She braced herself for another vertical impact, but he had other ideas. He ripped her back to the floor and pinned her facedown. As he mounted her from behind, his weight settling on her lower body, she cried out—

The knife was about six inches long, and had a blade that was cared for so well, it gleamed white in the distant light of her office.

“No more of that yelling. Don’t want to wake the neighbors.”

“You’re not going …” She couldn’t breathe.

“To get away with this? Of course I am. You’d be surprised what I’ve gotten away with in the past.”

“You’re…”

“Just stop, I know what I’m doing, okay?” At that, one hand locked on the back of her neck to keep her in place, and the other started working on her clothes.

Tears speared into her eyes, terror making her tremble all over. Not like this, oh, dear God … but she couldn’t move, and wasn’t going to try screaming again in fear of—

A thunderous noise broke through the pounding horror in her blood, and she wasn’t the only one who heard it; she could feel G.B. freeze above her. A moment later, it was repeated … and a third time, and a—

The explosion that came next was something she knew, if she lived through this, that she would never, ever forget. It was unholy, a roar that was loud and deadly as a wild animal’s attack call.

An instant later, the weight on top of her was gone, and even as close to fainting as she was, she took advantage of it, wrenching herself up and shoving herself backward.

“Duke!” she screamed.

Duke’s much larger body had taken G.B. down, the pair of them rolling around.

“He has a knife!” she yelled.

Like either one of them was listening? Scrambling to her feet, she wanted to help, needed to—

Fuck the phone and 911. What she required was upstairs, in her bedroom.

As the pair of them struggled for control of the weapon, she ran for the staircase, skidding in her now-bloody socks, ricocheting off the walls, scampering to the second floor. And even though it was totally dark up there, she found her bedside table in a second.

Her handgun was one she was licensed to carry and had been trained to use. But all of that had been on a hypothetical. It had never occurred to her that she might have to use the nine-millimeter autoloader.

She all but fell down the stairs.

Pulling herself around the base of the balustrade, she entered her living room with the weapon up at shoulder height and the safety off.

All hell had broken loose, her furniture busted up, more pictures down from the walls, the lamp knocked over.

They were up on their feet again, a hideous waltz happening as they circled around and around. Duke had control of G.B.’s arm, his superior strength on the verge of winning out, but he’d been stabbed, blood dripping off his elbow and from a wound in his side.

For a split second, she thought … yes, they truly did look like brothers. Nearly twins, as a matter of fact.

Then she leveled the gun at the two of them. “Drop the knife,” she said in a voice that didn’t sound like her own.

Both of the brothers looked toward her, identical pairs of blue eyes locking on the barrel of her gun.

Later, she would realize that Duke really did love her. Because for a split second, his concern for her distracted him and his focus was lost … and that was all it took.

G.B. pulled a second knife out from God only knew where and plunged it right into his gut.

“No!” she screamed.

Everything went into slow motion at that point. Duke dropped to his knees, clutching his abdomen, curling over. Above him, G.B. threw the knife up over his head, his eyes rapt, his body strung in an arc—

Pop! Pop! POPPOPPOPPOPPOP!

Cait started knocking off rounds, the bullets firing cleanly out of her well-oiled gun, one after another after another … driving G.B. back, the impacts jerking him like a puppet. And as he went, so she followed, discharging the entire clip as she walked with him.

Just as she had done in that dream she’d had early in the morning.

When she was finally finished, he was falling backward, his feet tripping over themselves, his expression one of utter and complete shock, as if this was not at all what he’d had in mind.

He hit one of the glass windows of her office in the center of its large pane, and his weight and trajectory were too much for the fragile barrier to hold: he broke it as he finally fell back completely, his limp body shattering the expanse in a spectacular display of light and sound.

But she didn’t give a shit about him.

Whirling around, she all but fell on Duke. “Oh, God, please don’t die, please don’t…”

With a groan, he pitched to the side, and she could tell he was struggling to focus. “Duke, I’m going to call nine-one-one, just hold on.”

As she went for the phone on her desk, he captured her arm with a burst of strength that didn’t last. “Cait …? Are you there?”

Oh, shit. “Yes, I’m right here.”

“I’m not going to live through this, Cait.”

“No, you are! You’re going to—”

“I love you,” he said as he started cough. When blood appeared on his lips, she nearly screamed again. “I want you to—”

“I love you, too!” Oh, God, she meant that. With all her heart and her soul, even though she barely knew him, and even though—

“Just be with me as I go, okay? Just … stay with me…”

“No! You fight it! Goddamn it, you fight and stick around until the—”

Fast, everything was going so fast now, as if time felt it needed to catch up from the slowdown that had just occurred. She needed to stop this—oh, God, how did this happen—how did—

As her mind threatened to hamster itself into immobility, Duke’s voice reached her through the delirium.

“Cait, are you still there?” His eyes were moving around, but they were unfocused—and there was more blood, everywhere. “Cait?”

Pull it together. She was going to pull it together. Right. Fucking. Now.

As her brain came back on, there was only one thing she wanted more than to give him his dying wish. And that was to save his life. Which was not going to happen if she stood by and let him continue to hemorrhage on her living room floor.

For the second time, she tried to break away from him … and this time, he couldn’t hold on to her.

