Back behind the garage, the sound of screeching made him twitchy, his body ready, willing, and panting to join the fray out in the forest. But Matthias was up in that studio, and Jim wasn’t going to give this operative a chance to infiltrate and pop the bastard.

In Hell. The blond girl is there—I was with her….

Jim cracked his knuckles. His vengeance was getting harder and harder to suck up, that fault line of fury threatening to break him in ways Devina’s physical torture couldn’t get close to. The bitch was smart—killing those other women. It kept Sissy right in the forefront, loud as a fire alarm, bright as a goddamn neon sign.

It was the most effective thing the demon had done so far to get under his cool—

Over to the right, a shadow moved—and it wasn’t the Devina kind. It was a man dressed in black from head to foot, a mask covering his face.

Jim observed from his superior position of not-fucking-there as the operative slipped from trunk to trunk. You had to admire the focus. In spite of the fucked-up weather, the God-only-knows-what out back, and the relative lack of cover, the guy was a study in cold calculation, every footfall exactly where it needed to be. And he was well equipped, with a good-looking gun and silencer, and no doubt a bulletproof vest under the black fleece—after all, operatives were hard to find, difficult to train, and extremely expensive to support.

Not the kind of resources you squandered.

There was no backup, at least not that Jim could sense or see. Operatives did work in pairs from time to time, but that was rare and usually only when there were multiple targets.

And clearly, they were just coming for Matthias.

Which was not going to happen. Not under Jim’s watch.

Crossing the pea gravel, he zeroed in and didn’t waste time with any showboating or big reveal from out of thin air just to get a rise out of the fucker.

In honor of the tradition he had been trained in, Jim simply let the other man pass by and then fell in step behind him, unnoticed even as he let himself become visible. Then, with quick coordination, he gripped both sides of the operative’s head and snapped the man’s neck with one vicious jerk. As the body went loose, Jim let it drop where it did, and stood his ground.

In the unlikely event there was another operative in the woods, that was going to flush him.

Heartbeat.

Heartbeat.

Heartbeat.

Jim stretched it a little longer and then was sure it had been a solo job again. Stepping over the newly dead, he fell into a jog around to the rear—

Talk about your melees.

Minions were swarming the back forty, going up against Adrian and— Shit, was that Matthias with a crystal dagger?

Sure as hell looked like it.

And he was holding his own.

The first impulse was to jump in there, but Jim stopped himself. This ambush bullshit was just too obvious. And he didn’t believe that the minions were going to kill Matthias—nope, not with Devina stepping in when she had back at the Marriott.

Narrowing his eyes on the fighting, he whistled once, the shrill sound cutting through the grunting and cursing. When Adrian glanced over, Jim popped up his palms—the universal sign for, You got this?

When Adrian nodded and returned to work, Jim gave Matthias another quick measure. The bastard was on fire, that broken body somehow working with enough deadly coordination to score some serious hits—and not because the minions were giving it to him easy once they engaged with him.

They were, however, focusing on Adrian, none of them singling Matthias out until the guy forced them to.

Devina had definitely given a no-kill order to those shadowy sons of bitches: Jim had squared off with them enough to know that they were capable of far greater offensive strategy—and the shit Adrian was dealing with was proof.

Time to go.

Jim hightailed it around to the front, threw some buffering over the corpse so that in the unlikely event someone got lost and made it all the way down the drive, they wouldn’t find a dead guy as a welcome mat.

Then he was out of there, going Angel Airlines to downtown Caldwell.

The reporter was the one exposed at the moment, and that was where Jim needed to be.

36

As far as Adrian could tell, the final minion showed up shortly after Jim disappeared.

The second that angel was gone, the seemingly endless supply of Devina’s PITAs dried up—proof that keeping the guy on site had been the reason for the attack.

Ten minutes later, the last shadow was dispatched, stabbed through the head by a crystal dagger wielded by Matthias.

As Adrian turned and looked at his wingman, he was breathing hard and steaming from the blood that had splattered on his shoulders.

That crippled SOB had sure as hell pulled it together in the nick of time.

“You okay?” Ad demanded between heaving gasps.

Matthias’s knees buckled and he gave himself over to gravity, letting his ass hit the ground—at least until the black blood that had been spilled on it ate its way through to his BVDs.

The man popped up off that grass like he’d been kicked in the can. “Fuck! This shit is—”

“Don’t rub your ass with your hand, idiot. Then your palm’ll get covered in it.”

Annnnnnd that was how Matthias ended up dropping trou in front of Ad.

The guy all but ripped open the front of those black slacks, and then his flat ass and thin legs let the rest happen.

“Better?” Ad said dryly as he looked around.

“Except for the stiff breeze on my ’nads, yeah.”

Ad’s eyes went back to the man’s lower body…and for some reason, his mind got stuck on the reporter in that hotel room the night before, the two of them all sexed up, but going nowhere.

That must really suck, he thought.

Clearing his throat, he nodded at the garage. “I got a change in there for you.”

“I’m ready for one.”

Matthias bent down, used the crystal dagger to slice open the pant legs, and then stepped free of them, leaving the burned-out remains smoldering on the ground like a car that had been bombed and abandoned at the side of the road.

Looking over, he tossed the dagger in a perfect end-over-end sequence at Adrian. “Thanks for the weapon—that was fun.”

Then the guy turned away and made like he was heading around the garage.

No questions. No demands of, “What the fuck?” Just, Hey, good party, my man.

