"Still only honest." He put his hand over his heart. "Just keeping it real over here in tuxedo-land."
As she laughed again, they rounded a corner, approaching a glass-enclosed reception and office area. "Figure you might as well know up front that I'm not a lingerie girl."
"Guess what?" Coming up to the see-through door, he opened the way in and dropped his voice to a whisper. "That's even hotter than anything from La Perla."
"What's La Perla?"
G.B. laughed so hard, he threw his head back, and the deep rumble attracted the attention of the young woman sitting behind the receiving desk. As she looked up, he put his arm around Cait's waist and led her over.
"Hey, Jennifer, I'm here to pick up the backstage pass for my friend here."
"Jennifer" focused on Cait, and yeah, wow, time to take a step back. Talk about an unwelcome mat--the receptionist or office manager or whoever she was clearly did not appreciate some part of this. Like maybe that whole arm/waist thing?
"I don't have the credentials," Miss Thang snapped. "I gave 'em to Erik."
G.B. cleared his throat and moved in front of Cait, as if he were attempting to shield her from those death rays. "Do you know where he is?"
"He left for the day."
There was a beat of silence. Then G.B. turned around. "Cait, I'm so sorry, could you excuse me for a minute?"
"Oh, yes, absolutely. But please--don't worry about me. We can just meet up afterward?"
G.B. shook his head and took her back through the door. In a quiet voice, he said, "Give me a sec to deal with this."
As he disappeared back inside, Cait pivoted away so that she wasn't eavesdropping--except although that meant she couldn't see them, it didn't do a thing to drown out the rising voice of that woman as it promptly got higher. Louder. More shrill.
And the arguing went on forever.
From time to time, someone would walk by and she'd give them an awkward smile--even though they were never looking at her. Nope, they were craning for a peek into that office, seeing what sure as hell sounded like a grudge match--at least on the girl's side. G.B., when he was able to get a word in edgewise, kept things much, much quieter and more reasonable.
It was impossible not to get the gist. G.B. had taken the girl out and that had led to certain expectations on her part. When those hadn't been met, as evidenced by G.B. showing up on a date, looking for the backstage pass? Cue the drama.
When he finally emerged, he helped the door ease shut behind him, and nodded in the direction they'd come from. "Ah, listen, can we..."
Considering Cait could feel the woman's stare all the way out here in the corridor? "Sure, absolutely."
He led her back around the corner, stopping when they were out of eyeshot. "I'm so sorry. You need credentials to go backstage--and they've ... disappeared."
Cait touched his sleeve. "It's okay."
"No, see, it really isn't." He pushed a hand through his hair, those luxurious waves shining even in the dull fluorescent ceiling lights. "Look, I want to be honest about what's going on. I hooked up with her--it was totally casual. We were out with friends, and it just happened. She thought it was a start to something. On my side, I wasn't thinking like that. I probably could have handled things better. It just didn't dawn on me that she'd take it so seriously."
"Don't apologize. It's none of my business."
G.B. gripped her shoulders. "But it is. I didn't ask her on a date--it's nothing like ... well, this stuff between you and me is different, okay? I just don't want you to think I go around banging random chicks and then treating them like hell because I can."
She so could not doubt him. Not with the steady way he was meeting her in the eye. "I appreciate your saying something. And I could kind of tell that the problem was on her side."
"I swear it." He looked around. "Now, about the rest of tonight. I've got to go warm up, and there's still a ticket waiting for you at will-call--we probably should have picked it up first, actually." He cursed under his breath. "I'm really sorry..."
"So you mean the worst has happened"--she smiled up at him--"and all I get to do is listen to you perform with an incredible singer and watch you do something you love. Oh, the horror."
He seemed momentarily nonplussed. "I can't believe ... you."
"Good or bad."
G.B. laughed tightly. "Good ... very, very good. You're just being really cool about this."
"It's not your fault."
"No," he said with an edge. "I can assure you it's not. And I better get going. I'll just walk you back to will-call--"
"It's only down at the end here, right? Don't worry about me, I can take care of myself."
G.B. paused again, his eyes roaming around her face. Then in a quick move, he dropped down and kissed her on the cheek.
"Thank you so much. The ticket's under your name. Just give them your driver's license."
Man, he smelled good. "I'll see you afterward?"
"Go to the lobby and wait--I'll find you. After the event, they sometimes loosen things up and I might be able to sneak you back then. It depends on how cool her staff is."
"I'll be there, and take your time. I don't mind people watching."
"And then we'll have drinks, yes?"
"You can bet on it."
For a split second, she was convinced he was going to kiss her again--this time on the mouth: He focused on her lips and tilted toward her. But then at the last minute, he pulled away and blew out an exhale.
"I gotta go," he said ruefully.
"Break a leg--or is that only for actors?"
"Coming from you, it works for me, and that's all that matters."
On an impulse, she reached out and squeezed his hands. "See you in a bit."
As she turned away, he said, "Cait."
She glanced back at him. "Yes?"
"That woman in there ... she's not you, all right? I don't want to scare you off."
"You haven't."
