I don’t pretend to know what that answer means, and I don’t reply. She’s lost everyone that resembled family in her life, including me, at least in her mind. But the reason she lost me is exactly why I can’t offer her comfort. It wouldn’t matter. Not coming from the devil himself.
I focus on the sidewalk we’re traveling on toward a dark blue house with a steepled roof, horse stables to our left, and the hilltop where we hid earlier, to our right. This place was Jake’s dream home that will now become his daughter’s. If she can stomach living in the place he died.
We reach the front door, and a tall Black man and a German Shepard greet us. “I’m Jack’s human,” he informs us, offering us no other name. “He’s got a hit inside the house. You want him to go in first, or do you want to handle it?”
“We’ve got it,” I say. “Keep your pup out here and safe.”
The dog’s “human” as he likes to call himself gives us a nod. “Much appreciated.”
I draw my sidearm and step forward, not about to give Ana the option of going in first. I reach for the knob and the dog whines.
“What is he telling us?” Ana asks quickly.
“He’s a cadaver dog,” is all the man says.
In other words, he’s not trained to warn us about the living. He’s trained to find what’s left of those who are not. It’s a shitty confirmation of Jake’s death, which is also a shitty reality. I enter the house into a grand living room with vaulted ceilings and so far, no sign of Jake. Ana steps to my side and then starts walking toward the kitchen. I grimace. Stubborn woman doesn’t know how to follow the leader and stay behind me. Ever.
I’m beside her when we both enter the kitchen to find Jake sprawled on the floor, face down, a trail of blood where he’s tried to drag himself across the tile. His phone is also on the floor, by the door, just beyond his now stiff fingers.
“The bastards left him alive and taunted him with the phone,” I say, closing the space between me and Jake. I kneel beside his body and scan for anything that tells me who to go kill right now.
Ana does the same, though I assume her motives are a little more pure, both of us keeping our hands on our knees to avoid contaminating the evidence. Voices lift in the outer room, and Ana stands. “I need to go give them direction.”
I push to my feet as well. “I’m going to look around.” She opens her mouth as I pull out my gloves. “I know, Agent Banks.”
“Stop calling me that.”
“Lucifer and Agent Banks. We’ve come a long way, baby, now haven’t we?”
Her lips press together and she turns away from me, walking briskly toward a law enforcement officer waiting on her in the doorway. My gaze returns to Jake’s body, my mind traveling to the past. To the hellish moment after I’d scrambled with Kasey for a gun. I’d snagged the weapon, but I’d been jumped again. When I’d freed myself, Kasey not only had another gun, he had the princess. He’d held his weapon at her head and I saw the trapped rat in a cage. I knew the moment it became me and her or him.
I killed him.
The princess continued to scream, terrified and covered in blood.
I’d motioned to one of my other men, Christian. “Get her inside to safety.”
He’d done as I ordered. Jake had stepped to my side then. “You had no choice, son.”
I couldn’t go there right then. I couldn’t think about Ana right now or we might all end up dead. “Where is the package?” I’d asked.
“It seems it and Trevor are missing. And I don’t think we have enough men left to hunt for him. We need to get in the air. We need to leave that little bitch here to die.”
He’d been right.
And that’s exactly what we did. We’d left that little bitch to die, and yet somehow, he’d made it back to Colorado before we did. He’d gone to Ana and played her. He’d told her I killed Kasey and flipped the entire story. I was the one running dirty jobs, according to him. She’d known him for years longer than me, and somehow, that was enough for her to believe him.
And if Trevor hadn’t died in that car accident a year and a half ago, I’d be hunting him right now.
As for Jake, he didn’t stay around to talk sense into Ana when she wouldn’t listen to reason. He wanted out. He got out. Or so he thought.
My gaze lifts to the archway where Ana has now disappeared through, and that’s probably a good thing right about now, considering the anger burning through me at her and myself. Maybe, just maybe, if we had both handled what happened differently, Jake wouldn’t be dead.