Crave

“The only way . . .” Grier wiped her eyes again. “The only way I can be anywhere around him is if he helps you.”

“So tell him that when he gets here.”

A moment later she straightened her shoulders and took the phone. “Okay. I will.”

As a burst of emotion hit him, he had to stop himself from leaning in for a quick kiss—God, she was strong. So very strong. “Good,” he said hoarsely. “That’s good. And I’m going to go find my buddy Jim now.”

Turning away, he went down the back stairwell, and rounded the landings with speed. He was praying that either Jim had returned or those two hard-asses out in the backyard could bring him in from wherever he was at.

Bursting through the kitchen, he hit the door out into the garden, opening it wide—

Over in the far corner, Jim’s buddies were bookending a glowing cell phone, looking like they’d been kneed in the balls.

“What’s wrong?” Isaac asked.

The pair glanced up and he immediately knew by those tight expressions that Jim was in the shit: When you worked on a team, there was absolutely nothing more gut-wrenching than if one of you got captured by the enemy. It was worse than a mortal wound in yourself or a teammate.

Because the enemy didn’t always kill first.

“Matthias,” Isaac hissed.

As the one with the thick braid shook his head, Isaac jogged down to them. Pierced was looking green, positively green. “Who then? Who has Jim? How can I help?”

Grier appeared in the open doorway. “My father will be here in five minutes.” She frowned. “Is everything okay?”

Isaac just stared at the two guys. “I can help.”

The one with the braid shut that right down: “No, I’m afraid you can’t.”

“Isaac? Who are you talking to?”

He glanced over his shoulder. “Friends of Jim’s.” He looked back—

The two men were gone, as if they had never been there in the first place. Again.

What. The. Fuck.

As the creep-o-meter on the back of Isaac’s neck went wild, Grier walked over. “Was there someone here?”

“Ah . . .” He looked all around. “I don’t . . . know. Come on, let’s get inside.”

Ushering her back into the house, he thought it was entirely possible he’d lost his damn mind.

After locking the door and watching Grier reengage the alarm, he sat down on a stool at the island and took out the Life Alert. No response yet and he hoped Grier’s father got here before Matthias hit him back.

Best to have a plan.

In the silence of the kitchen, he stared at the cooktop as Grier took up res across the way, leaning back against the counter by the sink. It felt like a hundred years had come and gone since she’d made him that omelet the night before. And yet if he followed through on what he was contemplating, the next few days were going to make that seem like the blink of an eye in comparison.

Running through his brain, he tried to think of what he could say about Matthias. He knew a lot when it came to his old boss . . . and yet the man had purposely created black holes in every operative’s mental Milky Way: You were told only what you absolutely, positively had to know and not one syllable more. Some shit you could deduce, but there were vast patches of huh-what? that—

“Are you okay?” she said.

Isaac looked up in surprise, and thought he was the one who should be asking that of her. And what do you know, she had her arms around herself—a self-protective pose she seemed to fall into a lot when she was with him.

“I really hope you can patch it up with your father,” he replied, hating himself.

“Are you okay?” she repeated.

Ah, yes, so both of them were playing dodge ’em.

“You know, you can answer me,” she said. “With the truth.”

It was funny. For some reason, maybe because he wanted to practice . . . he considered doing that. And then he actually did.

“The first guy I killed . . .” Isaac stared down at the granite, turning the slick expanse of stone into a TV screen and watching his own actions play out across the speckled surface. “He was a political extremist who had bombed an embassy overseas. It took me three and a half weeks to find him. I tracked him across two continents. Caught up with him in Paris, of all places. The city of love, right? I took him out in an alleyway. Sneaked behind him. Slit his throat. Which was a messy mistake—I should have snapped his—”

He stopped with a curse, well aware that his version of talking shop was hardly like some tax attorney yammering on about the IRS code.

“It was . . . shockingly uncomplicated for me.” He looked at his hands. “It was like something came over me and put a lockdown on my emotions. Afterward? I just went out to eat. I had a steak with pepper—ate all of it. Dinner was . . . great. And it was while I was having that meal that I realized they’d chosen wisely. Picked the right guy. That was when I threw up. I went out the back of the restaurant, into an alley just like the one I’d murdered that man in an hour before. You see, I hadn’t really believed I was a killer until it didn’t bother me.”

“Except it did.”

“Yeah. Fuck—I mean, hell, yeah, it did.” Although only that once. After that, he was good to go. Stone-cold. Ate like a king. Slept like a baby.

Grier cleared her throat. “How did they recruit you?”

“You won’t believe it.”

“Give it a shot.”

“sKillerz.”

“Excuse me?”

“It’s a video game where you assassinate people. About seven or eight years ago, the first online gaming communities were getting big and integrated play had really caught on. sKillerz was created by some sick bastard—no one’s ever met the guy, apparently—but he’s a genius at graphics and realism. As for me? I had a head for computers and I liked”—to kill people—“I liked playing the game. Pretty soon there were hundreds of people in this virtual world— with all these weapons and identities in all these cities and countries. I was at the top of all of them. I had this, like . . . knack for knowing how to get to people and what to use and where to put the bodies. It was just a game, though. Something I did when I wasn’t working on the farm. Then, about . . . about two years into it . . . I started to feel as though I was being watched. That went on for, like, a week, until one night this guy named Jeremiah showed up at the farm. I was working the back rails, mending fences, and he drove up in an unmarked.”

“And what happened?” she asked when he paused.

“I’ve never told anyone this before.”

“Don’t stop.” She came over and sat beside him. “It helps me. Well . . . it’s disturbing, too. But . . . please?”

Right, okay. With her looking up at him with those big, beautiful eyes, he was prepared to give her anything: words, stories . . . the beating heart out of his chest.

Isaac rubbed his face and wondered when he’d become a sap—oh, wait, he knew that one: the moment he’d been escorted into that little room back at the jail and she’d been sitting there all prim, and proper, and smart as hell.

Sap.

Wuss.

Nancy.

“Isaac?”

“Yeah?” Well, what do you know—he could still answer to his own name and not just a bunch of ball-less nouns.

“Please . . . keep talking to me.”