He smiled a little. And then he lifted his hand in a wave and strode away, rounding that corner with his hands in the pockets of his tuxedo pants and his head down like he had no intention of engaging with Jennifer again.
Making her own way, Cait went back to the lobby, his last words lingering with her. As she got out her driver's license and stood in line in front of will-call, she thought ... he wasn't the type who was going to scare her off.
That other man was.
The two were opposite ends of the spectrum, for sure--and it was so much healthier to focus on the latter instead of the former...
When it was her turn up at the Plexiglas window, she put her ID in the sliding drawer and leaned into the microphone that was mounted in the glass.
"Cait Douglass," she said. "I believe there's a ticket for me?"
The man on the far side nodded, his voice tinny through the little speaker. "Sure thing, Miss Douglass."
Cait glanced behind her, searching the faces of the late arrivals who were rushing to get to the ushers.
"What was the name again?"
She refocused. "Cait? With a C? The Douglass has two Ss?"
The guy went back to a box that held a lineup of envelopes, leafing through with deft fingers that had clearly gone through that motion a number of times. "Nope. Nothing by that name."
She put her purse on the marble ledge. "G.B. was supposed to leave it for me?"
All she got was a shaking head. "I'm really sorry. There's nothing in your name."
"Are there any tickets I can buy?"
"The event's sold out, I'm sorry."
Cait opened her mouth. But what could she do? There were people who were waiting behind her, and it wasn't like she could negotiate with No Vacancy.
As he pushed the sliding drawer back to her, she took her license and moved free of the line.
Stalling out, she thought ... okay, not what she had planned.
Chapter
Thirteen
"Take me to my parents. Please."
> At the sound of Sissy's voice, Jim came awake like a rubber band, consciousness snapping his neurons alive, his body jerking out of its slump on the floor. From habit, he checked his watch. Ten o'clock.
Sissy was standing in the doorway of her bedroom, dressed in the jury-rigged outfit he'd laid out for her, nothing but a button-down shirt of his, and a rolled-up pair of his sweatpants to cover her up and keep her warm. Her hair was smoother than it had been, probably because she'd brushed it with her fingers. Her feet were in the pair of tennis shoes he'd found in the back of a closet downstairs.
Damn him, he thought for the hundredth time. What had he brought her back to?
And she'd asked him a question, hadn't she...
"Yeah, I'll run you over there." Jumping to his feet, he was ready to go even though he'd been out like a light a moment ago. "Give me five."
"I'll meet you downstairs."
As she walked by him, the calm that surrounded her was disturbing. Too expressionless. Too removed. Too opaque.
A zombie without the limp-and-snarl routine.
"Fuck," he muttered as he went to his room, grabbed a change of clothes, and hit the shower out in the hall.
By his watch, he still had twenty-five seconds to go as he jogged down to the foyer. Sissy was by the front door as promised, her slender form bent over so she could pet Dog, that hair of hers falling down and veiling her face. As she straightened and looked Jim in the eye, her stare was that of an adult.
She might be going "home" to her parents', but she was not a child.
"Do you want a coat?" he asked, wondering what he could give her if she said yes.
"I'm fine. I don't feel anything."
He could believe that--and he was the same way. "We'll take my truck. It's parked around back by the garage."
That was the extent of the conversating as they left Dog behind to guard Adrian, Eddie and the house. Outside, the night was not all that old, but it was utterly dominant, no trace of the sun left, what little warmth there had been during the day having faded into another forty-degree chill.
Was spring never coming this year, he wondered.
Maybe it was waiting to see who won the war.
As they approached the F-150, he wanted to help her with her door, but she got there first and took care of herself, shutting things up, yanking her seat belt into place. Left with nothing to do for her, he went around to the driver's side, got in, drove off.
"They go to bed early," she said as she stared out the window next to her. "My parents. They always ... went to bed early."
"It's after ten o'clock."
"They'll be asleep."
"You want to go in the morning?"
"No."
When she fell silent, he let her stay that way--even though the silence made him want to curse on every exhale.
"You know where I live?" she said after a while.
Looking over at her, he measured the way the headlights of oncoming cars illuminated her face in brief flashes. "Yeah, I do."
And he got them there in record time, cutting crosswise out of the old estate section of town, speeding through darkened suburban shopping areas, heading into a more modest neighborhood of houses that were set back among big trees.
As he drove them down the correct street, and then came to a stop in front of her house, he felt like he had kept his promise to her mother--but only in theory. What had he brought back for the family, really? It wasn't like their daughter was going to slip into her old role, filling the horrific void, reversing the agony and the grieving.
Turning off the engine, he glanced across the seat. Sissy was staring out of the side window, her chest pumping up and down under his shirt. As she lifted her hand up to the glass, her thin fingers shook so badly they skipped across the surface.
"You sure you're ready to do this?" he said gruffly.
"Yes."
But she didn't move.
At least now he could help her.
Exiting, he went around behind the truck and remembered what a bitch his own postmortem checkin had been like--namely, him waking up in the morgue at St. Francis and enjoying the truly bizarre experience of looking at his own dead body. This had to be the same for her, consciousness and reality colliding in a way that just shouldn't ever happen.
