“I’ll be back soon, sister mine.”
She glances at someone behind me—Gerard, probably—and plants her feet.
I go around her. I’m already gone. I have to get the fuck out of here before I kill someone in the foyer, before I lose myself to that violence. I’ve reserved it for someone else.
In my garage I choose a nondescript SUV, black and featureless, and drive out into a winter night. Snow spirals in front of the headlights. A separate part of me, one not being consumed by blistering pain, is in control of the vehicle. The roads to Bishop’s Landing are bathed in shadows.
It hurts so fucking much.
The pain is all-consuming and irrelevant at once.
It changes nothing. I’m done waiting.
I have waited for hours with Haley in the clutches of a monster, and it’s over. I know she’s at the Constantine compound. I’ve surveilled multiple Constantine properties for years, so I have video of a car arriving in the night. They bundled her inside with her jacket over her head like I wouldn’t know what the fuck they were doing. I know she’s there.
I just need confirmation she’s still in the main house. Caroline’s house. Confirmation they didn’t take her somewhere else—a warehouse, a hospital. An unmarked grave. No. I can’t think like that or I’ll drive this vehicle through the front door.
I would do it, too. Except that Haley might get hurt.
Instead I have to sit in this SUV until I see someone leaving. It’s hell to drive. I can’t keep my back fully away from the seat but it wouldn’t matter if I could. It’s reaching around to my ribs now. The fronts of my legs. Everything hurts. There is a rumor in Bishop’s Landing that I train to stay fit for killing people, but the truth is that when the pain gets this bad, it can cause a cascade of knots and cramps in my muscles that require movement to work out.
I try to stay ahead of them.
I’m not ahead of them now.
As I roll through the maintained, lighted street adjacent to the Constantine compound, a car pulls out of a side gate. The driver lifts a hand to shield his eyes against my headlights.
It’s Rick Joseph Jr.
I suppress a brief urge to run him over with the SUV. It would win against his piece-of-shit car. But he has been useful to me in the past. He likes money, and he likes chances, and the fact that he wants to be a Constantine means he’s worked to get as much access as he can.
He can be bought. I’ve done it many times before. I’ll do it again.
It’s painful to turn away from the Constantine compound when I think Haley’s inside, but I force myself to do it. This is the only way I can be sure to get her out safely. Without a single scratch on her beautiful head. I have to trust that her family won’t hurt her. At least not right away. She’s one of them, after all.
I turn down a side street and race Rick to his apartment. It’s the kind of bullshit place up-and-comers in Bishop’s Landing scramble to rent, with fake columns on the ground floor and glass windows above. It takes nothing to get Rick’s apartment number from the doorman, who doesn’t give a fuck about his job. It takes a pathetic amount of money to buy his silence. The veneer of fanciness on this place doesn’t prevent me from forcing the lock on Rick’s door.
I have just enough time to stand in his shithole living room before he arrives.
He was at Caroline’s house.
Caroline’s focus is on fucking with me at this moment, which is why she’s taken Haley.
Rick was there because he’s working with Caroline. They’ll have a mutual interest.
I’m waiting for him when he opens the door and steps in.
I must be a nightmare, coming at him out of the dark, but I’m merciful. I take his shirt in my fist and punch him before he has time to panic and run. His head snaps to the side.
Rick’s an asshole, and an opportunist. “What the fuck—”
“What the fuck is right, Rick. What the fuck have you been doing at Caroline’s? And here’s the more important question, are you ready to die for it? Because I’d love to kill you.”
I back him up against the door in an adrenaline haze and punch him again. He was with Haley. I know he was. He was with her, and he was with her because Caroline wanted him to be there, and I could kill him. I will fucking kill him.
The second hit is too much for him, and when I release his shirt, he folds.
He gets his hands underneath him and starts to push up. I kick him before he can get to his feet, sending him back to the floor. One more kick to the rib. Every muscle tenses to deliver another one, and another, until he’s dead, but I haul myself back from the edge with both hands.
I stalk into his living room, putting distance between me and that asshole, that motherfucker. There are tricks, there are strategies, to bring myself back when it’s like this, when it’s bad like this, when my fury swallows me whole. I remember the first lines of books. Backward and forward. Random bullshit from my library. It doesn’t matter. Count the words. The pain has me in a tight grip. A crushing grip. But I have to calm the fuck down, if only slightly. Enough that I don’t actually murder Rick Joseph Jr. Because if I murder him, I can’t use him.
He groans when he hears me coming back, and does it louder when I pick him up and pin him to the door by the throat. I want to drive the tip of my knife into his artery until he bleeds but I won’t be able to stop. As it stands he’ll have a black eye and maybe a cracked rib.
“You’ve seen her. Haley Constantine. At the compound.”
Rick doesn’t struggle. “Yeah.” I’ve knocked the wind out of him. “Yeah. She’s there.” He blinks at me in the light coming from his microwave. “Why do you—why do you care?”
I drive a fist into his chest and he makes a sound like a wounded animal. My control is paper-thin. “Tell me how she is. Is she hurt? Is she afraid? Is she hungry?”
Rick’s eyes slide to the left, and my heart implodes. “She’s okay.” He grunts again, and I discover I’ve moved a hand to a kicked rib and driven my knuckles into it. Good. I add more pressure and his teeth grind together. “She’s okay, I swear to God. How could anyone not be okay in a goddamn mansion? Two-thousand-thread-count sheets, and all she can talk about is leaving. Talking shit about her family. Saying Caroline’s holding her against her will.”
The edges of my vision dim. This bastard. This son of a bitch. He talked to her, and he didn’t believe her. My pulse races faster. I’m going to crush the life out of him. Now, now, now.
“She won’t—” Rick sounds more pained by the word. “She won’t stop talking about you. Talked about you on our date. Did you hit it, man? I’m not mad about it.”
An image of Haley springs into my mind. Sweet, soft Haley, who is filthy for me, who cries for me, couldn’t keep my name out of her mouth even in Caroline’s lair. I’m out of my mind, thinking of her trapped there. I’m out of my mind. But the last thing I want is for her to hear from Caroline that I’ve killed Rick. That I’m a murderer. She’ll think I’m not coming to get her.
That’s the only thing that pulls me back from the edge.
I yank him away from the door and throw him into his apartment. Rick crashes over a coffee table and crumples, clumsy and beaten. He puts one hand up to shield himself while I tower over him. “The next time Caroline invites you to her house, what are you going to do, Rick?”