Fallen Angels 02 - Crave (13 page)

“Follow him out of state as only you can,” Matthias heard himself say in a calm, level tone.

“Wait for the right moment, and
not
around Childe‟s daughter.”

“Why does that matter?”

“Because I fucking said so. That‟s why.”

Matthias ended the call and tossed the phone across the desk. All of his men were good at what they did, but his number two had tricks that no one else could come close to. This of course made the guy extremely useful, but also a danger if his ambitions or thirst for blood got away from them both.

The man was a demon, straight up—

Abruptly, Matthias had to take a deep breath to ease a pain in the center of his chest. Lately, the sharpshooters had been happening with increasing frequency, rendering him breathless and slightly nauseated. He had a feeling he knew what it was, but he was going to do
nada
to stop the myocardial infarction that was coming his way.

No doctor‟s visit for him, no stress test, no Lipitor, no Coumadin.

On that note, he lit up a cheroot and exhaled. No Chantix to stop smoking, either. He was going to go hard with the coffin nails until he dropped dead from the big one—God knew he‟d tried to kill himself with that bomb in the desert, and that had been a giant fuckup. Much better to ease into his grave the old-fashioned way, through bad diet, lack of exercise, and addictions.

As a chiming alarm went off, he braced his palms on the arms of his chair and prepared himself for getting vertical. Pain meds would have eased him tremendously, but they also would have dulled his brain, so that was a no-go. Besides, physical agony had never bothered him.

Gritting his teeth, he pushed hard on the chair and hefted his weight onto his legs. Moment to steady. Reach for the cane. Deep breath.

That night in the land of sand when he‟d been saved by Jim Heron had had repercussions, and a lot of them were the lead-and-steel kind—only not weapons. Thanks to that cocksucking soldier dragging him out of that ruined, dusty building and hauling him eight miles through the dunes in a fireman‟s hold, Matthias was now part man, part mechanics, a creaky, clunky version 67

J.R. Ward

of the strong, powerful fighter he‟d once been. Put back together with pins and screws and bolts, he‟d wondered in the beginning whether it would be a turning point. Whether the pain and suffering he‟d gone through with all the surgeries would open a door to his becoming…a human.

As opposed to the sociopath he‟d been born.

But, no. All he‟d had since then were these precursors of the heart attacks that ran in his family. Which was a good thing. Unlike the bomb he‟d set in the sand and deliberately stepped on, he knew a coronary would do the job—hell, he‟d watched his father die from one.

Actually his father had been his first kill, courtesy of Matthias knowing exactly what to say to cause his old man‟s ticker to seize up good and stop dead. He‟d been fifteen at the time. Pops had been forty-one. And Matthias had sat on the floor of his bedroom and watched the whole thing, idly turning the knob on the radio that woke him up for school, looking for a good song among all the crap on the airwaves.

Meanwhile, his father had turned red, then blue…then faded out to gray.

Perverted fucker had deserved it. After all he‟d done…

Pulling out of the past, Matthias drew on his coat, and as always the simple act of dressing was a production, his back straining to accommodate the shift of his arms. And then he was out of his office and walking the subterranean halls of the anonymous office complex he worked in, his body hating him for the ambulation.

His car and driver were waiting for him in the underground parking facility, and when he got into the rear of the sedan, he groaned.

Shallow breathing kept him conscious as the flaring pain grew volcanic…and then gradually subsided as the car eased forward.

From up front, he heard the driver say, “ETA eleven minutes.”

Matthias closed his eyes. He was not entirely sure why he was making this trip…but he was being drawn to the northeast United States by a compulsion not even his rational side could deny. He just had to go, even as he was surprised at the need.

Then again, just as his number two had found his target, Matthias had also located the soldier he was after personally, and this long flight back over the ocean was because he wanted to look the man who had saved his life in the face for one last time—before the bastard‟s corpse was buried.

He told himself it was to confirm that Jim Heron had indeed died.

There was more to it than that, though.

Even if he didn‟t understand the whys…there was much more to this trip for him than that.

68

M
ore than anything, Grier was furious at herself. As she pounded over to her Audi, weeding through the other cars and getting heckled by a knuck dragger or two, everything came into sharp focus: where she was, what she‟d done earlier at the courthouse, who she was trying to save.

Isaac had
broken
that guy‟s arm. In front of her and a hundred other people. And treated it with the same degree of shock and panic as someone hanging up a phone.

Like he did that every day.

And then he‟d accepted money for it.

Coming up to her sedan, she got her key fob out and deactivated the alarm. And as she caught her reflection in the glass of the driver‟s-side door, she thought of her brother.

The kind of wild buzz that had driven her to come out here reminded her of the night he‟d died.

Grier had been the one to find his body and her resuscitation efforts had made no difference…because he‟d been dead before she‟d started them. But she‟d kept up the pumping on his chest and the breathing into his mouth anyway.

The paramedics had had to drag her off his body. Screaming.

And the thing was, in death, as well as in life, he hadn‟t cared about all her efforts to save him. He‟d been transfixed by his final fix, a haunting look of ecstatic pleasure frozen on his pasty gray face, his driving addiction fulfilled.

Recklessness took a variety of different forms, didn‟t it.

She‟d always prided herself on being the responsible one out of the pair of them, the one who had excelled at school, and worked hard to get ahead, and never done anything that her parents would have disapproved of. She‟d certainly never, ever tried illegal drugs. Not even once.

And yet here she was, putting herself and her career at risk on the off chance she could talk a total stranger into going straight. If the police had shown up—or did, there was still time for that—getting arrested as a spectator would have had her booted from the Massachusetts bar faster than she could say, “But, Judge, I was only there for my client.” She‟d already put up twenty-five grand, which would hardly break her bank…except how much farther could those funds have gone if put to use on some program for at-risk youth?

