by J. R. Ward
Colin’s laugh was immediate. And grating as all get-out. “You think that angel . . . and I . . . ?”
“He is fit.”
“Aye. But he is not whom I want.”
Nigel swallowed hard, and tried to hide his reaction by looking away. “It . . . is for me?”
“Aye. So what say you, lover mine.”
Eventually, he swung his eyes back and the two of them stared at each other for the longest time.
Then Nigel sat forward and brushed his hair back with a shaking hand: The desire for composure did not win, not here and in private. Not with Colin.
Never with that archangel, he feared.
Reaching out his hand to his love, Nigel said hoarsely, “I say . . . it was the one I would have chosen.”
The archangel came forward with a smile. “And that,” Colin murmured, “was why I put it on.”
CHAPTER 51
Down below, in an attractive suburb of Caldwell, Susan Barten sat in her living room, wide-awake even though it was four a.m. Upstairs, her husband and her remaining daughter were sleeping in their respective beds, and all was quiet above, around, and below her.
She was used to this silent, painful sitting in the dark. The last stretch of uninterrupted rest she had gotten had been the night before . . . “it” had happened.
As usual, she sat in the armchair next to her couch, with her eyes trained on the front door. This was her perch, the branch she locked her feet onto as the winds of fate blew gales at her loved ones, peeling off layers of who she was and what her family was and how she’d expected to pass her time on earth.
She always faced the door Sissy had once gone in and out of so regularly—and this had been true even after the first couple of nights, when the initial hope had bled out, leaving nothing but a paralyzing fear behind. It was still true even now, when there was a concrete reason to know that her daughter was never, ever returning home again.
God, to think she felt lucky there was something for them to bury.
At the thought, tears itched in the corners of her eyes, and she found herself thinking about that Dr. Seuss book, the one that had been so ubiquitous at the high school graduation, the one they had bought for Sissy along with those dove earrings and that dove necklace and that dove braclet.
Oh, the Places You’ll Go!
An early grave was not what any of them had contemplated.
Why couldn’t this destination of hers have been medical school? Or Eurhen? Or New York City?
Or just to a hair salon in downtown Caldwell, or a vet’s office, or an elementary school to teach?
Why couldn’t it have been what all of her classmates had been granted?
Why did it have to have been that Hannaford supermarket on that particular night . . .
Susan balanced on the tipping edge of madness as the hundreds of different avenues open to her elder daughter presented themselves in a list . . . and she wondered yet again why, when the dice had been rolled, had they come up with—
A shout erupted out of her mouth before she was conscious of making the sound, and her legs were the same—doing their duty to get her out of the chair and around behind the thing before she was aware of moving.
A man had come through the door.
A huge man with blond hair had entered her house without actually opening the way in, and he was now standing in her front hall.
Staring at her.
Wait . . . she knew him. He was the one she had given that necklace to. He was the one who had looked devastated along with her.
And he was devastated still.
“What are you doing here?” she asked softly, strangely aware that however he had arrived, he was not here to hurt her or what was left of her family. “Why have you come?”
The man just stared at her without answering, his harsh face saddened to the point where it seemed as if he were on the same edge she was.
Feeling unsteady, Susan rounded the armchair and all but fell back into it. Then she placed her hands on her knees, and rocked back and forth slowly.
“I already know they found her,” she said. “I know they found . . . my daughter. . . .”
The man came forward as she began to sob, and after she tried to wipe her eyes, she found that he had crouched down at her feet.
“You said you were going to bring her back,” she choked out.
When he nodded to her, she took that to mean he still intended to make good on the promise, but surely he knew such a thing was impossible.
“I’m glad you came,” she murmured, thinking out loud.
He remained silent, and as she looked into his strange eyes, she voiced the guilt she had not spoken to anyone else: “I killed my daughter. I sent her out for those groceries. I asked her to go . . . and if she hadn’t . . . she wouldn’t have . . .”
There was no going any further as she began weeping. And as she cried her heart out, the massive warrior stayed with her, sharing her pain and her solitude and her regrets, his big hand coming to rest on her shoulder and easing her, his presence a balm over the raw burns that covered her even though her skin was outwardly still intact.
