Ruined

Chapter Sixteen

Sam

Keeping quiet siphoned every bit of self-restraint I had. Questions. There were so many. I wanted to know the details behind Jax’s demonic side despite the possible answers, because crazy or not, I still wanted him same as always. But first we had to deal with the threat to my life. After that was handled, there’d be time to ask questions. Time to crumble and mourn the death of my parents again. And if he was still determined to run, I’d get him to change his mind.

Several subtle glances told me he was on the other side of the office, riffling through a pile of papers on the manager’s desk. Every once in a while he’d pick his head up and catch me watching him. Each time, chills raced down my spine, and my heart went into overdrive. How the hell was it that a single glimpse could do that? It was like he devoured me with every glance.

“Got it,” Jax exclaimed. He snatched a paper from the filing cabinet on his side of the room and waved it back and forth. “The file says the apartment is rented to Bob Dowdy. There’s another address in this file for him, too. We can check it out.”

“Bob Dowdy,” I said, rolling the name around in my mouth. I closed the filing cabinet and climbed to my feet. “The demon’s name is Bob?”

His right eyebrow rose slightly above the left and he set the folder back into the drawer where he’d gotten it. “Were you hoping for a Lucifer? Maybe a Damien?”

“Smart-ass.” I rolled my eyes. “Does the name sound familiar?”

“Why would it?”

I shrugged. “I dunno. Don’t you guys, like, all know each other or something?”

“There’s no club, Sammy. We don’t meet once a year at a convention for the demonic.” He stuffed the paper into his back pocket and hitched his thumb toward the door. “Let’s go see what we can dig up on this thing.”

I nodded and reached for the handle, giving it a quick turn. Nothing happened. “Um… It’s stuck.”

“Stuck?” He moved to nudge me aside, but stopped when I turned at the same moment, putting our faces inches from each other.

“Go ahead. Do your thing,” I said.

“My thing?”

We didn’t have all day, but the way he said it woke the butterflies in my belly. The manager would be back soon, but reality be damned, I wanted him to kiss me again. “Yes. Your thing. Your demon thing. I want you to open the door.”

Actually, I wanted him to throw me over his shoulder and head for the desk on the other side of the room, but since that was less likely than a two-headed panda wearing a top hat and singing show tunes, I’d settle for getting the hell out of here.

He stepped closer. “Using my demon thing. Is that right?”

I swallowed and tapped the door, forcing myself to breathe. “We don’t have all day, Jax. Get to it.”

Jax took a deep breath and let his eyes flutter closed for a second. When he opened them, there was a wicked smile on his lips. With one hand braced against the door, he leaned in and whispered, “I could open the door, but you’d much rather I kiss you, right?”

I nodded. It was all I could manage.

“Even though I’m a demon?”

His voice was like melted chocolate. Rich and soothing. It didn’t matter to me in that moment that he was a demon. It wouldn’t matter, I realized, in any moment, because he was Jax. And he was what I’d always wanted.

“I would wreck you, Sammy. Make you scream for hours and hours until your voice is gone and you don’t remember your own name. Is that what you want?”

My mouth was dry. Legs mushy. Heart on overload. Again, all I could do was nod.

He pulled away, smile gone. At first he looked confused. Brows furrowed and lips pursed. Then he just looked indifferent. A rush of cold replaced the spot he’d been and I shivered. “Tell me,” he said, voice icy and low. “How does it feel to want?”

The chill turned into a glacial freeze. My heart, seconds ago banging like a woodpecker gone postal, was now dead. Words. They were just meaningless words meant to push me away. Still, it hurt. “Fuck you,” I said, backing away.

He laughed, but there was something off about it. It was forced. “No—” Jax turned away from her to stare at the door. “Do you smell that?”

“Smell what?” I snapped. “The odor of asshole? As a matter of fact, I—”

He clamped his hand across my mouth and leaned closer to the door. The urge to bite his hand came—and went. Pissing off a demon, no matter how big a dick he was, probably wasn’t the path to a long life.

“Gasoline,” he said, voice hushed. “I smell gasoline.”

I pried his hand away from my face. “You’re crazy.” But no sooner did I get the words out than the smell filled my nose, followed by a rush of clear liquid from under the door. It crept across the tile floor, filling the spaces between and rolling over the grout like a mini tidal wave.

Jax reached for the handle again, but halted midway. Without a word, he pivoted, hand shooting out in a blur, and knocked me back as a rush of flame spilled in from under the door.

“Shit.” I gasped, backing toward the window. Fumbling with the lock, I threw it open and looked down. We were on the fourth floor. The office was in the back of the building and faced nothing more than an empty lot. There was no help in sight.

With the help of the gasoline, the fire spread quickly, catching the numerous stacks of papers strewn around the room. The temperature rose as thick gray smoke billowed into the air. A series of body-racking coughs doubled me over and I gasped for air.

“Do you still have an issue with heights?” Jax asked, taking my arm and dragging me closer to the window.

I glanced over my shoulder. “If I say yes, will that change anything?”

