And yet he could have sworn he was being watched. “Jim? You out there, Jim?”

No one replied. Nobody came out of the foliage.

“Jim?”

As he went back inside, he had the strangest feeling he was never going to see Heron again. Which was odd, because Jim had been so fired up to be a savior.

Then again Matthias’s body was stiffening on the kitchen floor, which meant Isaac was safe now—so that man’s purpose had been served, hadn’t it.

Although . . . just to be sure, he was keeping the bulletproof vest on until dawn.

No reason to take being alive for granted.

CHAPTER 51

CHAPTER 51

“Jim? You out there, Jim?”

As Isaac’s eyes searched the trees, Jim stood no more than three feet away from the guy and he wished he could hug the motherfucker. God . . . when those two gunshots had gone off and he’d watched through the kitchen windows as both Matthias and Rothe went down, years had been shaved off his eternal life.

But Isaac had been okay. He’d saved himself with some very clear, defensive thinking. Just as he’d been trained to do.

“Jim?”

And now, as he stared at his fellow soldier, pure, unadulterated elation flooded him. He’d won. Again.

Fuck you, Devina, he thought. Fuck you.

Isaac was alive and so were Grier and her father. And in spite of getting the soul wrong in the beginning, things had worked out properly—although Nigel’s punishment thing had turned out to be a nonissue, hadn’t it.

Jim looked over his shoulder at Adrian and Eddie and was surprised to find that they weren’t all smiles.

“What’s wrong—”

He didn’t get a chance to finish the sentence. A mad swirling rush rose from his feet, twirling around him, rising up to claim his legs and hips and chest. He tried to fight it, but couldn’t run from—

His molecules scrambled and scattered until he was a swarm of himself that moved out of the dimensions of time and space, traveling to some unknown destination.

When he coalesced, he knew just where he was . . . and the sight of Devina’s worktable made his gut sour.

He had not won. Had he.

“No, you did not,” she said from behind him.

Turning on his heel, he looked at her as she came in through the archway. She was in her brunette form, all lovely and lush and fake as a Barbie version of herself.

She smiled, her red lips curling off her beautiful white teeth. “Matthias shot Isaac with the intent to kill him. Whether or not there was a death is not the measure. There was mens rea—a guilty mind.”

Above her head, a black flag hung from the black wall, the first trophey for her.