As her head started to pound, she regarded her actions since around nine a.m. with a clear eye. And what do you know, she saw not so much someone doing good in the world, but an out-of-control woman who was—

Daniel appeared on the far side of her car, his ghostly face dead serious.
Get in, Grier. Get in
the car and lock the doors.

69

J.R. Ward

“What?” she said. “Why—”

Do it. Now
. Her dead brother seemed to focus on the air behind her right shoulder.
Damn it,
Grier—

“I remember who you are.”

She squeezed her eyes shut. Oh for God‟s sake, this just kept getting better, didn‟t it. The meth head was back.

Turning around to give her erstwhile suitor another—

The man grabbed her arms, and with a shove that left her teeth singing, pushed her up against the car face-first. As he held her in place with his body, she was reminded that men were in fact built differently from women: They were a hell of a lot stronger. Especially when they were high and desperate.

“You‟re Danny‟s sister.” The breath on her cheek was hot and smelled like roadkill in August. “You showed up a couple of times at his place. What happened to him?”

“He died,” she croaked out.

“Oh…God. I‟m sorry…” The addict seemed honestly sad. In a Tim Burton, distorted-netherworld kind of way. “Listen, can you spare some cash? Rich girl like you…hafta have some cash on you. But only if you can manage it.”

Uh-huh, right. She knew she was going to give him what he wanted whether she liked it or not—which was how, in spite of the way he phrased it, a mugging worked.

Rough hands rummaged around and her purse was ripped off her shoulder. She thought about yelling, but the weight bearing down on her rib cage made anything more than shallow breaths impossible, and besides, she had parked way around the side in the shadows. Who was going to hear her?

As her wide eyes tracked the departing cars and trucks that were so close and yet so far away, she had an absolutely absurd memory of the opening scene from
Jaws
—where the woman was being dragged under by the shark and saw the glowing lights of houses on the shore.

“I‟m not gonna hurt you…I just need money.”

With his body still forcing her against the car, he dumped the contents of her bag on the muddy ground, her cell phone, wallet, keys, everything pouring free. And then he tossed her sixteen-thousand-dollar Birkin bag over the hood of the Audi.

Stupid bastard. He could have gotten more for that on eBay than any cash he‟d find in her wallet.

Half of her mind was in a panic, the other part icy calm, and she went with the latter, because she was nothing if not her father‟s daughter: This freaked-out addict was going to spin her around at some point because he was going to want her jewelry, and when he did, she had a good chance of kneeing him where it counted.

Even if she had to pretend she wasn‟t about to throw up all over her shoes—

The weight crushing against her wasn‟t so much removed as it was vaporized, gone as if it had never been: One second she couldn‟t breathe. The next, she had all the oxygen in the world.

As she dragged in a tremendous gulp of air and held on to the car roof to keep standing, grunts sounded next to her.

Pushing herself around, she had to blink a couple of times to understand what she was 70

Crave

looking at—but no amount of wait-maybe-I‟m-not-seeing-this-right changed what was going on: Isaac had come out of nowhere, pinned her assailant to the ground, and was giving the guy a root canal the hard way.

Namely with his fist.

“Isaac—” Her voice cracked and she coughed. “Isaac! Stop it!”

Louie the PI‟s voice echoed through her head:
That SOB could be a murderer.

“Isaac!”

She was expecting to have to jump on him or call for help to get him to stop the beating, but as soon as it started, it was over. Isaac quit the Rocky routine on his own, flipping the man onto his stomach and wrenching his arms back to immobilize him.

Nothing was broken this time.

And Isaac wasn‟t even breathing hard as he glanced over at her. “Are you okay?”

His eyes were sharp, his expression deadly and calm, his voice even and polite. It was obvious that he was in total control of himself and the situation…and it dawned on her that he might possibly have saved her from something awful. With addicts, you never knew what they were going to do.

“Did he hurt you?” Isaac said. “Are you okay?”

“No,” she answered roughly, not sure which question she was answering.

With sheer, brute strength, Isaac picked the man up and gave him a shove and there was no argument, not even a comment. Her attacker scrambled away like he was damned well aware he‟d narrowly missed the beat-down of his life.

And then Isaac picked up her things. One by one, he gathered what had been in her purse, wiping off the mud on his own sweatshirt, lining everything up on the hood of her car.

Falling back against the driver‟s-side door, she was captivated by how very careful he was, his bloody hands gentle.

Daniel appeared right beside him, seemingly struck by how he treated what was hers.
Let
him take you home, Grier. You’re in no condition to drive.

“He hasn‟t asked me,” she mumbled.

“Asked you what?” Isaac said, glancing over.

When she waved the words away, he went and got her bag, putting everything into it before holding the thing out to her. “I‟d like to drive you home. If you‟ll let me.”

Bingo
, her brother said.

She opened her mouth to shut up Daniel, but just didn‟t have the energy to follow through with it.

“Ms. Childe?” With her client‟s Southern accent, that came out as one word,
MzChiiiiilde
.

God, what to do. And of course,
Hell, no
, was the healthiest response—in spite of Daniel‟s opinion.

Trust me
, Daniel said.

Isaac‟s voice dropped. “Just let me get you home safe. Please.”

For some unknowable reason, her instincts were telling her to trust this stranger with a bad past and a criminal present who was on the run. Or was it just a case of her savior complex 71

J.R. Ward

overriding better judgment?

Or…was it the look on a ghost‟s face? Like Daniel was seeing something she couldn‟t in this collision between her and a dangerous stranger with a soft Southern drawl.

“I don‟t need a driver. That I can do myself.” She took her bag from him. “But I do need you to stick around and face your charges.”

Isaac scanned the area. “How about we talk at your house.”

“I carry Mace, you know.”