Hell's Rayne (Book 1)

Chapter 20

As much as I tried to ignore them, Frank's words replayed on a running loop inside my head as I made my way back up the narrow street. He'd been toying with me, hoping I'd be desperate enough by this point in my case to set him free for any scrap of information he might have had to offer. As desperate as I was to get this case done, I wasn't grasping as so many straws that I'd risk letting a Whisperer free on the surface; the carnage would be unimaginable and the repercussions way too high. No, there was no way I'd ever be that desperate.

Still, I did have to wonder, was there any shred of truth in what he'd said? Any at all? So the words ran around in my head and I walked while I over-analysed every syllable, all to no avail. The only good thing that came from my overworked mind was I became distracted enough to find the street that led to Jesse's house without much in the way of searching.

Knowing where I had headed wrong the first time did make it that much easier to find my way, but over thinking on Frank's words, rather than on the worry of getting lost, helped that much more, and I soon found myself picking my way through the overgrown garden towards Jesse's front door. There was a light on in the hallway so I was hopeful that he would still be up. I knocked and waited.

Some time passed as I shivered on the doorstep, so I raised my fist to knock again; perhaps he was asleep after all. Trouble was, I didn't actually have anywhere else to go, not to mention I didn't feel safe with Frank still roaming around out there in the dark, I would just have to wake him. I knocked a second time, the banging of my knuckles on the wood sounded obscenely loud in the pitch darkness and I was quietly grateful for Jesse having no immediate neighbours.

A scuffling noise came from behind the door before it opened just a crack, and Jesse's figure appeared from behind it. The dim light that came from the hallway haloed around him and cast his features into shadow, but even obscured by darkness what I could make out of him looked distinctly rumpled and dishevelled. Yeah, pretty sure he had been asleep.

He blinked at me a couple of times, pulling the door open wider so that the light filtered around him and revealed his face a little better. Large bags shaded his dark eyes, which looked distinctly red-rimmed. His hair was even more of a mess than usual and his face looked drawn and pale; though he was still dressed in his shirt and jeans – maybe he hadn't been sleeping, most people didn't sleep in jeans.

A deep frown furrowed his brow as he took in my form standing, unexpectedly, on his doorstep. “Heather? Uh, what are you doing here? I thought you went back to the pub,” he said in a gravelly tone.

“I did. I'm sorry, did I wake you up?” I asked, diverting attention away from myself for a moment. I still wasn't sure what excuse I was going to give Jesse for my showing up on his doorstep at such an hour of the night.

While I could usually fabricate a story at the drop of a hat, my cover was so dependent on it, I'd been too distracted during my walk here to come up with an excuse to explain away what had happened with Frances and Frank back at the pub.

Heather was proving to be one of the most one dimensional persona's I'd ever come up with and I found I was pouring more and more of myself - my real self – into her all the time, but there was only so much of me that I could let slip through the cracks. So what would Heather have done to land herself in this sort of situation? Being myself this time just wasn't going to work but I'd lost touch with this identity some time ago, feeling a desperate need to just be Rayne again for a little while. The truth was rarely an option and it certainly wasn't this time, at least not the whole truth.

“Well, kind of,” he said, “I crashed out on the sofa a little while after you left. Got a phone call that dragged me through the ringer a bit and I just suddenly felt too knackered to do anything but lie down...”