Where Winter Finds You (Black Dagger Brotherhood #18)- J.R Ward Page 0,3

clothes, but he wasn’t wearing a jacket or a coat. He had just a shirt on, one that seemed to fall as if it were silk, and a cuff link flashed in the streetlights.

He could have been an athlete, but he seemed like a businessman. Who knew his true profession, and really, did it matter? Whatever the job or wherever the money had come from, there was obviously enough of it to afford the BMW and so much more.

Too bad the man did not look happy at all.

Raul could only shake his head. Rich people. They never appreciated what they had, and that was one definition of Hell, wasn’t it: to be seated at a table stacked with food, yet starving no matter how much you ate—

Without warning, the oddest thing happened, and Raul narrowed his eyes further, taking careful note, for it was the kind of thing he was going to want to tell Ivelisse about as soon as he got home: Between one blink and the next, the interior of the car became suffused by a peridot-green glow.

At first, Raul assumed it was from a cell phone screen, something that the driver, in his frustration at having even three minutes of forward progress halted by a red light, had created by checking his email. Except no, there was no phone. No iPad. No laptop. Perhaps it was a reflection of green-means-go as the traffic light changed—no, there had been no change up there. Confused, Raul considered the possibility he was seeing things.

Which was when he noticed the figure standing directly in front of the BMW.

The lashing snow was moving around what appeared to be a man, judging by the size of the torso, the flight paths of flakes reoriented by the three dimensions of height, weight, and, at least in theory, mortality. The problem was… Raul could see through the figure to the buildings across the street. Everything was visible, from the corner of the intersection, to the lobby doors of the bank, to the clutch of pedestrians who were approaching the crosswalk.

Raul rubbed his eyes, although it did nothing to change what seemed to be before him, and that was when the tires of the BMW began to spin. As the light finally turned green, all four low-profile tires abruptly lost purchase, and not just in a fishtail, get-off-the-mark-in-a-sloppy-way fashion, but as in going-nowhere-at-all. Which made no sense because the M850i had the xDrive. All-wheel traction.

The powerful engine revved. And revved again.

Inside, behind the wheel, Raul could see the driver grip the steering wheel harder and tilt into the windshield as if, in his mind, he was willing the powerful car to propel forward.

And still the tires spun and the ghostly apparition blocked the way.

“ ’Scuse me, buddy,” someone said to him.

In a reflex born of being a city dweller all of his life, Raul stepped aside without looking, assuming he had room to spare on the shoveled sidewalk. He did not. His foot landed on the edge of a snow-slicked curb, and his body lurched off balance—

Just as a semitrailer truck that was trying to stop at the red light in its lane lost control and plowed through the intersection, scattering the pedestrians who had started to cross, barreling past the BMW that was stuck, and coming right for Raul.

As his eyes swung around, he looked directly into the oncoming grille and knew, without a shadow of doubt, that he was going to die. His body was going to be impacted at a sufficient speed to do extensive internal damage, and given the forward list of his trajectory, his skull was going to be cracked wide-open.

Even though there was no hope, he whipped his hands out of the pockets of his coat, the cross in its box coming with his hand and flying free, his efforts to save himself too little, too late.

His first thought was of Alondra. He couldn’t wait to see her.

His second was of his Ivelisse and his other two girls. They would be heartbroken. They had barely recovered from the family’s first tragedy—how would they get through his death, too, especially as it was so random, so unlucky… and on another slippery, snowy night.

His third was that this was so unfair. He had led a just life. He had loved his wife and honored her. He had cherished his children. He had worked hard and been honest and done his level best to do unto others as he would have them do unto