Page 16

To my surprise, my anger at my mother was actually the perfect fuel for getting caught up on schoolwork. Whether it was a healthy outlet for that rage or just the desire to accomplish something other than crying or screaming, I wasn’t sure, but it was effective as hell. By the morning, the lingering pile of homework doom was nearly complete, except for the dreaded Spanish project—and Pride and Prejudice .

School was surprisingly uneventful too, which was really saying something considering I had a federal agent in tow all day long. It was shocking how easily he blended into the room—after he closed all the blinds, positioned me to his liking, and posted up in the back. You could almost forget he was there altogether. Almost .

He was even with me when I collected the white suit Tabby’s mom had bought for me (that actually wasn’t totally heinous) and dropped the surprise-return-of-my-mother bomb on the lunch squad. I appreciated the fabricated reason he used to pull me away from their slew of follow-up questions, as though he knew I was in no shape to answer them. It felt good walking down the hall with him, giggling at how Tabby’s eyes had looked like they were about to bust out of their sockets.

By the time the day was over, I almost felt normal.

But the questions running through my mind weren’t normal at all. It was nearly impossible to focus with the strange menagerie of randomness playing on a loop: like trying to puzzle out Marco’s involvement in things, my mother’s apparent sudden need to return, the news of her high school pregnancy, the highly tactical murders of the detained mobsters, and the undeniable reality that the AD had to be from our area. Throw in whatever my father knew that he wouldn’t tell me, the mysterious Vollero family boss, and the call that had sent a police cruiser nose-first into a river, and I wondered if my brain would melt down soon.

“Callahan really is kind of a dick, isn’t he?” Dawson asked, yanking me from my jumbled thoughts. “And not really the best teacher, either.”

I opened the passenger door to his car and climbed in. “He’s grown on me.”

Dawson slid into the driver’s seat next to me. “You just like that he’s going easy on you now.”

“Exactly. He knows the way to earn my affection.”

“That’s a precarious journey, no doubt.”

“You should know.”

He looked at me from the corner of his eye. “Should I?”

“Do I still want to pummel you every time you’re in my presence?”

“Not that I’m aware of—”

“Then you know.”

The harsh set of his features told me he didn’t find my insight as amusing as I did. “It’s a long way between not wanting to assault someone and affection, Danners.”

“Is it?” I asked, feigning ignorance. “There are some top-selling romance books that might lead you to believe otherwise, my friend.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

“Who knows, maybe Pride and Prejudice will prove interesting on that front.”

He rolled his eyes and began our trip home, peppering it with normal questions someone might ask a high school senior not in the crosshairs of a serial killer, like my plans for next year—plans I had thought zero about since the moment I’d accepted the scholarship he’d help secure for me. I felt a bit ungrateful sitting next to him with nothing to say about that, but to his credit, he didn’t press the issue. “You’ll figure it out. You have time.”

“Thanks,” I said with a smile. “I’m sure if worse comes to worst, I could just get Tabby to figure my life out for me, then give me the bullet points.”

“Be careful what you wish for.”

At that, we both laughed.

But that levity cut short once we were settled around the kitchen table back at Gramps’ house. A buzzing from my phone cut through the companionable silence and ratcheted up the tension. We both saw my screen and ‘Logan Hill Penitentiary’ scrawled in big, bright letters. I snatched it up off the table and turned away from Dawson.

Then I took a deep breath. “Hey, Dad.”

“It’s good to finally get hold of you. I’ve missed seeing you lately.”

“Yeah, I know. Things have just been a bit crazy.”

“Gramps told me you’re drowning in schoolwork.”

“That is correct, but at least that situation seems to be improving.”

Silence.

“And the other situation?” he asked carefully. “How are you handling that?” I had to give him credit for how delicately he was asking when I knew damn well that he wanted to interrogate me until his fears had been assuaged (or augmented). Instead, he waited patiently while I tried to figure out how to tell him that things might not be any better on that front at all.

