And as he stood over his boss, the back-flat was just too fucking metaphorical: The man had fallen in more ways than just in the here and now.
Jim didn’t believe for one second that the guy was sincere about taking Isaac back into the fold. That was just a draw to get the soldier within shooting range.
God knew Matthias was an excellent liar.
Jim bent down and put the man’s gun back into its holster; then he slipped his arms behind the guy’s knees and under his shoulders—shit, the cane. He reached across, picked it up, and laid the thing right down the center of the man’s chest.
Standing up was a breeze, and not just because Jim had strong shoulders. Damn . . . Matthias was so light; too light for the size of his frame. He couldn’t have weighed more than a buck fifty, whereas in his prime he’d been well into the two hundreds.
Jim walked through the closed doors of the embalming room and went up the stairwell to ground level.
Back in the desert, when he’d done this the first time with the fucker, he’d been prickling with adrenaline, on a race to get his boss back to camp before the fucker bled out—so that he wouldn’t be accused of murder. Now, he was calm. Matthias was not about to die, for one thing. For another, they were both in a bubble of no-can-see and safely in the States.
Passing through the locked front door, he figured he’d take Matthias over to the guy’s car—
“Hello, Jim.”
Jim froze. Then twisted his head to the left.
Strike that about the “safely,” he thought.
On the far side of the funeral home’s lawn, Devina stood on the grass in her black stilettos, her long, gorgeous brunette hair curling down to her breasts, her little black dress hugging all those curves. Her perfect facial features, from those black eyes to those red lips to that alabaster skin, positively glowed with health.
Evil had never looked so good.
But then again, that was part of her surface appeal, wasn’t it.
“What you got there, Jimmy,” she said. “And wherever are you going with him.”
Like the bitch didn’t already know, he thought, wondering how in the hell he was going to get out of this one.
CHAPTER 26
From his vantage point in Grier’s pantry, Isaac could hear what was being said out in the kitchen—but he couldn’t see a damn thing.
Not that he needed a visual.
“Tell me where Isaac Rothe is,” Grier’s father repeated in a voice that had all the warmth of a January night.
Grier’s response was just as chilly. “I was hoping you’d come here to apologize.”
“Where is he, Grier.”
There was the sound of running water and then the flapping of a dish towel. “Why do you want to know.”
“This isn’t a game.”
“I didn’t think it was. And I don’t know where he is.”
“You’re lying.”
There was a heartbeat of a pause, during which Isaac squeezed his eyes shut and counted the ways in which he was an asshole. For shit’s sake, he’d brought a wrecking ball into the woman’s life, crashing through her relationships both personal and professional, creating chaos everywhere—
Footsteps. Hard and sharp. A man’s. “You tell me where he is!”
“Let go of me—”
Before he knew he was blowing his cover, Isaac burst out of hiding, throwing the door wide. It took him three leaping steps to get to the pair of them and then he was all over Grier’s pops, swinging the man around and shoving him face-first up against the refrigerator. Palming the back of the guy’s head, he pushed that patrician piehole into the stainless steel so hard, good ol’ Mr. Childe’s panting breath left little clouds of condensation on the panel.
“I’m right here,” Isaac growled. “And I’m a little twitchy at the moment. So how about you don’t handle your daughter like that again, and I’ll consider not opening the freezer section with your face.”
He expected Grier to pull a let-him-go, but she did no such thing. She just took a box of Band-Aids out from under the sink and fiddled around choosing the right size.
Her father heaved a deep breath. “Get away . . . from my daughter.”
“He’s just fine where he is,” she answered, as she wrapped a strip around her index finger. Then she put the box away and crossed her arms over her chest. “You, however, can leave.”
Isaac briefly frisked her father’s fancy-ass sweater and superpressed pants, and when he didn’t find a weapon, he stepped away, but stayed close. He had a feeling the guy had gotten physical because he was scared to death and about to crack—but no one handled Isaac’s woman like that. Period—
Not that Grier
Damn it.
“You know you’re giving her a death sentence,” Childe said, his eyes boring into Isaac’s. “You know what he’s capable of. He owns you and he’ll mow down whoever he has to in order to get to you.”
“Nobody owns anybody,” Grier cut in. “And—”
Mr. Childe didn’t spare his daughter a glance as he cut her off. “Give yourself up, Rothe—it’s the only way to be sure he doesn’t hurt her.”
“That man’s not going to do anything to me—”
Childe wheeled around on Grier. “He already killed your brother!”
In the aftermath of that drama bomb, it was as if someone had slapped her—except there was no one to hold back from her, no guy to yank free and disarm and immobilize. And as Grier went white, Isaac felt a paralyzing impotence. You couldn’t protect people from events that had already happened; there was no rewriting history.
Or . . . people, either. Which was the root of so many problems, wasn’t it.
“What . . . did you say?” she whispered.
“That was no accidental overdose.” Childe’s voice cracked. “He was killed by the same man who’s going to come after you unless he gets this soldier back. There is no negotiating, no bargaining, no terms to trade. And I can’t—” The man started to break down, proving that money and class were no protection against tragedy. “I can’t lose you as well. Oh, God, Grier . . . I can’t lose you, too. And he will do it. That man will take your life in the blink of an eye.”
Shit.
Shit, shit, shit.
As Grier braced herself against the counter, she was having trouble processing what her father had said. The words had been short and simple. The meaning, however . . .
She was half-aware that he was still talking, but she’d gone deaf after, “That was no accidental overdose.” Stone deaf.
“Daniel . . .” She had to clear her throat as she cut in. “No, Daniel did it himself. He’d OD’d at least twice before. He . . . It was the addiction. He—”
“The needle in his arm was put there by someone else.”
“No.” She shook her head. “
“You found the body . . . but I saw it happen.” Her father let out a sob. “He made me . . . watch.”
As her father buried his face in his hands and lost it completely, her vision flickered in and out like someone was playing disco with the lights in the kitchen. And then her knees went loose and—
