double doors and knew just where he was going as soon as he could get through them. He'd memorized the location the civilian male had given them. Was going to dematerialize and be there in the blink of an eye.
Seven minutes.
It would be better to wait until the sky was all dark, but fuck that. The instant that godforsaken fireball slipped over the edge of the horizon, he was out. To hell with it if he ended up with a bitch of a tan.
Six minutes.
He rechecked the daggers on his chest. Took the SIG Sauer out of the holster at his right hip and ran through it one more time, then did the same for the one that was on the left. He felt for the throwing knife at the small of his back and the six-inch blade he had on his thigh.
Five minutes.
Z cocked his head to the side, cracking his neck to loosen it up.
Four minutes.
Fuck this. He was going now -
"You'll fry," Phury said from behind him.
Z closed his eyes. His impulse was to lash out, and the urge grew irresistible as Phury kept talking.
"Z, my man, how're you going to help her if you fall flat on your face and start steaming?"
"Do you get off being a buzz kill? Or does it just come natural?" As Z glared over his shoulder, he had a sudden memory of that one night Bella had come to the mansion. Phury had seemed so taken by her, and Z remembered the two of them standing together and talking, right where his boots were planted now. He'd watched them from the shadows, wanting her as she'd smiled and laughed with his twin.
Z's voice got sharper. "I'd think you'd want to get her back, being that she was all into you and shit, thinking you were handsome. Or... maybe you want her to stay gone because of that. Did your vow of celibacy get shaken, my brother?"
As Phury winced, Z's instinct for weakness jumped into the opening. "We all saw you checking her out that night she came here. You were looking, weren't you? Yeah, you were, and not just at her face. Did you wonder how she'd feel underneath you? Did you get all nervous about breaking that no-sex promise to yourself?"
Phury's mouth thinned into a slash, and Z hoped the male's response was a nasty one. He wanted something hard to come back at him. Maybe they could even go at it for the remaining three minutes.
But there was only silence.
"Nothing to say to me?" Z glanced at the clock. "Just as well. It's time to go - "
"I bleed for her. The same as you do."
Z looked back at his twin, witnessing the pain on the male's face from a long distance, as if he were staring through a pair of binoculars. He had a passing thought that he should feel something, some kind of shame or sorrow for forcing Phury to give up that intimate, sad revelation.
Without a word, Zsadist dematerialized.
He triangulated his reappearance to a wooded area about one hundred yards away from where the civilian male said he'd escaped from. As Z took form, the fading light in the sky blinded him and made him feel like he'd volunteered for an acid facial. He ignored the burning and headed in a northeasterly direction, jogging over the snow-covered ground.
And then there it was, in the middle of the woods, about a hundred feet from a stream: a single-story houselike structure with a black Ford F-150 and a nondescript silver Taurus parked off to one side. Z sidled up to the structure, staying behind the trunks of pine trees, moving quietly in the snow as he worked the building's periphery. It had no windows and only one door. Through the thin walls he could hear movement, talking.
He took out one of his SIGs, flipped off the safety, and considered his options. Dematerializing inside was a dumb move, because he didn't know the interior layout. And his only other alternative, though satisfying, wasn't that strategic either: Kicking the door down and going in shooting was damn appealing, but as suicidal as he was, he wasn't going to risk Bella's life by lighting the place up.
Except then, miracle of miracles, a lesser came out of the building, the door shutting with a smack. Moments later a second one followed, and then there was the beep-beep of a security alarm activating.
Z's first instinct was to shoot them both in the head,