“I’m not really sure how to answer that, Dad. I’ve been going to school, and I talked to the shrink at the FBI. I think I’m doing okay. The nightmares are relatively gone at this point.” I could feel the weight of Dawson’s stare on my back as I admitted that. “As for the rest of it…I’m not sure you’ll love the report.”

“Tell me you’ve stopped investigating, Kylene. Please . What more will it take to get you to see that nothing good can come of it?”

“I’m not investigating anything,” I argued, “but that doesn’t seem to matter at this point. Every potential lead the FBI had has been inconveniently un-alived over the past week. And now the feds are hunting down the pizza guy from town.”

“Who? Marco?”

“That would be the one.”

“Why? What did he do?”

I thought about how best to answer his question, knowing that calls from the prison were recorded. Did I want to tell him about all we’d learned in an attempt to coax information from him? Yes . Yes, I did. Did I think that was a good idea? Not even a little.

“They think he might be in league with the guy who targeted me,” I said, thinking that was enough truth to satisfy him without causing unnecessary fallout.

My dad went silent for a moment. “I don’t see it,” he finally said. “Do I think he’s capable of murder? Yes. But I don’t think he fits the profile in any other way.”

“Well, I guess we’ll know more if and when the feds find him. In the meantime, I’m being guarded because Dawson is worried about the risk of attack where I’m concerned, and Agent Wilson seems to agree.”

Somehow, the mere mention of Dawson put a chill on the conversation that I could practically feel through the phone. I stifled the urge to shudder.

“I’d like to have a word with him.” Everything in the tone of my father’s voice told me that ‘have a word’ didn’t so much mean ‘have a chat’, but more ‘I want to bury my fist in his face’. For the first time in my life, I was glad he was locked up, because I knew he’d do it if he could get his hands on the rookie.

“I’ll be sure to let him know.”

“I want you to stay away from him.”

“Yeah…” I said, drawing the word out to buy time, “I don’t think that’s gonna happen, Dad.”

“And why not?”

I looked back at the man in question, staring at me with laser focus. “Because Dawson is going to be staying here at the house…indefinitely.”

The silence that drew out on the phone was scarier than the tone with which he responded. “The hell he is.”

“Agent Wilson is fully supportive of this, given how loose ends seem to be getting cut off.”

“Then he can assign someone else to protective detail.”

“I’ll be sure to pass that sentiment along, but for now, it’s Dawson.”

“No.”

“I don’t think ‘no’ works on Dawson, Dad,” I said, then immediately regretted my phrasing. Given the way the young fed’s brows quirked, he wasn’t a fan either. “I mean, of course ‘no’ works on him in the appropriate situations where ‘no’ should absolutely be respected…not that I have any personal experience with those…” I cringed as I turned away from Dawson and walked down the hall to my room to escape his gaze and the utter mortification I felt.

At least I escaped one of the two.

“Is he there now?” my father asked, anger brimming in his tone.

“I wish I could say no, but—”

“Put him on the phone.”

“Unfortunately, I can’t do that,” I said as I slammed the door, locking it for good measure. “He’s in the bathroom. Bad takeout. You know how it goes.”

“Kylene—”

“I’ll put him on once he dares to venture out of there.”

Another bout of silence nearly made me come unglued. “Kylene, that boy has done nothing but put you in danger by encouraging you to pursue this obsession of yours—”

“It’s not an obsession, Dad,” I argued, “and he’s a federal agent, not a boy.”

“He’s a pup in a big dog’s game, and he’s going to get you killed,” he snapped.

His warning blended with AJ’s words from the night we broke up. Anger bloomed in their wake.

“At least he realized that I was going to keep going with or without his help and decided that with was better—unlike you.”

“Kylene Danners, that’s not fair.”

“Not fair? You want to talk about what’s not fair? Not fair is losing not one, but two parents overnight. Not fair is returning to a town that fucking hated me with no initial support, except for Gramps. Not fair is possibly not graduating on time because the trauma-train that is my life keeps barreling down the tracks even though the wheels are coming off. And the most unfair part of it all is that, rather than helping me, you want to attack the one guy who’s willing to take a bullet for me—the only person in my life who seems to understand what this shit has been like. So no, Dad, I don’t think I’ll be listening to your lecture on fairness. Yours or Mom’s, since she showed up out of nowhere to play the victim—”

“Wait,” he said, shock once again tainting his tone. “Your mother’s there?”

