Playing God (Helford #2)

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I was pacing the halls again. It had been weeks without a word from Jonathon, but I still stopped outside of his bedroom door and listened for his breathing, hearing his sleeplessness and at least knowing that meant that he was safe. I had avoided him and he had avoided me; I think we were both sorry for a lot of things, but Jonathon and I didn’t operate the same way that we used to. When we had once confronted the problems between us calmly, now it was more like a standoff. We stood on opposite ends of the spectrum, watching for sudden movements, ready to shoot the other down at a moment’s notice.

I was sadly used to this game. We would never be that same kind of honest with each other that we used to be, and I shouldn’t have been surprised by that. I had confessed that my mother had killed his—I should have expected him to react in a way that was much worse.

I softly moved down the stairs, wrapping myself in a sweatshirt I had found in the back of one of the closets, but I didn’t care if it belonged to someone. I edged across the hall and to the kitchen, ready to spend another sleepless night sitting on the couch and cleaning my weapon, again and again—

Something was wrong.

I had trained in a way that taught me when to sense the change in atmosphere, although it was more about observation than anything. There were guards on every floor, sentries on the roof with snipers, but the house was too silent. The second my foot hit the bottom step, I realized that I didn’t hear anything. Dead air. I can normally hear them breathing, hear them shifting in their chair, hear them pacing the floor to pass the time. But there was nothing.

I slowly reached behind me, careful to make no more noise than necessary, and took the gun from the back of my waistband, where it comfortably always sat pressed against my back like a security blanket. I was thankful for my bare feet because it made it much more easy to navigate deeper into the first floor soundlessly on the hardwood, ducking around corners and checking all of the doorways. I looked toward the seat where the guards normally sat and waited, in the middle of the open floor plan so they could see nearly everything—and there was no one there.

My pulse sped up as I quickly ran through the options—on if I should scream, if I should wait and attack them myself, if I had missed the sound of someone breathing when I had been upstairs. I took a step forward, and I held my breath as the floorboard creaked ever so slightly under my weight.

I closed my eyes for just a moment, silently cursing to myself.

“Caitie,” a voice called behind me, sounding amused. “You’re awake.”

I turned quickly, gracefully, keeping my gun up and leveled with their chest. Talbot was standing against the entrance to the kitchen casually, watching me like he was about to laugh. His gun was pointed at my head, and his eyes were made of ice.

“You walked right past me,” he informed me solemnly before his façade broke and he burst into laughter, the grin that broke over his face making him a little less plain. “Oh, that’s always classic. I love when trained killers can’t even see me.”

“You’re pretty good at playing invisible,” I said, my voice as unyielding as stone. My finger twitched, and so did his.

We were at an impasse, and we would both die if the other pulled the trigger. We would kill each other, inevitably. And I don’t think either of us had a death wish, so we just kept staring, kept pretending like we were having a casual conversation. As if he belonged in the middle of a safe house.

“What are you doing here, Talbot?” I demanded. “Why didn’t Shawn just come here himself?”

“He’s a little busy,” Talbot responded, shrugging his shoulders so slightly that the gun didn’t even move. “He sends his regards, by the way. He actually sent me here to tell you something.”