Dec 22 12.10 pm
Hill had disappeared.
And to add insult to injury, it had looked like a shitty special effect from an ’80s movie. He’d been dolly-zoomed from existence. Davy could guess what had happened, but ititchedat him to work with conjecture. Even if it was well-informed.
“What’s wrong with you now?” Reynolds asked. “Do you need to go stand in a corner and look at a wall or something?”
Davy wasn’t sure whether it was contempt or disgust in Reynolds’s voice. It didn’t really matter. Both put his back up.
He’d forgotten howsatisfyingthe dull roil of his old black temper was in the flesh. Not that he was an even-tempered dead man, either, but chemicals definitely added a little zest to the experience. His tentacles, already agitated, responded to his mood by lashing out.
One wrapped around Reynolds’s neck. The pale, leathery length of it looked stark against a professionally topped-up tan and a black collar. There was no blood to flush with, exactly, but the shadowy pattern that blotched the length of it darkened as it squeezed.
It did fuck all, of course.
What little influence the dead could impose on the living didnotextend to popping their heads off like Pez dispensers. It wasn’t fair, but nobody had ever said death was except the Church…and they had good reason to lie.
So Davy could throttle the man all day and—
Reynolds rapped his knuckles against Davy’s forehead.
“Anyone home?” he asked. “Seriously. What’swrongwith you?”
Davy stared flatly at the man as his brain stalled out trying to process thewhat the fuckof what had just happened. For afuckingstart, people didn’t just touch him like that. Living him had been an asshole with a temper; dead him was an asshole with a temper and tentacles. People withanysort of survival instinct usually got the message that he was someone to give a wide berth to.
His lack of response made Reynolds snort and shake his head.
“Might as well talk to a rock,” he said as he reached over the reception desk to swipe his pass. “You’re lucky you’re the Old Man’s kid. Only reason you got a job here.”
Huh.
Davy looked down at himself. Or more accurately, at Hill’s lean, elegant body. That was right. He wasn’t an ex-SEAL merc with a hard-earned reputation for being not-quite-right. He was currently a nepo-baby analyst-twink with pretty eyes.
Funny how easy that was to forget.
“I’ll walk you up,” Reynolds said as the doors to the sleek, all-curved-lines pod of an elevator opened silently in one wall. “Make sure you don’t end up anywhere you’re not meant to be. Again.”
He walked away. Davy stared at his back with narrowed eyes and then followed him.
So the “fuck around and find out” vibes were only skin deep. He was a bit offended by that.
He could fix it, of course. Even in Hill’s body. It wouldn’t take much. Pain was a distraction; it was the fear ofmorepain that focused the mind. A broken finger. Or…as he stepped into the elevator behind Reynolds…a hand to the back of the head to smack his smug-ass face into the furred reflection in the matte metal walls.
The thought made Davy’s fingers twitch.
Food. Fuck. Fight.
The only three things on his to-do list for this brief return to meat and chemicals. He’d ticked food off the list already, and he really did need to get a move on with the other two.
“What floor?” Reynolds asked as he bent over to squint into the scanner. The light from it flickered briefly over his face as it checked his ID.
Davy indulged his fantasy of violence a second longer, then reluctantly abandoned it. Whatever form “redemption” took forFraser, it would probably still be best if there was no suspicious behavior on Hill’s part to tie him to it.
And despite the fact Hill’s departure had left Davy to deal with questions like “what floor” on his own, he didn’t want anything…Fraser…to happen to him.
So he stuck his hands in his pockets and gave Reynolds his best blankly unhelpful look.
“My floor,” he said, as if he genuinely thought it was the obvious answer.
