The Sinner

by J. R. Ward

  Annnnnnnd Butch went back to staring at the counter again, like the scotch was his best friend. “Was it that much? I don’t think it was—”

  “Yes. Three times.”

  Closing his eyes briefly, he said, “Please don’t take this the wrong way, but I can’t talk about work right now. I just can’t. There are eleven hours between this moment and when I have to leave to go out into the field again. I need to spend this precious time thinking about something, anything, else than the war.”

  Assuming that was even possible.

  After a moment, Marissa resettled beside him and tucked her feet under herself. Leaning into his chest, she tugged his heavy gold cross out of his shirt.

  “I love how this gets warm when it lays on your skin,” she murmured. “It makes me feel that you’re protected.”

  “I am. God is always with me.”

  “Good.” As her eyes became teary, she blinked fast. “I know you don’t want to talk about this… but I love you and I don’t want to live my life without you. You’re everything to me. If something were to happen—”

  “Shh.” He covered her hand with his own, so that they were both holding the symbol of his faith. Then he leaned in and kissed her mouth. “Don’t think like that. Don’t talk like that. I’ll be fine.”

  “Promise me that you’ll…” She looked deeply into his eyes, as if she could pull something out of him by will alone. “… be careful.”

  He had a feeling that she wanted to make him vow to get through the Dhestroyer Prophecy alive. But the sadness in her face told him she was confronting the fact that that was not his call. Being careful with himself? That was within his control to some degree. Being upright in his boots at the end? Way above his pay grade.

  She cleared her throat. “Do you remember when they found you, after the Omega got ahold of you and did… what he did to you?”

  “Let’s not talk about—”

  “They brought you to my brother’s clinic, the one he had before the raids.” She carefully tucked the cross back inside his shirt, as if she wanted it closer to his heart, closer to his soul. “I remember when V told me where they were keeping you. I ran to that isolation room. I was relieved you were alive, but horrified by the condition you were in—and you didn’t want me in there with you.”

  “Only because I couldn’t have you infected with the evil. And that’s still true to this day.”

  “I know.” Marissa took a deep breath. “The thing is, I’ve been through a lot in my life. All those centuries as Wrath’s unclaimed shellan. The trip across the ocean from the Old Country when I didn’t think we were going to make the crossing alive. Being judged by the glymera, by my brother, by the Council. Things only got better when I met you. You made me feel alive… you were such a revelation. And then I almost lost you.”

  “Don’t go back there—”

  “That’s my point. I don’t want to ever mourn you again.”

  “You aren’t going to have to.”

  In a small voice, she spoke the very thing that worried him most. “The prophecy only provides that you eradicate the Omega. It doesn’t say anything about what survives.”

  Butch stared somberly at his mate. “With everything I am, and all that I will ever be, I swear, I will come back to you.”

  Eventually, she nodded. And she was looking at where the cross hung under his shirt when she did.

  “Let me hold you,” he murmured as he drew her against his chest.

  Making circles with his palm across her back, he felt his love for his female take on a new dimension… but not for a happy reason. The sense that their time together could be cut short deepened his emotions to a painful degree, and in the overwhelming quiet of their home, he felt true fear. It was as if their separation was in the wind, a leaf falling through the air. Whether it landed on his grave or not, no one knew.

  “I just have this bad feeling,” she said against his pec.

  Butch kept his mouth shut on that one, closing his eyes and running through some Hail Marys in his head. It was the only thing he could think to do, and that reality made him feel his vulnerability more than anything else. His faith was strong. His love for Marissa was even stronger. His control over destiny? Big nope on that one.

  After a moment, she stirred against him, her lips pressing into the front of his shirt at his sternum. Then she released a button and kissed a little further down, on his diaphragm. Then… she shifted her body between his legs, sliding off the sofa so she was kneeling in front of him. As her hands traveled up his thighs, he felt things stir in a place he’d been a little worried about ever working right again.

