As Reilly hung from the cave's ceiling, she still could not believe the image she was showing to Veck: The hospital johnny and the flat chest and the dangling legs were not her own.
Yet through the screaming pain in her head, through her confusion and panic, she could move these limbs that were not hers, could draw breath through a throat she did not know, could fill lungs that were someone else's.
All of which gave credibility to what Veck thought he was looking at.
And so he was going to kill her, she thought in horror and disbelief.
Struggling to speak, she whispered in a rasping voice that was not her own, "I'm ... me ... please ..."
"... It's such an obvious path, a simple trade - everything that Reilly is, for this murdering madman. It's all in your hands... ."
The brunette who was talking was not in fact a woman. Reilly had seen what that thing was - it had shown her its true vileness while Bails got Veck on the phone, and that was why she had screamed.
Then afterward, she had watched as it had gotten into Bails's mind and made hm turn his own gun on himself.
The great liar, she thought. Who knew that that was so true about the devil.
"Veck ..." Reilly tried to marshal more breath, dragging air down into a frozen rib cage. "Veck ... no ..."
But she wasn't reaching him - and she wasn't going to: The louder she spoke, the more she sounded like Kroner, as if his voice box had replaced hers. And she was losing what little strength she had: Bails had dragged her down the quarry's slope, and her lower legs were contused badly - to the point where she knew she'd lost blood. She was also very sure she had a concussion, and she had grown weak from having hung in the cold for God only knew how long.
A hot tear slid down her cheek, and then a second ... and then a rush of them.
At one time or another, like most people, she had entertained morbid thoughts about what death was waiting for her: A slow-growing disease? A quick car accident? Some genetic weakness that predisposed her to a bad heart? Or maybe an attack from a criminal where she'd fight back, perhaps shoot him as he shot her. Real blaze-of-glory stuff.
What was happening in this frigid, damp cave? Not it.
Staring across at Veck's cold, furious face, she started to see double, and her eyes were incapable of bringing the two halves of him together ... so she had more than enough opportunity to find that there was no compassion, no emotion, no doubt in his expression ...
As that glinting crystal dagger lifted, she realized she was looking into his father's face.
This was the son living up to the father's legacy.
Images of her own parents made the tears come harder. She hadn't had a chance to say good-bye. To tell them one last time that she loved them, and that they'd changed not just her life, but so many others'... .
And she hadn't been able to tell Veck properly that she believed him, that she knew he was innocent ... and that she loved him.
Of course, the grand irony was that he was about to kill her under the guise of saving her.
"I know you didn't do it," she said on a harsh breath that didn't carry far. "The evidence ... it was Bails... ."
Why that was important to say given the amount of time she had left - which was nearly none - she hadn't a clue.
Better get on with it: "I love ... you... ."
And then she closed her eyes, turned her head away, and braced herself. He was going to go for the heart. With a dagger - that was the most efficient way - and Veck was not going to want to waste time if he thought her life was hanging in the balance.
Terror choked her and her body began to shake.
Her mouth opened as she started to sob.
Tears flowed ... as her blood soon would.
Nights ago, in those woods, by that motel, Veck had been prepared to take this piece of shit Kroner out.
Granted, it hadn't been for society's benefit - although he'd been prepared to maintain that it was. And after the opportunity had come and gone, he'd been relieved that he hadn't done it.
Now? He had the only justification that mattered: his Reilly didn't care that she thought he'd tampered with evidence or that she wouldn't have anything to do with him after this.
Saving her life was enough.
The brunette was right; such a simple trade.
Veck focused on his victim. As Kroner hung from the cave's ceiling, his mouth was moving, and given the tears that were pouring out of his eyes, he was no doubt begging for mercy, the killer reduced to begging for everything he hadn't granted his prey.
Christ, he was so fucking pathetic, that hospital gown marked with blood as if he'd been pulled headfirst down the slope, his skin so white it had slipped into snow territory, his face all distorted from swelling.
Veck had a passing urge to put the dagger away and punch the guy until the motherfucker had a coronary. The man's victims had had to go slowly ... had been conscious as he'd taken his godforsaken bits and pieces from them ... it seemed like karma to have him know on an up-close-and-personal level what it felt like to be out of control, in pain, and at the mercy of another.
