Blood Brothers Page 0,114

wandered the house, checking locks, staring out windows for any glimpse of the thing that stalked them. The moon was out, and the snow tinted blue under it. They'd be able to shovel their way out the next day, he thought, dig out the cars. Get back to what passed for normal within a day or two.

He already knew if he asked her to stay, just stay, she'd tell him she couldn't leave Layla and Cybil on their own. He already knew he'd have to let her go.

He couldn't protect her every hour of every day, and if he tried, they'd end up smothering each other.

As he moved through the living room, he saw the glow of the kitchen lights. He headed back to turn them off and check locks. And there was Gage, sitting at the counter playing solitaire with a mug of coffee steaming beside the discard pile.

"A guy who drinks black coffee at one a.m. is going to be awake all night."

"It never keeps me up." Gage flipped a card, made his play. "When I want to sleep, I sleep. You know that. What's your excuse?"

"I'm thinking it's going to be a long, hard, messy hike into the woods even if we wait a month. Which we probably should."

"No. Red six on black seven. You're trying to come up with a way to go in without Quinn. Without any of them, really, but especially the blonde."

"I told you how it was when we went in before."

"And she walked out again on her own two sexy legs. Jack of clubs on queen of diamonds. I'm not worried about her. I'm worried about you."

Cal's back went up. "Is there a time I didn't handle myself?"

"Not up until now. But you've got it bad, Hawkins. You've got it bad for the blonde, and being you, your first and last instinct is going to be to cover her ass if anything goes down."

"Shouldn't it be?" He didn't want any damn coffee, but since he doubted he'd sleep anyway, he poured some. "Why wouldn't it be?"

"I'd lay money that your blonde can handle herself. Doesn't mean you're wrong, Cal. I imagine if I had a woman inside me the way she's inside you, I wouldn't want to put how she handled herself to the test. The trouble is, you're going to have to."

"I never wanted to feel this way," Cal said after a moment. "This is a good part of the reason why. We're good together, Gage."

"I can see that for myself. Don't know what she sees in a loser like you, but it's working for her."

"We could get better. I can feel we'd just get better, make something real and solid. If we had the chance, if we had the time, we'd make something together."

Casually, Gage gathered up the cards, shuffled them with a blur of speed. "You think we're going down this time."

"Yeah." Cal looked out the window at the cold, blue moonlight. "I think we're going down. Don't you?"

"Odds are." Gage dealt them both a hand of blackjack. "But hell, who wants to live forever?"

"That's the problem. Now that I've found Quinn, forever sounds pretty damn good." Cal glanced at his hole card, noted the king to go with his three. "Hit me."

With a grin, Gage flipped over a nine. "Sucker."

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty

CAL HOPED FOR A WEEK, TWO IF HE COULD MANAGE it. And got three days. Nature screwed his plans again, this time shooting temperatures up into the fifties. Mountains of snow melted into hills while the February thaw brought the fun of flash flooding, swollen creeks, and black ice when the thermometer dropped to freezing each night.

But three days after he'd had his lane plowed and the women were back in the house on High Street, the weather stabilized. Creeks ran high, but the ground sucked up most of the runoff. And he was coming up short on excuses to put off the hike to the Pagan Stone.

At his desk, with Lump contentedly sprawled on his back in the doorway, feet in the air, Cal put his mind into work. The winter leagues were winding up, and the spring groups would go into gear shortly. He knew he was on the edge of convincing his father the center would profit from the automatic scoring systems, and wanted to give it one more solid push. If they moved on it soon, they could have the systems up and running for the spring leagues.

They'd want to advertise, run