  A rumble rose up his throat. And he repeated the sound as her hands went to the Hermès belt he wore.

  “I’m sorry you were hurt,” she murmured as she undid the supple leather strap. And started working on the button of his fly. And the zipper.

  Butch’s pelvis rolled and he braced his arms, his hands sinking into the soft cushions. “I’m not that hurt.”

  Marissa eyed the enormous erection that begged for any morsel of her attention. “So I see. But how about I kiss it to make it feel better anyway?”

  “Fuck… yes, please…” he breathed.

  * * *

  The St. Francis Hospital System’s Urgent Care facility was only about ten blocks from the medical center’s campus, eight blocks from the CCJ’s newsroom. So it was a toss-up. Given how tired Jo was, she couldn’t decide whether she should walk or drive, but the day was sunny and warm for March. Under the theory that scurvy was a possibility after the long winter in upstate New York, she decided to hoof it. Unfortunately, she forgot her sunglasses in her car, and halfway between her office and the doc-in-a-box, she came to a decision tree. Did she go back and get them? Or soldier on?

  You’re going to die.

  That mysterious man in leather’s bald statement, spoken in his deep, accented voice, spurred her on in spite of the way the sunlight stung her eyes—sure as if her mortal hourglass was running out of sand, and she needed to go faster to make it to medical help before she went into multi-organ failure.

  Not that she was catastrophizing at all.

  Nah.

  Wincing up at the sky, she cursed and put her hand up to her aching forehead. Screw her liver, kidneys, heart, and lungs giving out. She was liable to have her head explode, parts of her gray matter becoming airborne shrapnel as the tumor she was clearly growing under her skull like a fat August tomato spontaneously quadrupled in size.

  By the time she pulled open the glass door to the clinic, and stepped inside its Lysol-scented air, she was nauseous, a little dizzy, and a whole lot convinced it was cancer. Of course, the fact that she hadn’t slept since the night before, and she’d seen her first decapitated corpse, and she was sad for Bill and Lydia, was likely not helping her hypothetical CNS non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

  Thank you for that differential diagnosis, WebMD.

  Offering a wan smile to a receptionist who seemed absolutely uninterested in receiving anyone, Jo wrote her name on the lined sheet that read “Sign In Here” and then gratefully sank into a plastic chair directly under the TV. There were two other people stationed at quarantine-like quadrants around the waiting area, as if no one was sure who had what communicable disease, and therefore, nobody was taking any chances catching something they didn’t already have.

  She closed her eyes and breathed through her nose. When that did nothing to quell the rolling swells atop the bilious green sea in her stomach, she tried cracking her lips and redirecting her inhales and exhales through that route.

  “Ms. Early?” the receptionist said some time later.

  After checking in with her driver’s license and her insurance card, it was back to waiting, and then she was finally in a room. The male nurse who took her weight, her vitals, and her temperature seemed nice enough, and she prayed she didn’t throw up on him.

  “So,” he said as he entered her blood pressure into her electronic char
t, “tell me a little about what’s been going on.”

  “Is my blood pressure, okay?”

  “It’s on the low side. But your oxygen stats are great and your pulse is fine. You’re running a low-grade fever, though.”

  “So I’m sick.”

  He stopped typing into the computer and faced her. He was probably thirty, and he had a good haircut, a precisely trimmed beard, and eyes that were not anywhere near as tired as she felt.

  “What have your symptoms been?” he asked.

  “I’ve been feeling sick. Fatigued. Headachy.”

  “Hmm…” He went back to typing. “There’s a lot of that going around. Flu season is heartier than usual this year, it seems. So how long has this been going on?”

  “Three months. Maybe four.”

  He stopped again and looked over at her with a frown. “Since November, then?”

  “I mean, I’m sure I’m fine.” Which, of course, was exactly why she was sitting in this exam room, telling herself not to barf on the guy’s white uniform. She was just GREAT. “Really.”

