“I told you. I never saw anything. I just heard a growl. It could have been my stomach, for all I know.”

His expression hardened. “They aren’t like regular demons, Dutch. I don’t know exactly what they can and cannot do. Thus,” he added, swiping my keys, “I’m driving.”

“Oh, no, you don’t,” I said, jumping for the keys as Reyes raised them above my head. I felt like I was in second grade and Davey Cresap was holding my juice box just out of my reach. Until I kneed him in the groin. He damned sure never did that shit again.

I tried the same move with Reyes, but he was way too fast. He easily caught my knee and raised it until my leg was practically encircling his hips. It was such a nice fit.

He backed me against Misery again, pushed into me, whispered into my ear. “Next time you try to sneak out without me,” he said, curling a hand around my bu**ocks and pulling me against his crotch, “we are going to have a serious discussion about the well-being of your ass.” He squeezed, causing an infusion of warmth to flood my nether-neaths.

I wrapped my hands around his steely bu**ocks, pulled him into me, and said, “Next time you threaten my ass, you’d better have your own covered. I can swing with the best of them.”

He leaned back. “Did you just threaten to spank me?”

A bark of laughter bubbled up out of me. “As a matter of fact —” I left my sentence hanging as I playfully swatted a steely derriere. I could only hope he felt it. Freaking son-of-Satan crap. He was like a boulder with zero pain receptors. But I was super good at the whole denial thing. Pretending my swat registered, I said, “Maybe you should remember that the next time you threaten me.” I pulled my lower lip between my teeth, then added, “Or my exquisite ass.”

He sobered, his gaze dropping to my mouth. It lingered there, a delicious glint in the gold flecks of his irises. “I can assure you, Dutch,” he said, his voice husky and deep, “I will never forget it. Shotgun!” he added. He dropped my leg, tossed me back my keys, and strolled to the passenger side.

I stood stunned a moment before his statement registered. Gawd, that man was beautiful. After climbing in, I looked over at my intended, all sexy and… waiting for me to unlock the door. Wearing the mother of all smirks, I started the engine and put Misery in reverse.

“You do realize,” he said through the closed window, “I could rip this door off its hinges.”

I gasped. “You wouldn’t.”

His lids narrowed in challenge, and my mother of all smirks fizzled. Withered like a begonia in the Sahara. I unlocked his door and glared.

He didn’t care. He laughed. It was a very uncaring laugh.

Freaking son of Satan.

3

I’m diagonally parked in a parallel universe.

— BUMPER STICKER

I tried to convince Reyes to sit outside the courtroom, that I’d only be a minute, but he insisted on going in. We emptied our pockets for the guard, went through the metal detector as my purse was inspected, then went inside. Ubie – that’s the nickname I used to call him before I changed it – sat in the third row, his shoulders straight as he listened in rapt attention. I tiptoed to sit beside him. The captain was on his other side. And like any delinquent forced to enter a courtroom, Reyes chose a seat in the back of the room. He spread out, threw an arm over the back of his pew, and made himself comfortable. Ubie, on the other hand, looked anything but comfortable. He glanced over at me, slid his brows together in consternation, then returned his attention to the witness on the stand.

“Yes,” the Caucasian man in the prison uniform said. “I met Vikki about a year ago at a bar and we started sleeping together soon after. She told me she’d been slowly poisoning her husband, Steve, for several weeks for the insurance money.”

Vikki must have been the defendant, the one staring at him like he had two heads. The man’s testimony shocked her. And I felt that shock to my core. It rippled through me, knotted my stomach, made me feel woozy with nausea and utter disbelief. Either that or the morning sickness was kicking in.

“And we’re just supposed to believe you?” the female defense attorney asked. “A convicted felon who has perjured himself to get a reduced sentence before.”

“I’m telling the truth.”

I doubted that. The man in his late thirties seemed about as trustworthy as that guy who was selling pre-owned underwear out of his trunk the other day. I was with the defense attorney on this one.

Without looking at my scumbag uncle, I whispered, “He’s lying through his teeth. What do you want, Traitor Joe?” That was his new name: Traitor Joe. Because he was a traitor, and he was mean. A joke was one thing, but —

He cleared his throat, obviously uncomfortable talking at a trial. “I have a case for you,” he said back, his voice low. “And what do you mean, he’s lying through his teeth?”

I was busy concentrating on the defendant as she sat at a large table to the left of us. She was a heavyset woman, young with soft brown hair pulled back from her face. She wore an ill-fitting dress, the sleeves too tight around her arms. Wringing her hands in front of her on the table, she looked the type to feel more at home in jeans and cowboy boots than a dress. And her hands were rough. She was a worker. A hard worker. On top of that, she was completely innocent.

“Is this your case?” I asked Joe.

“Yes. We’ve spent months building it.”