But Reilly's life was at stake.
Veck craned his arm up higher over his shoulder and angled the glass dagger's point at Kroner's chest. One vicious stab was all it was going to take, and fuck knew that Veck had the strength to get the job done -
Just as the weapon reached the apex of the arc, in the second before he was going to put all his upper-body power into the downward thrust, one of the weapon's facets caught the candlelight and shot a beam onto Kroner's face.
Veck frowned as he got a clear picture of those ratlike features: Kroner had closed his eyes and turned his face to the side, his frail body trembling as he braced himself for death.
"What's the matter," the brunette barked. "Do it - and you'll have her."
This is not my life to take, Veck thought with a sudden, inexplicable conviction.
"Do it!"
This is ... not my life to take.
His father ... Kroner himself ... men like that ... they thought that all lives, all people, all things, were theirs for the taking, and it was just a case of whim-based design who they decided to choose, who became the next notch on their belt. And the trophies were about keeping a slice of this moment now, when they had all the power, when they were in control, when they were God - because like an orgasm, this pleasure point was fleeting, and the memory wasn't a patch on the actual experience.
Which was why they did it again and again.
And as for him? On some level, this was the perfect beginning, the stripe of poison ivy itching on his arm that, if he scratched it, would bloom and take over his entire body.
This is not my life to take.
"Just fucking do it!" the brunette demanded.
Veck shifted his eyes over to the woman. Her black stare called out to him even more than her words did, offering him a temptation that went beyond this cave, this split second, this on-the-verge -
"Reilly or him," she hissed. "Pick now."
Veck's arm began to tremble, his rock-hard muscles poised to strike and unable to bear the dead-space tension between decision and action.
"I don't believe you," Veck heard himself say.
"What."
Veck slowly lowered the weapon to his side. In a hoarse, cracking voice, he said, "I don't trust you. And I'm not ..." He had to clear his throat. "I'm not going to kill him."
Bails was already dead, and there were no other sounds in the cave. And this woman ... whatever she was ... was a liar: Reilly had been alive at some point - it had absolutely been her on the phone - but there was no one else who was breathing in this damp hellhole with them, and given how weak she had sounded, it was doubtful she could have gotten herself free.
Chances were good she was already dead.
And although that made him mad-crazy with grief and the urge for vengeance, Kroner, in his condition, had most certainly not done the deed.
"You miserable little shit," the woman spat. "You pathetic, spineless, cocksucking pussy. Your father didn't hesitate - years ago, when it was his time, he leaped at the goddamn chance I gave him."
For some reason, Veck thought of that dinner with Reilly's true parents, the ones who had taken her in and ushered her into adulthood, the ones who were not blood, but who were better to her than those who had brought her into this world.
"I'm not my father," he said roughly.
As the words registered in his ears, he felt stronger: "I am not my father."
From across the way, a hot breeze hit him, as if the brunette were a heating unit on overdrive.
"You're saying that" - she pointed to Kroner - "is worth more than the woman you love."
"No, I'm saying I won't kill him. I don't think Reilly is - " His voice broke, but he quickly recovered. "I don't think she's alive. And I don't know why the hell you want me to nail him, but if the last thing I do in this life is piss you off? I'm good with that. Bitch."
The roar that lit off was so violent that he was thrown off his feet, his body sailing through the foul air and slamming into the cave wall behind him. As he slumped for a split second, he could feel the earth shaking beneath him, and hear the boulders of the slope vibrating up above as dirt and small rocks fell from the ceiling of the cave. On impulse, he sheltered his head, for all the good that would do -
The candles went out on a oner.
And then in the pitch-black, the wind came from out of nowhere, the violent gale carrying on its back a vicious, earsplitting noise. In the midst of the fury, heavier and heavier stones fell on him, until he tucked into a ball and thought ... shit, he wasn't getting out of this one alive.
No fucking way.