  “Okay.” He typed some more. “Anything else?”

  “I haven’t been losing weight, though. Kind of a bummer, really.”

  “So you’ve always been…” He scrolled up and read a number.

  “That’s what I weigh now?” When he looked at her again, she waved her hand like she could erase the question. “I mean, it’s fine. I’ve lost a little weight, but it’s no big deal.”

  “How much did you lose?”

  “Ten pounds. Fifteen at the most. I’m tall, though.”

  Okay, for all the sense she’d made while drafting the online article on that decapitated body on the fire escape, she had now apparently lost her ability to think. Because she was making no damned sense.

  Unless she’d also made no sense with the article and just hadn’t known it.

  “I’m sorry, but I think I’ve wasted your time.” She made like she was going to slide off the examination table. “I’m fine—”

  The nurse put his hand out like a crossing guard’s stop sign. “Take a deep breath.”

  Figuring it was medical advice—and also a good idea—Jo followed directions. Twice.

  “Okay.” He smiled, but she wasn’t fooled. That was not the casual one he’d given her as he’d wrapped her biceps in a cuff or shoved a thermometer in her mouth. “Good. Why don’t you talk to the doctor when she comes in, okay? Dr. Perez is really easy to speak to. Just tell her what’s been going on. Maybe it’s nothing, but she’ll be able to think the symptoms through with you and give you some options about further diagnostics if she believes it’s warranted. Sound good?”

  Jo nodded because she felt like a fool. And because she was suddenly very terrified.

  She’d been thinking about going to a see a doctor for a good month and a half, maybe two months. And she’d decided to finally follow up on the impulse largely to give herself something to do as she waited for McCordle to check in again. Anything was better than sitting in that empty newsroom with Dick steaming pissed at her behind the closed door of his office—

  Oh, who was she kidding. Someone she didn’t know had spoken her biggest fear out loud to her last night. And she was here to find out if she was dying.

  As if that man in leather was a fortune-teller.

  “Have you been under a lot of stress lately?” the nurse asked.

  “I accused my boss of a pattern of sexual harassment about a half hour ago.”

  The nurse whistled under his breath. “That counts. And I’m sorry that happened to you.”

  “And last night, I saw my first dead body.” As his eyes bugged, she figured she’d keep the head-as-bowling-ball stuff to herself. “And I’m working on my first big story as a reporter—now that you mention it, things have been a little intense.”

  All of that was child’s play, though. That man she’d run from the police with? Who she’d kissed in that abandoned restaurant? He was the real stressor, the first-in-line. Which considering the list of stuff he’d beaten for that coveted pole position was really saying something.

  Jo took a deep breath again—but this time, she relaxed some as she exhaled. “You’re right. This is all probably stress.”

  The nurse smiled again, and she was relieved that the Medical Professional Expression was not on his face anymore.

  “I’ll send Dr. Perez in as soon as she’s done with her current patient.” He extended a card from his lapel, swiped to log out of the computer, and got to his feet. “You take care now.”

  “Thanks,” Jo said.

  After he stepped out of the exam room, she swung her feet as they hung off the lip of the table—and remembered doing the same thing the night before in that kitchen. Stopping herself, she looked around and noted the pamphlets on depression, insomnia, and melanoma. The first two applied to her. The last one? She’d never really been into tanning, but redheads were not known for hearty skin.

  There was also an anatomy chart on the far wall, the human skeleton on one side, the human muscular system on the other. The latter made her think of the skinned corpse, of those photographs that Bill had showed her.

  And then she was back on the man from the night before, the one in leather, the one she should have been afraid of. She could picture him clear as day, sure as if he were in the room with her, and for some reason, the smell of his darkly spiced cologne came back to her—

  As her phone went off in her purse, she snagged the thing out of the sea of Slim Jims like God was calling with the answer to a prayer. Sure enough, she didn’t recognize the number, and as she hit “accept,” her heart pounded, but not from fear. Nope. More like hope that it was that man, although that was not only impossible, it made no sense.

