Strangers of the Night Read online

  “You know that you can’t be responsible for someone else’s mental health issues,” Phoenix said. “God knows, I have my share of baggage—”

  Willa cut in, “Like everyone else in the world.”

  “—but you can’t unpack someone else’s bags for them,” Phoenix finished.

  She knew that, of course. She had for a long time. Yet somehow here she was, this was the life she’d chosen, and for the most part it wasn’t a bad one.

  “So...what about...this.” Phoenix touched the bruise she’d left. “When did you figure that out?”

  “It wasn’t easy getting a date in a town this size when everyone thought I was the big bad wolf who’d done her best to blow Brady’s house down. Even when he got married, which he did almost exactly a year later, people didn’t forget what had happened. So, I tried online dating. I met someone. We went on a date or two. Things went well. I agreed to meet him the next town over in a hotel. He asked me to slap him when I came.”

  Phoenix quirked a brow.

  “I couldn’t come,” Willa admitted. “Too much pressure. Too soon. I wasn’t used to casual sex, despite all the accusations Brady had thrown my way. I didn’t see that guy again after that, but I thought about him, and that, a lot. I started to seek it out. Men who were into pain. It’s both easier and more difficult than you might expect to find someone.”

  “I believe it.” Phoenix shook his head. He leaned forward, offering his mouth, which she kissed briefly before sitting back again. “But I have to ask you. About me. How...how did you know?”

  Willa’s brow furrowed as she thought how best to answer that. “I didn’t.”

  “So I guess that makes us lucky, then,” Phoenix said.

  He looked as though he meant to say something else, but from downstairs came the shatter of glass and the thud of the front door breaking open.

  Chapter 6

  It could’ve been anything—a strong gust of wind from the storm. A home invasion. The landlord forgetting his keys. Phoenix was up and out of bed in seconds all the same. Moving. Grabbing his clothes and throwing them on as fast as possible while he shoved the heavy dresser in front of the door.

  “Get dressed,” he shot at Willa without looking to see if she was going to.

  Whoever was coming for him would have no interest in her, unless she had some hidden talents she hadn’t shown off, and not the ones of the bedroom sort. That didn’t mean she wasn’t going to get hurt when whoever was thudding up the stairs burst through this door and tried to take him. Dressed, shoving his bare feet into boots, Phoenix backed her up toward the window.

  “You’re going to have to go out there,” he said. “Drop to the roof of the back porch. From there you can climb the trellis to the street.”

  “What the hell is going on?”

  Already the thunder of feet in the narrow hallway was trying to drown out her words. There wasn’t time for her to argue with him. He needed her to get out the window, and now. He nudged.

  “Out.”

  Willa moved toward the window, tearing wide the curtains and pulling up the sash, but she did not do as he’d told her. She looked outside. “They’re out there, too, whoever they are.”

  “Go out, anyway,” he said. “They’re going to come through that door in a minute and they probably have guns.”

  She ignored him, moving into the long, narrow closet that he barely used. “No. This way. Come on.”

  He nudged her harder. She stumbled as though he’d pushed her, a hand to her head, but she did not go to the window the way he was trying force her to. Phoenix pulled back, not wanting to hurt her, his attention torn between Willa and the bedroom door shaking as someone tried to get in. The glass in the window shattered inward after that.

  “Up here.” She’d pulled down the set of folding stairs into an attic he hadn’t known existed. Already halfway up, she turned to gesture at him. “Our two houses share an attic. I can get us into mine. From there we can get out.”

  He didn’t argue but followed. They took the time to pull up the stairs after them, and without a second’s hesitation she grabbed an extension cord coiled next to some boxes. She looped it through the folding stairs’ metal hinges, securing it from being pulled down, at least easily.

  “I read a lot of books,” she said when he looked at her. “I learned things.”

  With an easy, loping step, she navigated the attic’s center line where the beams were high enough to let her pass without ducking. At the door in the center, she pushed hard, and after a moment it opened. The attic on her side was brighter, cleaner, with boxes and discarded furniture and racks of out-of-season clothes neatly placed in rows along the side. She had identical folding stairs. In moments they were in her bedroom.

  “Will they have surrounded this house, too? Will they be trying to get in here? Quick,” she cried, snapping her fingers in his face until he answered.

  “I don’t know. I don’t think so. They try not to engage civilians.”

  It was the wrong word, because he was a civilian as well. Words were failing him, though not because of the sudden attack on his house. It had been only a matter of time before Wyrmwood caught up to him, he’d thought, but he was left stunned and reeling by how swiftly and with such prowess Willa was reacting.

  “Your truck’s parked in the alley. If we can get to that, we can get out of here.”

  “You don’t need to get anywhere,” he put in. “You can stay here in your house. They’re interested in me, and if you’re over here—”

  Willa cut him off as she grabbed a winter coat hanging from a coatrack. She found a pair of boots and slipped them on as she answered. “You really think they won’t come over here asking for me? We left two plates on the table. Two glasses of wine. The thermal bag has my name on it and my address. If they don’t figure out we were together just now, at the very least I think they’ll come over to ask me some questions.”

  She was right, although it still knocked him for a loop that she’d reacted so quickly. So smart. He nodded, feeling in his jeans pocket for his keys. Thanking all the gods and goddesses or whoever watched over those who’d royally fucked up their lives that they were in there.

  “Let’s go,” Willa told him as she slung a bag over one shoulder.

  Years ago, Willa had gotten into the habit of keeping a go bag near the back door. In case she needed to run away. In case there was a natural disaster that required evacuation. Just in case. She grabbed it now and slung it over her shoulder with a look at Phoenix. There’d be time for him to tell her what the hell was going on, but it didn’t seem to be now.

  She was doing this. Running out of her house with a man she barely knew, as strangers with guns pursued them. Why? Because he’d let her hurt him? Because she was afraid of what might happen if she stayed? Because it was a chance to get out, she thought as she let Phoenix go out the door ahead of her, onto her slightly sloping back porch and down the rickety stairs she always meant to get repaired but never had.

  Screw those stairs, she thought as he took them two at a time, landing on the snowy sidewalk with a grace she admired even in this hyped-up state of fight or flight. There was a man in a black uniform, wearing a mask, holding a gun, but he was looking the other way. He turned as Willa also leaped the stairs of the porch. She slipped on the ice, going to one knee as the gun swung up. She didn’t see what happened next, but the soldier or whatever the hell he was fell to his hands and knees in the piled snow.

  Eating it?

  Chowing down on it like a dog with a bowl of meat and gravy. Tossing his head from side to side. He got right down to pavement while she watched.

  Phoenix yanked her arm. “C’mon.”

  “What the—”

  She took another look over her shoulder as Phoenix pulled her toward the truck parked in one