by J. R. Ward
Or who, as was the case.
Halfway down, the elevator bumped to a halt and the doors opened to let a pair of men in. As the trip downward resumed, the two traded affirming noises, like they’d just concluded a conversation satisfactorily and were reinforcing the fact. They were both dressed in slacks and sweaters, and the one on the left was balding at the crown, his brown hair pulling away like it was afraid being on top of the mountain….
Vin blinked. And then blinked again.
A shadow bloomed all around the balding man, the glimmering, shifting aura the color of pencil lead and the consistency of heat waves on pavement.
It couldn’t be…oh, God, no…after all these years of quiet, it couldn’t be back.
Curling his hands into fists, Vin closed his eyes and willed away the vision, kicking it out of his brain, denying it access to his neurons. He did not just see that. And if he had, it was a misread of the overhead lighting.
The shit was not back. He’d gotten rid of it. It was not back.
He cracked a lid, looked over at the guy…and felt like he’d been punched in the gut: The translucent shadow was as obvious as the clothes the man was wearing and as tangible as the person standing next to him.
Vin saw dead people, all right. Before they died.
The double doors opened at the lobby, and after the pair filed out, Vin dropped his head and walked as fast as he could for the exit. He was making good time, running from the side of himself he’d never understood and didn’t want anything to do with, when he slammed into a white coat who was carrying an armful of files. As paperwork and manila folders took flight like startled birds, Vin helped steady the woman and then dropped down to help her clean the mess up.
The balding man who’d stood ahead of him in the elevator did the same.
Vin’s eyes locked on the guy and refused to budge. The smoke was emanating from the left side of the man’s chest…boiling up into the air from a specific spot.
“Go see a doctor,” Vin heard himself say. “Go see one right away. It’s in your lungs.”
Before anyone could ask him what the hell he was talking about, Vin scrambled to his feet and tore out of the building, heart in his throat, breath coming in short blasts.
His hands were shaking by the time he got to his car, so it was a good thing BMWs let you get inside and start the engine without plugging the key into anything.
Gripping his steering wheel, he shook his head back and forth.
He’d thought he’d left all that freaky bullshit behind. He thought that second-sight crap was solidly in his past. He’d done what he’d been told to do, and even though he hadn’t believed in the actions he’d taken, they had appeared to work for almost twenty years.
Ah, shit…he couldn’t go back to the way it had been before.
Just couldn’t.
CHAPTER
7
When Jim came out of the bathroom, diPietro was gone and a nurse with a lot to say had taken his place. While she went on about…shit, whatever the hell it was…Jim focused over her shoulder in hopes of cutting short the tirade.
“Are you done?” he asked when she took more than a single breath.
Crossing her arms over her large bosom, she looked at him like she was hoping she’d be the one to put his catheter back in. “I’m going to call the doctor.”
“Well, good for you, but it’s not going to change my mind.” He glanced around, figuring the private room he’d gotten was diPietro’s influence. “What happened to my things?”
“Sir, you were nonresponsive up until about fifteen minutes ago, and you were dead when they brought you in. So before you take off like you had the common cold, you should—”
“Clothes. That’s really all I’m interested in.”
The nurse stared at him with a kind of hatred, like she was so done with patients giving her lip. “Do you think you’re immortal?”
“At least for the time being,” he muttered. “Look, I’m through with arguing. Get me something to wear and tell me where my wallet is, or I’m walking out in this and making the hospital pay for my taxi home.”
“Wait. Here.”
“Not. For. Long.”
As the door eased shut, he paced around, energy burning through him. He’d woken up logy, but that was all gone now.
Man, he could remember this feeling, back when he’d been in the service. Once again, he had a goal, and as before, that gave him the power to throw off exhaustion and injury and anyone who threatened to divert him from his target.
Which meant that nurse had better get out of his way.
Not surprisingly, when she came back a couple of minutes later, she brought not one, but three reinforcements. Which was not going to help her. While the doctors formed a circle of rational thinking around Jim, he just watched their mouths move and their eyebrows go up and down and their elegant hands gesticulate.
As he thought about his new job—because he sure as hell wasn’t listening to the MD brigade—he wondered how he was going to know what to do. Yeah, he had a date with diPietro…but then what? And, holy hell, was that girlfriend going to be there?
Talk about “guess who’s coming to dinner.”
He focused on the peanut gallery. “I’m done. I’m leaving. Can I have my clothes now, thanks.”
Crickets in the background. Then everyone walked out in a huff, proving that they thought he was stupid, but not mentally compromised—because adults who had their marbles were allowed to make bad choices.
As the door was shutting, Adrian and Eddie stuck their heads in the room.
Ad smiled. “So you tossed the white coats out on their asses, huh?”
“Yup.”
The guy chuckled as he and his roommate stepped inside. “Why does this not surprise me—”
The whistle-blower nurse barged past them with a pair of hospital scrubs and a large Hawaiian shirt draped over her forearm. Ignoring Eddie and Adrian as if they weren’t even there, she tossed the threads onto the bed and presented Jim with a clipboard. “Your things are in that closet and your bill’s been taken care of. Sign this. It’s a form stating that you are releasing yourself AMA. Against medical advice.”
