Page 1 of Devil in the Details

Chapter One

Caleb Lockwood had been expecting her, so he wasn’t surprised to see his friend Delia Dunne’s white Hyundai Kona pull up to the curb in front of the house and stop. No room in the driveway; it was occupied by a truck that had arrived about fifteen minutes earlier to deliver the new furniture. When he’d first ordered all those pieces, his intent had been to stage the newly renovated house and then keep what he wanted and sell the rest, but the closer the Pueblo Street property got to completion, the more he knew he wanted this to be his home, rather than the flip he’d purchased almost three months ago, not long after he arrived in Las Vegas once he’d clawed his way out of Hell. The first house had given him a place to land, but he knew it had never felt like home. Not really.

Exactly how Delia — the woman who’d helped him find the Pueblo Street house but had become far more than merely his real estate agent — was going to react to his about-face regarding the sprawling mid-century home, he wasn’t sure. Of course, he owned the house and could do whatever he wanted with it, but he knew it wouldn’t have possessed the same polished perfection and understated style without her thoughtful input. That was part of the reason why he wanted to wait a little while to reveal his actual plans for the property and pretend as though he was just showing off the final result rather than claiming the house as his own.

He watched as she got out of the little SUV and locked the vehicle. Because it was a Saturday, she wore jeans and a pretty elbow-sleeve top with pale green embroidery rather than her usual skirt, dress blouse, and high heels. Caleb liked her both ways, but he thought he liked casual Delia best, with her coppery hair hanging loose on her shoulders and toes painted with soft peach polish revealed by a pair of flat sandals.

And now that they’d reached late March, the weather was the sort of perfection an Indiana native like himself could only have dreamed of. Sure, it would get blisteringly hot soon enough, but for the moment, he was just going to enjoy these wonderful stretches of days in the seventies.

“I still can’t believe you got the place done so quickly,” she said as she met him on the front stoop. The house was a little over three thousand square feet in size, but it didn’t have much of a porch.

“You saw it happening,” he replied with a grin.

“Some of it.” She glanced over his shoulder, clearly trying to get a peek at the interior through the partially open door. “But placing flooring orders and choosing lighting isn’t quite the same as having boots on the ground during the entire process.”

Caleb thought she’d done a little more than that, but if she wanted to downplay her part in the remodel, so be it.

“They’re still setting up the furniture,” he said. “So I thought we’d check out the backyard first.”

He inclined his head toward the side gate, and her brows drew together for just a moment. It seemed obvious to him that she thought he was taking the whole “surprise reveal” schtick to unnecessary levels, but she only nodded in response and followed him back to the driveway and then over to the gate that led into the side yard.

Even that part of the grounds hadn’t been neglected — he’d had pavers installed and a small arbor built that would one day be covered in climbing flowers.

“Nice,” Delia observed, taking in every detail with keen gray eyes. “This part of the yard probably won’t get used as much, but buyers like to see that every bit of a flip has been attended to.”

About all Caleb could do was make a small sound of affirmation. Yes, of course he was going to tell her that he had no intention of selling the house…and yet, he didn’t think this was the right moment.

Not yet.

The side yard led into the section of the backyard where the pool was located. When he’d first viewed the house, he wasn’t sure he liked that positioning, since it wasn’t directly behind the living room and the massive wall of glass he’d already imagined in that space and therefore wasn’t as easy to see when you were hanging out in that part of the house, but the secluded nature of the pool’s original location did make it feel more private.

Too bad he knew there was no way in the world Delia would ever go skinny dipping with him, no matter how cloistered the pool might seem.

“Wow, this turned out nice,” she said as she moved closer to the edge, which had been redone in flagstone pavers. “This thing was definitely a wreck when you bought the place.”

“Wreck” might have been something of an overstatement. True, the plaster had been cracked and he’d known there was no way he was keeping that border of electric blue tile — he guessed it wasn’t original to the house and probably had been installed sometime in the eighties — but it wasn’t as if the entire pool had needed to be removed and a new one put in.

But now, with the plaster refreshed and an understated border of tile in shades of gray and beige and soft blue replacing that neon ’80s tile — and with new pavers installed all around the border — the thing had a new lease on life.

Besides…even though he knew better than to bring it up now…he had a feeling Delia also had a negative view of the pool in its original state simply because the home’s resident ghost had tried to push her in the deep end with the hope that she’d break her neck when she dropped ten feet to the hard, cracked plaster below.

Good thing Caleb had sent that vengeful ghost straight to Hell where it belonged. The previous owner of the house had been a serial killer, with the bodies of five women buried in the ground beneath the rumpus room on the lower level next to the garage.

But quarter demons didn’t have much to fear from ghosts, and Caleb knew with the owner of the house dispatched and the remains of those poor women discreetly zapped into the Las Vegas medical examiner’s office, there wasn’t anything here that could possibly bother him.

Except maybe a few more minion demons like the ones the demon Calach had sent after him to keep him away from the local casinos, but everything had been utterly quiet these past couple of months. True, Caleb — with a massive assist from Delia — had also banished Calach to Hell, and there was no chance of him coming back any time soon, so the odds of that particular demon causing any further havoc were probably pretty low.

Then again, Caleb had spent an endless two years there before he was able to escape, and therefore he knew that if there was one thing Hell had plenty of, it was demons.

He’d worry about that later, though.

A glance through the huge bifold doors that opened onto the living room told him the movers and the stagers he’d hired were still busy putting everything in place, so he’d need to stall for time for just a little while longer.

Which meant he might as well let Delia know what he intended to do with the house.

“The whole thing came out awesome,” he told her. “And you’ll get to see inside in just a couple of minutes. Once I give you the tour, you’ll understand why I made this decision.”

“‘Decision’?” she echoed, one russet eyebrow lifting slightly.

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