I will eradicate your higher men one-by-one until you are fearless enough to face me.
“Why kill one of his own higher men?” I say. “That goes against his whole belief system.” Yet he killed Landry the moment he dosed him with hemlock. If the offender wasn’t one before, then he became a killer in that moment. “And then…why would he copycat the Harbinger killer…”
Kallum’s jaw sets rigid, a muscle tics along his jawline. “To make you believe it was me.”
A coldness sweeps through me, numbing me against the falling rain.
“Planting the rope at the scene wasn’t for the techs to find,” he says. “It was for you. You’re the only one who can prove I wasn’t in the hotel room, that I was at the scene. The Overman wants me out of the way, Halen.”
I shake my head. “That still doesn’t explain why he’d kill one of the victims. Especially when he needs them, all of them, for his rituals to ascend.”
His eyes darken. “Because he found someone he wants more.”
The implication hits me with a thunderous boom, the storm a deafening roar.
“He wants you, Halen,” Kallum says, emphasizing his point. “So I’m not going anywhere. Even when the carving knife conveniently turns up with my DNA to force you to confess to Alister that I was there, I’m not leaving you alone.” He sweeps the wet strand of white from my eye, gripping it between his inked fingers before he tucks it behind my ear. A forced smile touches his lips. “If you can’t trust the person, trust their intent.”
I drag in a shuddering breath, recalling how deeply I distrusted Kallum when first he said this to me. How I knew—sitting at that diner booth, staring into his clashing eyes as he held a steak knife—that I could never trust him, that he’d harm me the first opportunity that presented.
As I stare into his gaze now, there’s an open sadness there, a dejection, that feels so genuine I can taste the melancholy infusing the damp air around him.
And I could fall. Right now. Let go of obligations and consequences and even sanity, and fall over the edge with Kallum. Tumble right down into his abyss, and be lost.
Just let go.
I can’t lie to myself; a part of me wants to. That part of me which craves the surrender to oblivion that is promised in his frantic kisses and wild, feverish touches.
It’s like begging for the sweet caress of death’s kiss.
But another part of me, the one still desperately clinging to a life from my past, fears letting go of that final thread.
I’m not yet ready to be unraveled by Kallum.
“And your intent is to protect me,” I say between quivering lips, the question implied. “The villain who endeavors to be a hero.”
With a wry smile, he slips his tongue over the ridge of his teeth, then he braces the sides of my neck with both hands, his thumbs lifting my chin upward so all I can see is him.
“The villain only becomes such after he’s lost that which he cannot live without,” he says. “I’m in no need of a metamorphosis. I refuse to lose you.”
His mouth hovers so near mine, all I have to do is lift onto my toes to press my lips to his. The dare hangs there between us as he waits for me to be the one to accept him, to trust him, to seal us together.
“So, little Halen,” he says, his thumb featherlight as he brushes my cheek. “Will you trust me, or am I going to have to tie you down and force you to let me protect you.”
I place my hands to his chest, and the chaotic beat of his heart pounds against my palms. “You won’t be satisfied until I’m completely under your spell.”
A devilish smile slants his mouth. “Satisfaction is an impossible demand,” he says. “But I can be contented right this second to taste the rain on your lips.”
As his gaze hungrily traps my mouth, I’m pulled into the charged current. His lips are the lightest brush over mine, the tenderest touch, yet the fire threatens to sear us to ash.
The flash of headlights steals into the moment.
I pull back a fraction to sever the connection as the SUV coasts up the gravel road. Another pair of lights appear from the other direction, illuminating the falling rain like beads of glass.
“Fucking hell,” Kallum mutters beneath his breath. He drives a hand through his wet hair.
I escape his embrace completely at the sound of a door opening.
“Halen, why the hell are you in the rain?”
Shielding my eyes, I turn toward the sound of Devyn’s voice. I open my mouth, willing some explanation, but simply shake my head. She waves a hand, motioning me over. I look at the SUV, then Kallum.
“Don’t leave,” he says, the plea reflected in his darkened eyes. “Stay with me.”
Two directions.
And I have to choose one.
“I can protect myself,” I say to him, then slip out of the beam of light. I don’t look back as I walk toward Devyn’s car.
Once I’m settled in the passenger seat, Devyn is mercifully silent as she backs her car around to start in the opposite direction of the gothic mansion. I wait three fierce heartbeats before I look up at the last second to see Kallum still standing in the beam of the SUV’s headlights.
I grip his suit jacket around me and then touch my fingers to my lips, the heady mix of sandalwood and rain a torturous scent that sears this moment into my memory.
OceanofPDF.com
7
OceanofPDF.com
THE CHASM BETWEEN
OceanofPDF.com
KALLUM
With a clear sky also comes a new form of clarity, one where the FBI task force realizes that a small town doesn’t mean small thinking.
What remains of the storm travels through the killing fields as a biting wind, bringing the scent of foul death with it to match the bleak surroundings. The marsh waters rose with the downpour, requiring every member currently trekking through the wetland to wear wading boots.
I glance down at mine, a single thought spared for the ankle monitor presently submerged under the murky water. Agent Alister leads the way through the tall reeds, swatting the grass with zeal, as if the very marsh is at fault for the latest report.
At some time during the night, when the rain drove most people to take shelter, there was at least one busy bee buzzing around the fields up to no good.
As we come up on the second crime scene marked by tattered caution tape and a black willow tree, the only thing that remains of the hemlock grove are the bare canes. The poisonous patch has been stripped.
“Goddammit—” Alister shouts. He rounds on one of the federal agents nearest him. “I want eyes on every scene at all times.”
I glance to my right, tempted to make a bad joke to Halen about how the eyes were already on the first scene…but decide against it as Alister’s tapered gaze falls on her in accusation.
“Since you like to traipse around crime scenes at night,” Alister says to Halen, tone patronizing, “do you know anything about this, Miss St. James?”
“If I had, I would have reported it right away,” she says.
Alister gauges her suspiciously before he instructs the task force to start processing the scene. I don’t know what transpired between them during the interrogation last night, but she’s not barred from the scene today.
When she chose to leave me standing in the rain like some cliché movie scene, I had to restrain myself from following after her. The next time she decides to be fearless and go off without me, I won’t let a tracking monitor or the threat of being locked up hold me back.
It was late when I heard her enter her room. Then the sound of a chair being slipped under the doorknob. The chain lock on the conjoining door remains broken. It was a long, restless night where I fought the temptation to simply kick in the door.