Off in the distance, he heard more great rocks shifting, but knew that in reality, it was probably not far away at all and just a case of the earth muffling the sounds: The whole quarry slope was a Swiss-cheese mine field of subterranean cutouts, incapable of withstanding this kind of blast -
Abruptly the hurricane sucked out of the cave, taking the screeching noise with it.
In the aftermath, soft sobs cut through the rumbling of the slope.
Feminine sobs.
Not like Kroner's at all.
"Reilly?" he shouted. "Reilly!"
He jumped up - "Fuck!" he muttered as he hit something overhead.
Rubbing his skull and crouching down so he didn't bang the ceiling again, he shoved the dagger back into his belt and patted his pockets for his flashlight. Shit. He hadn't brought one.
Cursing a blue streak, he tried to zero in on the sounds of her. "Talk to me, Reilly! Help me find you!"
"I'm ... over ... here... ."
"Reilly!" he hollered, throwing out his arms in front of him and sweeping them from side to side -
All at once he had his own mini-earthquake, his body going haywire as Jim Heron separated the pair of them, and stepped out, revealing himself.
Perfect timing: Suddenly there was plenty of light in the cave, the angel's form glowing fiercely as he stood off to the side.
For a moment, all Veck could do was stare at what he saw.
It made no fucking sense.
Reilly was hanging from the ceiling, in exactly the place Kroner had been, her arms stretched over her head, her feet barely touching the earthen floor. Her face was swollen and her legs were bleeding, her panty hose shredded, her skirt covered in mud, her shoes God only knew where.
"Reilly?" he breathed.
She struggled to lift up her head. Through her dirt-caked hair, her blurry eyes sought his. "I'm ... me... ."
A shower of rock fragments fell from the ceiling and snapped Veck into action. Now was not the time to question any of this shit. He had to get her out of here before the slope collapsed on them both.
Thank God for Heron's guiding light.
Veck used it to shoot over to Reilly, except when he got a look at what she was strung up by, he knew they were in trouble: The iron links had been screwed into the rock ceiling, and the thick iron cuffs clamped to her wrists were bolted onto the damn chains.
Shit, this was not the first time this cave had been put to use, was it.
"Fucking hell," he muttered as he tried to find a release.
"Use the dagger," Jim said.
"It's just glass - "
"Use the goddamn thing."
Veck took out the blade and put it against the links. He didn't expect much - other than the "weapon" shattering -
The metal cleaved apart under the crystal, not just slicing in two, but getting ripped free of itself: He barely had time to catch Reilly and keep her off the ground.
Crushing her against him, he felt her shudder, and he allowed himself one treacherous moment of bliss to know that she was alive - and then he was all about getting her out.
As he swung her up into his arms, Jim led the way to the snaking corridor with his light.
Just as they came up to Bails, Veck had to stop.
"We're leaving him," Jim pronounced.
"You got that right." God only knew who his "friend" really was, but one thing was clear: Who the fuck cared. Anyone who so much as cut Reilly off in traffic was on his shit list. Endanger her life?
The bastard was lucky to have already been shot in the head -
Behind them, the ceiling began to crumble, the rush of sound and rocks and cold air all but palming his ass and ushering him the fuck out.
Veck broke into a run, his body charging forward at breakneck speed. As the chute they were racing through started collapsing on his heels, this was Indiana Jones, except it was real. Shit, the way in hadn't seemed this long -
Veck burst out of the tunnel into the fresh air, narrowly missing a body slam by leaping up onto the boulder in front of him.
There was no time for thanking God or Heron or anyone else. If that cave had just bitten it, there was a good chance that there was going to be an avalanche.
Zagging sharply to the left, he didn't bother measuring the distance he had to go to get them to the lip of the quarry, and he didn't waste time looking behind himself to see all the rolling, car-sized hunks of quartz barreling down on top of them.
Even if it killed him, he was going to get her up this goddamn slope.
He was going to save her - and all the odds that were against him from the obstacle course he faced, to the half mile up, to the burning fatigue that was already squeezing his thighs and his chest, weren't going to stop him.
He'd had the chance to sell his soul and had walked away from the negotiating table.
And that triumph paled in comparison to what it was going to feel like to make sure Sophia Reilly got to see tomorrow morning's sunrise.