“Yes.”

“Since when?”

“Yesterday, but we’re not talking about her right now,” I bit out. “She doesn’t get to waltz in at the eleventh hour and have a say in anything, and neither do you. Dawson stays, Dad. If you don’t like it, you can get yourself out of prison and come kick him out. I’m sure he’d welcome that, for my sake at least.”

I hung up without letting him respond. The guilt and regret I felt the second I tossed my phone down was immediate and impaling, but it was done and I couldn’t take it back. Perhaps it had been cruel but necessary. The impasse between us grew larger every day he allowed himself to rot in that prison, and helplessness was not an emotion I could weather gracefully.

Anger, however, I could.

“Danners?” My door handle rattled as Dawson attempted to open it. “Let me in.”

“Just go away. I can’t talk about this right now.”

Something metal scratched inside the locking mechanism, and two seconds later, Dawson stood in my open doorway. He stepped inside—right into the pressure cooker. The conversation I’d just had with my father had me itching for an outlet of some sort, and whether he deserved it or not, Dawson would do just fine.

Just like old times.

“Oh, so now that you’re staying here, you think you can just barge in whenever you want, uninvited? Is that how you think it’s going to be?”

He stared at me, dead faced, and folded his arms across his chest. “I take it that didn’t go well.”

“Like you weren’t eavesdropping the whole time.”

“Not the whole time, no.”

“Did you think it would go well?”

“Not particularly.”

I scoffed at his nonchalance. “Like you care anyway.”

“I don’t care what your father thinks,” he said, taking a step closer, “but I do care about you and your safety. And whether or not you believe him, he does too.”

He was right and I knew it, but rational thought couldn’t overpower the anger coursing through me. “Whatever. I don’t have time for this right now. I need to get ready for the tree lighting.” I climbed off the bed to square off against Dawson. “Can I do that alone, or are you going to stand there and supervise that too?”

“I’m not the enemy here, Danners. You should remember that.”

“Oh, good. Another man telling me what I should do.”

He stood there for a moment, glaring at me across the two feet that separated us. It might as well have been a mile. I’d hit below the belt with that one and I knew it, and as the seconds ticked by and my anger gave way to reason, I began to regret it. My sharp tongue was a weapon finely honed out of necessity, and I’d forgotten how easily it could cut.

Judging by Dawson’s tight expression, it had cut deep. “I’m going to call Sheriff Higgins and confirm that everything is ready to go for tonight, if that’s okay with you. Unless you’d like to manage the logistics yourself. I wouldn’t want to tell you what to do.”

He closed the door behind him before I could even get a word out, leaving me shut in with my guilt, my shame, and the overwhelming feeling that I might have pushed the one person I could count on above all others too far.

* * *

We drove in silence to the center of town and parked the car in the municipal lot next to the city building. A crowd had already amassed on the lawn near the massive spruce tree, awaiting the display, and I took a steadying breath, wondering if there was a killer among them—another of the AD’s lackeys waiting to take a shot at me. Possibly someone I knew; someone I trusted. That truth hit me like a brick, and I hesitated with my hand on the door handle. Dawson was already half out of the car before he noticed.

Once he did, he sat back down next to me.

“Danners, what’s—”

“I’m sorry,” I said, cutting him off. “I never should have said those things to you. I was angry and hurt, and I took it out on you.” I made myself look at him, though it took what little courage I still had to do it. “I know you’re not the enemy, Dawson. You never really were.”

“No,” he said as a wry smile tugged at his lips, “I was for a while there, in the beginning. But I’m not anymore.”

“Well, that’s good, because if someone happens to try to kill me tonight, I’d prefer to have you on my team.” I forced a smile when the weight of his gaze became too intense. “This is when you say ‘nobody is going to try to kill you tonight, Danners’ in that low-key patronizing tone of yours I’ve grown to appreciate.” His smile slowly fell away, taking any hope I had along with it. “Dawson…?”

