Fallen Angels 02 - Crave (39 page)

If this was anything like what Adrian went through—and given the way the guy looked, it was a one-for-one if he‟d ever seen it—what Jim really wanted was a bath followed by a shower.

But it was too early for that shit. Healing time first—there were just too many broken-andbruiseds to move him—which was the burden of an angel‟s dual nature: being both real and unreal meant that at least half of you could get fucked-up but good, and shit didn‟t spring back right away.

Adrian stood and went over to the heating unit that was under the windows. Turning the dial to “sauna,” he ditched his leather jacket and shut the connector to the other room, locking them in together. Then he got on the bed, stretched out on top of the thin blanket, and put his chest to the angel‟s back to warm him.

As he lay there and heard the heater come on with a whir, he felt the earthquakes in Jim‟s torso and limbs. Part of it was the healing process, which in some ways was more painful than the injuries. And part of it was the deep freeze of shock.

And part of it was the memories, no doubt.

He wanted to put an arm around the guy, but that was just going to be too uncomfortable for 202

Crave

Jim: When he‟d been in this condition, he‟d lain naked without even a sheet on his clawed skin.

After a while, the billowing warmth that fanned out from the heater reached them, arcing over and raining down. Jim obviously felt the flow because he drew in a long breath and exhaled on a ragged sigh.

Lying next to the other angel, Adrian should have expected that this was where Jim would end up, and he had, to a degree. He‟d known Devina had wanted the guy…back on their first assignment, back on that first night in the club in Caldwell. And he‟d served Jim up to her.

With everything but the “to and from” tag.

Hard not to feel responsible for this.

Realllllllllly tough.

“I‟ve got you, Jim,” he said hoarsely. “I‟m right here for you, man.”

203

D
own in the wine cellar, Grier went through the dossiers one by one while she waited…and waited…and waited some more…

Finally
.

“Why didn‟t you tell me,” she said, without looking behind herself.

Daniel took a long time in answering, but he didn‟t disappear: Whenever he was around, she could feel the slightest of drafts, and as long as that was brushing the back of her neck, she knew he was still with her.

I thought you would hate him. And then you and he would have no one left.

“So you knew what happened.”

Daniel came around the table, one hand planted on his hip, the other buried in his blond hair so that the curls went halo on him.
I was high when it all went down…so I just thought it was so
funny, Dad bursting in with three guys in black. I figured it was his version of an intervention—

all comic-book hard-core. But as they put the needle in my arm, he started to scream and that’s
when I realized…it wasn’t funny.

Daniel‟s eyes met hers.
I’d never seen him that way before. To me, he was always so aloof
and unemotional. It was…the reaction I had been looking for all my life, the visceral love I’d
been after. See, I was like Mom, not you and him. I wanted more than that chilly disapproval and
I got it, only it was too late…
He shrugged.
In retrospect, I was too needy, and he didn’t know
what to do with a son who wasn’t cut from military cloth. Oil and water. I should have handled it
differently, but I didn’t.

“And neither did he.”

It’s not anyone’s fault. It just…was.

Grier leaned back in her chair, thinking of the way their family had aligned, she and their father on one side, Daniel and their mother on the other.

It wasn’t his fault
, her brother said with a kind of stern tone she‟d never heard from him before.
The way I ended…he screamed, Grier…and then as I was dying, I heard him say, over
and over again, Danny boy…my Danny boy—

As Daniel‟s voice broke, she was compelled to get up and go to him. Before she knew what she was doing, she put her arms around…

Herself.

Please don’t hate him
, he said from the far corner, having shifted quick as a blink.

“Please don‟t run,” she countered.

I’m sorry…I have to go…

He disappeared before her as if he couldn‟t hold his emotions in any longer, his despair 204

Crave

lingering in the cold spot he left behind.