Jim took the black Bic from her and drew an X on the signature line.
The nurse looked down at the mark. “What is that?”
“My signature. An X is legally sufficient. Now will you excuse me?” He untied the neck ribbon on the johnny and let the thing drop from his body.
Full-frontal got her out of the room without further conversation.
As she took off at a dead run, Adrian laughed. “Not much on the words, but you know how to get things done.”
Jim turned around and drew on the scrub bottoms.
“Hell of a tat you got there,” Adrian said softly.
Jim just shrugged and reached for the ugly-ass shirt. The color combination was red and orange on a white background, and he felt like a frickin’ Christmas present with the damn thing on.
“She gave you that because she hates you,” Adrian said.
“Or maybe she’s just color-blind.” More likely it was the former, though.
Jim went to the closet and found his boots lined up on the bottom and a plastic bag with the St. Francis Hospital seal hanging on a hook. He put his bare feet into his Timberlands and took his jacket out of the bag, covering up the damn shirt. His wallet was still in his coat’s inside pocket, and he went through the folds. Everything was there. His fake driver’s license, his false social security card, and the VISA debit card that linked to his Evergreen Bank account. Oh, and the seven dollars that was change from his having bought the turkey sandwich and the coffee and the Coke that morning.
Before life had FUBAR’d out big-time.
“Any chance either of you didn’t come on a motorcycle?” he asked the roommates. “I need a ride back to the site to pick up my truck.”
Although to get out of here, he’d hop on the back bump of a Harley if he had to.
Adrian grinned and swept a hand through that gorgeous hair of his. “Brought my other wheels. Figured you’d need transport.”
“I’ll take a clown car at this point.”
“Give me a little more credit than that.”
The three of them left, and when they passed by the nursing station, no one got in their way, even though all the staff stopped what they were doing and glared.
The trip from St. Francis to diPietro’s nascent temple took about twenty minutes in Adrian’s Explorer, and he had AC/DC playing the entire time. Which wouldn’t have been a problem, except for the fact that the guy sang every word of every song and was never going to be the next American Idol: Fucker wasn’t just tone-deaf—he had white-boy rhythm and way too much enthusiasm.
As Eddie stared out the window like he’d turned to stone, Jim cranked the volume even louder in hopes of drowning out the wounded badger behind the wheel.
When they finally turned onto diPietro’s dirt drive, the sun had set and the light was draining from the sky, the tree stumps and the raw patches casting sharper shadows because of the angle of illumination. The hacked-up land was utterly stark and unappealing, and contrasted badly with the unrazed opposite shore, but no doubt diPietro was going to replant it with specimen everything.
He was definitely the type who had to have the best.
As they pulled up to the house, Jim’s truck was the only one left, and he was ready to jump out at it before the Explorer rolled to a stop.
“Thanks for the ride,” he shouted.
“What?” Adrian went for the volume and turned it all the way down. “What you say?”
In the acoustic vacuum, Jim’s ears rang like church bells, and he resisted the urge to try to shake the vibration out of his skull by slamming his forehead into the dashboard.
“I said, thanks for the ride.”
“No problem.” Adrian nodded at the F-150. “You okay to drive?”
“Yeah.”
After he got out, he and Eddie pounded knuckles, and then he walked over to his truck. As he went, his right hand searched out the pocket of the shirt the hospital had given him. No Marlboros. Damn it. But come on, like coffin nails were going to be a parting gift when you pulled out of St. Francis?
While Adrian and Eddie waited for him, he filled his cigaretteless hand with his keys and unlocked his—
A flash of movement by the back tire caught his eye.
Jim looked down as the dog he’d shared his lunch with limped out from under the security of the transmission system.
“Oh…no.” Jim shook his head. “Listen, I told you…”
There was the sound of a car window going down and then Adrian’s voice: “He likes you.”
The mutt did that curled-sit thing and stared up at Jim.
Shit. “That turkey I gave you sucked. You have to know that.”
“If you’re hungry, everything tastes good,” Adrian cut in.
Jim glanced over his shoulder. “Why are you still here? No offense.”
Adrian laughed. “None taken. Later.”
The Explorer reversed, its tires crunching over the cold ground, its headlights swinging around and hitting the half-done house before sweeping across the cleared acreage and the river beyond. As the illumination headed off down the lane, Jim’s eyes adjusted in the darkness, and the mansion presented itself as a jagged beast, the enclosed first floor its belly, the ragged second story framing its thorned head, the scattered piles of stacked brush and logs the bones of its victims. Its arrival had consumed the peninsula, and the more it gathered strength, the more it would dominate the landscape.
God…you were going to be able to see it for miles in all directions, from land and water and sky. It was a real temple to greed, a monument to everything Vin diPietro had obtained in his life—which made Jim willing to bet that the guy had come from nothing. People who had money inherited old houses this size; they didn’t build them.