  “Hello?” she said.

  There was a pause. And then a tinny, falsely real-person’d voice said, “Hello, my name is Susan. I’m calling about your student loans—”

  Stupid marketers.

  Cutting the connection and cradling the cell in her palms, she found herself wishing she had memorized that man’s phone number when he’d given it to her. But where did she think dialing him up was going to get her?

  Well, she knew at least one answer to that.

  Focusing on the door, she saw that hard, lean face, those deep-set eyes, those wide shoulders in that leather jacket. Then she felt his lips on her mouth, the leashed power of his tremendous body, the possibility of—

  A woman in a white coat opened the way into the exam room and entered with a calm smile. Her stare was direct, her manner brusque yet not cold, her attitude one of competence and kindness.

  “Good morning, Ms. Early,” she said as she closed them in together. “I’m Dr. Perez.”

  She didn’t go to the computer and sign in. She came over and shook hands. And even as her dark eyes were making a sweep of Jo’s face, like she had one of Bones McCoy’s scanners implanted in her head, she wasn’t impersonal about it.

  “Let’s talk about what’s going on. Matthew gave me some idea, but I’d like to hear everything again from you.”

  As she smiled, Jo smiled back.

  Yes, Jo thought. This was the kind of person she wanted to get answers from, not some guy who was a stranger she should not trust—as if the repertoire of replies to the question “What the hell is wrong with me?” varied depending on who was supplying them.

  Whatever. She was feeling better already.

  “I’m really glad I came,” she said. “So, it started probably back in November…”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  At nightfall, Syn materialized downtown without telling anyone where he was going. As he re-formed, his cell phone was vibrating like it was having a seizure, and he took the thing out so fast, he sent it sailing and had to pull a two-handed catch before the Samsung Sam-shattered all over the pavement.

  Finally, his female was calling—

  Oh, for fuck’s sake. Not her. But instead of letting things dump into voice mail, he a
nswered. “Relax, I’m taking care of it.”

  The old man with the cement company on the other end coughed like the carcinogens from his cigars were setting up a campground in his lungs. “What’s the fucking holdup? And I told you, you keep it quiet this time—”

  Syn cut the call and contemplated throwing the phone at the building in front of him. Except then his female couldnae reach him, at least not during the dead zone between when the unit broke into a million pieces and the split second later when he got a new one. So yeah, fine. That mobster wanted that reporter dead? No problem. Syn had a fuck of a temper going on, and this was a killing-many-birds-with-one-stone situation. He could burn off his bad mood, let his talhman stretch its legs with the guy, and get that fucking human he’d used to find himself a good victim to stop calling his ass.

  Win/win, motherfuckers.

  Stepping back so he was shrouded in shadows, he cased the parking lot of Caldwell’s local newspaper. There was only one car there, a Volkswagen of some sort, and the compact was parked in a spot marked “Reserved for CCJ Employees Only.” He glanced at the back door into the building. There was a sign reading “CCJ Staff Only” next to it, and through the chicken-wire’d windows, he could see somebody moving around and shutting off lights in the interior space.

  Good. Whoever owned that car was going to tell him where the hell he could find Joseph Early—or they were going to be used to whet his appetite.

  Cracking his knuckles, he willed the exterior security lights off, the fixtures going dark one after another until the parking lot was too dim for human eyes. In the other buildings around, there were only a few offices still glowing with illumination, but no one was in them that he could see. Not that witnesses mattered to him—

  The steel door opened and the light streaming from behind the egressing person made it impossible to see their face.

  But he knew who it was.

  Syn’s spine straightened like his ass had been hooked up to an electrical charge. Flaring his nostrils, he tested the air to make sure his sinuses weren’t playing tricks. They were not. He’d recognize that scent of meadow flowers anywhere.