Page 3 of Guilty as Sin
He put the phone on speaker, and then it was back and forth across the hickory floor of the cabin, describing his actions to Rafe, his brother offering up his own suggestions, his own counter-moves. When it came to action, Jace’s hands could only type what his body told him, and for that? He needed to move.
He was ducking, feinting, as Tobias prowled the boundaries of the log cabin like a wraith. Jace—Matt Sawyer, that is—grabbed his adversary’s slim wrist in a hard hand. Even as he did it, she tossed the knife to her left hand and lunged for the kill.
No softness in her now. Her teeth were bared, and there was nothing but menace in that face. Nothing but hatred.
He was reading her intention, dropping to his knees, thrusting his head forward instead of back, moving into the fight instead of away from it, shaking up her assumptions and throwing her off-balance. He knew the blade was whistling through the air, ready to take off his scalp, even as he drove the crown of his head into the beautiful body that had been trembling under his a few hours earlier. He heard thewhooshof her breath leaving her lungs, felt the weakness, and he was tumbling her, flipping, ducking behind a wooden beam as she recovered. As she went for the kill.
And then the mistake. The frozen quarter-second when she stared at the quivering blade impaled in the heavy wood. The moment when she didn’t react fast enough.
Sawyer hadn’t spent that moment staring, though. It was what he’d told her. She might be good. He was better. He had an elbow crashing into her face and his hand on the knife, was wrenching it from its prison. She lunged for him, her nose spouting blood, her teeth sinking into his left hand all the way to the bone, her legs kicking viciously, and he struck.
A knife to the heart. The way he’d felt when he’d finally understood exactly why the enemy had seemed one step ahead of him all this time. When he’d realized he’d been betrayed by the woman he loved.
Yeah, it had hurt. But a real knife to the heart hurt more. He knew that. He’d watched it happen before. He was watching it now.
She fell to the floor, graceless, in a heap of tangled legs and arms, those thick-lashed golden-brown eyes staring up at him as her failing heart pumped one last time. And then she died.
“Good,” Jace said to Rafe, breathing hard with effort and adrenaline as Tobias came forward at last and thrust his muzzle into his hand now that he wasn’t Sawyer anymore. Now that he’d switched gears. “Cheers, mate.”
“Don’t hang up,” Rafe said. “I wanted to—”
It was two hours later when Jace realized what his brother had said. He only remembered, in fact, when the phone rang again. He picked it up and said, “Sorry.”
No answer.
“Rafe?” he asked. “Mate?”
Still nothing, then a sharply indrawn breath, a low, halting voice. “It’s you.”
“Pardon?” He held the phone out and checked the screen. Not an area code he recognized, and not a voice he did, either. He put the phone to his ear again and said, “Wrong number.” As he was about to hang up, he heard the voice ask, “Did you get it?”
That was odd. Annoying as well. He didn’t bother to say anything more, just hung up and turned back to his laptop screen. Somehow, it had become afternoon. He could tell by the angle of the sunlight streaming through the window at his shoulder. The first Tuesday in May, barely spring in the Montana Rockies, the chill of the mountain night ready to fall around you like a blanket of snow.
He picked up his coffee cup, and the liquid within it was cold. Huh. Hehadbeen working longer than he’d thought. He could’ve sworn he’d just refilled that.
The urgency had abated, that burning need to get the words down before he lost them, and he became aware of the tension between his shoulder blades. He stood up, interlaced his fingers, stretched his arms overhead before swinging them in giant circles, then headed out the door of the cabin with Tobias padding behind him.
Rafe was right. Jace had run the mountain with the dog that morning and had worked out after that, but other than the choreography for the knife fight, he’d barely moved since. He was hungry, he was thirsty, he was stiff, and he wanted a beer. But he had one hell of a story, with only the epilogue to go. He smelled money, but more than that? He smelled satisfaction.
Might as well empty the mailbox while he was out here. He ran a hand over his beard, then pushed back his hair and tried to remember when he’d checked the mail last. He couldn’t, so he jogged lightly to the intersection with the main road, inhaling the sharp, clean smell of evergreens, then pulled open the door of the galvanized iron mailbox with an effort.
It had been longer than he’d thought since he’d been down here, apparently. It took some time to prise the contents loose, they were wedged in there so tightly. Rubbish, mostly. Why did people still mail things? Who looked at advertising? He walked up to the house again, sorting along the way. Catalog, catalog, grocery store circular, flyer from the hardware store, oil-change coupon. On and on. And one hand-addressed legal-sized envelope.
Retirement-planning seminar, probably, and they were trying to make it look like personal mail so you’d open it. He was only thirty-six, but that didn’t seem to stop anybody. Even though they didn’t know who he was, as far as he could tell, other than that weird bloke up on the mountain. He ventured only a few times a week into the fleshpots of Sinful, Montana—the town where he’d bought this cabin on a desperate whim during that low point nearly six months back. Had made the down payment, in fact, with the money from returning the ring.
He kept his distance. From Sinful. From people in general. Dogs, now—dogs might not be fantastic conversationalists, but at least they were honest. What you saw was what you got. He went to the grocery store, the gym, the hardware store, and his favorite café, with an occasional foray into the library when the cabin’s walls closed around him. He’d never sampled the glories of the his-and-hers spa treatment room as he’d originally planned, let alone the master suite at the Sinful Inn. He’d never set foot inside Montana Gems, and as for the lingerie store where you could buy your lady something fragile enough to rip straight off her? He’d crossed the street to avoid that one.
But he hadn’t run away. He’d been too stubborn for that. He’d stayed here and finished his book, and then he’d written another one. Which meant he’d won. He kicked open the door of the cabin again, tossed the rubbish into the burn box, then hesitated over that white envelope.
“May as well,” he muttered, then ripped it open, unfolded two stapled, printed sheets, and sighed. Some wannabe author sending him a story, wanting him to “help me get started.” He was about to toss the whole thing into the burn box with the rest of the junk when something caught his eye.
His name. Hisrealname. Not Jason Black. Jace Blackstone. They were the first two words in the manuscript. And wait, he thought, his gaze flicking back to the ripped envelope. This hadn’t been forwarded by his agent. It had been addressedhere.Tohim.What the hell?
He sank down into the rocking chair that sat in front of the enormous green wood stove, pulled the manuscript all the way out of the envelope, and began to read.
Jace Blackstone opened his eyes. At least he thought he did.
Blackness. A void.
