Cassie chuckled along with him, squeezing his hand tighter. He was going to be alright, she was certain of that now. Whatever he had experienced last night had rattled him greatly, but he was going to be alright. His spirit was too strong to be beaten down for long. Devon was suddenly behind her, his hands gently grasped her shoulders. Relief poured through her, her tense shoulders sagged as he gently massaged her. She turned toward him as he bent over her, brushing a quick kiss on her cheek. His breath was sweet and tantalizing; it warmed her to the tips of her toes.
His eyes darted to the hand tightly entwined with Chris’s on top of the table. Lifting a questioning eyebrow, he turned toward Chris. Cassie stiffened slightly, unsure how Devon would handle her connection with Chris. He knew that they were friends, but he probably didn’t realize just how good of friends they were, or how strong the bond between them was.
“Trying to steal my girl?” he inquired, his tone far lighter than Cassie had expected from him.
Chris grinned back at him, snorting slightly as he shook back his shaggy blond hair. “No worries there she’s too much of a pain in the ass for my liking.”
Cassie shot him a fierce look as he released her hand. He grinned back at her before eagerly pulling his tray over to attack his tuna fish sandwich. Devon chuckled softly as he slid into the seat beside her, turning sideways to face her. A dull flush of excitement crept through her as he leaned toward her, his closeness causing her body to heat.
“How are you doing?” he asked softly, wrapping his hand around the back of her neck to massage her gently.
It took her a few moments to answer, as the thump of her heart made speaking difficult. “Fine,” she murmured.
And she was surprised to realize that with Chris’s smile, Melissa’s unwavering loyalty, and his solid presence, she was fine. Nothing else mattered, not the cruel whispers, not the waves of anger and hatred, not even the monster that lurked within their town. As long as she had these three standing beside her, she could survive anything.
She hoped.
CHAPTER 20
Cassie’s stomach curdled as if she had eaten something rotten. A ball of nausea had wedged itself into her throat, choking her. She leaned over the counter, breathing heavily, her gaze locked upon the large headline before her.
THIRTEENTH PERSON REPORTED MISSING FROM HYANNIS.
Her blood pumped heavily in her veins, feeling almost painful as it lumbered through her system as she read the article. The woman had gone missing from a bar on Main Street; no one had seen her since. And they probably wouldn’t again, Cassie realized with a sinking sensation in her stomach.
It was smart, whatever was out there it was smart. It was definitely covering its tracks. And it was their fault that it was still out there killing, destroying innocent people, and their families. It was her, Chris, and Melissa’s responsibility as Hunter’s to protect the innocent, and they were failing miserably at the task. Thirteen was far too many people, and these were only the ones that had been reported, and weren’t already reported as dead. There were probably even more that had gone unreported, that had no one out there to love and miss them.
Her hands trembled as she closed the paper, her gaze darted to the bright day beyond the kitchen windows. The bright sunlight was completely out of place with the emotions rolling through her. It should be dark out, cold, foreboding. It should match the hollow chill that had encased her from head to toe.
Taking a step away from the counter, she began to move slowly from the room when something about the article clicked into her mind. Turning slowly back, her throat went dry; her heart seemed to stop beating as her legs became suddenly shaky, wooden. She reached out quickly, grasping hold of the counter before she fell to the ground.
She inhaled great, heaping gulps of air in an attempt to ease the shaking that wracked painfully through her bones. She was trembling so hard that the teeth rattled in her head. Her gaze went slowly back to the paper. It now seemed malevolent to her, awful, wrong, out of place in what used to be the warm comfort of her kitchen.
Taking another deep breath, she used the counter to support her as she moved slowly back to the island she had left the paper on. She did not want to look at it again, did not want to touch it, but she knew that she had to. She needed to see it, to know for certain if what she had seen was right. To see if what she feared was true.
Releasing the counter, she stumbled to the island, nearly hyperventilating as she grasped hold of the paper and pulled it close. She was shaking so badly that she could barely get the pages open. Her gaze scanned over the article, coming to rest on the date of the first disappearance. September fifteenth, Megan Keller, twenty-two, had vanished from a park in Sandwich.
Cassie grasped the paper; sliding limply to the floor she pressed it tight to her chest. The wrinkled pages crinkled loudly as her fingers curled into it. Devon had arrived on the thirteenth. He had strolled into her life two days before the disappearances started.
Her mind began tripping over everything that she had been trying to deny. Little pieces of the puzzle she’d always had, but hadn’t wanted to assemble, suddenly began to fall swiftly into place. Devon’s speed and agility, the strength he exhibited when he lifted Mark easily, effortlessly, off the ground. He hadn’t even broken a sweat! She thought over the way he spoke, it was so old and elegant, so outdated. He knew the card game faro, a game no one knew anymore. She had definitely never heard of anyone her age ever having played the game.
Though the puzzle horrified her, once the pieces began slipping together, she could not stop them from assembling the picture. Melissa had seen nothing about Devon, other than his arrival, and Chris could not read him. Both of which could be explained by the power that radiated from him, far more power than a human would possess, and she was beginning to believe it was even more power than she possessed.
A chill ran down her spine, her body shook with the fierce tremors wracking it. Closing her eyes she tried to stop the images tumbling swiftly together, but no matter how hard she tried, they would not stop. He was always slightly colder than normal, a fact that could be explained by the weather, or bad circulation, but neither of those explanations seemed right to her now.
She had been irresistibly attracted to him, pulled to him like a magnet to metal from the very beginning. All of the girls were drawn to him, so much so that they had turned against her in the hopes that they would get him. It was something that she had known all along, that her attraction to him was fierce, and something that most people did not experience. But she had chosen to ignore that fact in her desire to be closer to him, to be with him.