Dangerous Lovers (148 page)

Both of us let out a little squeal. “Seriously! That was mean!” I pressed a hand to my chest to hopefully keep it from beating right out.

“You deserve it. I told you to stay in the car.”

“You took too long!”

“I was gone five minutes.”

Felt like a lifetime to me.

“What did you find out?” Piper asked, grabbing my hand and pulling me closer to wherever Storm was.

“Charming’s here. Getting him out isn’t an option this time.” His voice sounded a little funny.

“Why not!” I demanded.

“Well, because he’s still in his body. He won’t be going through walls anytime soon.”

“So let’s create a distraction. He’ll know it’s us and he can escape.” It was a perfectly reasonable plan.

“Uh, that’s not going to work.”

“Why not?” I demanded again.

“Because he’s unconscious.”

If that wasn’t a bucket of ice-cold water right in my face. I sucked in a breath. “What happened to him?”

“I don’t know. He doesn’t look bad, just unconscious.”

If he was unconscious, then it was bad. A person didn’t just pass out for no good reason. My worry over him increased tenfold. I really thought we would be able to find a way to get him out of there. Now I was starting to worry it wasn’t going to happen at all. Olly would sit there for months, only to be Recalled. The ATM card he gave me felt like a twenty-pound weight in my pocket. Had he known this was going to happen all along? Had his confidence been just so I wouldn’t worry?

“No.” I said, “This isn’t how this is going to go.”

“Let’s just go back to your place and we can come up with some sort of plan,” Storm said reasonably.

I was done with being reasonable.

I marched ahead, stepping onto the Reaper’s property and toward the front door.

“Frankie!” Piper called, running after me. “What are you doing?”

A man came around the side of the house and stopped short, seeing us approach. “This is private property,” he said.

“I know exactly whose property it is,” I spat. “Now step aside.”

“I’m afraid I can’t let you go any farther.”

I snorted and walked around him. “Fine, then. Come along.”

He raced after us as I walked up to the front door and banged on the solid wood with my fist. He probably had a doorbell, but I felt like hitting something.

The door swung open a few seconds later. “Oh, well, isn’t this a surprise?” The Reaper smiled. “I’m afraid your boyfriend can’t come to the door. He’s indisposed.”

Piper stepped up behind me and all his attention zeroed in on her. Again, that weird look of reverence overcame his features and it made me wrinkle my nose in disgust.

“She’s only here because of me,” I said, trying to take the attention away from her.

He blinked, his stare coming back to me, only for it to wander right back to Piper.

I slapped my hand against the partially open door. “Hey!” I snapped.

Irritation crossed over his features until I spoke. Once the words had left my mouth, I had his complete and utter attention.

“I came to make a deal.”

“You came to make a deal with me?” he said, interest clouding his eyes.

I nodded.

“Come in.” He held open the door as Piper and I went inside, both of us sticking very close together.

In his office, he sat in a massive black chair behind a desk that was completely bare, and my eye caught a few shards of broken glass lying on the rug beneath it. It made me wonder what happened and if it had anything to do with Olly.

The Reaper steepled his fingers beneath his chin and pinned me with a cold stare. “What’s the deal?”

I swallowed, not really believing what I was about to do. Yet I’d seen too much to simply ignore or deny anything that had happened recently. I could no longer just tell myself there was a way out of this that didn’t require anyone to die. In the world of the Reaper, death was king. Death was the be all and end all of everything.

If there was one thing I learned through all of this, it was that death wasn’t fair. No one wanted to die. No one wanted to simply cease to exist.

Yet there wasn’t a choice.

At least not for me.

“If I kill the Target for Charming, will you consider the job complete?”

Beside me, Piper gasped. “Frankie! Do you know what you’re saying? You want to kill someone?”

No, I didn’t. Killing Rosalyn was the very last thing I wanted to do. But it was her or Olly. I suppose it was selfish to choose Olly because I wasn’t just doing it for him. I was doing it for me too because I couldn’t fathom living in a world that he wasn’t in.

“You—a human—want to take on the duties of a Death Escort?” the Reaper asked.

“Not all the duties. One kill. One Target. I kill her for you, and you agree to let Charming go.”

He sighed. “I really did want to Recall him. However, this is just too fun to pass up.”

So he was going to accept. And I was going to agree to murder.

“But first, let’s see what Charming has to say about this.”

“No!” I said, not wanting him involved. I already knew what he would say to this. But it was too late. He wasn’t going to stop me.

“Send him in!” the Reaper yelled and the door opened and Olly was thrust into the room. He stumbled a bit, like he was out of it, but when he saw me his eyes widened and cleared. He had a gash on his temple, one that was red and swollen.

“Frankie?” He looked at the Reaper. “I told you to stay away from her!”

“Apparently you forgot to tell her the same. She came to me.”

He looked at me like I was insane and rushed across the room to grab me by the shoulders and give me a hard shake. “What the hell were you thinking?”

“I was thinking it was about time someone fought for
you
.”

Something behind his eyes shifted. His hard grasp on my arms gentled. “Frankie—”

The Reaper interrupted whatever he was going to say.

“Your lady here has offered me a deal.”

Olly’s eyes widened and he shook his head. “No.”