She stood for a time, staring at the vacant space he‟d just occupied. She and her father had been two of a kind, and in their intellectual accord, they‟d locked the others out, hadn‟t they. Her mother and brother had taken to their addictions while she and her father had been in lockstep with the law and their careers and their external passions.

She‟d known it on some level…and maybe that had been part of her drive to save Daniel.

Her brother‟s addiction and her efforts to pull him out of it had been the link they hadn‟t found outside of childhood: She had always blamed herself—and for a brief moment tonight, she had blamed her father.

Now…she was angry at that man with the eye patch. Viciously angry. If Daniel had lived, maybe they‟d have figured it all out. Forgiven each other, all three of them, for the past. Moved along to…something that their family had had only on the surface. After all, privilege and money and breeding could cover up a multitude of problems—and didn‟t ensure that the closeness on a Christmas card was actually more than a pose once a year for a photographer.

Shaking her head, she went back to her seat and stared at the dossiers.

Isaac was going to even the score for her family, she thought. By being the one who brought down that maniacal bastard who had killed her brother and all but ruined her father.

Flipping through the photographs, she recognized each of the men now, because she‟d gone through the pages over and over again while waiting for Daniel to show. There were a hundred or so pictures, but only a total of some forty men, with multiple shots illustrating them through the years. Out of the lot of them, there were five that she recognized—or at least thought she‟d seen before. Hard to know…on some level, they looked so similar.

Isaac‟s picture was in there and she returned to it. The photo was a candid, caught on the fly.

He was looking directly into the camera, but she had the impression he didn‟t know he was being photographed.

Hard. God, he looked so hard. As if he were prepared to kill.

The birth date under his name validated the age she knew him to be, and there were a couple of notes about foreign countries he‟d been to. And then there was one line that she kept coming back to:
Must be provided moral imperative.
She had seen the phrase under only two other men‟s profiles.

“How are you holding up?”

Grier jumped at the sound of Isaac‟s voice, the chair under her butt screeching across the floor. Grabbing her chest, she said, “Jesus…how do you do that?”

Because, all things considered, she would have preferred not to get caught staring at his picture.

“Sorry, I just thought you might like a coffee.” He came over, put a mug down, and then retreated back to the doorway. “I should have knocked.”

As he paused between the jambs, he was now just in the hooded sweatshirt he‟d used as a pillow, his shoulders oh, so wide beneath its gray expanse. And considering what the last forty-eight hours had been like, he looked amazingly strong and focused.

Her eyes went to the coffee. So thoughtful. So very thoughtful. “Thank you…and sorry. I guess I‟m just not used to…” A man like him.

“I‟ll announce my presence from now on.”

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J.R. Ward

She picked up the mug and took a sip. Perfect—with just the right amount of sugar she liked in it. He‟d watched her, she thought. Saw how much she‟d added at some point, even though she hadn‟t been aware of it. And he‟d remembered.

“You lookin‟ at me?” When she glanced up, he nodded down at the dossiers. “My picture?”

“Ah…yes.” Grier tapped the phrase. “What exactly does this mean?”

He walked over and leaned in. As he stared at the details under his face, the tension in him was palpable, his big body tight all over. “They had to give me a reason.”

“Before you‟d kill someone.”

He nodded and began to walk around, going over to the wine bottles. He took one out, looked at the label, returned it…moved on to another one.

“What kinds of reasons did they give you?” she asked, well aware that his answers about this meant way too much to her.

He paused with a Bordeaux cradled in his hands. “The kind that made it seem right.”

“Like what.”

His eyes flipped toward her and she had a moment of pause. They were so grim and hollow.

“Tell me,” she whispered.

He put the bottle back. Went a couple of feet farther down the wooden racks. “I only did men. No women. There were some who could do the females, but not me. And I‟m not going to give you specific examples, but the political-affiliation nonsense just wasn‟t enough for me. You kill a bunch of people or rape some women or blow some shi—er, stuff…up? Very different story. And I needed to see some proof with my own eyes—video, photograph…bodies that were marked.”

