“He’s going there with a woman. By herself,” Willow snarls as we duck into the car, pulling the doors shut behind us. “He’s going to do what he did to Jules.”
My mouth tastes like rust. “Then we follow,” I say. My hands go steady on the wheel because the planner in me already knows this is a line neither of us will leave uncrossed.
We don’t have to tail. It almost feels too easy. We know where Phoenix is headed. We both know exactly where the Institute is. We just have to get there, and get there quick. We move because we can’t unhear what he promised over the phone, because we both know a woman alone with him is not safe.
This is the only time of day or night when that clinic isn’t glowing with that awful, soft light it uses to sell safety and serenity. The windows are dark, the lobby is dark. There are only two security lights at the first doors. We pull up the block just intime to see Phoenix climb out of his car and walk up to the doors with keys in his hand.
“She isn’t here yet,” Willow observes as she looks around. There’s no one waiting at the doors, there aren’t any other cars in the parking lot. “We wait outside and intercept her before she can go in.”
“I like it,” I agree to her plan.
Three minutes later, a car eases into the lot. It’s a small thing, a commuter sedan, the kind people buy when they need function more than personality. The woman who climbs out looks hollowed at the edges—eyes glassy, shoulders brittle-looking. She pulls her jacket tight and starts toward the door.
Willow moves before I can let out a full fucking breath. I scramble out of the car after her. Willow doesn’t stalk or sneer—she simply steps in front of the woman with the kind of calm that she usually reserves for corpse cleanup.
“Bella,” she says, voice soft but no charity in it. “Don’t go in there. It’s not what you think it is.”
The woman blinks at her, startled. Willow moves like a black cat in shadows. She basically appeared out of thin air. “What do you mean? Who… who are you? How do you know my name?”
Willow’s expression is as serious as the grave. “He’s not trying to help you. If you think about what is literally going on right now, you’ll see it. No real doctor asks you to come alone at midnight.” She’s gentle and sharp at once, the blade in a velvet sleeve.
I step out of the shadow to add a different voice, a different angle. “Think about it. There’s no one else here. It’s the middle of the night, and he asked you to come here alone? Trust me, even if you don’t like hospitals, you’ll be a hell of a lot safer in one of them than you will be here,” I say. I keep my tone flat, technical—if I sound logical rather than angry or vindictive, she’ll be a lot more likely to listen. “You can’t trust this guy.”
The woman’s face pulls into an expression that’s less anger and more hurt. “People always say that about Phoenix,” she whispers. “He changed my sister. She’s better—” She swallows hard, like she’s retelling someone else’s miracle. “He saved her.”
That’s the line Phoenix builds his life on—a miraculous cure, repeated enough to look like revelation. I hate that it sometimes works.
She starts moving again and strides right through the door. Something in Willow snaps from patient to animal. She steps into the clinic with the woman, and fear grips me by the throat.
I know what happens in that building. I know what Phoenix plans on doing tonight, and the woman I love just walked into his lair.
I scramble after them. The reception area smells like eucalyptus and citrus; a diffuser sighs little electronic puffs. It’s staged tenderness, and it makes my skin crawl.
“He’s done this before,” Willow says, blurting anything that might bring this woman back into reality and the danger she’s walking into. “To my best friend. He promised a personal healing session and then told her that orgasmic release was the only way. He told her that his fucking cum could bring relief.”
Willow’s words are getting more frantic by the step, her volume increasing with every foot the woman walks farther.
Fuck.
“What?” The woman asks, disgust and confusion lacing her tone. Finally,finally, she stops in place. “That’s not… that…”
But she doesn’t get to say more, because down the hall, a door opens, and out steps a figure.
Dammit.
“What the hell is going on?” Phoenix’s voice echoes through the dark. His footsteps echo as he walks toward us.
My hands curl into fists. My eyes are scanning the lobby for a weapon. There. A statue of a woman holding her hands up to thesky. That looks heavy enough to bludgeon him with. Or maybe I could choke him out with the curtain ties. If worst comes to worst, I’ve got my own two hands. I’ve got two inches in height on Phoenix Marrow, and probably thirty pounds.
“Willow fucking Vale,” Phoenix says with a sneer as he steps out into the dim light in the lobby.
The bastard is already shirtless. Not casual shirtless, not guru shirtless—the kind of staged undress that reads sexual theater, the bare chest a tool to lower someone’s defenses.
It’s fucking disgusting.
“You continue to be a thorn in my side,” he says. His careful composure is gone, his false serenity selling his therapies and supplements. It’s replaced by cold disdain as he recognizes Willow for what she is: a huntress who always gets her prey. “And you’ve brought your spy. You might have thought to send someone a little more innocuous. He isn’t exactly the clientele I typically help.”
“Help,” I say, the word coming out as a taunting sneer. “You help many of your clients shirtless with body oil smeared on yourself?”
