“Yeah. I’ll do that.”
The lie was so easy, he knew he’d told a lot of them in his lifetime. And as he returned her wave, he was processing her like she was a memo or a piece of mail.
Not something human—and that wasn’t her fault.
He had a feeling it was his hard wiring.
Great. Nothing like waking up and learning piece by piece that you were a real ass**le…
He glanced over at the bedside table. The business card and the wallet were right next to each other, one black and thicker, one white and thin.
As he reached his hand forward, he didn’t know which one he was going for—
Ultimately, the wallet held the greater allure. Opening the folded leather, he stared at the driver’s license that had been slid into the clear slot. The picture was…well, he didn’t recognize the guy, but the nurse with the magic touch certainly seemed to think it was him. Was this what he looked like? A guy with black hair and a face that was handsome, but cold.
The printed info told him that his eyes were blue—and it looked like they were both working as they focused on the camera. Date of birth was this month. License expired then.
The first name, Matthias, was the one he went by, and the address was in Caldwell, New York, which solved the geographic question—oh, yeah, which he hadn’t been aware he’d had.
Caldwell, New York.
Back again. Or at least that’s what his instincts told him—
Get out of here. Get moving now.
Urgency aside, he took getting off the bed slowly, and when shit didn’t buckle, he pulled out the IVs from his vein and the pads from his chest. Leaning into the monitoring equipment, he muted the alarms before shuffling over to the bathroom.
The light was off, and as he stepped inside, he flipped the switch…and it was showtime.
As he met his own reflection in the mirror over the sink, he dragged in a raw breath. His eye on the one side was milky white, and his face was carved with the indelible lines of a lot of past pain—as well as some faded scaring at the temple where his ocular injury had occured.
That photograph on the ID was definitely him, if you added a little gray at the temples, but it had been taken before he’d—
“Sir, I’m going to ask you to get back in bed—you’re a slip-and-fall risk. And you should not have taken out the—”
He ignored the new nurse. “I’m leaving. Right now—AMA, yeah, I know.”
He shut the door in her face and started the shower. For some reason, as he refocused on the mirror, he thought of Mels Carmichael. No wonder her first reaction had been in the OMG category.
Not exactly a looker—
Christ, why was he thinking like that? What did it matter how anyone viewed him?
In a quick surge of coordination, he reopened the door to the room and stuck his head out. The nurse was gone, but no doubt she was coming back with someone who had Dr. in front of his or her name—time to move fast. He snagged the card that Mels had left and put it in the wallet. Then he grabbed the clothes from the closet and shut himself in the bathroom.
Ten minutes later he had clean hair and a clean body and was dressed in a plain black T-shirt, a black windbreaker, and a pair of loose jeans.
On his way out the door, he snagged a cane that he inferred had been brought for him.
The thing felt normal against his palm, and his gait was much faster with it. Like he was used to using one.
Heading for the elevators, he didn’t check in with anyone, no good-byes, no signing on the dotted line. Their billing department would find the man at the address listed on the driver’s license.
And maybe so would he.
Adrian’s scream woke Jim up and torpedoed him out of bed, his body landing in the attack position. With a crystal dagger in one hand and an autoloader in the other, he was ready for business of the human or Devina variety. Dog, being no dummy, just headed under the box spring, taking cover.
“I’m okay,” Ad said. With all the conviction of someone bleeding from an artery.
As Jim shot around the corner, he thought, Yeah. Right.
In the sunlight that streamed through the flimsy drapes, the angel looked absolutely wasted as he sat there sprawled on the floor, dark circles under his eyes, his black hair messed up, his hands shaking as he pulled at the loose collar of his Hanes T-shirt. His piercings, those pieces of metal that circled his lower lip and went up his earlobes and marked his brow, were the only things that sparkled. Everything else was all about the dead-but-breathing.
His pilot light had gone out.
Jim went over and held his hand down to the guy. “Time to get up.”
The other angel clasped his palm, and for a moment Jim stiffened, an unpleasant sting tunneling up his own forearm and making his instincts tingle in a bad way. But then he heaved Ad off the floor, and whatever it was disappeared.
“You been to see Nigel and the boys yet?” Adrian asked as he walked around like he was trying to shake whatever had gotten to him.
“What the hell for.”
“Good point.”
On that note, the other angel went into the bathroom and shut the door. After the toilet flushed, the shower came on, and then the sink.
Going over, Jim settled at the jamb and talked to the flimsy wood. “What was the dream about.”
When there was no answer, he curled up a fist and pounded. “Adrian. Tell me.”
God knew that Devina used all kinds of tricks to get what she wanted. The idea that she might have B&E’d Ad’s mental back door while he was sleeping was a well, duh.
He pounded some more.
When there was no answer, he f**ked off modesty and barged in.
Through the clear plastic shower curtain, he got an eyeful of Adrian down on the ground again, this time with tile under his ass: He was crammed in the stall, his knees up, his elbows in against his chest, his head buried into his palms. But he wasn’t crying, or cursing, or falling apart, and maybe that was the scariest part. The angel was just sitting under the warm spray, his huge body folded up on itself.
Jim put the toilet cover down and sat on the thing. “Talk to me.”
After a moment, the angel said roughly, “She was Eddie. In my dream, she was Eddie.”
Shit. “That’ll make you scream.”
“He was there, too. He woke me up, actually. Goddamn it, Jim…seeing him was…”
As the sentence trailed off, Jim took particular care inspecting his dagger’s blade. “Yeah, I know.”
“I’m going to kill her.”
“Only if you get there before I do.”