Fallen Angels 03 - Envy (49 page)

The serial kil er struggled to lift his chin, his mouth working slowly. He was trying to talk, but Veck didn’t give a shit what the fucker had to say.

“Reil y! ” he cal ed out, hoping that the darkness beyond the candles meant that there was another chamber where she was—

Someone stepped out of the shadows toward him.

He blinked once, and when the vision didn’t change, he realized it was, in fact, a woman. Although what someone like her was doing here—

“Hel o, Veck.” It was the voice from his phone, live and in person. “Welcome to the party.”

The brunette made Angelina Jolie look like a librarian: She was lush and dangerous, an upright jungle dressed in stilettos and a short skirt that belonged in a café downtown, or an elegant private club . . . anywhere but this stank-ass cave.

“Did you come alone?” she asked him, her plump, juicy lips pursing.

“Yes.”

“Good.” She moved around him, circling, smiling. “You’re just like your father—taking direction wel .”

“Where is Reil y?”

“Your devotion to the woman is”—her voice got tense—“enviable. And because I can imagine how anxious you are to find her, I’l say that I’m prepared to tel you.”

“So do it.”

She eyed the guns. “Do you honestly think those are going to work against me?” Her laugh was wind chime–beautiful—and nonetheless rang falsely in the ear. “And, oh, look, they gave you a dagger, too. Hope does spring eternal, I suppose. By the way, did Jim tel you he used to be a kil er?”

“I don’t give a shit what he was.”

“Right, right, it’s al about the girl.” That voice grew bitter again. “How lucky she is. And she should know how you feel about her, don’t you think.”

At that, the woman idly turned toward Kroner and strol ed across to the guy. Speaking over her shoulder, she said, “Yes, tel her how you feel, why don’t you.”

Veck looked into the shadows. “I love you, Reil y! I’m here!”

“So romantic,” the brunette said dryly.

As the woman stayed fixated on the serial kil er, Veck decided to hedge his bets: He put one of his guns away . . . and palmed up that glass dagger he’d been given. None of this was making sense—which gave some credibility to Adrian’s advice.

“Where the fuck is she?” he growled.

“I’l tel you—but you have to do something for me.”

“What.”

The brunette smiled and stepped back from Kroner. “Kil him.”

Veck narrowed his eyes on the woman.

In response, she smiled more deeply. “It’s what you were going to do al along. You waited for him in those woods, biding your time until he showed up among the trees next to that motel. You were going to act . . . but you were denied your chance.”

Facing off at her, Veck’s body began to vibrate, that rage that had sprung loose at the prison coalescing in his torso, tightening his muscles.

“This is my gift to you, little Tommy. You kil him, and I’l show you where your woman is. It’s what you want. It’s what you’re here for. It’s your destiny.”

From out of nowhere, a reflection of light pierced the darkness, and il uminated the shadows, revealing . . . Bails.

The guy was sitting on the floor of the cave, leaning back against the wet wal . A gunshot marked his forehead between his wide-open eyes, the smal est trail of blood seeping out and dripping down his nose. His mouth was lax; his skin pale gray.

“Don’t worry about him,” the brunette said dismissively. “He was nothing but a pawn. You, on the other hand . . . are the prize. And al you have to do is act. Kil him . . . and I’l make sure you see your girl.”

Abruptly, Veck realized where the shaft of light was coming from.

His hand had risen up, and that glass dagger had caught the butter soft candlelight, sending a shaft of it across the cave to zero in on his supposed friend.

“Time’s wasting, little Tommy. Let’s get through this, so we can come out the other side. Listen to your gut. Do what you know is right. Take out this piece-of-shit, amoral kil er and find what you seek. It’s such an obvious path, such a simple trade—everything that Reil y is, for this murdering madman. It’s al in your hands. . . .”

“Is Reil y alive?” he heard himself say.

“She is.”

“Wil you let us both out of here alive?”

“Probably. Depends on what you do, doesn’t it.” The brunette’s voice dropped to a seductive whisper. “You can see her the moment you take care of business. I swear to it. It’s al in your hands. . . .”