“Nope,” he said, maneuvering a leg over the sill.

“Then fair warning,” I said, letting him tug me closer. “I may puke on you.”

“Noted.”

I stepped out onto the thin ledge as Jax inched closer to the fire escape ladder a few feet away. I made the mistake of peeking down. It was quick—nothing more than a flicker—but it was enough. Vertigo hit with a vengeance. The fire wouldn’t get me. The fall from the ledge wouldn’t, either. But that sudden stop at the bottom? Yeah. That’d do it right.

Jax wrapped his right hand around the far side of the ladder and stepped onto the rung. He climbed down a few bars, and with his left hand, waved me over. “Okay. Come here.” He patted the second rung from the top and said, “Step right on this one. Don’t worry. I won’t let you fall.”

I did as told, and rung by rung, we descended the ladder until there was blissfully solid earth beneath my feet. I would have dropped and kissed the ground, too, if it weren’t for the fire engine and four police cars that came rocketing into the lot.

The Harlow Police Station was, unfortunately, a place I knew well. Jax and I had our fair share of trouble as kids. No formal charges had ever been filed, but any time anything went wrong in town they looked to Jax first. Granted sometimes he was the culprit, but nine times out of ten, it was just simple minds and the overinflated rumor mill of a small town.

I got into nearly as much trouble, but that, too, was Jax’s fault if you asked, well, anyone. Everyone blamed him for dragging me along as though I had no mind of my own. Then, after he’d left town, they explained my delinquent behavior as acting out as a result of the horrible tragedy I’d suffered at such an early age, and of course, added in that Jax must have messed with my head. That had always pissed me off. The truth was, I’d been a juvenile delinquent all on my own.

Frank Spencer was the police chief now. He’d been a close friend of my mother’s, and had always looked out for me. I knew he felt bad. The entire Harlow Police Department did. They’d never caught the man—thing, I knew now—that murdered my parents. It was one of the town’s only unsolved crimes.

Frank, a short, stocky man with a scant patch of thinning brown hair and a crooked grin, slid into the seat across from me wearing his standard frown. The poor guy had to get out more. He always looked like he was having a bad day. Pasty and irritable, he never smiled. “You want to tell me what the hell you were doing in that office, kid?”

They’d separated Jax and me the moment we got to the station. I knew the drill. I sighed. “Would you believe we were on a scavenger hunt?”

Frank rolled his eyes. “This is serious, Sam. You’re over eighteen now and that means criminal charges. You were just caught breaking and entering, and are suspected of possible arson. Give me something. Please.”

“Arson?” I balked. “Because we tried to set ourselves on fire?”

“So you’re saying you didn’t set the fire?”

“I didn’t set the fire.”

Frank slid a pen and note pad across the table. Tapping it twice, he asked, “Did Flynn set the fire?”

“No!”

“Why do I find that hard to believe?” As a patrolman, Frank had pulled Jax over shortly after he’d gotten his license. Jax thought it’d be funny to roll his window down a few inches, order a burger and fries, then roll up the glass and flip the man off. Needless to say, there was no love lost between the two.

“He didn’t do it. Neither of us did.”

Frank sighed. He leaned back in the chair and kicked both feet onto the tabletop. A watery memory fought its way to the surface. Frank, at my parents’ house, doing the same thing on my mother’s coffee table. She’d hit him with a rolled-up newspaper. “I see your choice in companionship hasn’t improved since we last saw each other. I’d hate to have to haul you in when he goes down—because we all know he will. You’re just starting to get your life together.”

I was over eighteen, so they wouldn’t call my aunt, but Frank wouldn’t just let me walk out of that office without some kind of explanation. So I gave him one. The real one. “I was searching for information on someone who rents an apartment in that building. Me. My idea. My reason. Jax was helping me.”

“So he came back to town to help you break into an apartment office building?” Frank snorted. “And who were you digging for information on? And why?”

“I wanted to find the man who attacked me at school,” I said. Did it without a warble, too. “You can call the Huntington police if you don’t believe me. It’s the truth. Some guy attacked me.”

Whatever he expected me to say, that wasn’t it. Frank’s demeanor changed instantly, going from hard-ass cop to concerned family friend. “Sam, if something happened, you can’t take matters into your own hands. You need to let the proper authorities handle this. Does this have something to do with your car ending up in the river?”

“I think so. Yeah.”

He scribbled notes on the pad. I tried to see what he was writing, but Frank kept the pad tilted up, away from my prying eyes. “What makes you think this person—who did you say it was?—is the one who attacked you? Did you see his face?”

“I did some digging. That’s all I can tell you. His name is Bob Dowdy.”

All the color drained from Frank’s face. “When did you say the attack occurred? You went to Huntington, right?”

“Last month,” I said. “And, yeah. Why?”

“I don’t know where you kids are getting your information from, but you’re wrong about Dowdy.” He leaned in, hesitating for a moment before blowing out a loud sigh. “Bob Dowdy was a person of interest in several cases involving local missing girls, but he was found murdered. He couldn’t have been the one who attacked you. He’s been dead for months.”