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I flinch when I hear it.
Like he had yelled it atme.
Aboutme.
I bolt past Mrs. Baker and hurtle into the frigid night, not thinking about what I’m doing or why I’m doing it. All I can focus on is catching the punk who said it, shaking him by the shoulders, and making sure he knows I’m innocent.
The dark figure starts running when he sees me coming, his sneakers slipping on the dew-slicked grass. It gives me the extra second I need to catch up just before he can get away. I lunge forward, grab him by the shirt collar, and yank. His feet slide out from under him, and he drops to the ground like a sack of wheat. The flashlight flies from his hand and rolls across the grass, its light flickering. In that stuttering glow, I leap on top of him, surprising him and surprising myself even more.
Yet there’s another surprise in store for both of us.
Writhing in the grass beneath me, the trespasser looks up at me and says, “Kit?”
No matter how shocked he is, I’m doubly surprised.
It’s Kenny.
“What are you doing here?” he says.
Winded, I slide off him and plop onto the grass. “I work here. What areyoudoing here?”
“Just having a little fun with the boys,” Kenny says as he sits up.
“Aren’t you a little old for this shit, Kenny?”
“Yeah,” he says, now grinning the same way he did whenever I met him at the back door. “But it’s not like it’s hurting anyone.”
He’d be singing a different tune if Mrs. Baker had shot one of them, which I wouldn’t put past her. A woman like her surely has an itchy trigger finger.
“You really work here?” Kenny says. “At Hopeless End?”
I sigh. So that’s what they’re calling it now. “I do.”
“Who’s your patient?”
“Who do you think?”
Kenny blinks. “No way! What’s she like?”
“Not a killer bitch,” I say.
“Yeah, sorry about that,” Kenny says, eyes to the ground. “I didn’t mean anything by it. That’s just what everyone says about her.”
“They’re wrong.”
“Then what’s she really like?”
“Quiet,” I reply, which says everything while also revealing nothing.
I look down the long driveway to the front gate, where the rest of Kenny’s friends have gathered. At least it’s fully closed tonight. Not that it matters. One of Kenny’s “boys” is boosting the others over the brick wall. At the top, another reaches down to help him up. Gate or no gate, it proves that literally anyone could have come onto the property and killed Mary.
One of Kenny’s friends shouts at him from atop the wall. “Hey! You coming?”
“In a minute!” Kenny calls back.
“Do you guys do this often?” I say as his friends vanish over the wall.
“Not since high school,” Kenny says, which in his case was only two years ago. “A few of us were drinking and decided to come see if what everyone’s saying is true. You know, about her dead nurse.”