Possession

locked up. Waiting for a break in the flow of cars, she jogged across and hoped that her luck with janitors continued.

Nope. She was able to get into the public foyer, but the lobby was locked and empty. Going over to will-call, she peered in. Nobody was in the office—

The staff-only door opened wide and she turned. A police officer was coming out, and he paused to look behind himself like he was waiting for a colleague.

“Excuse me,” she said to the guy. “May I go down to the office? I think I left something here the day before yesterday and I want to see if anyone picked it up.”

“Do you know where you’re going?”

“Just through this hall.”

“Okay, g’head.”

She walked fast down the corridor, passing by some other cops, probably the ones the uni at the door was waiting for. As she went along, it was ironic that she was yet again looking for a lost-and-found box. Maybe she’d have more luck than when she’d been on the search for her gold earring.

Coming around the corner, she straightened her skirt as she approached the glass office. She was not looking forward to going rounds with that receptionist again, but who else was she going to ask?

It turned out that the reception space was empty, but as she tried the glass door, she was able to pull things open. “Hello?”

The desk was orderly, the computer screen displaying a slowly rotating Palace logo, the phone ringing quietly.

“Hello…?”

There were clearly more offices in the back, a rear hallway going off in two directions, but she didn’t want to intrude—

Her foot hit something unexpected, her balance instantly going haywire as she tripped forward. Catching herself on the corner of the desk, she looked down. A cardboard box filled with personal effects was on the floor: Aluminum travel mug. Plant. Picture of—

Frowning, Cait knelt down. Without touching anything, she got close enough to see the image of two young women standing side by side on a beach, their arms around each other’s shoulders. The one on the right was…

An odd foreboding brought her head up and around to the empty chair behind the desk.

“Can I help you?”

Cait jumped up. A man had come in, an exhausted, half-bald, used-to-be-good-looking man in wrinkled clothes.

“I—ah, I’m sorry to bother you. I was looking for the receptionist?”

He recoiled like she’d slapped him. “You didn’t hear?”

Before she asked … before he answered her … she knew who had been killed. “No, no, I haven’t…”

“Jenny’s dead.” He marched past her. “So unless you’re applying for the position, I can’t do anything for you.”

And that was that. He disappeared down the inner hall, a door slamming shut a moment later.

Cait didn’t stick around. Trying to find her sketchbook was such a low priority compared to what was going on here.

At least it was a relatively new one. The only thing in it … had been those sketches of G.B.

By the time G.B. got out of his second round of questioning, he had reverted back to his old ways, the ones he worked so hard to hide, the ones that had gotten him into trouble before.

Unfortunately, his submersion into himself so complete, he was having trouble seeing what was ahead of him.

Fury, as great and wide a divide as it had always been, owned him.

Getting into his car, he grasped the steering wheel and tried to focus. He could feel a plan developing in his head, and he had enough sense to know that it wasn’t a good one. It wasn’t clean. It wasn’t tight.

And he was in enough trouble already with the whole Jennifer thing. But he couldn’t … concentrate … on … anything else—

As his phone rang, he fumbled with the thing, dropping the cell in his lap as he took it out of his inside pocket. He answered without checking, without thinking—

“Hello, G.B.” Female voice. Low. Seductive. “What are you doing, G.B.?”

The sound of the brunette he’d fucked in that basement workroom pierced through the veil of his emotions, the fog of his anger, the clouds of his past.

“I’ve been thinking about you.”

As she spoke, he thought that he should say something back to her to let her know he was actually on the line—but she seemed to be already aware of that.

“What are you going to do about all this, G.B.?” she asked.

“About what?” he mumbled.

“What are you going to decide to do?”

God, how did she know? Because he was torn, the urge to act warring with the sense that it was in his best interest to let this shit with Cait go.

But his brother was in the way. His fucking goody-two-shoes brother was getting her. And he just couldn’t let that happen.

The shit with that whole Nicole thing had been for fun. But he actually liked Cait.

“You know she cheated on you.”

“Who …” he asked.

“That blond you like so much. She fucked your brother last night.”

He frowned. “How … how do you—”

“You know she did. You saw him kiss her at the grave site. You think that happens between two people who are just friends? Don’t be naive.”

G.B. brought up a hand and started to rub his forehead, back and forth, back and forth, as if he were sanding the skin off. He had always hated Duke. Had come out of the womb detesting the guy. And yeah, sure, it had never been logical, but some things were so strong that you didn’t need to understand them. They just … were.

It was like he had a demon inside of him, and sometimes the evil needed to get out before it ate G.B. alive.

Like with Jennifer in the theater basement. A switch got flipped and … everything else disappeared except the malignancy—and keeping that inside? Impossible.

Man, one of the single biggest satisfactions in his life had been taking Duke’s boring-ass girlfriend away from him—seducing her right out from under his brother’s nose. God, so fucking pathetic—the pair of them had been so “in love,” parading around that college campus arm in arm, full of dreams. But there had been fractures in the relationship to exploit—Darling Nikki, as the song went, hadn’t been quite the nicey-nice girl Duke had believed she was. What a skank. And she hadn’t been on the pill—so when G.B. had poked holes in the condoms before he used them? Not long before she was nauseous every morning and then—oopsie! She’d had to tell her BF she’d cheated on him.

When Duke had found out, his first stop had been G.B.’s apartment—and the guy had beaten him so badly, he’d needed dental implants afterward. But it was so worth it—and the payback had lasted for years.

Was going to last at least until the kid was eighteen, right?

“G.B., I think you need to do something about all this.”

Coming back to the present, he shook his head. The brunette was right. So fucking right.

“Go to the mall, G.B. Turn your car on, and go to the mall. The food court, G.B. Go there, and find your path. I’ll be waiting for you at the end—and I’ve got a lifetime contract to offer you.”

He blinked, thinking that was a strange way of putting things. “What…?”

“I’m offering you what you’ve always wanted, what you sing about—I’m prepared to give you eternal life.”