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Kian shook his head. “Please don’t. I don’t want to keep arguing with him, and it doesn’t matter anyway. I can’t keep working there with Vaughn back in town. I can’t handle him being my roommate and my boss.”
I wanted to argue, but I could see how that would be a problem. “As long as you aren’t moving out…”
I really didn’t want him to go. Despite the kiss, Kian was my friend first. I liked seeing him every day, and having him in the house made me feel safe. As long as I didn’t think about the fact he was possibly a suspect in my mother’s murder.
That little ole thing.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he promised.
A tiny, panicked part of me settled at his reassurance. It wrapped up my concerns about his relationship with my mom and Bart and smothered them.
Now wasn’t the time. I reached across the center console and took out the photos I’d stashed there after thinking about it earlier. We needed to get on with this. If Leonn decided to leave for work early, this entire thing would be a waste of time.
“Cover me.” I clutched the photos between my fingers and squeezed the door handle with my other.
“Wait!” Kian yelped. “Cover you? With what, a blanket? I’m not armed. What are you doing?”
I flashed the photos at him. He’d seen them before. They were copies of the Polaroids I’d taken of myself after the attack. My face bruised and battered, my skin ripped and torn. My eyes looked dead. Completely soulless because three men had taken every scrap of dignity I’d managed to scrape up over the years. Plus, I’d added a message from myself in blood-red Sharpie. “I’m reminding our friend I haven’t forgotten what he did.”
Before Kian could argue, I was out of the car and striding down the gravel driveway.
Kian hissed for me to come back, but I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t rush or hurry. I walked down that driveway like I was a six-foot model on a Victoria’s Secret runway, owning every step, my damn head held high.
If Leonn had cameras I’d be on them. But what was he going to do? Go to the cops? I doubted it. That would mean he’d have to tell his wife and kids about it. I suspected Leonn wasn’t quite that brave.
Every step I took stoked the fire inside me. Caleb might have tried to drown it, but I was still here, ready to show them nothing had changed. I wasn’t going away. I was still determined to make them pay so they never hurt another woman the way they had me.
It was the driving force that pushed me on.
Nobody else could suffer like I had.
Like the woman Caleb held captive right now.
It hadn’t been part of my plan, but a few steps from his car, I stooped to scoop up a handful of little rocks. The anger was too much to contain. I jostled them around in my loosely closed fist, almost like they were dice and I was about to throw a lucky hand.
Then ran them up the side of Leonn’s shiny car, taking scrapes of paint off as I went.
I waited for someone in the house to hear the obnoxious noise, but there was no movement from behind the windows of the massive house. I dug the rocks in harder, scrubbing off as much paint as I could in the time it took me to get to the front of the car.
I dropped the stones by the front tire, and they blended back in seamlessly with the rest of the driveway. For a second, I thought about breaking into the car and leaving the photos all through the interior. But I didn’t want Leonn getting in the car, where the dark tints would shield him from view.
I wanted to see his face when he saw the photos.
I wanted him to know I hadn’t forgotten what he’d done. That even though the cops wouldn’t touch a well-respected doctor from Providence, I wouldn’t stop.
Not until I’d destroyed him the way he’d destroyed me.
I lifted the windshield wiper and tucked the images beneath it.
Kian’s eyes were wide when I got back inside the car, but he held up his hand for a high five. “See what I mean, Little Demon? You’re a total badass. Now what?”
I reached behind me and pulled over the leftover tub of popcorn. “Now we sit here, eat popcorn for breakfast, and wait.”
Kian shoved his hand into the oversized bucket and tossed a handful in his mouth. He munched it around a grin. “Seriously? We’re just going to hang out here, right in front of his house? You don’t even want to move the car a bit so we aren’t so obvious?”
I chomped a piece of salty, buttery goodness in half. “Nope… Oh look! The door is opening. Is it wrong to hope his wife might be the one to see them first? I’d love to watch him try to explain that to her.”
Kian pointed to Leonn walking out his front door, dressed in business pants and a hospital polo shirt that tugged tight over his rounded gut. He had one armful of paperwork and juggled his keys and a coffee with his other hand. He was so distracted; he didn’t even notice us sitting up on the road in my car with our snacks.