be—and be run by the right people. You’re out.” He nodded at Childe, “I’m out. The slate is wiped clean—provided you let me handle it from here. Let’s do this the right way—one last time.”
Her father cursed—which was something the man no doubt didn’t do very often. And then he said, “He’s right. Let me go change.”
As her father disappeared, Grier looked at Isaac, her arms slowly crossing around herself, her eyes growing grave. “Is this good-bye for you and me? Tonight? Here and now?”
Isaac went to her and captured her face in his hands, feeling all too vividly the reality he couldn’t escape and she wasn’t going to be able to live with.
With a pain in his chest that had nothing to do with the bullet, he said one, devastating word: “Yes.”
As she sagged, her eyes closing tight, he had to speak the truth: “It’s better that way. I’m not your kind of man—even if I don’t have to worry about XOps anymore, I’m not what you need.”
Her lids flipped open and she glared at him. “How old am I?” she demanded. “Come on, how old. Say it.”
“Ah . . . thirty-two.”
“And you know what that means, legally? I can drink, I can smoke, I can vote, I can serve in the army, and I can make my own damn decisions. So how about you let me choose what’s good for me—and what isn’t.”
Right. It was so not the time to get turned on. And he really didn’t think she’d thought through all the implications of being with a man who had his background.
He stepped back. “Go with your father. Let me clean up here and back in town.”
Her eyes held his. “Don’t break my heart, Isaac Rothe. Don’t you dare break my heart when you know perfectly well you don’t have to.”
With that, she kissed him and strode out of the kitchen . . . and as he watched her go, he felt pulled between two outcomes: one where he stayed with her and tried to make it work, the other where he left her to stitch up her life and move along.
Overhead, he heard her and her father walk around as they got themselves ready to go out and pretend like they hadn’t seen two men get killed in their homes and weren’t praying that a soldier who they shouldn’t have ever met disappeared the bodies.
Christ, and he even considered being in her life?
Isaac was alone no more than twenty minutes later, the two of them making a hurried departure for the city in Childe’s Mercedes.
Before they left, Isaac shook her father’s hand, but didn’t offer even his palm to Grier—because he didn’t trust himself not to kiss her one last time: Looking at her in her black dress, with her hair put together and her makeup on, she was as he had first met her, a beautiful, well-educated woman of privilege with the smartest eyes he’d ever had the privilege of staring into.
“Be safe,” he said to her hoarsely. “I’ll call you to let you both know when it’s okay to come back here.”
No tears, no protest on her end. She just nodded once, turned on her heel, and went to her father’s car.
As the pair left, he walked to the front door and tracked the sedan’s taillights.
He had to wipe his eyes. Twice.
And upon the disappearance of those glowing red beacons, he felt as if he had been left behind. But that was such bullshit, wasn’t it. You couldn’t be left, if you were the one doing the departure.
Right?
Needing some kind of contact, some sort of hope, he looked around at the treeline on the far side of the rolling lawn again. No sign of Jim or his boys . . . or that dog.
And yet he could have sworn he was being watched. “Jim? You out there, Jim?”
No one replied. Nobody came out of the foliage.
“Jim?”
As he went back inside, he had the strangest feeling he was never going to see Heron again. Which was odd, because Jim had been so fired up to be a savior.
Then again Matthias’s body was stiffening on the kitchen floor, which meant Isaac was safe now—so that man’s purpose had been served, hadn’t it.
Although . . . just to be sure, he was keeping the bulletproof vest on until dawn.
No reason to take being alive for granted.
CHAPTER 51
“Jim? You out there, Jim?”
As Isaac’s eyes searched the trees, Jim stood no more than three feet away from the guy and he wished he could hug the motherfucker. God . . . when those two gunshots had gone off and he’d watched through the kitchen windows as both Matthias and Rothe went down, years had been shaved off his eternal life.
But Isaac had been okay. He’d saved himself with some very clear, defensive thinking. Just as he’d been trained to do.
“Jim?”
And now, as he stared at his fellow soldier, pure, unadulterated elation flooded him. He’d won.
Fuck you, Devina, he thought. Fuck
Isaac was alive and so were Grier and her father. And in spite of getting the soul wrong in the beginning, things had worked out properly—although Nigel’s punishment thing had turned out to be a nonissue, hadn’t it.
Jim looked over his shoulder at Adrian and Eddie and was surprised to find that they weren’t all smiles.
“What’s wrong—”
He didn’t get a chance to finish the sentence. A mad swirling rush rose from his feet, twirling around him, rising up to claim his legs and hips and chest. He tried to fight it, but couldn’t run from—
His molecules scrambled and scattered until he was a swarm of himself that moved out of the dimensions of time and space, traveling to some unknown destination.
When he coalesced, he knew just where he was . . . and the sight of Devina’s worktable made his gut sour.
He had not won. Had he.
“No, you did not,” she said from behind him.
Turning on his heel, he looked at her as she came in through the archway. She was in her brunette form, all lovely and lush and fake as a Barbie version of herself.
She smiled, her red lips curling off her beautiful white teeth. “Matthias shot Isaac with the intent to kill him. Whether or not there was a death is not the measure. There was
Above her head, a black flag hung from the black wall, the first trophey for her.
“You lost, Jim.” That smile got even wider as she lifted her arms and indicated her great, viscous prison that rose high above them both. “He’s here now, mine forever.”
Jim’s hands curled into fists. “You cheated.”
“Did I.”
“You pretended to be me, didn’t you. That must have been how Matthias got into the farmhouse. You either made him look like me or you appeared as me.”
Her smug satisfaction was all the confirmation he needed.
“Now, now, Jim—I never cheat. So I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Devina strolled over to him, approaching him in a sensuous glide. “Say, would you care to stay awhile? I’ve got some ideas for how we could spend the time.”
When she was right in front of him, her red-tipped nails drifted up his chest and she leaned in. “I love being with you, Jim.”
With a hard clap, he captured her wrist and squeezed hard enough to break it. “You must be a glutton for punishment. In case you don’t remember, I shattered you last trip through the park.”
The bitch had the nerve to pout. “You’re hurting me.”
