Page 30 of Danger Close

With each letter received, and sent out to be delivered, my heart cracked a million more times.

“Then they delivered it to the wrong person, because I received nothing from you,” she insisted.

“I’d believe that if that were one or two letters, but over a hundred in a year?” I didn’t believe it.

She shivered, and I regretted my tone, if not my actual words as she whimpered, “I’m not lying.”

I knew she wasn’t. Teri was a lot of things, but she wasn’t a liar. But I wasn’t equipped to figure out what the hell happened. Was it even worth figuring out?

“It doesn’t matter.” It wouldn’t get us back the last thirty years. “What’s done is done.”

We turned at the crossroads, the blue barn on the side of the road as the final landmark before the road that sent us up the drive to the McClanahan farm. The blue paint almost looked purple in the night light. I snorted, lightly, because the barn’s coloring reacted to the light the same way Teri’s eyes did.

We continued the drive in silence, Vedder’s headlights tailing us the entire way.

“Please, don’t hurt him,” she said when we turned into the long driveway of the McCalanahan farm.

“Please, don't hurt who?” I asked even though I knew the answer.

“Don’t hurt Greg,” was all she said. “He was trying to be kind.”

I snorted. Was this really what she thought of me?

“I’m not gonna hurt Greg Vedder.” I squeezed her thigh, trying to settle the tension in the air between us. “Not unless he asks for it.”

I might have a temper, and even if the boy and I got into a scuffle, I’d never actuallyhurtthe kid. Pin him down and make him tap out? Sure. But real damage? No. I wasn’t anywhere near angry enough for that.

“He’s just a punk kid who wanted to get lucky, with an easy target.” I shook my head, annoyed.

Then I winced, because I probably shouldn’t have said that out loud.

She scoffed and turned away, tilting her knees toward the door to get out of reach. I retracted the hand that was on her lap, and put it back on the steering wheel.

“Of course, you would think that.” Her tone wasn’t even mad. It was defeated.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” We were going to play this game a lot. TheWTF do you mean by that?Game as we peppered each other with underhanded insults.

“You would never be able to understand that a man can be kind to a woman.” She shook her head, her nose lifting in that snobby way that I had once considered refined and elegant. Dignified. “To men like you, women are objects to use. Property.”

“Men like me, huh?” I said, staring out into the winding road, back to the farm. “What the hell do you know about men like me?”

She had no fucking idea. Men like me weren't a dime a dozen. She had no fucking clue what men like me were like.

“More than you will ever know!” She spat the words at me.

I’d killed a man in Reno using scorpions. I stuck a spork into the eye socket of a British human trafficker in Istanbul, and drowned a rapist in his own, recently used, toilet bowl. I sanitized my hands afterwards, because that was disgusting. I choked a man to death on a live squid in Monaco. I’ll never forget the tentacles still moving from his open, dead mouth.

The post-mortem pictures circulated through the Underground. That was the kill I was most known for.

But Trinity and Teresa had nothing to fear from me. Not now, not ever.

So no, Teri knew nothing about what kind of man I was. How could she?

“Where did you get this?” Teri’s sharp tone cut through my thoughts like a knife.

“Get what?” I said looking over at her for a second, before turning back to the drive, the farmhouse coming into view.

She had the pamphlet in her hand and was staring at it with wide eyes. Her nostrils flared as she took in a deep, frightened breath. Her hand was shaking.