“We should go now,” he said as he climbed out of the sedan.

I sat in his passenger’s seat, drowning in the subtext of what he hadn’t said. Because even in that moment, he couldn’t bring himself to lie to me.

* * *

The mayor awaited us near the podium high on the steps in front of City Hall, and I tried to act like I wasn’t a mess. I clasped my hands in front of me to keep them from shaking as I looked out over the crowd. At the very back of it, lingering near the sidewalk with Meg, stood my mother, and for a moment, I wondered if that unnerved me even more than the potential presence of a killer.

“You look lovely this evening, Kylene,” he said with a smile, pulling me from my dark thoughts as we joined him. “And Agent Dawson, what a pleasure to see you again, though something of a surprise. What brings you here?”

“Agency matters,” the fed replied in a curt tone. “Speaking of which, could you walk me through exactly how this ceremony is going to play out?”

“Of course.” Mayor Applewood laid out the rather simple procedure step by step while Dawson listened intently. When he finished, Dawson said nothing. “Forgive me for asking, but is there something I should be concerned about?”

“Maybe just give me a wide berth when it’s time for me to step up and flip the switch.” Dawson cut me a sideward glare, and the mayor just looked confused. “I’m kidding,” I said with a forced laugh, “unless you’re worried about whoever wired this thing. Hopefully it wasn’t Johnny Jenkins, or this whole place is going up in flames. You know he’s only half sober on a good day.”

A moment of awkward silence drew out before the mayor’s hearty laughter sliced through it. The deep tenor of it only grew when I joined in with him. To be honest, I needed the comedic intervention.

“Oh, Kylene, you truly are amusing, just like your mother.” As our laughter faded, a serious look overtook him, and he leaned in closer. “Might I have a word with you in private for a moment?”

“Sure—”

“No.”

Dawson’s firm response seemed to surprise the mayor as much as it did me, but it didn’t dissuade him completely. He took me by the arm lightly and turned me away from Dawson. “I wanted to apologize again for what I said the other day,” he said softly. “It was terribly inconsiderate and poorly thought through. If I'd known that the conversation would lead there, I would never have brought your mother up at all.”

“And now you’re bringing her up again,” Dawson said, stepping around the mayor’s side.

The mayor’s back stiffened as he stood upright, offense driving his posture. “I meant to compliment Kylene by comparing her to her mother, nothing more. It’s unfortunate how the situation played out, hence my desire to apologize.”

“And you’re forgiven,” I replied, drawing their attention to me. “Now, should we get this started before we give this crowd a different show altogether?”

“I believe we should,” the mayor replied as he pulled on his lapels. “If you’ll follow me.”

I shot Dawson a look, then fell in line behind Jasperville’s fearless leader on the way to the microphone. Mayor Applewood addressed the crowd while I stood next to him, my eyes scanning the assembled masses with a smile plastered on my face. I knew I wasn’t likely to see someone hiding at the back with a sniper rifle, but it gave me a small sense of control amid the chaos, so I ran with it. Dawson’s arm brushed against me as he reached back to rest his hand on his gun, just in case, and I swallowed back the reality of our scenario. I really was a sitting duck up there for any crackpot with half-decent aim.

“And to do the honors for us this evening, we have the jewel of Jasperville, your Winter Festival Queen, Kylene Danners!”

The crowd roared with applause—something I still struggled to get used to—and I edged forward to take the switch in my hand. “Ladies and gentlemen, let there be lights!”

I took a deep breath and flipped the toggle, fighting the urge to wince like a bomb was about to go off.

But one didn’t. Instead, the glorious tree before us lit up with a million tiny white lights, illuminating the crowd. ‘Oohs’ and ‘ahhs’, followed by another round of applause, filled the night, and I breathed out a sigh of relief.

“You did great,” the mayor said in my ear. “Your parents would be proud.”

“I’m sure they are.”

“It’s a damn shame they weren’t here to see it.” He did that condescending, pressed-lip smile thing adults do when they pity you, then stepped back to the mic to make a parade announcement.

