Page 10 of Phobia

But I really didn’t want to trigger her. I knew talking about Josephine Fischer beyond the superficial stuff could do just that, so I needed to choose my words wisely. “Her name’s Josie Fischer.”

“Josie Fischer,” she echoed, her lips crooking into a slight smile, like she was testing the name out and liked it. “She seems young for him,” she added, rocking back and forth on the heels of her boots, looking around the gallery.

Young for who?

Before I could question my nosy little wife, her shoulders punched up to her ears when she noticed the taxidermy animals on display to the left of the glass jars. Her eyes tapered with mistrust on a stuffed Canadian goose. Its thin, elongated black neck craned in her direction, its wings frozen mid-flap, flight feathers proud. Spiky teeth lined the bird’s bared tongue from within its fixed open mouth. I’d recalled a story she’d told me about being chased by one as a kid at a family picnic.

Vicious fucks.

“And afraid of him,” she added.

Huh? I raised a brow at her.

She tore her stare away from the goose, her head slanting. “They’re together, aren’t they?”Curiosity rounded her eyes, her bright orange hair slipping over her shoulder. “Josie and Rhys?”

I gave her a clipped shake of my head. Rhys WagnerwithBaby Fischer? That would fucking be something that would send Briar on another psychotic rampage.Briar had it bad for Rhys. The entire town knew that. I’d never seen someone rebuffed and humiliated so many times over the years, only to come back for more at the next opportunity. Rhys didn’t react to much, but anytime Briar sidled up next to him with a flirty smile and cushioned his arm between the tunnel of her tits, he sneered at her and ripped his arm away like she was corrosive matter or downright repulsed him. Briar didn’t have a shot in hell. We all could see that, but all it did was fuel her to try harder. She wasn’t used to being told “no”, and for someone who didn’t have the right last name in this town, she often got what she wanted—and got away with it, too.

Even when it came to hurting her sister. People either turned their heads or pretended it hadn’t happened at all because ofwhohad helped her.

The reminder had my blood boiling all over again. Look, I wasn’t exactly the personification of sound mental health or an ardent follower of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts’ penal system even if my wife’s eldest sister and her husband-to-be were lawyers with enough cop friends to make me yack.

My first foray with the law letting me down was seventeen years ago, when my father was killed.

They called it an accident.

I called it murder and added names to a list.

I’d sought my revenge when the time was right.

We got caught the first time, and that had cost Vince and me five years of our lives.

But the second time?

I fought back the smile.

Justice served. No cop was ever going to do that. No detective gave a shit when you cried in front of him and recalled what you’d seen. He offered you a can of store brand cola, a stale cookie, and asked you to repeat your story again with bored eyes.

I believed if you didn’t fit the bill of what a cop decided a victim should look like; you would never get your justice. It hadn’t mattered that I’d been a kid.

But if you looked like the perfect criminal, if you had a motive—well, your life was going to be a living hell. Cops had fucked me. So I learned.

I couldn’t wrap my head around how anyone could do that to their kid sister. How anyone could have tried to ignore it happened at all. I would have razed this entire fucking town if anyone so much as breathed in my kid sister Saorise’s direction the wrong way.

Josephine was harmless, timid and scared on a good day. Always had been. Saoirse had tried to befriend her for years, but Josie avoided her the way she avoided everyone.

Kind of like Rhys did. Only Rhys had looks going for him and Josie was… forgettable.

“Maybe if I’d tried harder to be her friend, it wouldn’t have happened,”Saoirse had told me once.“Maybe I could have stopped it.”My sister couldn’t have stopped it, because when someone was sick enough to want to do that to you, all they needed was a little patience and an opportunity.

Rolling out my tense shoulders, I felt the knot shift there and click, followed by a spike of heated adrenaline pushing through my veins.

I didn’t make a habit of thinking about Josie because it made me think of every person who’d ever said "no". It forced me to think of Katrina’s trauma, the lingering aftermath of it, how I had to be careful not to touch her in a way that had the potential to trigger her.

I could have stopped it had I been there.

So, like Saoirse, I blamed myself every time my wife had a night terror that had her shooting upright in bed, screaming and kicking the blankets away from her. I had scooped her up into my arms countless times when we were in public and someone brushed up against her and she drew in a strained breath and made that face of warning that the onset of a panic attack was nearing.

She’d gotten stronger over the last couple of months, yes, but it hadn’t changed how I wished she’d never had to become that way—and that was on me.