It wasreal.
The clown must have noticed Knox coming at them because the thing turned its head and gave him a creepy smile. With an evil chuckle, it tossed Rachel bodily across the room toward Knox like she was a toy.
Knox barely had time to catch Rachel before she crashed to the floor. Even then, they both took a tumble. Tightening his arms around her, he twisted his body in midair, so his shoulder and back took the brunt of the impact.
Out of the corner of his eye, Knox saw Diego heading for the clown, clearly intent on taking the monster down. But instead of shying away from the heavily muscled werewolf, the clown stepped forward and backhanded Diego across the room. Diego slammed into the wall beside the door, knocking off the landscape painting hanging there.
Knox jumped to his feet and strode toward the clown with a snarl, his claws extended further than he’d ever seen them. The clown squared off against him, that same demented smile on his ugly face.
“Don’t hurt it!” Rachel shouted from behind him. “Hadley is in there!”
Knox slowed, not sure what the hell Rachel was talking about at first, but then he realized the clown wore the same colorful dress Hadley had been wearing when he’d met her in the waiting room earlier. It made no sense, but somehow, the clown wasinsideDelacroix’s body.
Shit.
Knox retracted his claws. Rachel was right. He couldn’t hurt the woman. The clown. Whatever the hell this thing was. Unfortunately, the clown didn’t have the same issues with causing damage. Taking advantage of Knox’s hesitation, the thing surged forward and punched him in the center of the chest.
It was like being hit by a truck, and Knox swore he heard a crack as something near his sternum broke. He didn’t even realize he was flying through the air until he slammed into the big wood desk. It collapsed under him, wood fragments going everywhere—including into his back.
He would have preferred to lay there and groan for a while, but the clown was already heading for Rachel again. She stood there immobilized, terror in her eyes.
Scrambling to his feet, Knox sprinted across the room and tackled the clown from behind. The thing quickly squirmed free, backhanding him across the face hard enough to crack his jaw. How the hell could anything Delacroix’s size be so frigging strong?
Knox grabbed the clown around the waist as the thing tried to get away. Luckily, Diego showed back up, throwing himself on the clown’s legs to help hold it down.
Trying to restrain someone as strong as the clown without hurting the body the thing was using as a host was like fighting with one arm tied behind his back. Every time he and Diego got it pinned down, a fist came flying out and another bone in his body or Diego’s would crack. It didn’t help that the damn clown laughed like crazy the entire frigging time they fought. The sound was so disturbing it made goose bumps run up and down Knox’s spine.
Then Rachel leaped into the fray and got her hands on the clown’s face. Greasepaint smeared everywhere as Rachel shouted at the clown to leave Hadley alone. It seemed like a ludicrous demand, but suddenly, it was like a switch had been flipped and all the fight went out of the clown.
Knox was lying across the clown’s body, pinning one of its hands to the floor, so he couldn’t see its face very clearly, especially with Rachel now entirely blocking his view, but a moment later, he heard Hadley ask what was happening in a soft, confused voice.
Figuring it was safe to release her, Knox sat back on his heels as Diego did the same down by Hadley’s legs. To his relief, the clown was gone and the therapist was back. Eyes glazed and a dazed expression on her face, some of her dark hair that had been up in a neat twist was hanging down around her shoulders in complete disarray.
“What happened?” Hadley asked again, scanning the room, a frown furrowing her brow as she focused on the three of them again. “How did I end up on the floor? And why are you all looking at me like that?”
Rachel glanced at Knox and Diego but didn’t answer. Knox couldn’t blame her. How could anyone explain anything that had just happened?
Chapter 13
Rachel buried her face in Knox’s pillow, breathing in his scent and letting it lull her back into that fuzzy place where things weren’t nearly so complicated as her real life seemed to be right now. Of course, no matter how much she’d rather lay there in his comfortable bed and continue to forget her problems for a few more hours, there was a part of her that knew it wasn’t the mature, adult thing to do.
Sometimes, being an adult sucked.
Sighing, she shoved the blanket down a bit and rolled onto her back, gazing up at the ceiling for a while before glancing at the clock on the nightstand. She blinked when she saw that it was a little after 9:00 p.m. Crap, she’d slept for more than eight hours. She thought for sure it hadn’t been more than an hour or two. Then again, watching your therapist turn into the clown from your nightmares and kick the crap out of you and your friends was somewhat exhausting.
Rachel considered reaching over to turn on the lamp beside the bed but then decided against it. She might be awake, but that didn’t mean she was ready to get out of bed yet. She still needed time to think about and process everything that had happened.
She could hear soft murmurs from outside the bedroom as Knox and Diego talked. While she was grateful for their support, she wasn’t eager to face them yet. So instead, she lay there reliving the morning’s events and letting herself believe the warmth provided by the blankets was actually Knox’s arms around her.
If she weren’t a cop, she would have been shocked at how fast law enforcement and paramedics had shown up at Hadley’s office after the clown disappeared. Then again, the psychologist provided trauma counseling for quite a few cops and paramedics over the years. They’d recognized her address and gotten there quickly.
She and Diego had immediately identified themselves as fellow DPD officers, saying Knox was private security currently working for the DA’s office. But when the responding officers had seen the freaked-out receptionist, not to mention the big dent in the wall, the questioning had become intense.
Hadley had been so dazed she was barely able to say anything, which was probably good. As far as the doctor could remember, one moment she’d been talking to Rachel, the next she was on the floor with Rachel, Diego, and Knox holding her down. Diego—a master of creativity—suggested Hadley had suffered from a violent seizure, and it had taken the three of them to restrain the woman. Rachel hated implying Hadley was somehow responsible for everything that had happened, but the cops and paramedics seemed to buy it, so that’s the story they stuck with. The officers who’d responded to the call spent a little more time taking down everyone’s statements and contact information but left soon after paramedics had taken Hadley to the hospital.
That had left Rachel with Knox and Diego. The three of them had stared at each other, none of them eager to be the first to talk about what had really taken place in Hadley’s office. Finally, they’d all decided to take the conversation to Knox’s hotel room, figuring it wasn’t something to talk about over lunch at a restaurant.
But other than confirming they’d all indeed seen the clown taking over Hadley’s body—and kick their asses without breaking a sweat—their conversation hadn’t yielded any solid conclusions. In some ways it was nice for Rachel to discover she wasn’t alone in her insanity, but the thought that perhaps she’d somehow infected Knox and Diego with her condition didn’t make her feel very good.
