Page 4 of Speak of the Devil

Caleb needed the exact opposite of that — a place teeming with life around the clock, a place where he could disappear among the crowds and the tourists and the frenetic activity.

“I don’t think I can tell you that,” he said after a pause.

Brooke regarded him for a moment before she put down her coffee cup once again. “Give me a few minutes.”

She left the kitchen while Caleb made himself stay in the spot where he was standing. It would have been way too easy to head over to the cupboard, get out a mug — maybe the rose-painted one she’d scorned so many years ago, just as a little fuck-you — and pour out the rest of the coffee waiting in the carafe of the fancy Breville machine sitting on the counter, but he wasn’t going to sink to her level.

No, he’d just get the money and bail, and know that he’d never have to come back here after today.

It wasn’t as though she was going to miss that $50K. That much was only pin money to her, and he had no doubt that she’d go to the bank and get what she needed to replace it almost as soon as he was gone.

A few minutes later, Brooke returned, now holding a black briefcase that Caleb recognized as one of his father’s.

“I didn’t count it,” she said as she handed him the briefcase. “But it should be somewhere between forty-five and forty-eight thousand.”

More than enough to get started — and he already had a good idea about how to build that nest egg into something much bigger.

“Thanks,” he replied. “I appreciate it.”

For a second or two, she only looked at him, expression almost blank. “Do you, Caleb?”

He met her gaze, and she blinked and then glanced away. “It’ll help,” he said easily before pausing as a thought crossed his mind.

Maybe he shouldn’t ask, and yet….

“What happened to my loft?”

Brooke waited to reply until she had her coffee cup back in hand and had taken another sip. “You were gone more than a year. I paid the property taxes the first year, but then Larry said I should really sell it.”

Larry Moore, the family attorney. He wasn’t a part-demon, but his instincts were cutthroat enough that he might as well have been.

And Caleb had always gotten the impression that Larry was interested in Brooke, although he’d known the lawyer was way too smart to show any real signs of his attraction when Daniel Lockwood was still around.

With Daniel out of the way, Caleb supposed it had only been a matter of time before the shark started looking for chum.

“How much?”

His mother didn’t pretend to misunderstand the question. “Obviously, much more than what I just gave you. It’s not like I keep that kind of money on hand, you know.”

True enough. All the same, Caleb wanted the real number, just so he could keep his mental accounts straight.

“How much?” he pressed.

“A little over two hundred,” she said. “We got a fair price.”

He supposed she would. Property values in Greencastle weren’t anywhere close to what they were in Los Angeles, so a bit more than two hundred thousand for a loft — even one that had been completely updated — without any land was still pretty good.

When he didn’t reply right away, Brooke said, “If you’ll tell me where you’re going, then I can send you a cashier’s check for that amount. I never intended to keep the money from the sale of the loft.”

It was tempting…but Caleb knew it was better for everyone concerned if she had no idea of where he planned to end up.

“No, I’m good,” he replied.

For the first time, real worry flickered in her eyes. “So…what? You come back after being gone for more than two years and won’t give me a single word of explanation as to where you’ve been all this time or how you survived when no one else did, and you won’t give even a hint of where you plan to go after this?”

He hesitated. A shadow outside the kitchen window caught his eye, and he watched for a few seconds as a crow landed on the dry grass in the backyard and began pecking in the dirt for seeds. Something about the black bird silhouetted against the yellowed grass and surrounded by bare trees made a shiver run down his spine.

Too cold here. After two years in Hell, he never wanted to be cold again.

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