Gun Shy

  Before we leave, Amanda gives me some sleeping pills that are safe to take in pregnancy and the address of a clinic in Reno. And she makes me swear on Hannah’s soul that I won’t do anything to Hal Carter.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CASSIE

  Amanda drives me home after we close up the diner. When we pull up, there’s an ambulance parked out front.

  The lights aren’t on.

  And there are more cars. Damon’s patrol car. Chris’s SUV. I’ve never seen so many people here at once. The light in the den is on; it’s too bright. We only ever use soft lamps for my mother’s makeshift hospital room. Through the kitchen window, I can see Damon sitting at the table, his head in his hands.

  And I know before I’ve even opened my car door, that my mother is dead.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  LEO

  I can’t kill Hal Carter, at least not yet. Not until Hannah gets some proper medical care. After I spoke to Amanda, I got Pike to take Hannah home. I couldn’t go there, not until I’d found a way to deal with my rage. Because if I walked into that trailer and saw my mother? I would have killed her on the spot with my bare hands for what happened to Hannah. What she let happen.

  So I’m here, at midnight, sitting in the empty garage with nothing but the old car bodies out back as companions.

  I’ve been sitting here all day. I watched the sun rise high into the midday sky, and then drop below the horizon until inky darkness claimed the night again. And I’ve been sitting here, freezing my ass off, shaking with the fiery anger that’s burning me from the inside.

  I need to hurt something. I think of Jennifer, her bent neck and spread thighs. I think of the way I hurt her. If she were here, I’d do it all again, and I’d feel better for it. But she’s not here. She’s missing. And I can already read the writing on the wall. Sheriff King wants to pin her disappearance on me. I’ve got days, at best, before I’m back in lockup.

  I can’t run. I’ll violate my parole, and besides, who would take care of Hannah then?

  I can’t tell the truth about Jennifer. If I do, I’ll get the death penalty. It doesn’t even matter if I killed her or not. All that matters is that if they find her car, it’ll probably have my DNA all over the fucking thing. And if they find her body… well then, it really is game over for me.

  At one a.m., I finally stand up. My legs are numb from the cold, from sitting for so damn long. I flick my lighter to get some illumination. I find a crowbar. I take it out back to where the Mustang lies, turn on the floodlights so I can see, and I beat the absolute shit out of the car my daddy left for me all those years ago.

  I’m beating it so hard, I start to bleed. At least, that’s what I think I see. Red splashes of something on the bumper. I drop the crowbar and it clatters to the asphalt beneath me. I study my arms, my hands, my face - no blood.

  Confused, I kneel in front of the car — or what’s left of it — and run my thumbnail across what, upon closer inspection, looks like specks of red paint. I’ve never seen them before; I mean, I haven’t seen this car up close in years. I scrape a little of the red and it comes away under my fingernail. It’s definitely paint. And it’s sparking a vague memory of something inside me long buried.

  I call Chris McCallister. It’s the middle of the night, but he answers. He’s on duty, just a block away at the Sheriff’s office. I ask him to come over to the garage, and to my surprise, he’s standing beside me before I can so much as hide the crowbar.

  He’s holding two cups of coffee, his uniform looking a little worse for wear.

  “You look like shit,” Chris says, offering one of the Styrofoam cups.

  “Could say the same about you,” I reply, accepting the coffee and gesturing my thanks with a tip of the cup.

  “Missing girls mean lots of overtime,” he says, swigging his coffee. I take a sip of mine and make a face; it’s watery and bitter, but at least it’s hot enough to warm me.

  “Your boss is gonna try and pin Jennifer on me, you know.”

  Chris shrugs. “Is that why you asked me to come over here? You know I can’t talk about that shit with you unless you’ve actually got some information for me.”

  I shake my head, watching as my breath turns into thick fog in front of my face. “No. I actually wanted to show you something. Can you keep it to yourself? Just for now?”

  Chris looks dubious.

  “It’s not about Jennifer Thomas. It’s about the red paint I found on the hood of this Mustang.” I point to the wreck.