“She has agreed to kill your Target in exchange for me not Recalling you.”

“
No.”

“I was just as shocked as you.” The Reaper went on. He was totally enjoying torturing Olly. “But it made me realize perhaps I was being too harsh. You are, after all, the best Escort I have. I thought maybe you were losing your touch. But this is the first time you’ve ever charmed anyone into killing for you.”

“She’s not killing anyone!” Olly ground out. He grabbed me again. “You are not doing this.”

“Ah, but she’s already agreed.”

I looked at Olly and nodded. Anguish filled his eyes. “You can’t do this. I won’t let you.”

“You don’t have a choice.”

“Just Recall me!” he burst out, turning toward the Reaper, stepping up in front of me. “Recall me right now.”

“No!” I cried, pulling Olly back.

“As tempting as that offer is, I’m going to have to pass. It’s clear the best way to punish you for everything you’ve done is by letting her sacrifice herself for you.”

His shoulders slumped. That single gesture did more to me than any denial he could have made with his lips. “Frankie,” he whispered, hoarse.

“So, then. We have a deal?” The Reaper looked at me with glee in his eyes. “You will kill the Target and I will agree to let Charming live.”

Olly looked at me, a plea in his eyes. I looked away. “Yes.”

And so it was done.

I just hoped Olly could forgive me for what I was doing.

I also hoped I would be able to forgive myself.

Chapter Forty-Nine

“
Hotwire - to start the engine (an automobile, for example) without a key by short-circuiting the ignition system.”

Charming

She made a deal with the Grim Reaper.
After everything I’d done to keep her away from this, to keep her safe.

She freaking comes here
to his house
and makes a deal.

Was it really too much to ask for a guy to be allowed to protect the woman he loves without her going and ruining it all?

When I got out of here, I was going to kill her. G.R. would be the least of her worries.

And I was getting out of here.

All I needed was for the opportunity to present itself.

It took forever. I waited hours, keyed up and pacing the room. The longer I waited the more afraid I became that I was going to be too late to stop her. If she killed someone for me, I would never forgive myself.

I knew what it was like to carry around guilt like that. I carried it around longer than Frankie had been alive. All these years… all these years I thought my sister killed herself because of me. Because I killed the man she loved. But she didn’t kill herself.

She was murdered, by my boss, in an attempt to control me. And then he stuffed her body in a secret closet in case he ever needed to control me again.

The worst part was it worked. He managed to turn me into a cold-hearted killing machine. Whatever he saw in me when I was in that ring, he’d been right because with a little manipulation, I turned into exactly what he wanted.

I was done being manipulated and controlled by him. I wasn’t a puppet whose strings could be pulled for a desired effect. My sister was gone… and while I realized I wasn’t directly responsible for her death, I was still involved. If I hadn’t taken the job as an Escort, the Reaper never would have killed her. There was nothing I could do for my sister now, but Frankie was here. I could actually save her. History didn’t have to repeat itself.

I heard footsteps drawing closer so I put my back up against the wall, the same wall with the door.

Seconds later the door cracked open.

Someone swore. “He’s not in here.”

“What! How the hell did he get out this time? Let me see.” The door swung all the way open and one of the newer Escorts stepped inside.

I rushed him from behind, taking him by surprise and putting him into a headlock and ramming him straight into the wall. He fell out of my grip, unconscious.

“That’s for earlier,” I spat, reaching up to finger the knot where they hit me with the gun and then turned to leave.

Stooge #2 was waiting. I used all the anger and frustration built up inside me to power out a burst of pure energy, which struck the man and sent him back out into the hallway, slamming him into the wall.

I made it through the house in seconds and out into the driveway. I planned on running, but as I passed by his BMW Roadster, I changed my mind. Using the heel of my foot, I kicked out the driver-side window and let myself in.

Hotwiring it didn’t take me very long. Ninety years of practice made a guy pretty good at getting a car to go when you wanted it to.

G.R. rushed out into the driveway as I sped away. In his car. Before I pulled out onto the street, I stuck my hand out the window and gave him the finger.

Chapter Fifty

“
Gun - a weapon consisting of a metal tube from which a projectile is fired at high velocity into a relatively flat trajectory.”

Frankie

I called Rosalyn to see if she was back in town, remembering that Olly told me she had to go away on business. She was just arriving back—her trip being cut short by a few cancelled meetings. I told myself her cancellation was good luck for me. Then I told myself it was wrong to have good luck when you were trying to murder someone.

I lied and told her Charming was still out of town and that he felt guilty about leaving her to do all the work and he asked me to step in and help plan the fundraiser. We agreed to meet at her house tomorrow for lunch where we could tackle what remained on her to-do list.

I was basically a basket full of nerves.

The moment I left the Reaper’s house, the reality of what I agreed to do sank in.

How was I going to do this? How was I going to look someone I considered a friend in the eye and then rob them of their future? The weight of it was crippling. How did Olly live with this weight? How did he live knowing he took countless lives?

He turned it off.

He turned off his emotions—his humanity. That’s how he survived all these years. His cold exterior when we first met made so much more sense now.

“What the hell happened in there?” Storm said as we drove toward my apartment.

I didn’t answer. All I could do was stare out the windshield, like I was on autopilot and going through the motions of driving the car.