Chapter 3
three
Sophie meant to have fun. Really, she did. But the gin-and-tonic was watered down, the dance floor was so crowded she’d gotten elbowed and damn near molested in the five minutes she’d spent swaying to the beat, and the pumping, throbbing music was going straight through her head with glass spikes.
Great. All I need is a migraine. Why can’t I just enjoy myself like everyone else?
Lucy was apparently having a fine time, shaking her thang on the dance floor with a guy who looked the epitome of a Latin Lover stereotype, right down to the poufy white ruffled shirt.
Luce looked downright amazing, as usual, and the guy was leaning in, talking in her ear or nibbling.
They were rubbing hips just short of truly illegal fashion; Lucy had her hands up, abandoned to the dance in a way Sophie couldn’t even dream of.
I was like that once, though. Wasn’t I? She couldn’t remember. Instead, the image of copper-bottomed pans hanging over a kitchen island rose in memory, bright round shapes twitching, and an icy rill of fear slid up her back.
A half-guilty glance around showed nothing out of the ordinary. As usual.
Still jumping at shadows. She couldn’t even remember what it felt like to dance without being afraid. And her nerves tingled, whether it was from weak gin or the infrequent pins-and-needles feeling which meant something truly bad was about to happen.
Those pinprick-waves had even saved her from a car crash once.
Or at least Sophie firmly believed, no matter what anyone else would say.
The feeling had made her sit at a four-way stop, foot firmly on the brake, until another car zoomed through the intersection, not even pausing.
Whether the driver was drunk or just careless didn’t matter—the point was, she’d avoided being T-boned.
Still, the feeling hadn’t piped up when she was, say, about to marry a man who thought “wife” meant “slave.” Or, sometimes, “punching bag.”
Sophie sighed. She could have left her glasses in the car, rendering the world a soft fuzz much easier to deal with, but then she’d be half-blind.
She probably should have left them, this was just the sort of crowd fit to accidentally knock them off her face plus step on them, and there went a few hundred bucks’ worth of frames she couldn’t afford to lose.
They were cute, too. And they didn’t require the care and expense contacts did.
I’m all new now. Except the inside, where I’m the same old Sophie. Scared of my own shadow. She took another gulp of watery gin, then someone bumped into her from behind. The drink slopped, splashing, and cold liquid landed on her cleavage. The pinpricks swept over her skin, retreated.
Sophie sucked in a breath, nearly choked, and looked up as the person bumping her settled against the bar less than a foot away.
Oh, wow.
He was tall, dark, and rough-looking, stubble crawling on his cheeks under high arched cheekbones.
The man’s mouth was a little too thin, as was his nose, but his eyes—so dark pupil blended into iris, especially in uncertain light—were nice enough.
And the shelf of dark hair falling stubbornly across them was just waiting for fingers to smooth it back.
A streak of almost-blond winging back from his temple should have looked ridiculous, but didn’t.
Hello, stranger. Sophie quickly looked back down at her drink. Lucy would have grinned at him and said something witty. Jeez. I’m such an idiot.
“Sorry about that,” he almost-yelled in her ear, easily projecting over the music. Warm breath touched her hair, and a not-unpleasant bolt of heat went through her. It was the closest she’d been to a man since… oh, two months before she filed for divorce?
The pinpricks had gone away. Probably just the gin. She was a lightweight at booze anyway, and her liver seriously out of practice besides.
“No problem,” she yelled, practically into her drink. Being this close to anyone made her nervous. And he was… big. Sheer physical size usually meant danger, and she checked where his hands were with quick little peripheral glances.
You can’t tar everyone with the same brush, she told herself for at least the five thousandth time. Not all men are like that.
The sense of someone breathing on her didn’t go away, so she slid to the side, bumping against a deeply tanned woman in a skimpy red dress.
Oh, God. Too many people. I’m going to suffocate.
Her gaze swung up, and she found the man looking at her again.
A drink had appeared in front of him; he handed the harried bartender a crumpled bill without looking or waiting for change.
Black T-shirt, broken-in jeans, a belt with an oddly shaped silver buckle, tiny details presenting themselves one after another.
He was standing too close. It was packed three-deep here at the bar, but he was still way inside her personal space.
