“Wow.”
“Exactly. Are you sure you want to do this, Charley?”
“Of course. Why wouldn’t I be?” I sat at the table and laid a file folder I’d brought on top, surprised he’d let me keep it.
“Well, let me think.” Neil was agitated, started pacing back and forth. He still had a fairly nice physique despite the tragic onset of male pattern baldness. From what I’d gathered, he’d never married, which came as quite the shocker. He’d always had hordes of girls after him in high school. He glanced at me as he made another pass. “Reyes Farrow is the son of Satan,” he said, starting the count off with his thumb. “He is the most powerful man I’ve ever met.” Index finger. “He moves at the speed of light.” Middle finger. “Oh, and he’s pissed.” Fist at side.
“I know he’s pissed.”
“He’s pissed as hell, Charley. At you.”
“Pfft. How do you know he’s mad at me? Maybe he’s mad at you.”
“I’ve seen what he does to people he’s angry with,” he continued, ignoring me. “It’s one of those images that haunts you forever, if you know what I mean.”
“I do. Damn it.” I pulled my bottom lip between my teeth.
“I’ve never seen him like this.” He paused and placed his palms on the table in thought. “He’s been different since he got back.”
“Different how?” I asked, alarmed.
He started pacing again. “I don’t know. He’s distant, more distant than usual. And he isn’t sleeping. He just paces like a caged animal.”
“Like you’re doing now?” I asked.
He turned to me, not amused. “Remember what I saw when he first got here?”
I nodded. “Of course.”
The first time I’d visited, Neil told me the story of how he became aware of what Reyes was capable of. He’d just started working at the prison and was on the floor in the cafeteria when he saw three gang members heading toward Reyes, a twenty-year-old kid at the time who’d just been released into gen-pop from Reception and Diagnostics. Fresh fish. Neil had panicked and grabbed for his radio, but before he could even call for backup, Reyes had taken down three of the deadliest men in the state without breaking a sweat. Neil said he moved so fast, his eyes couldn’t follow. Like an animal. Or a ghost.
“That’s why I’ll be watching through that camera,” he said, pointing to the device in the corner, “and I’ll have a team just outside this door, waiting for the word.”
“Neil,” I said, leveling a warning gaze on him, “you can’t send them in and you know it. If you care anything about your men.”
He shook his head. “Maybe if something happens, they can at least stop him long enough to get you out.”
I stood and stepped next to him. “You know they can’t.”
“Then what am I supposed to do?” he asked, a hard edge to his voice.
“Nothing,” I said pleadingly. “He won’t do anything to me. But I can’t make the same promise for your men if you send them in with batons and pepper spray. He might get a bit miffed.”
“I have to take precautions. The only reason I’m letting this happen is—” He lowered his head again. “—you know why.”
I did know why. Reyes had saved his life. Out in the real world, that was saying a lot. In prison, the weight of that statement multiplied exponentially. “Neil, you never even liked me in high school.”
He scoffed humorously and raised his brows in question.
“I’m a little flattered you’re worried, but—”
“Don’t be.” He grinned. “Do you know how much paperwork is involved when people get killed in prison?”
“Thanks,” I said, patting his arm, really hard.
He pulled out my chair. “You sit tight. I’m going to help bring him in. I don’t want any incidents along the way.”
“Okay. I’ll sit tight.”
And I did. My stomach churned with excitement and adrenaline, fear and too much coffee. It was hard to believe I was finally going to see him. In the flesh. Conscious. I’d seen him in the flesh before, but he was either in a coma or unconscious from being tortured. Torture sucked so bad.
A few minutes later, the door opened and I scrambled to my feet as a man in handcuffs stepped halfway in, then turned back toward the burly corrections officer who’d followed. It was Reyes, and his presence took my breath away. He had the same dark hair in desperate need of a trim, the same wide shoulders straining against the orange fabric of his prison uniform, the sleeves rolled up and the sharp, crisp lines of his tattoos visible, curling up his corded biceps to disappear under the faded material. He was so real, so powerful. And his heat, like a signature, snaked toward me the minute the door opened.
The corrections officer looked at Reyes’s cuffed hands then at his face and shrugged. “Sorry, Farrow. Those stay on. Orders.”
Neil walked up then. Reyes was only slightly taller yet seemed to tower over him.
He lifted his cuffed hands. They were attached to a chain that clasped on to a belt around his waist and led down to lock to another set of cuffs at his feet. “You know these won’t make a difference,” he said to Neil, his deep voice washing over me like warm water.
Neil glanced past him toward me. “It’ll buy me a few seconds should I need them.”
Then Reyes looked over his shoulder. For the first time in over a decade, I was looking into the eyes of the real, in-the-flesh Reyes Farrow, and I thought my knees would give beneath me. I’d seen him several times in a much more spiritual sense, when he could come to me incorporeally, but this in-the-flesh thing was fairly new. And the last time I’d seen his corporeal body, he was being ripped apart by a hundred spidery demons with razor-sharp claws. He seemed to have healed nicely, if the surge of sensual adrenaline that now coursed through his veins was any indication.
While I could feel his reluctance to break eye contact, I was sure he could feel the lust that crept up my legs and seeped into my abdomen, a Pavlovian response to his nearness, and somewhere deep inside, I was embarrassed. But I could also feel his desire to tear off the cuffs, partly to spite Neil and partly to remove the table that stood between us. And he could have done it, too. He could have removed the cuffs like papier-mâché. But I could also feel his unabated anger, and I was suddenly glad for the camera, for that extra sense of protection, as ridiculous and noneffective as it would be should it come to that.