Cait was too rattled to be let down. “Hey.”
“I want the name of your hairdresser. Right now. And yes, I’m thinking about going blond, too.”
As Cait started to laugh, some of the tension bled out of her—but not all of it. In the back of her mind … that man lingered.
And not the singer…
… the other one.
Chapter Eight
Talk about shock and awe.
As Devina poofed out with her prize, Jim stared down at Sissy, his brain totally and completely blank. The girl was shaking as she held on to herself, her eyes wide and terrified as she looked between him and Adrian.
Poor goddamn girl.
Christ, now what.
“Go inside,” Jim said softly to Adrian, “and find Dog.”
Ad beat feet once again, disappearing in that uneven gait of his.
Left alone with the girl, Jim crouched down, both his knees popping. Putting his palms forward, he tried to make his voice nonthreatening. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
“Is she gone?”
The three words were so rough, he wasn’t sure what he’d heard. But then it computed. “Yeah. She—”
Sissy lunged for him, her body flopping forward in spastic discombobulation, tripping all over itself. He barely had time to catch her as she flailed in his direction, his hands slipping on her torso before finding purchase, his arms easily holding her up off the porch’s cold floorboards.
Up against him, she was soft and painfully light—although she held on to his shoulders like a cat trying with every claw to stay out of a deluge.
“I got you,” he said hoarsely. “I’ve got you…”
For a brief moment, he dipped his head, putting his face into that blond hair. Then he felt her shivering, and knew he had to get her somewhere warm. As he stood up, he had the clear sense that he could have let go of her completely and she would have remained Velcroed to his chest.
“I know you …” she said into his neck. “You came … you told me…”
“I would get you out.”
Going in through the front door, he kicked the thing shut—and ran out of gas. He wanted something clean and fresh for her, a hotel room with sheets that smelled like lemon, and room service that would bring her a hamburger, or a piece of chicken … or frickin’ nachos with melted cheese if that’s what she was into. His options?
Bedrooms that were out of a Hoarders episode, a limp-along kitchen, and a whole lot of draft and dust.
After glaring at the stairs, like maybe that would change the composition of the second story, he picked the sofa in the parlor. For whatever reason, maybe because that room was over the boiler in the basement, it was always warmest in there. Except … when he got to the couch, he took one look at the white sheeting that covered the damn thing and thought, Nope. He wasn’t about to put her on that filthy mess—and removing the draping would only create a dust bowl.
“I’m going to …” Shit. “Take you upstairs.”
“Where am I?”
“Out,” he said as he backtracked and went for the barely carpeted steps. “You’re out of there, and you’re never going back.”
“Promise?”
He stopped and pulled her away from him. Staring down into her eyes, he said, “Never. I don’t care what I have to do or where I have to go, she’s never getting her hands on you again.”
Sissy blinked. And then she nodded, the agreement rendered upon nothing more substantial than breath and voice, and yet forged in stone between them.
As she collapsed back into his chest, he took the staircase two at a time, and snarled at the grandfather clock as he passed it by—if that thing let out even one gong, he was going to take a chain saw to it and light the pieces on fire in the back-fucking-yard.
It would be the single most satisfying way to blow a security deposit.
When he got to the second-story foyer, he carried her right into his bedroom—the sheets were tangled, but at least they’d been laundered in the last two days.
The instant he put her on the mattress, he went to step back—and found himself locked in.
“You can let go now,” he told her.
In the end, he had to reach up and gently pry her hands free, her nails scratching at his skin even through his shirt.
He made sure he went way back, not stopping until his shoulders hit some kind of plaster. Across the room, she tucked into herself again, looking minuscule on the king-size bed, her wide eyes jumping around like she expected the walls to give way and reveal where she really was.
“You’re out,” he repeated—and wondered which of the two of them he was talking to. “And you’re never going back there.”
“Where was I.”
Jim exhaled, and unconsciously went for his pack of cigarettes. Except he wasn’t going to smoke around her. “Not a good place.”
“Was it really…”
The idea that she’d been thrown in with Devina’s tormented masses made his chest burn. “Yeah. It was Hell.”
Sissy’s eyes locked on him. “How many years was I there?”
“Ah … it wasn’t years. Not by a long shot.”
She shuddered, and seemed to brace herself. “So how many … decades. Or … was it centuries?”
Jim recoiled. “It was only a matter of weeks.”
She shook her head. “No, that can’t be right. I was there for … an eternity.”
Some kind of warning tickled its way up the back of his neck, and he followed an instinct that told him not to argue with her. Fucking Devina.
“You know I’m never going to hurt you,” he said. “You don’t have to worry about me like that.”
Sissy refocused on him, her eyes seeming so old, he wondered if maybe she was right. Maybe it had been forever for her in that wall.
“I know,” she said.
Such simple words, but the relief they gave him was worth a million cigarette drags—
The clipping of little feet across bare floors brought his head around to the open doorway. As Dog made his appearance, Jim vowed to give the little guy roast turkey for the next month and a half.
“Your dog!” Sissy cried out.
Dog took that as the cue to do what he did best: get in someone’s lap and stay there. As he jumped awkwardly up onto the bed, Sissy opened her arms and the two became one, the girl holding all that scruffy fur to her heart, the animal burrowing in as if she were a living, breathing quilt whose sole purpose was to make him warm and comfortable.