Page 12 of Bird on a Blade (Hunter’s Heart #1)

CHAPTER ELEVEN

EDIE

W hen I hear the crunch of tire wheels through my open windows, I nearly have a heart attack. I’m draped on the sofa, reading a romance novel on my phone. My tenth this week. If I don’t keep myself distracted, I’ll start panicking about Scott.

And thinking about Sawyer.

The tire crunch sends me into full panic mode, though. Scott is keeping his search for me private. No weepy missing person’s press conferences. No announcements on his various social media accounts, no earnest videos of him begging for any information about the whereabouts of his beloved wife. He’s rich enough that he’s a public figure even if he’s not really famous, but he’s keeping this close to his chest. And that terrifies me

It terrifies me what he wants to do when he finds me.

So when I hear the tire wheels, I immediately leap to my feet and pull up Charlotte’s number. If she gets any kind of weird call from me, she’ll be on it.

I sidle up to the window, listening. With the windows open, I can hear everything. Heavy, steady footsteps marching across the dirt. Stepping on my porch.

I peer out, trying to hide behind the curtains. I can’t see the porch from here, or who’s standing on it, but I can see the beat-up pickup truck parked behind my car. It was probably red once, but now it’s a kind of dusty pink color.

I hold my breath, waiting for the doorbell. For a knock. There’s nothing. Just the scrape of boots across the dirt. And then?—

My heart drops out of my chest as the figure moves into view. Tall, lanky, dark curly hair, a blue flannel shirt.

Sawyer.

Sawyer . I toss my phone aside, my panic subsiding a little. Not entirely, of course. Has he killed someone again? Brought me another fucking head? I have the thought, sudden and sharp, that the reason I haven’t seen him for a week is that he drove that dusty red pickup truck all the way to California to collect Scott’s head.

Don’t be stupid. That would take longer than a week. You’d have heard about it.

Then I realize Sawyer’s leaving. I also realize that, inexplicably, I don’t want him to.

So before I can talk reason into myself, I drop the curtain and fling the front door open and shout, “Wait!”

He stops, head lifting, and I notice what he left for me.

A small white baker’s box and a small white bird skull.

I step onto the porch, the wind fluttering the hem of my dress. “Wait,” I say again, and he turns his head, eyes dark and shrouded. I pick up the bird skull.

“Did you kill this, too?”

He turns around completely to face me. God, I hate how fucking handsome he is, every part of him lean and angular. When he was stalking this camp fifteen years ago, his knife blade dripping blood, I never would have expected him to look like that under the filthy mask.

He frowns at me .

“Don’t kill birds,” he calls out. “Not unless I intend to eat ‘em.”

I blink. It’s not remotely the answer I expected from him.

“I found it,” he goes on. “Thought it—thought you might like it. That’s for you, too.” He nods toward the white box, shoves his hands into his pockets, fixes his gaze on me. It would all be normal—sweet even—if he wasn’t sizing me up like the murderous predator he is.

I set the bird skull back down, careful not to break it. It’s beautiful. Beautiful and strange and eerie, a memento of a creature that once twittered in the tree branches and fluttered through the forest but hasn’t for a long, long time.

Footsteps scrape against the dirt. He moves closer to me, slow and cautious. I pick up the white box and pull it open, half-knowing what I’m going to find but still feeling this gut punch when I see it, piles of sugared butter and glittery marzipan leaves.

Huge huge huge huge huge huge ? —

Dead eyes gaping at me, old blood congealing where I now stand.

“Thank you,” I say stiffly, folding the box closed, hating that I can’t just accept this gift even if it is from a killer.

Sawyer stops on the other side of the banister, frowning up at me. “I thought you wanted one,” he says. “Saw you looking at them in the bakery the other day.” His frown deepens; his eyes darken. Fear twists in my chest. But only a little. It’s not like with Scott, who brought me gifts of expensive chocolates just so he could see me toss them in the trash, my thinness—such as it was—more important than my happiness.

I swallow and look out the woods, trying to figure out the best way to answer. “I did want one,” I finally say. “But… it’s complicated. Thank you, though.” I let myself glance over at him, and he’s staring at me in that way that reminds me he’s a killer. Like he wants to devour me. “I do like the bird skull. ”

Something flickers across his face. A flare of lust. It’s the same way he looked at me the other night as I relented to his touch.

I think he can see it, that strain of darkness inside me.

“What’s so complicated?” he asks. “About the cupcake?” He scowls a little. “The stupid thing cost me damn near five bucks. You really ain’t gonna eat it?”

I laugh in spite of myself. “Five dollars? It’d have been eight out in California.”

He tilts his head, and a curl of hair falls into his eyes. It takes every ounce of my willpower not to reach over the banister and brush it away.

He’s a fucking killer, Edie.

“Is that where you’ve been?” he says. “California?”

“Yeah.” I stack the bird skull on the cupcake box and lift them both up. Sawyer just stares at me, and I realize, with a jolt, that I don’t want him to leave. When he’s here, I’m not thinking about Scott. I’m not worried about Scott. That sick, twisting anxiety that’s followed me around the last week is gone.

“Do you want to come inside?” I ask.

Sawyer’s eyes go wide. For a second, I’m sure he’s going to say no. But then he grins, and there’s just enough cruelty in it that it’s not exactly a heartthrob grin but Jesus Christ is it close.

“Want a repeat of the other night?”

I laugh, disbelieving.

Do you?

“I was actually just going to offer you some coffee.” I had no idea I was going to say this until I do. “And tell you why I’m here, if you want to know.”

The grin wavers and something in his eyes softens. “Oh. Yeah. I’d—I’d like that, actually.”