Man, derailing diPietro from this shit was going to be a hard sell. Very hard. And somehow, the threat of eternal damnation just didn’t seem like enough of a motivator. Guy like this wasn’t going to believe in life in the hereafter. No fucking way.
As a cold wind rolled across the property, Jim looked back down at the dog.
The thing seemed to be waiting for an invitation. And prepared to sit it out for eternity.
“My apartment’s a pit,” Jim said as they stared at each other. “About on a level with that sandwich. You come with me and it ain’t no lap-of-luxury gig.”
The dog pawed at the air as if a roof and four walls were all it was looking for.
“You sure about this?”
More with the pawing.
“Okay. Fine.”
Jim unlocked the cab’s door and bent down to pick up the thing, hoping he’d read the conversation correctly and wasn’t going to lose the tip of a finger. All was cool, though. The dog just lifted its butt and gave its body up to the palm that encircled its belly.
“Damn, we need to put some weight on you, boy.”
Jim settled the animal on the passenger seat and got behind the wheel. The truck started up quick, and he turned the blowers off so that the little guy didn’t catch a chill.
Flipping his headlights on, he eased the engine into gear and followed the path Adrian and Eddie had forged, turning around and going out the lane. When he got to Route 151N, he hit the left-hand blinker and—
The dog ducked under his arm and sat in his lap.
Jim glanced down at the animal’s boxy head and realized he had nothing to feed the thing. Or himself.
“You want more turkey, dog? I can hit the Citgo on the way home.”
The thing wagged not only its tail, but its entire bony butt.
“Okay. That’s what we’ll do.” Jim hit the gas and eased out of diPietro’s driveway, his free hand stroking the dog’s back. “Ah, just one thing…any chance you’re housebroken?”
CHAPTER
8
Darkness brought with it, among many blessings, the benefit of prevalent shadow. Which made it far more useful than daylight.
As the man sat behind the wheel of the taxi, he knew that both he and his vehicle were invisible to the one he watched. She couldn’t see him. She did not know he was there or that he had taken pictures of her or that he had been trailing her for weeks. And this confirmed the power he had over her.
Through the bars on her window, he watched her as she sat on the couch with the boy. He couldn’t see them clearly, as there was a gauze curtain in the way, but he recognized the shapes of them, the larger and the smaller, nestled close together on the sofa in the living room.
He’d made it his business to learn her schedule. During the week, she schooled the boy until three in the afternoon, whereupon on Mondays through Thursdays she took him to the YMCA for his swimming and basketball lessons. While the boy was at the facility, she never left him—whether he was in the pool or on the court, she was perpetually seated on the benches where the children left their warm-ups and their little bags. When the boy was finished, she waited right outside the locker room for him, and after he got changed, she drove him straight home.
Careful. She was so very careful—except for the fact that the rhythms of her life never changed: Every night except Sundays, she made the boy dinner at six; then the babysitter showed up at eight o’clock and she took off, going to St. Patrick’s either for confession or prayer group. After which she went to that godforsaken club.
He hadn’t been inside the Iron Mask yet, but that was going to change tonight. His plan was to trail her for hours while she worked as a waitress or a bartender or whatever she was, learning more about her and how she lived. God was in the details, as they said, and he needed to know everything.
Glancing into the rearview mirror, he fussed with the wig and the mustache he was using as a disguise. They weren’t sophisticated, but they hid his features well enough, and he needed them for a variety of reasons.
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Plus he relished the feeling he got when he was invisible to her; the thrill of watching her when she was unaware of it was downright sexual.
At seven forty, a sedan pulled up in front of the house and an African-American woman got out. She was one of three babysitters he’d seen this week, and after following one of them home and seeing where she went the next morning, he’d learned they all came from a social service called the Caldwell Center for Single Mothers.
Ten minutes after the sitter went inside, the garage door trundled up and he ducked lower in his seat—because two could play at the extra safe game.
Seven fifty. Right on time.
His woman backed out into the driveway and waited as the door shut tight, as if she were worried that one of these times it wouldn’t make it all the way down. When it was finished doing its thing, her red brake lights went out and the car reversed into the street and took off.
He started the cab and was just putting it in gear when the dispatcher’s voice broke through the silence. “One forty—where are you, one forty? One forty, we need your goddamn car back.”
No way, he thought. He didn’t have time to drop off the cab and catch up with her. St. Patrick’s would be the next stop, and by the time he checked out of work, she’d be done at the church.
“One forty? Goddamn you—”
He curled up a fist, prepared to punch the radio into silence and it was hard to tame his temper. Always had been. But he reminded himself that he would have to return the taxi at some point, and busted equipment meant he’d have to deal with the dispatcher.
He had to avoid conflicts because they never ended well for him or the other person. That much he’d learned.
And he had big plans.
“Coming in now,” he said into the receiver.
He’d just have to see her at the club, even though he felt cheated because he’d miss her at St. Pat’s.
Marie-Terese sat in the basement of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in a plastic chair that made her butt hurt. To her left was a mother of five who always cradled her Bible in the crook of her arm like it was a baby. To her right was a guy who must have been a mechanic: His palms were clean, but there was always a black line beneath each of his fingernails.
