Chapter 45 Free-Range Hearts
FORTY-FIVE
Free-Range Hearts
His smile dimmed. “I’m afraid I don’t follow.”
Finding that hole in my mental walls, I listened to him pivot.
He’d thought this would be easy. Some arty, woo-woo psychic wasn’t even a challenge.
Now, though, he was pissed. He wanted the hunting knife he kept in a sheath inside the waistband of his pants.
He wanted to drive it into my smug body over and over, until his arm tired.
“Right. So you’re here at closing, hoping to get me alone, so you can talk portraits? With your fake beard and your disguise glasses? Is that it?” Sarcasm dripped from my words.
Charming smile back in place, he moved closer. “You caught me.” His gaze ran over me. “You’re quite beautiful.” He’d planned to kill me quickly, but now that he was here, drawing it out and making it hurt had a certain appeal.
“It’s odd,” I told him. “Psychopaths are often better mimics of normal human behavior. You know how to look charming. You know the mannerism, the expressions, but you don’t feel them, and so it’s unsettling.”
He scratched his cheek on a laugh. “Are those your psychic skills at work?” Head tilted, he gave me a look that chilled me to the bone. “I can’t say I’m too impressed.”
“Do you remember when CGI was new and studios realized that if they rendered characters too close to human, it freaked out the audience? We innately recognize when something isn’t quite human. That’s you. You’re just off enough to send chills down my spine.”
He shook his head. “I suppose an overactive imagination is needed in an artist.” He turned partially away from me, ostensibly to study my artwork. Really, though, he was pulling the knife from its sheath, his body blocking my view.
Smiling again, he considered how he’d do it. Should he slit my throat? Stab me in the heart? Maybe plunge it through my eye?
I smiled. Declan was right outside the door with Carter. Osso was probably close. As much as I would have liked feeding him to a hungry ocean, I wanted him to stand trial and live out the rest of his life in prison.
I smiled, completely relaxed. “It’s cute how you think you’re the one who will be walking out of here alive. I’m not a little boy on an archery field or a teenaged girl you drugged and raped by a pond.”
There it was. His expression changed. The charming politician was gone. The psychopath wanted to play, preferably with my entrails.
“I’m not a recovering addict,” I continued. “How many were there? How many desperate people sought help at that shelter, only to run afoul of you? Had you gotten a real taste for it by then?”
I shook my head in disgust. “So many lives stolen for the crime of crossing paths with you. You’re a plague, one that needs to be eradicated.”
Declan had slipped silently through the front door, so when Mayor Monroe lunged at me, knife out, ready to plunge it in me, he instead had two huge hands grab him. Declan pinned Monroe’s arms to his side and picked him up off the ground, swinging him away from me.
“There are cameras,” I reminded him.
He shook his head, like he was trying to shake off the shift. Muscles bulging, he slammed the mayor down on my concrete floors. Something or somethings broke, because the sound of bones snapping in an empty gallery was quite loud.
Declan was suddenly there, his eyes bright gold. He picked me up, crushing me to him, as he carried me to the door. “I’m so sorry,” he murmured into my hair. “I couldn’t hold it together.”
Osso and a couple of uniformed cops ran past us into the gallery.
“I’d sprouted wolf ears and claws,” he said, his voice a confession. “I knew you had cameras going and we needed to use the footage to nail him.”
He held me so tight, I had trouble breathing.
“I put you in more danger.”
“No.” I kissed his cheek above his beard. “You arrived right on time. We needed proof he was planning to gut me. If you’d come in earlier, we wouldn’t have that. Your timing was perfect.”
He carried me to the end of the porch, away from more racing feet. “Carter wanted to go in and get him. I wouldn’t let him.”
He had me dangling off the ground, our faces close together. I put my hands on either side of his and stared into his blazing gold eyes. “You needed to be the one to protect me, and you did. Look at me. Am I shaking? Do I look scared to you?”
He took a moment to get out of his own guilt-ridden head to study me. “No.”
“No,” I echoed. “He was never going to hurt me. He may be a serial-killer, but he’s still a human one. I’m Arwyn Fricking Corey. I moved a car yesterday. You think I can’t take a fifty-year-old public servant?” I rolled my eyes at that.
Laughing, the tension in his body finally started to release.
“Good point.” He gave me a short, hard kiss, then stared into my eyes.
