With a groan, he pitched to the side, and she could tell he was struggling to focus. “Duke, I’m going to call nine-one-one, just hold on.”
As she went for the phone on her desk, he captured her arm with a burst of strength that didn’t last. “Cait …? Are you there?”
Oh, shit. “Yes, I’m right here.”
“I’m not going to live through this, Cait.”
“No, you are! You’re going to—”
“I love you,” he said as he started cough. When blood appeared on his lips, she nearly screamed again. “I want you to—”
“I love you, too!” Oh, God, she meant that. With all her heart and her soul, even though she barely knew him, and even though—
“Just be with me as I go, okay? Just … stay with me…”
“No! You fight it! Goddamn it, you fight and stick around until the—”
Fast, everything was going so fast now, as if time felt it needed to catch up from the slowdown that had just occurred. She needed to stop this—oh, God, how did this happen—how did—
As her mind threatened to hamster itself into immobility, Duke’s voice reached her through the delirium.
“Cait, are you still there?” His eyes were moving around, but they were unfocused—and there was more blood, everywhere. “Cait?”
Pull it together. She was going to pull it together. Right. Fucking. Now.
As her brain came back on, there was only one thing she wanted more than to give him his dying wish. And that was to save his life. Which was not going to happen if she stood by and let him continue to hemorrhage on her living room floor.
For the second time, she tried to break away from him … and this time, he couldn’t hold on to her.
Chapter
Fifty-seven
“More coffee?”
When Adrian didn’t answer, Sissy got up from the kitchen table and took his mug with her. As she poured out what was left in the pot, steam rose up and tickled her nose. Funny, the old pot seemed to be getting the stuff hotter by the hour, instead of the other way around.
“It’s so late,” she said, looking at the clock for the thousandth time.
She’d tried reading more of that book he’d given her. Had flipped through the magazines in that Target bag. Had even resorted to reading the newspaper, something she’d always assumed only parents did.
“How much longer can this go on …?” she wondered out loud.
She couldn’t believe she was still asking that as dawn closed in—and there still had been no word from Jim. No sign of him. No anything at all.
For a while, she’d assumed Adrian was just better at this waiting thing than she was. But then she’d realized he’d fallen asleep sitting up, his battered body somehow knowing enough to keep him propped upright at the kitchen table.
“I’m just going to go to the bathroom,” she said to him in his repose. “I’ll be right back.”
After all, that coffee she’d been drinking all night had to go someplace.
As she headed out, her companion didn’t show any reaction to her excusing herself, and that was okay. If she couldn’t get any rest, he might as well have the benefit of it. And at least someone in the household would be perky enough to deal with whatever might come home.
Striding down the hall, and into the parlor, she shut herself in the formal guest bath. There were another nine or so to choose from, but she didn’t want to go upstairs, and the other two on this level weren’t as pretty.
She liked the flowered silk wallpaper, so sue her.
After taking care of business, she went to the sink and cranked on the gold handle. So strange. Every time she came in here, the fixtures seemed to get shinier, the mirror losing even more of the black pits that had marred its wavy surface, the crystal sconces coming back to life.
It was almost as if the house were de-aging.
But of course, that wasn’t possible.
After drying her hands on a towel that was softer than it had been when she’d used it at midnight, some six hours before, she walked out toward the—
A flash of reflected light appeared across the marble floor for a moment … before disappearing as if it had never been.
Frowning, she changed directions and walked to the front part of the house. The door was closed, as it should be—so it couldn’t have been from someone—like, oh, say, Jim—coming home. Besides, he walked through those kinds of things normally, didn’t he.
Just as she was about to go back toward the kitchen, she heard the subtlest creaking above her head.
Someone was going up the stairs.
Rushing around in her stocking feet, she was about to bound up two at a time, but instead she stopped. Collected herself. Proceeded in a silent way.
As she passed the grandfather clock, it began to chime, its incessant droning pissing her off—as if the thing were making the noise in hopes of giving her away.
When she got to the top, she was just in time to see the hall bathroom door shut and hear the shower come on.
So it was him.
Fine. She would wait out here.
The second-story sitting area had an arrangement similar to the one in the parlor, sofas and love seats placed with care around an Oriental rug, little side tables supporting lamps and small objects made of stone as well as coasters for drinks consumed long, long ago.
Funny, her grandmother had had a collection of those carved rocks, too. Sissy had particularly liked the ones that were cut and polished to be fruit—green grapes made of jade, purple ones made of amethyst, apples and pears from various shades of quartz.
As the shower droned on, the grandfather clock eventually got over itself and fell silent, and she got bored with pacing around, so she sat down in the far corner.
Not long thereafter, the water cut off.
And Jim came out into the light with nothing but a towel on.
Surging to her feet, she went to say his name—
Something stopped her. Well, actually, it was him: He looked absolutely hollowed out, a shell of the man she knew, and yet that wasn’t it. No … there was something else—
His mouth was swollen, but not like he’d gotten punched. Just red and puffy. And there were scratches on his bare chest and his arms.
Made by fingernails.
And he wasn’t just exhausted; he was spent.
Sissy didn’t know a lot about sex—well, the mechanics, sure, but it wasn’t like she’d personally gone much past second base or anything. And it hadn’t been because she was a prude. She’d just never found a boy who seemed worth the risks of pregnancy—had never been so flipping turned on that she’d let booze or romantic delusions go to her head.
She knew enough, though, to be one hundred percent sure that that man had spent most of the night having had it.
And the confirmation? Not that she needed it?
As he walked on to his room, he flashed his back: Which was covered in a shockly huge black-and-white tattoo of the Grim Reaper. And there were scratches on both the ink and the flesh, as if someone had been hanging on to him as he—