  Chris blanches; clearly this is not something he was expecting. “This is your car from the accident,” he says. It’s not really a question, more a statement, but I nod in confirmation anyway. “Yeah. I was beating the shit out of it just before, and I noticed the red. I thought it was blood, but it’s the wrong consistency. See?” I scrape a little off with my nail and shake it into my palm. “It’s metallic paint. From another car.”

  “Why were you beating the shit out of a car you crashed eight years ago?” Chris asks suddenly.

  I clear my throat awkwardly. “My sister’s pregnant to a guy old enough to be her father, and I’m not allowed to beat the shit out of him.”

  “Right,” Chris replies, his eyebrows rising in disbelief. “So, you wanted to blow off some steam, you decided to take it out on your car, and that’s when you saw these paint chips?”

  I nod.

  “How do you know they didn’t get here recently?” Chris asks. “This car’s been sitting in a scrapyard for almost a decade, Leo. Even if we did find something…”

  “Please,” I say. “I think I’m remembering shit. I think somebody ran me off the road that night. We used to be friends, didn’t we?”

  Chris scrubs his hand along his clean-shaven jaw.

  “You remember that night, man. You were the one who took me away in cuffs.”

  “Even if somebody did run you off the road,” Chris says solemnly, “you could never prove it. It’s been so long. You’ve already served your time, Leo. Just let it go. Do your parole, and then leave this town and don’t ever come back.”

  “Please,” I beg him, and I fucking hate having to beg. “Please just test the fucking paint and see if you get a match. Just tell me what kind of car it comes from. That’s all I need to know.”

  I just need to know I’m not completely fucking crazy here. I’m afraid that if Chris doesn’t take these paint chips right now, they’ll disappear, like Jennifer disappeared.

  “Stay here,” Chris says. “Don’t go anywhere.”

  “Where the hell am I gonna go?”

  He shakes his head as he walks off.

  When he comes back, he’s holding one of those plastic evidence bags in his hand, gloves on his hands. I watch on as he takes a single-use razor blade from a package and scrapes as much of the red paint from the car bumper as he can get off.

  “I’m only doing this because we have history,” he says, sealing the bag up and stuffing it into his jacket pocket. “If I find something, I’ll let you know. Until then, don’t say anything to anyone about this, you hear?”

  I nod. “Thank you,” I reply, and I really fucking mean it.

  “Why are you doing this, man?” Chris asks. “Is it because she’s dead? Is that it?”

  My heart leaps into my throat. “Who’s dead?” I demand. “What do you mean?”

  “Teresa King,” Chris says. “She died a couple hours ago.”

  Fuck. She’s dead. I killed her. And I know I just spent most of my adult life locked away for what I did to Cassie’s poor mother, but there’s a vast chasm between almost-dead and actually dead.

  My eyes are stinging. Even after all these years, the first person I think of calling is Cassie.

  “How’s Cassie?” I ask.

  Chris takes a step back. “How do you think?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CASSIE

  My mother isn’t even dead forty-eight hours before we bury her in the ground.

  It
happened so suddenly, and yet so slowly - how can both of those statements be true? I can count on both hands the years it took for her to finally die after the accident that should have killed her instantly. And yet, I went to work in the morning, and she was alive, and I served food and wrote checks and took money and processed credit cards while my mother’s heart stopped inside her paper-thin chest. As she took her final breaths. Alone.

  My mother died all alone, in the dead of winter, and nobody was there with her.

  Maybe it’s better that way. Maybe she waited until she was alone to pass. Maybe we tried too hard to keep her around in the prison that her body had become.

  We travel to the Gun Creek Cemetery in the back of a funeral car, just Damon and I. Ray drives behind us in his truck. In front, the hearse carries my mother’s body to its final resting place, in the dirt. I stare out of the window during the short drive. I don’t talk. There’s nothing left to say.

  “It’ll be okay,” Damon murmurs beside me. Our eyes meet for the briefest of moments.