Like, leaning in so far they were almost rubbing noses. A breath of male scent enfolded her, freighted with some musky cologne.
Her heart gave a nasty thump. Jesus! Sophie flinched, dropped her gin and tonic on the bar, and retreated. The glass turned over, sending a tide of watered alcohol across polished plastic, and a flash of terrified guilt burst reflexively inside her ribcage.
Clumsy. You’re so fucking stupid. Marc’s voice hissed inside her head, but she made it to the dance floor, going up on nearly numb toes to look for Lucy. Pushed her glasses up as well, hoping they wouldn’t get smudged. That would just cap the whole night.
Dammit, girl. Where have you gone now? But her friend was nowhere in sight. Sophie canvassed the entire floor, glanced at the emergency exit, decided that was silly. Lucy wasn’t at the bar, either—but it wasn’t like her to vanish completely.
She was flighty, sure, but not truly heedless. Sometimes Sophie thought her friend’s extrovert act was just that—a performance, used so often it was habitual, covering up shyness almost deep as Soph’s own.
Her heart was pounding as if it intended to explode; her breath whistled short and fast as she checked the ladies’ room and, again, found zero Lucy.
Don’t have a panic attack now. She wouldn’t bail on you.
But, oh, Sophie’s body wouldn’t listen, mute but wise flesh bracing itself for disaster.
Outside the night was clear and cold, rising breeze biting her bare, sweating legs. Too hot inside the club, hypothermic outside, what a choice. Her glasses fogged briefly, cleared. Her lungs eased up, and the tight knot of squirming panic in the pit of her belly dialed back a bit.
A group of smokers clustered around a parking meter, all laughing uproariously at a college-age boy doing some sort of jig to the beat coming through the walls.
But no sleek dark head or jingle of gold bracelets. Sophie stood irresolute on the pavement, craning to look in every possible direction—and someone bumped into her from behind.
Again.
Oh, thank God. There you are. She turned around, opening her mouth to mock-scold. Instead, her jaw dropped even farther as she looked up—and up, he was at least six feet tall—at the man who had jostled her at the bar.
For Christ’s sake. “Watch where you’re going,” Sophie snapped, and took two giant, skipping steps back. Leave me alone. Go away.
“Sorry.” He smiled, showing incredibly white teeth, but the expression was more like a grimace. “You okay?”
She didn’t have to reply. A scream punched the night, a high feminine note cut sharply off the moment it reached full-throated terror, and Sophie almost leapt out of her skin.
I know that voice. She was already moving, heart hammering afresh, borrowed heels clattering. The mustachioed bouncer looked startled, staring down the street, clearly trying to figure out where the sound had come from.
“Luce!” Sophie yelled, and plunged into the slim, brick-walled space between the Paintbox and a throbbing, thumping pirate-themed club next door. “Lucy!”
This alley ended on a blank brick wall, and next to an overflowing dumpster was a crumpled pale shape twitching weakly in the gloom. A hand closed around Sophie’s naked upper arm, hot fingers like steel bands.
What the hell? “Lucy!”
Whoever held Sophie’s arm dragged her a few steps backward as another shape—male, tall but skinny, a wet black blotch down its white shirt—looked up from crouching over the sprawled shape. But it was wrong, somehow—its eyes ran with crimson hellfire, and darkness smeared across its lips.
Sophie yelped as the grip on her arm yanked again. Another slice of golden light opened up, slim graceful bodies piling through, bending and stretching in ways they shouldn’t.
The shadows swarmed the thing with the red-gleaming eyes; Sophie’s legs turned to noodles. She sagged, the hard terrible grip on her arm the only thing keeping her upright, and when the hurtful fingers loosened she actually staggered.
Shock of her knees meeting filthy concrete, jarring up through her hips and shoulders. Heart in her throat like a dry pulsing rock, choke-tight. The pale form lying so still next to the dumpster wore Lucy’s face, gasping out weak rattling breaths audible even in the chaos.
Lucy’s neck bubbled, torn wide open, red and terrible.
Sophie stared. Oh, God. What… what on earth…
Then the thing in the stained, fluttering white shirt turned from the back of the alley and lunged for her, snarling.