area. Wonderful. She did say her battery was low. Maybe it died.
Having no choice, I patted dry, dragged on a pair of jeans, a Blue Oyster Cult sweatshirt, and my hard-won biker boots, and stepped out of the bathroom. The television sat silent, the living room dark.
I didn’t bother drying my hair before I left the apartment, advising Mr. Wong not to let strangers in as I did so. A freezing rain pelted me when I rushed outside to Misery, swearing on all things holy if Gemma wasn’t at the convenience store when I got there, I would begin my illustrious career as a soul collector for real, starting with hers. I supposed I’d have to pick up a jar first.
I drove to Santa Fe for the second time that day as sheets of icy rain cascaded down my windshield. My hair, frozen to my head, was slowly thawing. At least it was easier to stay awake in Popsicle mode. Misery was doing her best to warm me, and I had to admit, my toes were pretty toasty. I should have brought a towel or a blanket. What if something happened? What if Misery died and I froze to death? That would suck.
I wondered if Reyes ever got cold. He was so hot, as though his body generated heat from its own source inside him. He should’ve come with a HIGHLY COMBUSTIBLE warning label.
When I was finally warm, I realized the shaking I’d been experiencing was not due to the temperature but to Reyes’s latest visit. Figures. I forced my mind away from him and onto the case at hand. My first order of business would be to use my supernatural connections to find out if Teresa Yost was still alive. The odds were certainly against it, but with any luck, she’d survived whatever the good doctor had in store for her. I needed more information on him as well.
The rain continued to fall in a procession of thick angry droplets that sounded more like hail against Misery than raindrops. It forced me to slow, to take the turns more cautiously than I wanted to. But its aggressive disposition matched my own. The slapping of the windshield wipers lulled me into serenity, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t stop my thoughts from traveling back to Reyes.
Why did he come to me? He was so angry, so reluctant to be with me, yet there he was, enjoying it each and every time as much as I.
Then again, he was a man. Why men did anything they did was beyond me. And they have the nerve to complain about women.
I took the exit that would lead to the convenience store outside of Santa Fe. It sat in a fairly remote area, and I couldn’t help but wonder what in the name of jelly beans Gemma had been doing out here. As far as I knew, she rarely went spotlighting for jackrabbits. A delivery truck ahead of me caused me to slow even more, but since the rain made it impossible to see beyond twenty feet, I actually felt safer behind it. I focused on its taillights to stay on the road. Rain in the parched deserts of New Mexico was always a good thing, but driving in it was becoming dangerous. Thankfully, the heavily lit convenience store came into view. The truck continued on as I coasted into the parking lot, then stopped short. Only one car sat off to the side, probably the night clerk’s. I scanned the area for Gemma’s Volvo, a realization coming to light along with a stunned kind of anger. She wasn’t there.
Clamping my jaw together to keep from cursing aloud, I tried her cell again, to no avail. Then I checked the texts again to make sure I had the right place. I did. Maybe she was lost, had told me the wrong convenience store. Before I could make a decision on what to do, my passenger’s-side door opened. Thank goodness. I figured her car was stuck somewhere out in this tempest and she’d had to hoof it to the store on foot. But instead of my sister’s blond hair and slight frame climbing in, a large wet man crawled inside and closed the door behind him. After an initial period of astonishment, a jolt of adrenaline rushed through me in a delayed reaction I would later shake my head at in befuddlement.
Cookie was right. I almost get killed in the most unlikely places.
I jumped to open my door, but long fingers that could easily be mistaken for a Vise-Grip locked around my arm. The fact that I knew the survival rate of abducted women spurred me into action. I fought him with a few well-placed punches while groping for the door handle. When he jerked me toward him, I raised my feet over the center console and kicked. But he bound my legs within a steel-like arm and pulled me underneath him.
A large hand muffled the screams I’d let rip as he pushed himself onto me. His weight caused the console to grind into my back painfully, but I still kicked and squirmed and used everything I’d learned in the two weeks I’d lasted in jujitsu. No way was I going to make this easy for him.
“Stop fighting me and I’ll let you up,” he said with a growl.
Oh,
“Don’t stop fighting me,” he added in a husky voice, “and I’ll slice your throat right here and now.”
For an endless minute the only thing I heard was my own labored breathing. The flood of adrenaline coursing through my veins shook me from head to toe. The man was soaking wet. Cold rain beaded off him and dripped onto my face.
Then something familiar registered in the back of my mind. The heat. Though his clothes and hair were soaking wet and bitterly cold, a heat radiated toward me and I blinked in utter astonishment.
He rested his forehead against mine as if catching his breath. Then he moved his hand from my mouth to the back of my neck and lifted me to a sitting position. My legs were still draped over the console when he straddled my hips — an amazing feat in the cramped space — and placed the weapon against my throat again.
Looming over me, he seemed larger than life. I recognized the prison uniform underneath a pair of work coveralls, filthy and torn.
“I won’t hurt you, Dutch.”
The sound of my name, the name he’d given me, sent an electric charge rushing through every molecule in my body.
I stared at him as a flash of lightning illuminated the confining space, and looked into the deep brown eyes of Reyes Farrow. The realization stunned me. He had escaped from a maximum-security prison. Things didn’t get much more surreal than that.
He was shaking with the cold, answering a question I’d asked myself of him earlier. Though his gaze was laced with desperation, his actions screamed otherwise. He seemed very much in control, and something other than desperation was driving him. A fierce determination fueled his every move. I didn’t doubt for a moment his willingness to kill me if need be. He was super pissed at me for binding him anyway.
“Take the Jeep,” I said, unable to believe I was actually scared of him. Of course, he’d always been the only thing I was afraid of growing up. I just didn’t know it was him until recently.
His eyes narrowed. He hovered over me, allowed his gaze to roam over my face. I wanted to turn away but found it impossible. The things we had done over the past few weeks. The things he was capable of. And now I was sitting here with a knife at my throat, placed there by the very man who could make me scream out his name in my sleep. “It’s yours,” I said. “Take it. I won’t call the police.”
“I have every intention of doing just that.”
Somehow, this was so different from any other encounter I’d had with him. Different because it was him, Reyes Alexander Farrow, Rey’aziel, the son of Satan in the flesh. Aside from that morning, I didn’t have experience with this part of him, with a beast capable of ripping a man to shreds between commercial breaks, if the stories Neil Gossett told me were any indication.
When a burst of lightning illuminated our surroundings again, he glanced at his watch. Only then did I realize his muscles were tense as if in pain. “We’re late,” he said tightly, the barest hint of a grin lifting one corner of his mouth. “What took you so long?”
I drew my brows together. “Late?”
His smile faltered and he ground his teeth, leaned forward, and placed his forehead against mine again. I realized he was hurt. He went limp against me for half a second, as though he’d lost consciousness. With a jerk, he forced himself to attention. He grabbed the steering wheel for balance, then refocused on me.
In my mind, history was repeating itself. That night so long ago, a teenage boy went limp from a violent blow. He raised his arms in a futile effort to fend off the attack. The image brought back feelings of empathy, of a blinding need to help him.
I fought it. This was no teenage boy. This was a man, a supernatural being, holding a knife to my throat. A man who had sat in prison for more than a decade, being molded, tempered, and hardened by the hatred and anger