When she calmed down some, he put his hands on hers.
At the contact, magical warmth entered her and traveled up both sides of her arms, the tide moving into the chasm in her chest, filling her.
It was then that she saw he had wings. Great gossamer wings that rose over his huge shoulders and caught the light, even though she had left the house in darkness.
“You’re an angel,” she whispered, transfixed. “You are . . . an angel. . . .”
He showed no reaction, just kept staring up at her, his beautiful eyes and his healing touch elevating her even though she remained seated.
Eventually, he removed his hands from hers, but the warmth he had given her stayed inside her body.
“You have to go?” she said sadly.
He nodded, but before he rose to his great height, he pulled open his shirt. There, at his throat, was the delicate necklace she had given him, the dove of peace suspended from its little chain.
She reached out and touched the links that were warm against his glimmering skin. “I know you will take care of her.”
He nodded once . . . and then he was gone. Instantly.
With jerky movements, Susan jumped out of the chair and rushed across to the front door. Unlocking it and throwing it wide, she leaped onto the cold concrete of the stoop.
No sign of him. But he had been there.
The warmth he had given her was still with her.
As she looked up to heaven, she saw that it was snowing: Little white flakes were drifting down slowly from the sky, their weaving paths like that of the destinies of people, ever changing, never the same, moving around obstacles seen and unseen.
Letting her head fall back, she felt the tiny spots on her forehead and cheeks as if they were small, kind hands sent to brush her tears away.
The angel would be back, she thought.
And Sissy, wherever she was, was not alone. . . .
It was a long time before Susan stepped back into the house, shut the door, and quietly made her way up to the bed she and her husband had shared for decades. As she slid inside the sheets, he roused briefly.
“You all right?”
“We have an angel,” she told him. “He’s watching over us. Over Sissy.”
“You think?”
“No,” she said, going into her husband’s arms and closing her eyes in exhaustion. “I know.”
And with that, she fell into a deep, abiding sleep . . .
EPILOGUE
Two weeks after Reilly got out of the hospital, she stood at her bureau in her bedroom and wondered if it was morally wrong to wear lingerie under your clothes—assuming you were going to your parents’ for Sunday dinner.
Maybe she’d just throw on the black lace. Sexy, but nothing peekaboo—
“What you doin’,” Veck said as he came up behind her and put his ar
ms around her.
He was naked, as usual, and very glad to see her—as usual.
Glancing over her shoulder, she smiled and held up the bra in question. “The black. I was thinking the black. What say you?”
“Good choice. It’s one of my favorite sets to take off of you.”
As he kissed her slow and deep, and rubbed that arousal against the back of her bathrobe, Reilly gave herself over—but only for a moment.
Inching away, she shook her head. “We’re already late.”
“Won’t take me long,” he murmured, going for the tie in front. “Promise.”
“But I’ll have to explain to my father why we delayed dinner.”
Veck stepped back sharply. Cleared his throat. All but glanced behind himself to see if the man in question was in the room with them. “Good God, why aren’t you dressed yet, woman. Come on—shake a leg.”
She laughed as he headed over to the suitcase in the corner and started throwing on clothes like the house was on fire.
Her partner was still the tough-cored, straight-talking, sexy man she’d fallen in love with: Ever the dogged detective. Always alert and very protective of her. Precisely the kind of guy who never backed down, rarely gave an inch, and somehow managed to still cater to her.
But if there was one person on the face of the planet who could snap his BVDs, it was her father.
Veck and Big Tom, as Veck called him, were cut from the same cloth, but Veck never overstepped, and was always on his best behavior. And the fact the pair got along so well was just one more reason to love both of the men in her life.
“You’re still in that robe, Reilly,” he shot over while he yanked his pants on.
“I love you, you know that?”
He didn’t even pause, the flapping continuing as he pulled on a button-down. “That’s nice, honey. Now come on, get dressed.”