A
s Reil y hung from the cave’s ceiling, she stil could not believe the image she was showing to Veck: The hospital johnny and the flat chest and the dangling legs were not her own.

Yet through the screaming pain in her head, through her confusion and panic, she could move these limbs that were not hers, could draw breath through a throat she did not know, could fil lungs that were someone else’s.

Al of which gave credibility to what Veck thought he was looking at.

And so he was going to kil her, she thought in horror and disbelief.

Struggling to speak, she whispered in a rasping voice that was not her own, “I’m . . . me . . . please . . .”

“. . . It’s such an obvious path, a simple trade—everything that Reil y is, for this murdering madman. It’s al in your hands. . . .”

The brunette who was talking was not in fact a woman. Reil y had seen what that thing was—it had shown her its true vileness while Bails got Veck on the phone, and that was why she had screamed.

Then afterward, she had watched as it had gotten into Bails’s mind and made hm turn his own gun on himself.

The great liar, she thought. Who knew that that was so true about the devil.

“Veck . . .” Reil y tried to marshal more breath, dragging air down into a frozen rib cage. “Veck . . . no . . .”

But she wasn’t reaching him—and she wasn’t going to: The louder she spoke, the more she sounded like Kroner, as if his voice box had replaced hers.

And she was losing what little strength she had: Bails had dragged her down the quarry’s slope, and her lower legs were contused badly—to the point where she knew she’d lost blood. She was also very sure she had a concussion, and she had grown weak from having hung in the cold for God only knew how long.

A hot tear slid down her cheek, and then a second . . . and then a rush of them.

At one time or another, like most people, she had entertained morbid thoughts about what death was waiting for her: A slow-growing disease? A quick car accident? Some genetic weakness that predisposed her to a bad heart? Or maybe an attack from a criminal where she’d fight back, perhaps shoot him as he shot her. Real blaze-of-glory stuff.

What was happening in this frigid, damp cave? Not it.

Staring across at Veck’s cold, furious face, she started to see double, and her eyes were incapable of bringing the two halves of him together . . . so she had more than enough opportunity to find that there was no compassion, no emotion, no doubt in his expression . . .

As that glinting crystal dagger lifted, she realized she was looking into his father’s face.

This was the son living up to the father’s legacy.

Images of her own parents made the tears come harder. She hadn’t had a chance to say good-bye. To tel them one last time that she loved them, and that they’d changed not just her life, but so many others’. . . .

And she hadn’t been able to tel Veck properly that she believed him, that she knew he was innocent . . . and that she loved him.

Of course, the grand irony was that he was about to kil her under the guise of saving her.

“I know you didn’t do it,” she said on a harsh breath that didn’t carry far. “The evidence . . . it was Bails. . . .”

Why that was important to say given the amount of time she had left—which was nearly none—she hadn’t a clue.

Better get on with it: “I love . . . you. . . .”

And then she closed her eyes, turned her head away, and braced herself. He was going to go for the heart. With a dagger—that was the most efficient way—and Veck was not going to want to waste time if he thought her life was hanging in the balance.

Terror choked her and her body began to shake.

Her mouth opened as she started to sob.

Tears flowed . . . as her blood soon would.

Nights ago, in those woods, by that motel, Veck had been prepared to take this piece of shit Kroner out.

Granted, it hadn’t been for society’s benefit—although he’d been prepared to maintain that it was. And after the opportunity had come and gone, he’d been relieved that he hadn’t done it.

Now? He had the only justification that mattered: his Reil y didn’t care that she thought he’d tampered with evidence or that she wouldn’t have anything to do with him after this.

Saving her life was enough.

The brunette was right; such a simple trade.

Veck focused on his victim. As Kroner hung from the cave’s ceiling, his mouth was moving, and given the tears that were pouring out of his eyes, he was no doubt begging for mercy, the kil er reduced to begging for everything he hadn’t granted his prey.

Christ, he was so fucking pathetic, that hospital gown marked with blood as if he’d been pul ed headfirst down the slope, his skin so white it had slipped into snow territory, his face al distorted from swel ing.

