Page 66 of Heart Stopping
"Like I said, you can walk out the door and never look back," I told him coldly. "You saw what you came to see."
I hadn't missed it when he said he tried to take care of Fairfield himself. What form would that have taken? I couldn't see evidence of a gun on him. Or a knife, for that matter. What was he planning to do, yell Fairfield to death? Perhaps glare at him until his heart stopped?
"Have I?" Jules looked at me sideways, dark eyes intense. "Do you seriously think seeing that asshole like that is going to make me feel better about what he did to our brother?" He gestured back towards the bathroom with his whole arm.
"No, because it doesn't take away the pain of what he did to my sister." I tried to keep my voice even, although my emotions threatened to spill over.
"All it does is make me feel better that he can't do it again. That lasts for a couple of days before I'm reminded he's only one person. There's so many more like him."
Jules dropped his hand to his side with a slap. He pressed his lips together and half closed his eyes.
"Exactly," he said, his voice gravelly with his own barely contained emotion. "That sack of shit dying isn't gonna bringAugustus back. It's not going to erase what I saw when I walked into his room and found him…" He screwed his eyes shut.
"Jules." Cass walked over and put his arms around his older brother. Jules stiffened for a moment before returning the embrace.
"It's so fucking fucked up," Jules whispered.
"It's extremely fucked up," I agreed. "I wish I got to him before he got to your brother. Then it wouldn't have happened at all."
Jules all but shoved Cass away. "You were looking for him?"
"For years," I said.
"You could have stopped this." His tone was all accusation.
"Julius—" Cass started.
Jules shook his head. "No. If she had found him, Augustus would be here right now."
"What Fairfield did wasn't her fault," Cass insisted. "You know that."
"Do I?" Jules rounded on him. His jaw set, he turned and stalked out the door, slamming it shut behind him.
"I'm sorry about him," Cass said softly. "He didn't mean it. He knows there's nothing you could have done." He didn't seem so sure.
Maybe I was projecting my thoughts on to him, because I blamed myself. If I spent less time setting up my restaurant and more time hunting these monsters, I might have gotten to Fairfield first. I'd split my attention between two things, trying to hold onto some kind of normality. How many people had hurt because I did that?
How many had died?
How many would still die while we tried to figure out who Eros, Hypnos and Zeus were?
We were in a race to find them before they destroyed more lives.
And before they found us.
EPILOGUE
ZEUS
"Boss, it would seem Granger Fairfield is dead," Thomas remarked.
"Of course he is," I said with a grunt. Why did I surround myself with toadies like him? Yes men and their Captain Obvious routine.
I rewound the footage and watched it again.
Fairfield stood inside his own property, the one he used when he visited New York. In his hand, he held a gun, pointed at two figures covered from head to toe in black. One looked female, but I couldn't be sure. They were speaking, but no sound accompanied the video.
Exactly as it happened the last handful of times I watched it, the back door opened and a man stepped through. The camera only caught a glimpse of his face before he plunged something into Fairfield's neck. Some kind of drug.
