““he was so focused on watching where Presley went that she almost didn’t see the man he was with until they stopped beneath a security light, their backs to her. She first noticed the other man then, and was shocked at his size. Then her gaze moved to the thick bush of curly hair pulled into a pony tail at the back of his neck, and she wondered how he ever got something that unruly washed and dried. It wasn’t until he turned sideways that she got a momentary glimpse of his profile. As she did, a strange, anxious feeling skittered through her belly, then quickly disappeared. The stranger didn’t matter. He couldn’t matter. It was time to make her move. She had to stop Presley now, before he went any farther. She reached toward the glove box for her handgun and taser, slipped the taser in her pocket and was reaching for the door latch when the big man turned and faced her. For a full fifteen or twenty seconds, Cat had a clear and unfettered view of his face, and in those seconds, the world fell out from under her. She didn’t know that she started moaning, or that she’d broken out in a cold sweat. All she knew was that she was no longer in her car in a San Antonio parking lot but back in her childhood home, trying to run from the intruder who’d come out of their bathroom. She was screaming for her father when the intruder’s arm slid around her chest and lifted her off her feet. She saw the strange geometric designs on his arm, then on the side of his face, as the cold slash of steel from his knife suddenly slid against her throat. The coppery scent of her own blood was thick in her nose as he dropped her to the floor, leaving her to watch as he slammed the same knife into her father over and over again. She tried to scream, but the sounds wouldn’t come. The last things she saw before everything went black were the look of sorrow on her father’s face and the demon who’d killed them running out the front door.””