Veck had a passing urge to put the dagger away and punch the guy until the motherfucker had a coronary. The man’s victims had had to go slowly . . .

had been conscious as he’d taken his godforsaken bits and pieces from them . . . it seemed like karma to have him know on an up-close-and-personal level what it felt like to be out of control, in pain, and at the mercy of another.

But Reil y’s life was at stake.

Veck craned his arm up higher over his shoulder and angled the glass dagger’s point at Kroner’s chest. One vicious stab was al it was going to take, and fuck knew that Veck had the strength to get the job done—

Just as the weapon reached the apex of the arc, in the second before he was going to put al his upper-body power into the downward thrust, one of the weapon’s facets caught the candlelight and shot a beam onto Kroner’s face.

Veck frowned as he got a clear picture of those ratlike features: Kroner had closed his eyes and turned his face to the side, his frail body trembling as he braced himself for death.

“What’s the matter,” the brunette barked. “Do it—and you’l have her.”

This is not my life to take, Veck thought with a sudden, inexplicable conviction.

“Do it!”

This is
. . . not my life to take.

His father . . . Kroner himself . . . men like that . . . they thought that al lives, al people, al things, were theirs for the taking, and it was just a case of whim-based design who they decided to choose, who became the next notch on their belt. And the trophies were about keeping a slice of this moment now, when they had al the power, when they were in control, when they were God—because like an orgasm, this pleasure point was fleeting, and the memory wasn’t a patch on the actual experience.

Which was why they did it again and again.

And as for him? On some level, this was the perfect beginning, the stripe of poison ivy itching on his arm that, if he scratched it, would bloom and take over his entire body.

This is not my life to take.

“Just fucking do it!” the brunette demanded.

Veck shifted his eyes over to the woman. Her black stare cal ed out to him even more than her words did, offering him a temptation that went beyond this cave, this split second, this on-the-verge—

“Reil y or him,” she hissed. “Pick now.”

Veck’s arm began to tremble, his rock-hard muscles poised to strike and unable to bear the dead-space tension between decision and action.

“I don’t believe you,” Veck heard himself say.

“What.”

Veck slowly lowered the weapon to his side. In a hoarse, cracking voice, he said, “I don’t trust you. And I’m not . . .” He had to clear his throat. “I’m not going to kil him.”

Bails was already dead, and there were no other sounds in the cave. And this woman . . . whatever she was . . . was a liar: Reil y had been alive at some point—it had absolutely been her on the phone—but there was no one else who was breathing in this damp hel hole with them, and given how weak she had sounded, it was doubtful she could have gotten herself free.

Chances were good she was already dead.

And although that made him mad-crazy with grief and the urge for vengeance, Kroner, in his condition, had most certainly not done the deed.

“You miserable little
shit
,” the woman spat. “You pathetic, spineless, cocksucking
pussy
. Your father didn’t hesitate—years ago, when it was his time, he leaped at the goddamn chance I gave him.”

For some reason, Veck thought of that dinner with Reil y’s true parents, the ones who had taken her in and ushered her into adulthood, the ones who were not blood, but who were better to her than those who had brought her into this world.

“I’m not my father,” he said roughly.

As the words registered in his ears, he felt stronger: “I am
not
my father.”

From across the way, a hot breeze hit him, as if the brunette were a heating unit on overdrive.

“You’re saying
that
”—she pointed to Kroner—“is worth more than the woman you love.”

“No, I’m saying I won’t kil him. I don’t think Reil y is—” His voice broke, but he quickly recovered. “I don’t think she’s alive. And I don’t know why the hel you want me to nail him, but if the last thing I do in this life is piss you off? I’m good with that. Bitch.”

The roar that lit off was so violent that he was thrown off his feet, his body sailing through the foul air and slamming into the cave wal behind him. As he slumped for a split second, he could feel the earth shaking beneath him, and hear the boulders of the slope vibrating up above as dirt and smal rocks fel from the ceiling of the cave. On impulse, he sheltered his head, for al the good that would do—

The candles went out on a oner.