“Did you ever refuse an assignment?”

“Yes.”

“So you wouldn‟t have killed my brother.”

“Never,” he said without hesitation. “And they wouldn‟t have even asked me. The way Matthias saw it, I was a weapon that worked under prescribed circumstances, and he took me out of his holster at appropriate times. And you know…I realized I had to leave XOps when it dawned on me that I was no different from the people I was killing. They‟d all felt as if whatever atrocities they were committing were justifiable. Well, so did I and that made us mirror images of each other really. Sure, an objective viewpoint would have agreed with me over them, but that wasn‟t enough.”

Grier let out a long exhale. He was what she‟d always believed in, she thought.

“How so?” he said.

With a flush, she guessed she‟d spoken aloud. “I always told Daniel…” She paused, wondering if she had the stuffing left in her to go there. “I told him that it was never too late.

That the things he‟d done in the past didn‟t have to define his future. I think toward the end, he‟d given up on himself. He‟d stolen from my father and me and his friends. He‟d been arrested burglarizing a house and also on felony theft of an auto and then while trying to hold up a liquor store. That‟s how I got involved with doing pro bono. I was in and out of various jails for the five years before his death. I felt like I wasn‟t helping him—but maybe I could someone else, you know? And I did…I did help people.”

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Crave

“Grier—”

She waved him off as her voice hitched. She was finished with crying. There was going to be no more of that and no more dwelling on what couldn‟t be changed. “Do you want to go through this now?”

As she indicated the dossiers, he shrugged and went to the door, settling into a lean against the jamb. “I really just came to check on you.”

In the still air, his low-lidded eyes warmed her from the inside out. Such a contradiction he was…between his trained-killer job and his Boy Scout heart.

She glanced down at his picture. “You look like you‟re tracking something here.”

“I was about to get on a plane, actually. I had the feeling someone was watching, but I couldn‟t tell from which direction. I was waiting at an airbase to go overseas.” He cleared his throat like he was sweeping the memory from his mind. “Your father‟s passed out upstairs. He spent about two hours on the phone, as far as I can tell.”

“It‟s been that long?” She glanced at her watch, and as she shifted her wrist around, she became aware of all the kinks in her body. Stretching her arms over her head, her spine popped.

“How are things going?”

“I don‟t know. Before he lay down, he told me that as long as we can make it until tomorrow night, we‟re in business. He‟s pulled multiple contacts from the CIA, NSA, and the presidential cabinet, and we‟re meeting right here so that I don‟t have to move. The missing piece is Jim Heron—we‟re still waiting for him to get back—although if we have to, we‟ll go forward without him.”

“Have you gotten a…response? You know, from them.”

“No.”

Fear tickled across her ribs and hit her heart like a battery charge. “Can you last until tomorrow night.”

“If that‟s the way it has to be, yes.”

He seemed so sure, and she needed to believe in that confidence: It would be a tragedy beyond measure for him to be cut down now, when he was so close to the freedom he sought.

Strange, that someone she had met only days before suddenly seemed so important to her.

“I‟m proud of you,” she said, running her finger down his photograph.

“That means a lot to me.” Pause. “And thank you for showing me the way. I never would have been able to do this without you.”

“Without my father, you mean,” she countered softly. “He has the contacts.”

“No. You‟re the one.”

She frowned, thinking that was a funny way of phrasing it. “I want you to answer something for me.”

“Name it.”

Her eyes flipped up to his. “What are your chances. Realistically.”

“Of getting out of this alive?”

“Yes.” When he just shook his head, she frowned at him. “Remember, we‟re so done with the whole „shelter the little woman‟ routine.”

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J.R. Ward

“Fifty-fifty.”

Well, didn‟t that give her a knot in her throat. “That bad, huh.”

“Do you want something to eat along with the coffee? I‟m no chef, but I saw some leftovers in the fridge and I can work a microwave.” When she begged off, he tacked on, “You have to eat.”