Chapter Fifty-seven

“More coffee?”

When Adrian didn’t answer, Sissy got up from the kitchen table and took his mug with her. As she poured out what was left in the pot, steam rose up and tickled her nose. Funny, the old pot seemed to be getting the stuff hotter by the hour, instead of the other way around.

“It’s so late,” she said, looking at the clock for the thousandth time.

She’d tried reading more of that book he’d given her. Had flipped through the magazines in that Target bag. Had even resorted to reading the newspaper, something she’d always assumed only parents did.

“How much longer can this go on …?” she wondered out loud.

She couldn’t believe she was still asking that as dawn closed in—and there still had been no word from Jim. No sign of him. No anything at all.

For a while, she’d assumed Adrian was just better at this waiting thing than she was. But then she’d realized he’d fallen asleep sitting up, his battered body somehow knowing enough to keep him propped upright at the kitchen table.

“I’m just going to go to the bathroom,” she said to him in his repose. “I’ll be right back.”

After all, that coffee she’d been drinking all night had to go someplace.

As she headed out, her companion didn’t show any reaction to her excusing herself, and that was okay. If she couldn’t get any rest, he might as well have the benefit of it. And at least someone in the household would be perky enough to deal with whatever might come home.

Striding down the hall, and into the parlor, she shut herself in the formal guest bath. There were another nine or so to choose from, but she didn’t want to go upstairs, and the other two on this level weren’t as pretty.

She liked the flowered silk wallpaper, so sue her.

After taking care of business, she went to the sink and cranked on the gold handle. So strange. Every time she came in here, the fixtures seemed to get shinier, the mirror losing even more of the black pits that had marred its wavy surface, the crystal sconces coming back to life.

It was almost as if the house were de-aging.

But of course, that wasn’t possible.

After drying her hands on a towel that was softer than it had been when she’d used it at midnight, some six hours before, she walked out toward the—

A flash of reflected light appeared across the marble floor for a moment … before disappearing as if it had never been.

Frowning, she changed directions and walked to the front part of the house. The door was closed, as it should be—so it couldn’t have been from someone—like, oh, say, Jim—coming home. Besides, he walked through those kinds of things normally, didn’t he.

Just as she was about to go back toward the kitchen, she heard the subtlest creaking above her head.

Someone was going up the stairs.

Rushing around in her stocking feet, she was about to bound up two at a time, but instead she stopped. Collected herself. Proceeded in a silent way.

As she passed the grandfather clock, it began to chime, its incessant droning pissing her off—as if the thing were making the noise in hopes of giving her away.

When she got to the top, she was just in time to see the hall bathroom door shut and hear the shower come on.

So it was him.

Fine. She would wait out here.

The second-story sitting area had an arrangement similar to the one in the parlor, sofas and love seats placed with care around an Oriental rug, little side tables supporting lamps and small objects made of stone as well as coasters for drinks consumed long, long ago.

Funny, her grandmother had had a collection of those carved rocks, too. Sissy had particularly liked the ones that were cut and polished to be fruit—green grapes made of jade, purple ones made of amethyst, apples and pears from various shades of quartz.

As the shower droned on, the grandfather clock eventually got over itself and fell silent, and she got bored with pacing around, so she sat down in the far corner.

Not long thereafter, the water cut off.

And Jim came out into the light with nothing but a towel on.

Surging to her feet, she went to say his name—

Something stopped her. Well, actually, it was him: He looked absolutely hollowed out, a shell of the man she knew, and yet that wasn’t it. No … there was something else—

His mouth was swollen, but not like he’d gotten punched. Just red and puffy. And there were scratches on his bare chest and his arms.

Made by fingernails.

And he wasn’t just exhausted; he was spent.

Sissy didn’t know a lot about sex—well, the mechanics, sure, but it wasn’t like she’d personally gone much past second base or anything. And it hadn’t been because she was a prude. She’d just never found a boy who seemed worth the risks of pregnancy—had never been so flipping turned on that she’d let booze or romantic delusions go to her head.

She knew enough, though, to be one hundred percent sure that that man had spent most of the night having had it.

And the confirmation? Not that she needed it?

As he walked on to his room, he flashed his back: Which was covered in a shockly huge black-and-white tattoo of the Grim Reaper. And there were scratches on both the ink and the flesh, as if someone had been hanging on to him as he—

“Are you kidding me,” she demanded.

He stopped dead in his tracks. But instead of turning around, he just dropped his head, as if he were too tired to hold it up anymore.

“I thought you were supposed to be fighting the war.” She went over to him, getting right in front of his well-used body. “But that’s not what you did all night, was it.”

“Sissy … you don’t understand.”

“Oh, please, like you’re going to hit me with another ‘Stay out of it, this is all toooooo complicated for you, little girl’? Do you honestly think I don’t know what the walk of shame looks like? Christ, I saw it all the time in my dorm. I just never thought I’d associate it with you.”

He pushed a hand through his wet hair and finally met her in the eye. “I’m going to bed now.”

“Okay, great. So I guess Adrian and I’ll just go find the soul—”

“We lost the round, okay? We lost.”

Sissy stopped breathing for a moment. Then that anger deep inside of her flared. “Because you were f**king around with some woman, right?”