Page 66 of Guarded By a Monster

His tone was deadly quiet when he said, “I told you to grab her, not bring her here. So I’ll ask one more time. Why is she here?”

Phillips audibly swallowed. “I… I… I…” He stammered the word without adding any others.

Vale slashed his hand through the air. “It’s done.” He directed his next words to Sophia. “Sit down, sweetheart, and watch mommy work. Everything’s fine.”

She looked from him to her mother and back again. Then she made her way at a snail’s speed to the couch and sat, avoiding the rips and springs that poked through.

I swung my focus to the nurse and finally recognized her from parent-teacher meetings. “Mrs. Calder?”

Her lips pinched shut as Vale spoke.

“Ms. Massey, please don’t distract her.”

“Where is Luna?” My head was full of cobwebs, but I’d managed to knock a few down.

“I don’t know anyone by that name.”

Phillips found his voice. “Her bodyguard.”

“Ah. In that case, answer the lady Phillips.”

“She was a problem. I shot her.”

I jerked in his grasp. Tears sprang to my eyes and I blinked furiously. I refused to cry in front of these assholes.

Vale scrubbed his hand down his face. “Do you not have a single brain cell, Phillips?” He didn’t let him answer. “Shut up. Not another word.”

“I don’t understand. Why am I here and not dead?” I couldn’t figure out why he didn’t just shoot me, too.

“I was hoping we could come to a mutually beneficial agreement.”

“How on earth could I benefit you?”

He smiled and it was the definition of slimy.

“You have managed to elude me and all of my associates, thus, you have skill at hiding that supersedes those in my employ’s ability to find what they’re looking for. It would prove useful to have a skill like that at my disposal.”

I glanced at Mrs. Calder, who was throwing bloody stacks of gauze on the floor and poking inside the man on the table’s body.

“That’s … not a skill I can transfer to anyone else.”

He steepled his fingers at his chin. “Are you unable or unwilling to teach someone else?”

“Unable.” I yanked at Phillps’s hold again and managed to get free this time. I didn’t move my feet. There was no point. I wouldn’t outrun Phillips or Wall of Muscle, much less a bullet.

“That’s disappointing. I thought you were a teacher.”

“It’s not a lack of skill, Mr. Vale, that prevents me. It’s the simple fact that my solution only worked because of who I am. No one else could take advantage of it.”

He dropped his hands and cocked his head. “Interesting. Explain.”

“No.”

I saw the change in his demeanor. He went from behaving like he was at a business dinner to pure rage in the blink of an eye. “No?”

I nodded.

“Do you know how I got to be so powerful, Ms. Massey?”

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