  He puts his hand on my knee. I look down to where his flesh touches mine; and I can’t, for some reason, take my eyes away from the bandaged bite mark between his index finger and thumb that continues to seep blood.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  LEO

  If Damon King knew I was stalking him right now, I think he’d shoot me dead on sight.

  I have to admit, I look like a goddamn psychopath. I’m dressed entirely in black, a balaclava covering my face in case anyone should glimpse me from my vantage spot underneath the old chestnut tree in Cassie’s yard.

  But goddamn it, I just want to see her. Get a glimpse. Know that she’s okay after her mother died and was buried.

  I look up into the window, her bedroom window. The shades are open just a crack, and I can see movement. Bodies. Two people, joined together, moving as one.

  I should look away, but I can’t. I know immediately what I’m looking at - hell, the window is fogged up - but I don’t look away. I can’t be with her, but I can stand here and look up and watch as Cassie presses her palm against the windowpane as somebody else makes the girl I love feel things she will never let me give to her as long as I live.

  I’m so busy looking at her face that I don’t notice his at first. Could it be Chase? Pike, even? Chase was close with Cassie many years ago, and he probably hates me, so I don’t see him filling me in if he is seeing Cassie behind closed doors.

  But something about the guy looks… familiar. I can’t get a good enough look to make out either of their facial features, but I’d know Cassie anywhere.

  I’ve got those binoculars in my pocket. I don’t want to get them out, but if I can see her better for just a moment, I’ll do it.

  I don’t take my eyes off that spot she’s touching on the window as I take the binoculars from my pocket and hold them up to my eyes.

  I focus again, still standing behind the chestnut tree, thankful for its size and position. With my spare hand, I run my fingers along the rough bark, remembering the way my palms broke and bled when I pressed Cassie up against the trunk of this very tree and fucked her. Now, my palms are scarred from the accident, and she’s up there in her house on the hill with some other guy.

  I turn a little dial on the the binoculars and everything comes into sharp focus.

  Suddenly, I can see the guy who has his hand around her throat, pressing her up against the window as he fucks the shit out of her.

  It’s… oh, shit.

  Her hand is pressed against the glass, and he’s got one hand on her hip, rutting into her like… well, like I want to. Like an animal.

  It’s not Pike.

  It’s not Chase.

  It’s Damon.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CASSIE

  The morning after my mother’s funeral is…quiet. Everything is deathly still. There’s a buzzing in my ears, a static hiss that the sound of her medical equipment used to fill.

  It’s been so long that, even though I know she’s dead, that she’s buried in a shiny black coffin six feet under at the Gun Creek Memorial Cemetery, I still shuffle downstairs, get her liquid nutrition mixed, and am standing in her empty room with the syringe in my hand before I realize what I’m doing.

  The bed is gone already. The room is devoid of the medical equipment that used to crowd around the bed. It’s just an empty room that smells like bleach.

  I wonder who cleaned it out. Part of me wishes they hadn’t touched it. Another part is grateful that I don’t have to deal with the aftermath. It’s like it never happened. There’s not a trace of my mother here. Except for the scars on my heart, the reflection in the mirror whenever I see myself and recognize her, the burns on my wrist. They’ll never go away.

  It’s been snowing again. The curtains are open; it’s so beautiful out there. So empty. From the window, I can see the spot in the far corner of our yard where Damon dug a hole and buried my dog.

  “Good morning,” Damon says behind me. I turn away from the snow, my retinas pulsing and blind in the center of my vision from the stark white light outside. It’s like someone has set off a camera flash right in my eyes.

  “Sleep well?” Damon asks, sipping from the mug of coffee he’s holding.

  I’m so tired. I can feel my eyes, puffy and red from all the crying I’ve done in the past forty-eight hours.

  “Like the dead,” I reply. Ha. I barely slept at all.

  “Come out of there,” he says, his eyes flicking around my mother’s dying room with clear discomfort.