Man, even after all the atrocities he'd seen and done, that shit had stopped him short. He couldn't imagine what it was like for her.
As he opened her door, she dropped her arm. "Do you want to know why I didn't come out all day long?"
Desperately. Anything to give him a clue where she was. "Yeah."
"The thing that bothers me most is their pain. I don't care what happens to me--that's a whatever. But to see their suffering? That's a hell I will not survive ... so I wanted to make sure they were sleeping." She got out and faced off at the house as if it were an opponent. "Guess I'm a coward."
Measuring her set shoulders, he shook his head slowly. "Not what I'm thinking. Not in the slightest."
Sissy didn't seem to hear him as she hit the walkway, her feet carrying her haltingly up to the front door. Before she opened the way in, he had an impulse to stop her, thinking of how he'd found her mother sitting in that chair in the living room, the woman's grief as tangible as a black shawl covering her whole body.
But maybe Mrs. Barten could go to bed now that Sissy's remains had been found.
As he stepped forward too, more memories came back to him, making him rub his eyes, like that might stop the videos from streaming. He hated thinking of how he'd found Sissy in that cave at the quarry, everything that had made her a living, breathing entity left to rot in the damp earth, discarded as if she had been nothing but garbage.
Goddamn Devina.
"How do I get inside?" she said, as if she were thinking to herself.
Shaking himself back into focus, he cleared his throat. "Walk right in."
After a hesitation, she gripped the doorknob and turned. "It's locked."
"I didn't mean that way." Taking her arm, he urged her forward. "Just trust me."
A bright flare of pain in his forearm told him she was gripping him hard, but he didn't mind--her reliance on him as she got scared made him feel strong in a way that had nothing to do with his body, and everything to do with his soul.
It helped him deal with the sense that he'd failed her back in the beginning.
"Wait," she cut in, pulling away. "I can't ... just go through."
"I think you will." After all, that newspaper kid hadn't seen her--so there was a chance that "solid" objects were not all they were cracked up to be for her. "Trust me."
This time she followed as he stepped forward ... and she let out a strangled sound as they passed through the panels of the door, the sensation of buffering only the briefest interference; then they were out the other side, breathing the warm air of the house, taking up space along with the living room furniture.
Sissy looked down at herself, flaring her hands, flipping them over and checking out her palms. "I..."
She didn't finish as she looked up and seemed to realize where they were.
No mother in that chair across the way. But yeah ... you only kept vigil for someone you hoped would come home, not if you had a coffin to bury.
"Oh ... God," Sissy whispered, putting both hands up to her mouth.
Jim let her go, watching from just inside the door as she walked into the room beyond. He couldn't see her face, but he didn't need to. The horror was in the way she moved: her shoulders shrugged in, her head going all around, her breathing forced. And then she turned around. In the dull light coming from the one lamp left on in the hall, there were tears rolling down her face.
"I'm dead," she choked out. "I'm dead..."
"I'm so sorry," he said roughly.
"Oh ... God..."
In spite of the fact that he was awkward with compassion on a good day, he walked over to her. "I'm ... so damned fucking sorry."
He was unaware of his arms reaching
out to her, but a split second later, she was up against his chest. And as Sissy clung to him, he found himself cupping the back of her head, urging her onto his heart, holding her even closer. Syllables were leaving his lips, but goddamned if he had a clue what he was saying.
"I'm dead," she sobbed. "I'm ... gone."
"I know. I know..."
As he held her, his eyes lifted to the bookcase that stood next to the bay window. Photographs of the family were lined up on its glass shelves, the frames all different sizes and shapes, the pictures taken in various eras starting when the children were really young, and then later as gangly preteens, and finally as near-grown-ups.
There were going to be no more images with Sissy in them, and this crying right now? No matter how concerned she was for those she had left behind, in this moment, he had a feeling she was experiencing her own loss for the first time.
And Devina had done this to her. To all of them.
The bitch had to go down.
Chapter
Fourteen
When Cait headed back into downtown a little after ten o'clock, there was no traffic getting in her way, no messenger bikes weaving in and out in front of her, no buses crowding the four-lane surface road route. Nothing but a couple of red lights, and a cop car that went screaming by her.
It was as she pulled over to the side to let the CPD unit pass that she realized she was on Trade Street. And what do you know ... she was right in the midst of all the clubs.
Not far from one specific club, as a matter of fact.
As she hit the accelerator and got back in her lane, she told herself there was no reason to slow down in front of the Iron Mask. But a couple of blocks later, she found herself letting up on the gas and coasting into her second pullover.
No cops going like a bat out of hell this time.
Just Duke's supposed workplace.
With her foot on the brake and staying there, she checked out the scene. She'd never been to the club before. For one, it had opened up after she was out of college and past her barhopping days. For another, going by the black facade and the Gothic lettering? Didn't exactly look like her kind of venue.
And yup, the long wait line at the double doors confirmed the extrapolation.
Right, the last time she'd seen that much drippy black hair and clothing? A Nick at Nite Munsters marathon. In fact, it was like her vision had gone fifties monochrome on her.
Strange to think that somewhere inside the low, windowless building, that man was working--at least in theory.