“Leave him alone! You leave my daddy alone!” The girl might as well have been a stranger, not only to Joe but also to the brute he felt everything through. Her face was familiar, yes, but there was no emotional connection. She was just a pretty girl with a screechy voice. He’d never, ever seen her with the expression she had on her face. She was angry, scared. She had auburn hair pulled back in a ponytail and she was dressed in running pants and a T-shirt that probably belonged to her dad. Her face was as pretty as ever, but now her eyes were wide, her mouth trembled on the edge of tears and her soft voice was loud. She wanted to protect her own. That was admirable, but unfortunately she was trying to protect a loser.
Admiration could go to hell. He couldn’t believe the feelings he had for her-No. Joe shook his head. Those weren’t his feelings, or even the brute’s; they belonged to the hidden side of the monster. Bleed over was bad here, worse than he’d ever experienced with his Other. This one’s Other had actually had a crush on her once. He shook the thought away. “Shut your stupid face! You don’t know anything! He doesn’t deserve your love! He’s a drunk and a loser!”
Robbie screamed but tried to man up. He swung with his free arm and threw his weight into it. The blow landed well enough to snap his head to the side and to clack his teeth together.
The world went red and Joe tried to stay calm in the sudden storm of anger.
Everything around him was the color of blood, and from deep in his chest he heard a roaring noise. Robbie had started to get a little smile on his face, like maybe he was feeling good about the shot he delivered, but that changed when the growl grew louder.
He didn’t merely growl, he roared, his voice shaking the windows, sending the people in the room into a terror.
His hand slapped across Robbie’s mouth and mashed his lips into his teeth and broke his nose. Rob barely even managed to grunt his pain out before he grabbed him in both hands and charged. Robbie weighed in at close to two hundred pounds, but lifting him was easy and so was charging across the living room, knocking his daughter on her butt as he moved past her.
The brute hefted the screaming man over his head and ran harder, straining as he aimed his burden at the sliding glass doors that led to the balcony and the best view in town.
He roared again as he threw Revrund Robbie through the air. The doors were tempered glass. They were designed to withstand a solid impact without shattering. That didn’t stop Rob from flying through them in a shower of broken shards or the chorus of screams from mother and daughter alike.
Rob screamed as he cleared the porch and sailed through the air toward the distant river. Gravity got to him before he could reach the Hudson. The trees and shrubs caught him on his way down. They were not gentle.
He watched the man fall and felt a grin spread across his face. The two women ran past him, forgetting him as they looked toward where the woods below had swallowed Robbie.
Joe pulled his mind from the other one. A few moments later he saw the dark shape of the brute as he left the building. Joe stood perfectly still and merely watched. Not time yet to introduce himself but soon, very soon. He had to get everyone where he wanted them-now that he knew he could.
Chapter Seventeen
Tina Carlotti
“Mrs. Ramirez? Hi, this is Tina Carlotti. I used to live next door to you. I-I was hoping maybe you’d remember me and my mom.” Tina licked her lips nervously. She’d called almost everyone she could think of, but mostly what she’d gotten for her trouble was answering machines, busy signals or no answer at all. She couldn’t leave a message. She didn’t want anyone calling her back. She didn’t have any close friends and money was tight and what if they called the wrong people and reported where she could be found? Maybe she hadn’t done anything. Maybe Tony Parmiatto was just fine and she could go home, but any way she looked at it, she had crazy loads of money in her possession, and that sort of cash had to belong to someone. It sure as hell wasn’t hers, but she was holding on to it.
She’d almost completely run out of phone numbers that she could remember and the lady who’d finally answered was one of the few where she would have felt safe leaving a phone message.
Lucille Ramirez was close to sixty years old, and there had been a time when the woman had watched her while her mom worked. Back before her mom fell for the wrong guy and got hooked on smack.
“Oh my!” The woman’s voice shook. It almost always shook. Her voice was like a mouse, small and shaky and maybe a little scared of everything. “Oh, Tina, sweetie, I was so sorry to hear about your momma.”
“My mom?” Her stomach tried to shrink down to nothing and Tina licked her lips again. “That’s why I’m calling. I haven’t been able to get her on the phone. I-do you know where she is?”
“Tina, honey. Oh, sweetheart, I heard it on the news. Your mother’s dead, honey. They pulled her body out of the river three days ago. They just now identified her.”
“I-what?” She had to have heard that wrong. That was all. There was a mistake.
“Honey, the police, they’ve been trying to find you. They wanted to let you know, and now they’ve been worried that something happened to you too. But your mother, she’s dead, baby. I’m so sorry.”
The phone fell out of her fingers. Suddenly it weighed too much to hold. She watched it bounce across the cheap carpeted floor and flop to the side.
“Mama?” Her voice was tiny, so much smaller than Mrs. Ramirez’s that she could have been a flea in comparison to the woman’s mouse. “My mama’s dead?”
She fell back on the bed, the nice old lady who used to watch her completely forgotten.
They pulled her body out of the river three days ago.
They just now identified her.
Somewhere out there, Tony and his friends were maybe looking for their money. Tony and his mob friends. How much damage would they do for two million dollars? They’d killed for a lot less. She knew that, even when she tried to pretend that part didn’t matter. They’d killed people and tortured people and sometimes they’d gone after the loved ones of people that did them wrong because for them it was more important to have what they wanted than it was to be good people.
Did they find my mama instead?
“Oh no. Oh, Mama. Mommy. No… ” Her lips kept moving, but there were no words. There were only tears. Tears, and that feeling like her whole universe was falling apart.
Chapter Eighteen
Cody Laurel
Cody was in a new office with a different doctor. Dr. Amelia Powell was in her early thirties if he had to guess, with strawberry blonde hair that she kept pulled back in a severe bun. The idea, according to what his parents had told him, was to get to the root of his problems. According to the last doctor, Dr. Keene, Cody was seeking attention. Not really sick, just a whiny brat, in layman’s terms.
The thought made Cody want to kick the man in his family jewels. He wasn’t looking for attention. He hadn’t run away from home and he didn’t disappear as a cry for help. No one wanted to understand that part.
The session had been going on for around ten minutes, and so far Cody liked the new headshrinker. At least she was fun to look at.
“Why do you think you’re here, Cody?” Dr. Powell looked at him and smiled. He smiled back. It was hard not to when she had a body that belonged in one of the porn sites he liked to surf when the folks were out. There weren’t a lot of girls looking at him on the average day. Mostly they just pretended he didn’t exist.
“Um. Because somebody decided I’m crazy.”
“No. You’re here because your parents wanted you to talk to somebody who can help you understand why