Reilly laughed again, grabbed her Victoria’s Secret, and did her own, toned-down version of the DelVecchio shuffle in the bathroom.
It was amazing how much had changed . . . and how little. Bails’s body had been found in the rubble of the quarry three days later, and the cause of death had been ruled a suicide, as the gun he’d used had still been locked in the grip of his cold hand. Kroner had also woken up dead: Medical staff at the hospital had discovered that very night of the quarry collapse that he’d stopped breathing and they’d been unable to revive him, something which had not been a surprise, given the extent of his injuries.
As for Sissy Barten, her death had been unofficially hung around Bails’s neck: Her body had yielded no DNA to tie the two together, but forensic IT specialists had gotten into the man’s various computers and found a web, literally, of madness and scheming—all of which revolved around Veck and Veck’s dad. Turned out Bails had often spoken in his postings online of killing someone just as Sissy had been killed, using precisely those techniques and markings, as a way to honor Veck’s father.
Needless to say, Veck had been cleared of all suspicion—in fact, an audit of the security camera files from the evidence room showed that the system had conked out for a period of time one night between when the Kroner stuff had come in and when Bails had put forth his false accusation. The implication that Bails had somehow engineered the malfunction was obvious.
And that . . . was that.
In the aftermath of it all, Veck didn’t talk much about what had happened—or remark on the fact that his father had been executed on schedule, or seem to dwell on that moment in the cave when the wrong decision on his part could have ended both their lives. But there had been enough nights when she and he had lain together and he’d said a few words here and there. She was giving him time, and he was taking it, but she’d never gotten the feeling that he’d hidden, or would hide, anything from her.
God willing, they had the next fifty years to keep up the dialogue.
“Are we ready?” he called out from the bedroom.
“Yup! Coming!”
A quick brush of her hair, a spritz of that perfume Veck liked, and she rushed out of the bath—
In the center of her room, right by the bed they shared, he was down on one knee, with a little velvet box on his outstretched palm.
Talk about skidding to a halt.
Putting her hand to her beating heart, Reilly blinked like an idiot for a moment.
“Two guesses what I’m going to ask you,” he murmured, flipping the top open.
For a long moment, she just stood there in shock. Except then she got with the program, all but floating over to him.
Looking down, she saw a small, perfect diamond in a simple pronged setting.
“Just so you know,” Veck murmured, “I asked your father a week ago. He gave me his permission—and vowed to beat me to a bloody pulp and bury me in your mother’s rose garden if I ever do wrong by you.”
Reilly got down on her own knees with him, tears waving everything up. “It’s . . . really like him to say that.”
They both laughed.
“Yeah. So.” Veck cleared his throat. “Sophia Maria Reilly, will you be my wife? Please?”
She nodded, because she didn’t trust her voice—and forget about the rock; she threw her arms around him and held on hard. “I love you. . . .”
Veck crushed her to him, and then eased back. With hands that shook ever so slightly, he took the ring out of its velvet slot . . . and slid it on her finger. “Fits perfectly.”
She took some time to admire the winking, flashing brilliance. The stone was incredibly bright and lively, almost impossibly so.
“It’s not big,” Veck said, “but it’s flawless. That was important to me. I wanted to give you something . . . flawless.”
She pressed her lips to his. “You already have, though. And it’s nothing you could buy me in a jewelry store.”
Veck kissed her back for the longest time . . . forever it seemed, and that was just barely enough for her.
And then, with his mouth still against hers, he whispered, “Now do you mind if we get in your car and break the speed limit? Much as I love your mother’s garden, I’d prefer not to be Miracle-Gro, especially on a night like this.”
Laughing, Reilly got to her feet and helped her . . . holy crap, fiancée . . . to stand up. “You know what I just realized? We both go by our last names.”
“And neither one of us can cook.”
“See,” she said as they raced for the stairs side by side. “We were meant to be together.”
Halfway down, he tugged her to a stop, pulled her into his arms, and kissed her again. “Amen to that, my love. Amen.”
One last kiss . . . and then just like that, they were out the door . . .
And off into their future.
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