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A splatter of hot liquid hits my face.
I shriek when I feel it, my eyes flying open to see Tina slumping onto her side. One of her hands flings outward past her head, knuckles against the floor, knife skittering from her grip. A thin pool of blood starts to roll out from under her, spreading fast.
She’s not moving. I’m not even sure she’s still alive.
“Tina?” I say, shaking her.“Tina?”
Noise drifts from the doorway. Someone breathing. I look up and see Coop standing there. Even in the darkness, I can make out the glint of his blue eyes as he lowers the gun.
“Quincy,” he says with a nod.
There’s always a nod.
43.
I notice the ring immediately. The red class ring he wears in place of a wedding band. It’s familiar, yet foreign. I’ve seen it so many times that I’ve come to not see it. Taken it for granted, like so many other things about Coop.
That’s why I didn’t recognize it when I saw it in that photograph on Lisa Milner’s dresser. Coop’s face wasn’t in the picture. It was just his hand thrown over Lisa’s shoulder, the ring right there, visible yet not.
But now it’s all I see, worn on the same hand that holds his Glock. Although the gun is lowered, his index finger continues to twitch against the trigger.
“Are you hurt?” he asks.
“No.”
“Good,” Coop says. “That’s real good, Quincy.”
He takes another step closer, his long legs covering twice the distance of a normal stride. One more step and he’s right beside us, towering over Tina and me. Or maybe it’s just me now. Tina’s likely dead already. I can’t tell.
Coop gives the knife near Tina’s hand a rough kick, sending it sliding into a distant corner, where it’s swallowed by the shadows.
There’s no point in trying to run. Coop’s finger never leaves that trigger. One shot is all it would take to put me down. Just like Tina. I’m not sure I even can run. Grief and pills and the weight of remembering that night have left me paralyzed.
“For a few years there in the beginning, I always wondered howmuch you knew,” Coop says. “When you asked to see me in the hospital that day, I thought you were toying with me. That you wanted me to be there when you told the detectives you remembered everything. I almost didn’t come.”
“Why did you?”
“Because I think I loved you even then.”
I sway slightly, dizzy from disgust. When I drift too far to the left, Coop tightens his finger around the trigger. I force myself to stop moving.
“How many were there?” I ask. “Before that night?”
“Three.”
There’s no hesitation. He says it with the same ease with which he orders his coffee. I was hoping for at least a pause.
Three. The strangled woman on the side of the road and the two campers stabbed in their tent. All of them were mentioned in the article I found at Lisa’s house. I think she knew what happened to them. I think she died because of it.
“It’s a sickness,” Coop says. “You need to understand that, Quincy. I never wanted to do those things.”
I sob. When snot starts leaking from my nose, I don’t bother to wipe it away. “Then why did you?”
“I’ve spent my whole life in these woods. Hiking, hunting, doing things I was too young to be doing. I lost my virginity on that big rock up on the hill.” Coop cringes at the memory, hating himself. “She was the school slut. Willing to do it with anyone. Even me. When it was over, I puked in the bushes. Christ, I was ashamed of what I’d done. So ashamed that I thought about snapping her neck right there on that rock, just so she wouldn’t tell anyone. It was only fear of getting caught that kept me from doing it.”
I shake my head and put a hand to my temple. With every word, a piece of my heart breaks off and falls away.
“Please stop.”