Page 57 of Dark Reunion

CHAPTER 21

DEAN

The office still smelled like bleach, but bleach didn’t drown out the metallic scent of blood.

Dean paused at the threshold. Streaks, finger-width runnels were dragged across the stone from the door to the far corner behind the desk. It was as if someone had been dragged and then abruptly lifted off the ground.

The rug had been rolled and propped against a bookcase that now leaned at a new angle, books crammed back with the spines facing wrong. The grandfather clock ticked too loud, smug in the silence that screamed death.

Matteo stood alone at the small bar with a towel in one hand and an empty glass in the other, polishing the same spot over and over again. His sleeves were pushed up, the skin at his wrists were spattered with dots of red.

Dean stepped inside and closed the door. “Who?”

Matteo didn’t look up. “I don’t ask questions you can’t unhear. No idea. Some girl. Could’ve been a servant, or someone he had dragged in from town.”

Dean’s gaze tracked the blood to the corner. There, a chair sat crooked, one leg snapped, the jagged end blackened by something hot. He cataloged the room like he cataloged a kill site. What was broken on purpose, what was broken by accident, what was left where it fell, and what had caused so much blood? Dean was sure that if he used a blacklight in this room, it would show the work of a sadistic killer.

“He snapped,” Matteo said finally, setting the glass down. “He expected you to come running when you heard that he had hit Ava and threatened Yasmine. It either offended or annoyed him that you stayed away so long and didn’t take the bait.”

“I knew what he was trying to do,” Dean replied, his voice flat. “Yasmine made sure to remind me what we are fighting for and insisted that I take a break. I saw the wisdom in her words.”

“You’re a lucky man,” Matteo murmured.

On the balcony beyond the open doors, the curtains billowed like they were breathing. Inward with the evening heat and then back out. Dean cocked his head, listening. Somewhere distant but closing in—a chuff-whump, rhythmic. Rotor blades beating air.

“Is that Keene or should we be preparing for another attack?” he asked.

“Keene,” Matteo answered, and Dean could already see the penny-bright glee he wore whenever money was on the menu.

Dean moved to the desk, he righted the blotter and turned a ledger that had been thrown upside down. He capped and uncapped a pen so his hands had something to do that felt somewhat useful. This place…it was getting to him.

He was stronger now, more than before, more determined than ever and yet…all he longed for was to lay in his bed in Kansas, with his wife in his arms, and their kids sleeping soundly in their beds. He longed for simple and safe. None of them were safe here, unless he finished this.

The helicopter settled on the far pad with a final shudder that rattled the compound’s old bones. It didn’t take long for boots to hammer along the corridors. Voices rose…Spanish, English, the clipped arrogance of men who thought they were in a friendly house.

The door handle turned without a knock and swung inward.

Two Righteous members entered first, square-shouldered, eyes hidden behind mirrored shades they used to help hide their identity as much as block out the sun. Dean didn’t recognize either of them.

Between them, shoved forward so hard she stumbled, was a woman with violet streaks bleeding through dark hair, dust ground into the knees of her jeans and top, and dried blood smeared along one temple and down her side. A leather necklace rested at her throat, a feather charm dark against skin.

With a guttural growl, she looked up, and Dean’s heart stopped.

Maeve.

It wasn’t her name in his head. Not at first. For a split breath it was Isabella, who he’d named his own daughter after. The girl that had been only six, small, bony, with a pretty dress, and a missing front tooth. He could clearly remember the weight of her hand in his as they ran. A night of hiding and quiet prayers. The days they’d spent together, the nights she’d wept and then…the firehouse and him walking away as she called for him to come back. That moment broke him and galvanized him more than all the abuse at his father’s hand and every death he had witnessed while he served.

He thought about her every day and prayed the same thing over and over. Live. Live and I’ll keep them from finding you. Fourteen years crushed into one heartbeat, and it was all turning to dust right before his eyes.

“No,” he said under his breath. “No, this can’t be happening.”

Maeve glared at him. Her eyes were not the eyes of the child he’d dragged out of hell. They were a woman’s eyes. Fierce, ringed with grit and fury. Maeve lunged forward but was caught by the soldiers.

“You,” she snarled, voice raw with road dust and grief. “You did this to me?”

The men holding her tightened their grips, expecting her to try again, but she didn’t. She just stared at Dean like he was a disease, like he was the answer to a question that had ruined her life.

Dean’s mouth opened and closed, his pulse racing. There were a thousand things he wanted to say…