“Do you understand how disorienting it is to have your heart wandering around on its own? Going to work, getting involved in dangerous shit, feeding raccoons? It’s your heart.
You need it to survive, but it’s out living its own life. ”
Tears flooded my eyes. “I do, actually.”
He gave his head a quick shake. “Carter called me and I started running.” He glanced over his shoulder. “The house is probably wide open.”
“That’s what wards are for,” I told him, wiping at my eyes.
“Another good point.” Blowing out a long breath, he tipped his head forward so he could rest his cheek against mine and breathe me in. “Let me hold you for a little while.”
“You got it,” I laughed. “I was sick of standing and walking anyway.”
A throat cleared behind me. I heard a very gruff, “Sorry,” and knew it was Osso. “Can we get the footage of him attacking you?”
I sniffed, wiping at my face again. “You bet.” I tried to move but Declan, true to his word, needed to hold me. “But not right now.”
“When you can,” he said. “By the way, the paramedics say he’s probably broken his collarbone and arm.”
“Good,” Declan grunted.
“And if his kneecap isn’t broken,” Osso continued, “it’s been badly dislocated.”
“I should have thrown him harder,” Declan growled.
“While I understand, it’s probably better you didn’t. It needs to be believable. Arwyn, I’m going to need your statement. Monroe is being carted out to the ambulance now. Do you want to go to your studio?”
We did. Bracken was waiting at the door for us. I invited him in to hear what he’d missed.
Osso was kind, which was unsettling, but he let me get through it all.
While he asked follow-up questions, I pulled up the security footage and we all watched our mayor pull a huge knife from behind his back and lunge at me, knife straight out.
We also saw Declan tear in, heave Monroe into the air, and slam him down on hard concrete.
Bracken patted Declan’s shoulder.
“Nice and clean,” Osso said. “Good job. This will stand up in court, and it doesn’t look like anything more than a really strong boyfriend defending his woman.”
After the cops and Bracken left, I locked up and we walked home. We could have stayed in the studio, but I wanted our home. Plus, if Declan really did leave doors open, we should go close them.
As we walked along the side of the road, hands linked, a chill ran down my spine. I paused, trying to figure out what it was.
Declan drew up short because he was holding my hand. “What is it?”
I shook my head, looking up and down the road. “Not sure, but it’s something.”
Declan’s head snapped back, looking toward the gallery. “No headlights and coming fast.” He picked me up and ran for home.
An engine whined as the driver floored it, aiming right at us. I couldn’t see her face, but I knew who it was. Apparently, Milena hadn’t been arrested with Milo and Catherine. I flicked my fingers and the car spun, sliding off the road and into a huge pine tree.
Declan stopped and turned. “Your vision?”
I nodded, pulling my phone out. “Hopefully Osso hasn’t gotten too far away yet.”
When we finally, finally made it home, we locked up and went straight to bed. Even later when, exhausted, we slept, I dropped off like a stone.
In the morning, I woke to soft light coming through the blinds. Unlike our new pattern, Declan wasn’t cooking in the kitchen. He was sleeping at my back, his arm around me, his hand splayed over my stomach. Eyelids fighting their way open, I saw something directly in front of me and flinched.
Declan’s arm wrapped tighter around me. “It’s okay,” he rumbled, his voice deep with sleep.
I stared at what was sitting a few inches from my face: a ring in a ring box.
But not some boring diamond. This ring matched my earrings.
A large creamy pearl sat in the center, with dark, fiery opals surrounding it like petals on a flower.
I pulled the box closer, examining it. The dark opals had lightning flashes of blue, green, and purple in them. “It’s beautiful,” I breathed.
“I wasn’t sure when to do this. I didn’t know if you’d even consider it, but hoping, I started to plan. One of the pack members is a jeweler. I wanted opals that matched your hair when it touches seawater and I asked your dad for the pearl.”
I tilted my head back to look at him. “You did?”
“Yeah. I told him how much I loved you and how all I wanted was to take care of you.”
“I don’t need you to take care of me,” I reminded him.
“Shh, I’m being sweet,” he grumbled, which made me laugh. “He looked into my soul, recognized the truth of my devotion, and gave his approval.”
“I don’t need that either.”
Declan plowed on, ignoring my interruptions.
“He gave me this pearl and said it would never dull or crack. He recommended I hold the pearl and think about everything I love about you, everything I admire, everything I cherish. I told him I was a null and you wouldn’t feel it, but he told me to do it anyway.