Vicki Pettersson - The Given

More pastels and white, he saw, risking a glance inside. Ruffles and lace, silken pillows and more knitted throws, things he knew were expensive though he didn’t know why. He had no desire to snooze atop some oversized doily. McCoy had been in the green, no doubt about it, but she was too showy about it. If he had to guess, she hadn’t always possessed the funds she did now.

Or used to.

Sidestepping into the room, Grif angled toward the walk-in closet and the attached bath beyond that. He’d just emerged when a muffled voice sounded from beneath the bed. “Grif?”

He damned near shot off his own foot.

Then a slim hand appeared atop the bedspread, red-stained, not with blood but lacquer. The half-moon manicure had a silver base and metallic maroon tip. He only knew what it was called because the woman who edged from beneath the bed had once taken an entire half hour to explain it to him.

Katherine Craig looked exactly the same as the last time Grif had seen her, maybe a little thinner, though still lush where it counted. She wore a pencil skirt in the same crimson color as her nails and a black sweater that echoed the hue of her hair. Her pearl brooch competed with her skin for translucence and even the fear widening her eyes couldn’t erase the seductive slant of those lids. Maybe it was her makeup, maybe it was just the lighting, or maybe it was the fact that they hadn’t made eye contact like this in six full months, but Grif couldn’t remember her ever looking so fragile and beautiful at the same time.

“Wh—” she started breathlessly. “How did you get here?”

“Why—?” He took a breath, but the words tumbling in his mind curled into a knot by the time they reached his throat, so he exhaled and tried again. “Why the hell would you reveal yourself like that when there’s an intruder in a home with a dead body?”

“Grif—”

“Jiminy Cricket!” He jerked his hat from his head and slapped it against his leg. “No, it’s like you want to get clipped. You might as well just wave a flag. ‘Hey, bad guy, next victim right here. Come and get it.’ ”

Kit’s spine seemed to grow another couple of inches. “Are you seriously yelling at me? Right now?”

Grif was about to tell her that someone needed to, but snapped his mouth shut instead. Nerves did strange things to a man.

“I wasn’t revealing myself, okay?” She put a hand to her chest, coming around to his side of the room. “I wouldn’t have come out if I wasn’t sure it was you, but I was. Besides, I have this.”

Grif’s eyebrows winged up at the dainty .22. At some point in the past six months, his Kitty-Cat had grown claws. He glanced at the peashooter, looked at her also considering it, and took an involuntary step back. He couldn’t be sure yet how sore at him she still was.

“So how’d you know it was me?”

“Eau de angel,” she muttered, reaching down and pulling out a vintage doctor’s bag from beneath the bed. Grif grimaced as he watched her. Of course she would hide her precious bag, probably some thrift-store find that she cherished more than her damned life. Grif was about to match her sarcasm with a quick rejoinder, but suddenly Kit deflated into herself.

Falling into the wingback in the corner, she blew her thick bangs from her forehead and dropped her face into her hands. Grif would have thought nothing of striding across the room and pulling her into his arms at one time, but now he hesitated, his body wavering with the uncertainty of his thoughts.

Kit didn’t give him much time to wonder anyway. She recovered quickly, gazing up at him for a brief moment before gesturing to his shoes. “Vintage Stacey Adams wingtips that look brand-new. Round laces, minimally worn soles, and a faint scuff on the right side. They’d sell for a pretty penny these days.” Then she added, almost to herself, “I’d recognize them anywhere.”

Sure she would, Grif thought, swallowing hard. She’d seen them every day for six months. Even when he undressed—even after she helped him do it—the shoes would return to his body, along with the rest of the clothes, at 4:10 every morning. The exact hour of his death. Kit had always laughed good-naturedly and called it magic. Grif called it a pain in the tail.

“Are you here to Take her?” Kit whispered.

Grif shook his head. “No, she’s already gone.”

She looked up. “Me, then?”

He tried to soften it for her. It would be a shock for anyone to learn they were due to be murdered in two days’ time. “Not yet.”

A shiver ratcheted up her spine at that. Guess it hadn’t come out as gently as he’d intended.

“Of course,” she finally said, and sighed. “Why else . . .” Kit gestured at Grif, meaning why else would he be there. He’d have been offended at the insinuation if her life hadn’t been threatened so many times since he’d entered it.

“Hey, you’re the one sitting in a dead woman’s home,” he reminded her.

Kit’s hand twitched on the .22. They were nipping at each other now, though it was better than having her cry or shake or scream about the body still cooling in the next room.

“Barbara called me,” she said, standing. She lifted her chin, knowing that wouldn’t sit well with Grif.

It didn’t. Grif narrowed his eyes. Had Kit actually become friendly with a woman who thought he deserved to die? Both Shaws got what was coming to them.

“She told me she had something to show me,” Kit said, joining his side. “But she also said she felt like she was in danger.”

Grif tried to feel some sympathy for the dead woman. “Guess she was right about that.”

Sympathy wasn’t his strong suit.

“I saw the guy. I guess I could pick him out of a police . . . whoa.” She swayed, and Grif reached out to steady her. Yet all the strength had gone out of her arms, and it suddenly fled her legs, too. He had to lunge, his palm cradling the back of her skull just before it struck the bedpost. “What’s going on? Why do I see stars?”

She meant literal stars . . . because Grif saw them, too. They were tiny and stabbed at her like brilliant needles, swirling around her so quickly that he got dizzy trying to track them. The plasma, Grif realized, too late. It’d been coming for her.

If you choose this path, if you go back in time, nothing will happen as it’s meant to. You’ll be rewriting history, and fate will try to rip the pen from your hand and scribble over your intentions. Do you understand what I’m saying?

He’d said yes, but he hadn’t. Not really. He’d come back intending on saving Kit two days from now . . . and fate had made a run at her early.

Grif tried to focus, but her weight and warmth in his arms was familiar, and all he wanted to do was hold her tight. “It’s fate, honey. It’s switching up on you, altering directions.”

“What does that mean?” she said, managing to lock gazes with him despite the specks of light encasing her like bees surprised from a hive.

“It means this is going to feel a little . . .”

But her head jerked back then, eyes rolling with it as her body arched away from his, leaning hard into a backward dive. The speckled dots of light poured like a shining river into her mouth and her core convulsed, arms and legs jerking in rapid spasms. All Grif could do was hold her, but when he lifted her up to pull her close, her mouth fell open, tongue sparkling like she’d licked glitter. The same sheen of stars pasted over the whites of her eyes.

Kit jerked from side to side, the motion of her body actually ripping her from his arms, and he fumbled to keep her from striking the bed and hurting herself. The movements soon evened out, blurring together until her body just hummed with a single vibration, like the beat of a heart monitor. One line indicating one life, one direction. One fate. She collapsed and fell still, the whole episode lasting less than thirty seconds, and all Grif heard was the rasp of his own rapid breath.