As Hunter loosened his grasp, Bishop rolled away to the floor, coughing and sputtering. Regina's kind face was stricken, red from crying. She started sobbing again now, apologizing to Corinne, begging forgiveness for what Victor had done. She tried to pull Corinne into her arms, but the thought of being touched - by anyone now - was too much for her to bear. Corinne backed away. She felt trapped in the room, suffocating in the confines of the Darkhaven that was no longer her home and could never be again. The walls seemed to press inward on her, the floors shifting, making her stomach churn and her head spin. She had to get out of there.
Mason held out his hand to brace her as she took an awkward step toward the study's open doors. She dodged his reach, avoiding his comforting hand and pitying eyes.
"I need air," she whispered, panting with the effort to form words. "I can't ... I need to get ... out of here."
And then she was running.
Through the foyer of the big house and out to the long driveway. Somewhere nearby, she heard the bright melody of Christmas music, joyous carols spilling out into the night. A soul-deep bereavement raked Corinne from within. She sucked in the cold air, rapid breaths sawing in and out of her lungs as she ran the length of the snow-edged drive.
Chapter Nine
Corinne was all the way to the closed gate at the street when Hunter left Victor Bishop to the wreckage of his sins and stepped out of the Darkhaven, onto the frozen lawn. She looked very small, fragile somehow, despite the strength she'd shown inside the house. Now that she was out here, alone in the darkness, he realized just how wounded she truly was. Her body shuddered, weathering a pain he could only guess at as she clung to the black iron of the gate, shoulders slumped, head bowed low.
She wept softly as he approached. Her breath puffed in pale clouds into the darkness. Her sobs were quiet but seemed to come from a place very deep within her. He didn't know what to say as he drew nearer to her. He didn't have any words of comfort, wouldn't have the first idea what she might want to hear.
He reached out his hand, intending to place it on her quivering shoulder the way he'd seen others do in shared moments of distress. Inexplicably, he felt an urge to acknowledge her pain. She looked so alone in that moment, he wanted to show her that he recognized she'd just lost something important to her back in that house: her trust.
She noticed his presence before he had the chance to touch her.
Sniffling, she lifted her head and looked at him over her shoulder. "Did you ... do anything to him?"
Hunter gave a slow shake of his head. "He lives, although I don't understand why you would find his death so unacceptable."
Her fine brows bunched into a frown. "He loved me once. Until a few minutes ago, he was my father. How could he have done this to me?"
Hunter stared into her fierce eyes, understanding that she wasn't looking for answers from him. She had to know, as he did, that Victor Bishop's cowardice had proven stronger than his bond to the child he'd taken in and raised as his daughter.
Corinne glanced past him, into the darkness beyond his shoulder. "How could he have lived with himself all this time, knowing what he'd done - not only to me, but to the rest of the family through the lies he told? How could he have slept after murdering that girl and using her death as part of his deception?"
"He is not deserving of the mercy you gave him tonight," Hunter replied, no malice in the statement, only a bleak truth. "I doubt he would have given you the same consideration."
"I don't want him dead," she whispered. "I couldn't do that to my mother - to Regina. He'll have to find a way to answer to her, not me. And not you or the Order either."
Hunter grunted low in his throat, less than convinced. The chief reason Victor Bishop was still breathing was the plea from his betrayed daughter. Hunter had been taken aback when she'd asked him to spare the man. He shouldn't have been. Mira's vision had predicted it, after all. Yet not as flawlessly as he would have guessed. The situation had seemed different. Corinne had seemed different, pleading not with the impassioned desperation he'd witnessed in Mira's vision but a defeated weariness.
And not just that, Hunter reflected. The outcome of the vision had been different than the child seer had shown him. He'd stayed his hand. The course had been altered, and that had never happened before.
It felt wrong, all of it.
Part of him was being drawn back toward the Darkhaven residence even as he stood there. He'd been trained never to leave loose ends that could unravel on him later. Hunter had witnessed a broken man, someone who'd been proven pliable and weak. Those things could be manipulated by someone stronger, as they had been by Dragos all those years ago. While tonight Victor Bishop had seemed an adversary of little consequence, despite his wealth and any remaining political connections, the experienced predator in Hunter twitched with the need to finish his job. Knowing what he did of little Mira and her extraordinary gift, he wondered how it was even possible that he'd not defied Corinne's pleas and delivered that final, preordained blow. He saw her tremble in front of him as a chilling gust blew through the iron of the secured gate.
"I need to get out of here," she murmured, pivoting toward the tall bars. "I don't belong here. Not anymore."
She grabbed hold of the gate in both hands and rattled it, harder and harder, a wordless cry erupting from deep within her throat. She threw her head back and railed at the star-pierced, black sky. "Let me out, goddamn it! I need to get away from this place right now!"
Hunter moved in behind her and placed his hands on top of hers. She stilled, every muscle within her going tense and motionless. Even though she had been shivering, her body felt warm against his chest. The heat was a living thing, an almost unbearable presence that made all of his senses fire up like awakened circuitry.
Corinne must have felt it too. She pulled her hands out from under his and folded her arms in front of her. He realized now how close they were, barely an inch to separate her spine from his chest and torso, her petite body caught before him in the cage of his arms. She was so small and delicate, yet there was a defiant energy that radiated around her. It drew him closer, enticed him to breathe her in, to let his touch return to the impossibly soft tops of her small hands, and to test the silken warmth of her long dark hair against his stubbled cheek. He wasn't accustomed to acknowledging temptation, let alone giving in to it. And so he held himself still in that bewildering moment, ignoring the sudden quickening of his pulse and the heat that kindled in his veins.
When she withdrew and ducked away, Hunter felt a swift relief. Cold air filled the space between his arms. Corinne stood to his side as he moved in closer to the locked seam of the iron gate and wrenched it open wide enough for them to slip out.
Alarms immediately went off back at the house. Floodlights blinked on from all over, spilling illumination along the Darkhaven's entrance and perimeter walls. Corinne looked at him under the pale yellow wash of the security lights. "Get me out of here. I don't care where we go, just get me away from this place, Hunter."
He gave her a grim nod, then motioned for her to follow him to the car he'd left parked down the street when he'd returned to confront Bishop. They ran together, Corinne jumping into the passenger seat as Hunter went around to take the wheel.
He drove off, taking note of the fact that she didn't look back even once as they left the Darkhaven behind them in the darkness. She sat rigidly in the seat next to him, her gaze distant, staring out the windshield but focused on nothing at all.
They rode in silence for more than twenty minutes, until he had navigated to a quiet part of the city and found a place to pull over. "I must report in to the compound," he said, retrieving his cell phone from the pocket of his leather trench coat.