Chapter 6
Chapter Six
Corvus…
I was in the Porsche, just about to leave the Manse after a late dinner with the boys, when my phone buzzed twice and the screen lit with an incoming text.
I had texted Savannah just a little earlier – to annoy her about a matter that really could have waited until tomorrow – but I was feeling petty, as she’d disturbed me days ago with an equally petty text after hours.
The message I got was not what I had expected.
He’s going to kill me – 911 – 911! 14 W. Duffy
I started the car, and the engine roared, the shifter moving smoothly, as I worked the pedals, tires screaming against the drive as I pulled around, fishtailing and damn near running my ass end into the gate on the way out.
Synister would be pissed about the rubber I laid on the drive, but I would have it fixed later.
I tore ass around the back of the Manse and screamed around the block and down Whitaker. She was lucky. She was barely two blocks away, and I knew the 14 W. Duffy property. I turned down West Park Lane and went up the back of the houses, turning into the back lot.
As soon as I hit the pavement after flinging open my door, I could hear the faint shouting and screaming coming from up and away inside the old Victorian. I didn’t hesitate. The back door leading into the kitchen was locked, so I busted out the pane of glass by the doorknob with my elbow.
I reached through carefully and threw back the lock, letting myself in.
I could hear loud crashing, as though someone was trying to take down a door, a man screaming in something that wasn’t English, but wasn’t a language I recognized. I went for the stairs, lunging up them, two and three at a time.
My gun was in the back of my waistband, but I didn’t bother with it yet. I didn’t know what I was dealing with.
I found a blond man beating his shoulder into a closed and locked door on the third floor, and could hear muffled and hysterical crying from the other side.
“Hey!” I barked. He turned, sweat-soaked, disheveled, and with blood dripping down one cheek.
There was a woman’s shoe lying forlorn on the floor between us.
“Back away from that door slowly.”
He rushed me, and I clocked him in a smooth, controlled motion – all muscle memory, and one hundred percent reflex and training.
He went down, skidded to the top of the stairs along the runner, and came to a halt, half lying down them, his legs on the landing, his waist over the top step.
He didn’t move.
I did. I glided up to the door, listened to the heaving breaths of the frightened prey behind it, and took a deep breath.
I knocked.
“Savannah?”
“Who – who’s there?” she demanded. “Is it the police?”
I bit back a laugh.
“Open the door, Savannah,” I ordered.
There was a dragging sound, some scuffling, a little shuffle, and then click!
The door opened inward just a crack, and a wild blue eye looked up at me, her mascara smeared in a muddy track down to her chin, her hair a wild and tangled mane, half-hiding the other side of her face.
“Corbett?” she squeaked, and she sounded horrified.
I cocked my head. “You texted that you were in trouble. I was less than two blocks away. You want I should leave and let you call the police?” I held a thumb over my shoulder, and she thrust open the door and nearly took me out, hiding her face in my chest, her arms wrapping around me like steel bands as she clung to me like I was her last known hope in the world.
The scent of peaches and adrenaline tickled my nose, and before I could catch myself, my arms went around her.
“Easy,” I ordered, but she was sobbing brokenly and blubbering what, I couldn’t understand.
“He tried to get me, he tried to hurt me, thank you! You came out of nowhere, but thank—” She shrieked, and reflexively, with one arm around her, the other went to the small of my back, as I turned us to the side and emptied three shots into the lunatic charging us.
She held onto me, screaming. I swore and turned to her and shook her a little more violently than I intended, but her mouth snapped shut, and my snarled “Stop it, right now!” seemed to get through to her.
She stared up at me, horrified, and I swallowed hard, knowing just how to turn this situation to my advantage.
Emotionless, I told her, “Stop your screaming.” As soon as it was safe to do so, I traded my gun for my phone and pulled her in so she could hyperventilate in peace against me, and I could get the job done.
I dialed Requiem.
“Yeah,” he answered on the first ring.
“Cleanup on aisle thirteen,” I said, deadpanned.
“Aw, fuck. How bad and where?”
I rattled off the street address and told him, “Get Reaper over here with you.”
“Shit, man, was that you?” he asked.
“Aisle thirteen,” I reminded him. It was the unluckiest number, so he knew it meant there was a witness, if not witnesses.
“How many?” he asked.
“One, and one,” I told him.
“Shit, right. YO, REAP!” he hollered, and I pulled the phone away from my ear and grimaced. He came back in his normal tone, “On it, be right there.”
“Thank you,” I said, and the line went dead.
“No, it’s okay. This is okay,” Savannah reasoned with herself, staring in horror at the man I’d just killed.
“It was self-defense, or defense of others. The cops will come… it’ll be okay,” she said.
She looked up at me, beseechingly, with that sexy-ass gleam of true fear in her eyes and silently begged me to make it all better.
The trap was sprung, and Savvy Savannah Davenport was firmly in my grasp.
I cupped her cheek, rubbed a thumb through the muddy tracks along it, and said, “No cops. It’s too late for that now.”
“What?” She sounded as though I’d stolen her breath.
“Corvus!” Requiem boomed from down below.
“When are the homeowners due back?” I demanded before calling down, “Yeah, we’re up here!”
“What?” she echoed. She was starting to stir, starting to realize I wasn’t the savior she thought me to be.
I seized her up tighter against me and snapped at her, “Focus!”
She gasped and went still, nearly boneless in my grasp.
“The-they’re abroad, um, uh, it’s in my calendar on my laptop downstairs.”
“Good.”
“Shitfire, motherfucker.” Requiem stepped up and around the dead body.
We could hear sirens in the distance.
“Don’t worry about it,” Grim said, coming up behind Requiem. “Syn already called in and made a false claim that it came from Forsythe, more toward the other end. Go on and get out of here.”
“Let’s go.” I cajoled Savannah in the direction of the stairs, and she gasped.
“Come on, sweetheart, let us help you,” Grim said carefully, putting on his funeral director's cautious airs. He knew how to handle fragile women.
“Give us the deets as soon as you can,” Requiem said. I nodded and passed Savannah off to Grim, who handed her down past him to who could only be Reaper around the bend in the stairs.
I met up with him, took her from him, and led her carefully down to the main floor.
“What’s happening?” she asked, and she was ghostly pale.
“They’re handling it, and you’re coming with me,” I told her, while scooping up her laptop on the way out the door.
“Wait,” she protested, and I stopped and looked at her.
“It’s either me, or the cops. And I promise you, that you don’t want any of that mess.”
She swallowed hard and went with me. I felt like a spider, winding its prize into ropes of silk to stash away for later.
I can’t tell you how much that got me off.