Adrian hightailed it to catch up, thinking that Jim had been right about his old boss. Even half-naked, with some of his clothes still smoking, the fucker was tight as a bank vault—and Ad’s kind of guy, apparently.

Matthias stopped as he came around the corner. “Looks like we had another kind of company.”

Sure enough.

The dead operative was lying like a doormat on the fringes of the forest, half on/half off the pea gravel of the drive. Talk about bad shape: the body was chest-down, but the head was owl-backward, those dead eyes focused on the skies above.

That musta hurt.

Ad went over and crouched. “You go up and I’ll get rid of him—”

“Not a chance.” As Ad looked up, Matthias planted his feet and got his glare on. “Those things out back? Those are your world. This.” He jabbed a forefinger at the stiff. “Is mine. Get me some f**king pants while I strip him.”

Well, what do you know. Just because his balls didn’t work didn’t mean the guy was a pussy.

“And bring me a belt,” Matthias muttered as he knelt down onto the ground, and started to pick over the carcass like the best kind of vulture. “I’m not your size anymore.”

Adrian wasn’t the type to be dismissed, especially by a mere human. But Jim’s old boss had earned some respect in that forest, and there was no arguing with the way he was handling the postgame wrap-up on a man who’d been sent to kill him.

After Ad did a quick scan of the property to make sure nothing was doing, he flashed up inside the studio—no reason not to, considering the focus Matthias was showing the dearly departed. After a quick check-in with Dog and Eddie, both of whom were right where they needed to be, he grabbed a set of leathers in case the shit hit the fan again, and looked around for something, anything he could leverage as a belt.

Back down on ground level, he dropped the pants by Matthias’s nearly bare ass. “Here.”

The guy took a pause in his peel job and started to get to his feet. When he faltered, Adrian extended his palm.

Matthias looked up as if he wanted to throw a fuck-off out into the airwaves, but as he made a second attempt and didn’t get far, he slid his hand against Ad’s. It took no strength at all to get him off the ground, but the subtle pull made the difference between Matthias’s staying where he was and his being on the vertical.

As the man’s head dropped to take off his Nikes, Ad felt a pang in his chest. To be disabled was a kind of curse. And yet through heart alone, Matthias had done a man’s job out in the back—had even stepped in during a moment when Ad might have gotten hurt.

“Thank you,” Adrian said.

Matthias’s brows twitched—which was apparently his version of OMG. “What for?”

“Stepping in.”

“You could have handled it,” he said gruffly as he yanked up those pants.

The leathers were painfully loose on him, and when Adrian handed over an extension cord, the stare he got back was all about the really?

“Best I could do.”

Matthias did the duty, snaking the stiff black cord through the loops, pulling shit tight, and tying it in a knot. Then he was back to work.

“No cell phone, ID has his picture on it and not much else, ammo, piano wire, good knife—but not as flashy as the ones you have.” Matthias glanced around. “We need to find his car and get him the hell out of here. They’re going to send more, but let’s clean up this mess before things get complicated and the morgue at St. Francis runs the risk of losing another body.”

“I’ll get the keys to the truck. In the meantime, let’s stuff him in the garage.”

“Roger that.”

Ad went for the F-150 that Jim had driven before he’d fallen into the battle between good and evil. By the time he’d backed the thing out, Matthias had tied the operative’s arms and legs together, and was dragging the body toward the bay that had been opened.

The effort was making him limp like someone had hit his bad leg with a Louisville Slugger. And broken the bat in half.

Adrian stepped in and took the torso. No comment. No fuss.

“Worried he’s going to wake up?” Adrian drawled, nodding at that thin copper wire that had been used to secure things.

“Lately, I’m not taking anything for granted.”

The truck that Adrian had pulled out was not new, but it was in good condition. Unfortunately, as Matthias grunted and dragged his bones up into the passenger seat with the help of his cane, the same couldn’t be said for himself.

He was old and in bad condition.

The fight he’d had such a blast with hadn’t ended as far as his body was concerned, every sharp jab, quick counter, and bracing blow lingering in his joints and muscles. He felt like he’d been in a car accident.

Again.

But he liked it. Everything…from the killing to the cleanup…felt like a familiar set of clothes or a destination he’d lived at for a long, long time.

After Adrian drove them out past the white farmhouse that appeared to be unoccupied, the man hit the brakes at the main road.

“Preference?” he said.

As with the fighting, the analysis came to Matthias with perfect clarity and confidence: “The operative would have driven by this lane first, coming from the direction of downtown because he’d have taken a car up from Washington, D.C., on the Northway. Then he’d have doubled back and gone past again.”

“So right.”

“No, left. He’d have double-checked a third time before identifying the best place to park. And then after finding it, he would have located another, less obvious solution.” Matthias nodded in that direction. “Left.”

“Do all you guys have the same brain?”

“I had a very specific recruiting strategy and type.”

“And what was that?”

Matthias focused on the man beside him. “You. Without the metal in your face.”

“I do believe I’m blushing.”

As Adrian made the turn, Matthias cracked a smile, and then got to searching the shoulders of the road. They were definitely out in the sticks, overgrown evergreens and early blooming forsythia crowding the asphalt on both sides like fans at a velvet rope.

One mile out. Two miles. Three—

“There,” he said, pointing through the front windshield—but like Adrian hadn’t seen the unmarked buried to its quarter panels at the side of the road?