Dawson took that opportunity to take me by the elbow and usher me away from the podium. “We should get going.”

I couldn’t have agreed more. I wanted to avoid my mother at all costs.

As he rushed us across the lawn, some strangers waved and smiled as we passed the crowd, heading for the parking lot. My mother was nowhere to be found among them, which was a relief to me, but I could feel Dawson growing more tense as we went, as though he knew the night had gone too smoothly and the other shoe was about to drop. As though our luck was about to run out.

Turned out, he was right—in a sense.

A male broke through the crowd, headed our way. His face was obscured by a hoodie, and my heart dropped the second I saw him. I hesitated just long enough for Dawson to sense something was wrong. One look at the hooded man storming toward us and his weapon was drawn in an instant.

“Hands!” he shouted, training the weapon on the now-frozen figure.

“Ky, it’s me.” AJ slowly pushed back the hood.

Dawson lowered his gun, but the damage was already done. Everyone in town was now staring at the beauty queen, the quarterback, and the quick-draw fed in an awkward standoff. Fabulous .

“AJ, what the hell are you doing?”

“I need to talk to you—”

“This is hardly the time,” I said with a sigh, knowing how it would play out. “We’ve been here before. Twice, in fact.”

“Not at gunpoint, we haven’t.” He cut Dawson a nasty look.

“Maybe that’s a sign,” Dawson said as he holstered his firearm.

“You need to get away from this guy,” AJ continued, undaunted. “He’s putting your life in danger.”

“I’ve done a pretty stellar job of that all on my own.”

“That’s not funny—”

“You’re right. It isn’t. And two of those times, when I didn’t die, it was due in large part to Dawson. You’d realize that if you could set aside whatever this obsession is to see the situation clearly.”

“This isn’t some weird obsession, Ky.”

“Are you sure about that?” Dawson’s eerily calm counterpoint did nothing to improve the situation.

“He’s using you, and I hate it,” AJ said, raising his voice. “Why can’t you see that?”

“No, he’s not. If anything, I’m using him.”

“That doesn’t mean he doesn’t have ulterior motives.”

“You’d know something about that, wouldn’t you, AJ?” Dawson asked, edging closer. “Maybe you should grow up and stop trying to manipulate her back into your arms.”

“And maybe you should stop trying to isolate her into yours!”

Shots fired …just not the kind I’d expected that evening.

“Okay,” I said, stepping between them before things escalated any further than they already had, “I think we’re done here—”

“I’ll be done when he admits it,” AJ argued as he stared at me in desperation.

“No, AJ, you’ll be done now.” I pushed him back a pace and stared him down. “I understand you’re still hurt. I am too, because you dumped me , if you recall, not the other way around. But Dawson wasn’t the cause of it, and whatever you think is going on between us, it isn’t.”

“Does he know that?”

I dared a glance back at Dawson, who stood steadfast, arms folded across his chest as he watched, ready to intervene—or egg AJ on. It was hard to tell. “I’m pretty sure he knows what his job is and his role where I’m concerned. He’s not confused about that. You are. And it makes me sad. I thought for a moment the other day that maybe we could be friends again, that things could be different, but I guess I was wrong. Again .”

“Too bad I’m not.” He shot Dawson a last wary look over me before turning to walk away.

I let out a breath and tried to tamp down any emotions threatening to revolt, if for no other reason than I didn’t want to cause any more of a scene than we already had. When I finally had myself collected, I found Dawson still standing there, assessing me.

“I could have done without that,” I said as I moved to walk past him.

“Danners—”

“It’s fine, Dawson. Really. It’s way better than what could have happened tonight, so let’s just drop it, okay?”

His arms dropped. “If that’s what you want.”

“What I really want is to get out of this ridiculous suit, put on some sweats, and binge watch New Girl for the eightieth time.”

“So let’s go do that.”

I looked at him, waiting for a smirk to overtake his dour expression, but it never did. And I had no idea what to do with that.

“I probably should start Pride and Prejudice instead. And text my friends about the shitshow that just went down.”

“Then let’s get out of here.”

No words could have sounded sweeter in that moment.