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“Then kill him.”
“No.”
Behind Caligo, Tyler gave another laugh, although there was less confidence in it this time. “Your monster’s running away, Rowan. Maybe he’s not as frightening as you think.”
Caligo didn’t even look at him. The shadow binding Tyler tightened until his laugh turned into a grunt.
He bent and swept me into his arms.
“Put me down.” I shoved at his chest, but it was like trying to move a wall. “Caligo, put me down!”
He held me more tightly and carried me toward the hallway.
“I said I want him dead.”
“And I said no. I get to decide what I do.” His voice remained infuriatingly calm. “You taught me that.”
The words cut through my rage because they were true. I’d spent weeks telling him you couldn’t kill people simply because it seemed like the easiest solution. Now, when every part of me wanted him to ignore those lessons, he was using them against me. Or for me. In my current emotional state, I couldn’t tell which—and that only made me angrier.
The front door opened ahead of us, pulled inward by another tendril of shadow. Caligo carried me over the threshold while I continued to struggle, although there was no actual force behind it anymore.
Then the door slammed shut behind us, leaving Tyler alive and safe on the other side.
Chapter Thirty-six
Caligo
Rowan’s agitation hadn’t lessened during the cab journey home. If anything, it had intensified. Now, I watched him pace from wall to wall of the living room without saying a word. Even if I’d had anything to say, there was little opportunity to say it amid the torrent of words spilling from him.
“I should have been smarter. Of course, he was going to realize that I was recording him. Tyler is many things, but he’s not stupid. I should have prepared better. I should have gotten hold of something smaller to record the conversation. Something I could have hidden better. But, oh no, I had to go rushing in there. It’s like the Donald thing all over again.”
He made an abrupt turn and started back the other way. “The only reason Donald didn’t call the police on me is because of the relationship he’d had with my mother.” His face creased in pain. “God! I thought I wanted to know the truth. I thought it would make everything better. I was so fucking naïve.”
Rowan let out a laugh that bore little resemblance to one. “Finding out you were sleeping with the man responsible is never going to make things better. There must have been signs I didn’t see. Maybe if I’d been sober more of the time, I would have seen them.”
His pacing took him into the kitchen. I didn’t follow. He was only gone for a short while before reappearing. “I need a drink, but there’s no fucking alcohol in the house.”
“We got rid of it, remember?” I said gently. “So you wouldn’t be tempted.”
His brow creased. “Right. I’ll have to buy some more.”
“No. We agreed. No more drugs or alcohol.”
He rounded on me. “If you don’t want me drinking, then maybe do what I asked and kill him.”
“You’d regret it.”
He shook his head wildly. “I wouldn’t.” He resumed pacing. “If I just had the damn recording.” He pulled his phone out of his pocket and started pressing buttons. “Maybe he didn’t delete it properly.” The loud “fuck” that left his mouth less than thirty seconds later said he had. As did Rowan hurling his phone at the sofa in disgust.
For a few seconds, he paced in silence. “He’ll run,” he said eventually. “I know Tyler, and he won’t risk sticking around. He knows that I’ll go to the police anyway, even with no evidence. And he won’t risk incriminating himself if they bring him in for questioning. He’s probably already packing to leave the country.”
“Where would he go?”
“I don’t know. South America or somewhere like that. Somewhere he can disappear. The fucker is going to get away with it.”
“He won’t get away with it,” I said.
“He will! Because he’s not dead, and he can just get on a fucking plane and fly wherever he wants to. He’ll be sitting on a beach sipping cocktails by tomorrow.”
