Page 60 of Twisted Tate

I pull her to me and kiss her. The kiss is soft and full of everything I want to say right now but can’t. She melts into me, and the horror of this room is burned away. I know it’s not as easy as that. My girl will continue to fight the demons. But I’m the fucking devil and her demons will answer to me each and every goddamn time.

“Hate to interrupt.” Fox breaks the moment. “But we have a problem.”

I pull back from Reese but keep her hand in mine. “What kind of fucking problem?”

“There is a car coming up the front drive.” Fox is at the window, peering through the curtains. “A black sedan.”

Fuck.

I move to the window beside him and Reese follows, placing her hand on my back as she peers out the window. The driver opens the back passenger door and a man steps out. Reese’s body goes rigid behind mine.

“That’s Michael Collier.”

My blood turns to a boil at the sound of his name.

Michael fucking Collier. The man who paid extra to hurt her. The man who haunts her nightmares. The man whose face she sees when she closes her eyes.

And he just stepped out of a car in the driveway of a house that we just set on fire.

“Why would he be here?” Ivy asks from behind us.

“He must be here to see my father.” Reese’s voice has gone flat, detached. “The butler will let him in and he will come up—” She doesn’t finish the sentence. She doesn’t have to.

The smoke is starting to thicken in the hallway. We have minutes before this whole floor is engulfed.

“We need to move.” Fox is already heading for the stairs. “Now.”

“Wait.” I grab his arm. “If we go down, we’ll run right into him. He will see us. He will know something is wrong.”

“He is going to know something is wrong anyway.” Thorne gestures toward the smoke billowing from the room behind us. “The house is on fucking fire, Tate.”

“Which means he is going to call for help. The fire department and police will be here sooner than we want. If anyone sees us leaving—”

“Then we make sure no one sees us.” Fox’s jaw is tight. “We go out the back, the same way we came in. We move fast and we stay quiet. Now.”

“And Michael?” I look at Reese. Her face is pale, her eyes fixed on the window. He has to be inside now. “We could end him now. Why just let him walk away?”

“We don’t have a choice.” Fox is already moving. “We will grab him another day. Right now, we need to get out before—”

There are footsteps on the main stairwell.

Everyone freezes.

“Jenson?” Michael’s voice carries through the house. “What the fuck is that smell? Is something burning?”

As soon as he reaches the hallway, he is going to see the smoke.

“Back stairs.” Reese’s voice is barely a whisper. “We can still make it if we go now.”

The others move toward the way we came. The smoke is getting thicker, stinging my eyes, burning my throat. Behind us, I hear Michael getting closer.

“What the fuck?” His voice tells me he’s not far away. “Fire! There is a fucking fire!”

Fox takes point, his weapon drawn. Thorne is behind him with the evidence bags. Ivy holds Reese’s hand, pulling her closer to the direction we need to go.

And that is when I see him.

Michael Collier appears from the other direction, coughing, waving smoke away from his face. And then our eyes meet.