Page 40 of Haven't Killed in Years

I didn’t like to admit it, but half of me had come from this woman. I’d never felt a connection, but I had grown inside her and she had fed me and dressed me and kept me alive before I was equipped do those things myself. Was I too hard on her? Was it just easier to hate her?

My plan had worked. Porter was with me, and instead, Reanne was dead. This was my doing. I had felt so smart concocting the plan. So why did I feel like complete shit now? Maybe it was because of Gustus. He was going to be heartbroken. He’d waited so long for her to get out of prison only for her to be taken away again. It had to be that. It wasn’t possible these churning feelings were about losing her. I wasn’t ready for that.

I knew for my cover I should be freaking out, but I didn’t feel like it. The kid was too far gone; he didn’t care if I was reacting appropriately. That was my fault too. I never thought it would come to this, but I knew he was susceptible. Not to anything specifically, but I knew he was young and lost and desperate for a place in the world. I had taken a kid like that, who I supposedly cared about, and thrown him right to the wolves.

“What happened to her?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he insisted. “She was dead when I showed up—sitting on the couch, blood everywhere, throat slit. Her eyes were all open.” He kept rubbing his hands forcefully over his face and through his hair, spreading bits of dried blood all over himself. “And my stuff…she had things that were mine.”

“What do you mean?”

“Like some of my old hair was on the floor, covered in blood. There was a receipt on the table that I know was mine, covered in blood. My debit card was sticking out from between the cushions…COVERED IN BLOOD. Do you see what I’m saying? I was being set up.”

“Why were you even there?”

“She asked me to go there. She said it was a friend’s house and I could crash there. Once I saw the body, I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t do it, but it looked like I did.”

“Who told you to go there?” I asked.

He turned toward me, bracing for my reaction. “It was her…It was Marin Haggerty.”

Twenty-One

“What do you mean,Marin Haggerty?” I asked, trying to keep my voice steady and my hands from violently shaking Porter by the neckline of his shirt.

“I went to visit Abel, and when I left, there was a note on my car. It said to meet her at Old Navy.”

“At Old Navy? Are you kidding me?”

“No, it said Old Navy, so I drove there and waited outside.”

“And…? !”

“What?” he protested, like I was being unreasonably impatient. “She walked up to me and we started talking.”

“What did she look like?”

“I don’t know. A regular person. Sort of pretty, blonde, a little awkward. She seemed nervous.”

“And you’ve never seen her before?”

“No. I saw the picture from when she was a kid that Dominic had, but I’d never seen her in person.”

“And you’re sure it was her?”

“Who else would it be?”

I moved on, not wanting to overplay my hand. “What did she say?”

“She asked why I was visiting Abel…We just talked. It wasn’t weird. She said it was hard for her to visit her father. I assumed she wanted me to help bring him messages. She was nice and she seemed scared. She didn’t seem psycho or anything.”

“Okay, but how did it go from that to this?” I pointed with gusto to my mother’s body in the trunk.

“I thought it was cool, okay? Are you happy now? I thought I could bring her over and the guys would totally lose their shit. I wanted to impress them. I know. Don’t say anything. I know it was stupid.”

“And dangerous. You understand that, right?”

“Yessss.” He elongated the word, frustrated with my completely justified frustration.