I try to ignore how weird this is all is, how I’m inviting the man who terrorized me in for coffee. Terrorized me on paper, anyway. In the papers. On the podcasts .

The man who actually terrorized me—well, it’s easy not to think about him. Not with Sawyer here.

I carry the cupcake and the bird skull inside, listening to his footsteps as he follows me, heavy against the cabin’s wooden floor. I wouldn’t say I’m scared of him, but it still feels wrong to turn my back on him. The skin on my neck prickles, and I glance over my shoulder.

He’s watching me.

I put the two gifts down on the counter and go to brew some coffee, sneaking glances at him like he might attack me. He doesn’t. He stands stiffly beside the counter, eyes drinking me in.

As the coffee brews, I turn toward him. This is the first time I’ve ever seen him in the sunlight, a thought that doesn’t occur to me until now.

“Your bruises are fading,” Sawyer says.

It startles me, how forthright he is. My fingers go up to my throat. “Yeah.”

“Are you going to tell me about it?”

The coffee bubbles and hisses as it brews. I walk across the kitchen and stand on the other side of the counter. The sunlight flooding the cabin is bright and vaguely golden, carving out Sawyer’s sharp, distinctive features. He tilts his head a little, watching. Waiting.

“My husband tried to kill me,” I start.

“Ex-husband.” He says it quickly, eyes flashing.

“Well, yes.” I run my hand nervously over my hair. “At this point, yes, obviously. Once I feel safe enough to—” I look at him. “That’s the part you’re hung up on? Not the part where he tried to kill me?”

Sawyer’s eyes glitter. “I already knew that he tried to kill you.”

Fair enough, I suppose. I lean my elbow on the counter, eyes fixed on the bird skull. The cupcake box. “He’s abusive,” I say. “He’s always been abusive. Emotionally, mostly.” I wonder if someone like Sawyer Caldwell even understands what that means. “ But in the last few years…” I trace invisible shapes on the glossy counter. “I’m in recovery for an eating disorder,” I say, and the words feel strange in my mouth, kind of knotted and twisted. “I went into recovery a few years ago. Scott—that’s my husband—he didn’t want me to.”

A darkness passes over the counter. It’s Sawyer, leaning close to me. “Why not?”

His stare is so intense that it almost feels as if he’s slicing apart my skin. I lift my gaze to him, wondering if that will lessen it, but it only makes it worse, seeing his big dark eyes and his full lips and his sharp cheekbones. He shouldn’t look like that, I think, and I know it’s my eating disorder voice, singing the same song in a different key.

Evil is ugly. Goodness is beautiful.

“Because I gained weight,” I say flatly.

Sawyer frowns. “You’re the same size as you’ve always been.” It’s not cruel, the way he says it. Just stating a fact.

I laugh, though. “It’s been fifteen years. I don’t know where you?—”

“I was in the ground.”

I still don’t know what he means by that. I’m not sure I want to know. I sigh. “After what happened... here.”

He doesn’t react.

“After what happened, me being the only survivor, I was in the news a lot. Lots of pictures of me on the Internet. And since Camp Head Start was a weight loss camp, well… you can imagine.”

“It was?”

I look up at him, certain he’s mocking me.

“I didn’t pay attention.” He shrugs. “You don’t need to lose weight, Edie.”

His words hit me like a punch. Or a knife. I’m struck silent by them, and I curl my fingers against the counter and take a slow, deep breath .

“Thank you,” I finally spill out, and I mean it. Has anyone ever said that to me? That exact sentence? I don’t think they have.

“Didn’t then, either,” he adds, and then he tilts his head like he’s waiting for me to continue.

And I don’t know why. Maybe it’s the way he’s looking at me or the fact that he seems to like me the way I am when no one ever has before. But I keep going.

“It was the stress,” I say. “What started it, I mean. All that attention—it made me self-conscious. And made me feel out of control. Everything was being done to me. Not eating was something for me to do, you know? The only thing I could do, it felt like.”

He stares at me, and I have no idea what I’m seeing in his face. In his expression. I’ve been through this so many times, with Dr. Valunzuela and the recovery group and even Charlotte. Never with a man, though. And certainly not with a…

Whatever Sawyer Caldwell is.

“It’s my fault,” he says suddenly.

“What?” I really don’t know how to react to this. I mean, he’s not wrong, but I don’t particularly want to tell him that.

“I killed those counselors for you.” His voice is strangely flat. “They treated you like shit, all four of them. I watched it for two damn months. I knew you probably wouldn’t see it the way I did, you not being a Hunter and all, but I didn’t think—” Something clouds up in his eyes. “I didn’t think about the aftermath like that.”

We stare at each other. My mouth is dry, my heart fluttery and tight. Everything this man does startles me. Confuses me. It’s been like that since the beginning, when I faced him in the dining hall and fully expected to die, only for him to show me the kindness I’d been missing since the camp closed and I’d been trapped with the tormenters my mother hired.

He reaches between us and grabs the cupcake box and pops it open. The scent of sugar wafts into the air, nearly drowning out the scent of coffee gurgling behind us. It pulls me back into the present, out of the past.

“Coffee,” I say. “I’ll fix you some. How do you like it?”

It is utterly bizarre to ask him that question, like he’s just an ordinary guest.

“Black,” he says.

What a surprise.

It’s a relief to turn away from him, to go tend to the coffee. My hands shake as I pour out two cups. One black, for him. The other with a splash of half-and-half, for me. I can hear him moving behind me, and when I turn around, he has the cupcake out of the box?—

And he’s clutching a knife in one hand.