  I try to blink away the blind spot in my eyes. It persists. I decide I can’t really fathom a fight right now and follow Damon into the kitchen. The pot of coffee is still there, and I pour myself some. I sip it and almost gag. He really cannot make coffee to save his life.

  Damon smiles lazily from across the counter, his eyes still puffy from sleep. “I can see the cogs turning in your brain, Cassandra. What are you daydreaming about?”

  I lean my elbows on the edge of the counter. My legs are tired and my head hurts. I don’t have it in me to lie.

  “This novel I read about a sociopath.”

  “Oh, yeah?” He drains his coffee and rounds the counter, setting the empty mug in the sink. Turning to me, he reaches out, tucking messy blonde hair behind my ear. And he leaves his hand there, his palm against my jaw, the pad of his thumb just below my bottom lip as he gazes down at me. “Enlighten me.”

  The snow outside reflects off his blue eyes and I feel so heavy.

  “A sociopath is… somebody who’s empty inside. Somebody who needs to take from everybody else to fill them up. Because they were born wrong. Because there’s nothing inside them.”

  Damon smiles; his lazulite eyes crease up ever so slightly at the edges. I imagine how beautiful he would have looked as a young child; how his mother would have melted whenever he smiled up at her. Because his eyes deceive. They don’t look empty. They’re beautiful, full of the souls of everyone else he’s sucked dry and left in his quest to find that something, that perfect thing to fill him up.

  In my head, I imagine opening a can, pulling away the lid to reveal a mass of writhing worms. The lid cuts me, and some of my blood drips down onto the worms so that their beige-brown bodies are mottled with red.

  This is what happens when you open a can of worms and show it to Damon. You end up with blood, and it’s almost always your own. But blood isn’t always a bad thing. Sometimes, it’s the one thing that reminds you you’re still alive.

  I can see myself in his eyes. My soul. He’s taken it from me.

  “Do you feel empty, Damon?” I whisper.

  He rests a hand at the base of my throat, all trace of his smile gone as he matches his fingers, onetwothreefourfive, to the brand-new bruises he left on me in the night, in the dark. “Not when I’m inside you.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CASSIE

  I ache between my thighs. I’m reminded of last night. Of how Damon cr
ept into my bedroom after my mother’s wake and fucked me until I hurt. Of course, it wasn’t enough that she was dead. That we’d just buried her. It wasn’t enough that he shot my dog. Once he’d had a taste of my pain, he had to come back for more.

  The man I’ve been fucking for the past eight years, or rather, the man who’s been fucking me — his eyes gleam in the harsh sunlight that casts a brightness over the kitchen, bathing it in some macabre stage lights that scream: Action! But this isn’t make-believe, and the curtains won’t fall at the end of our grotesque little act, and after we’re done here, I won’t be able to peel my mask off and toss it on the ground as I exit the stage.

  I swallow thickly. I wish he’d get tired of me.

  “I heard you in the shower last night,” he says, his fingers squeezing into my flesh. “Did you think you could just wash me off like nothing happened?”

  My cheeks burn as I try to twist away from him; Damon tightens his hold on my throat, crushing my windpipe as he pulls my face to his.

  “You need to learn,” he says, through gritted teeth, “that I know everything about you, Cassie. You can sit here and try to psychoanalyze me, but I know what you think. I know where you are. And I know exactly where you’re going.”

  It hurts, this familiarity. This incessant pain.

  “My wife just died. Say sorry,” he says, loosening his grip.

  “I’m sorry!” I wheeze, my throat burning as tears stream down from my eyes.

  “Not like that,” he says, one hand moving to his belt buckle. “Show me how sorry you are.”

  I do what I’m told. I show him just how sorry I am. How sorry I am that he ever came to this godforsaken town and ruined my life.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  LEO

  Taking Hannah to see an obstetrician in Reno is like a covert fucking CIA mission. We don’t tell my mother. She will freak. She will worry that we won’t come back, or that we are trying to take Hannah away for good. My mother is nothing if not a ball of narcissistic anxiety and paranoia with a streak of nasty for good measure.