Page 43 of Traitor

I snort. "It'd take a lot more than one night to soften me up."

When she falls silent, I begin to think I've offended her. Mentally berating myself, I try to come up with an appropriate apology. This is what happens when you spend the majority of your adult life surrounded by men with nothing but time on your hands.

Before I can, she says, "Thank you," so quietly I almost wonder if I've imagined it.

"You're welcome?"

She stuns me by grinning. "You don't ever treat me like I'm broken. I think I got so used to people coddling me: my uncle, friends, people I used to know, my therapist. It's refreshing to have someone who just doesn't give a damn about how messed up in the head I am."

"We're all a little broken, Peyton."

"Are you ever going to tell me what parts of you are broken? I've shared my scars, it only seems fair," she says.

Isolated the way we are by the sound of the wind rustling the bare bones of the trees and the lap of waves against the sand, it's almost easy to open up to her. "I'm an open book."

"You're a concrete wall."

"Let's work on tackling your demons before we start in on mine," I suggest.

"I wouldn't even know where to start now. My plan pretty much stopped at getting down here and looking around."

I smirk. "We're going to walk around the lake and look around."

"Of course we are,” she says.

The silence is unbearable, so I find myself saying, "What happened to the people who hurt you?" The thought of someone putting their hands on her, terrifying her, is unthinkable. My hands clench by my sides.

"The police tried looking for them, at first, but there wasn't much to go on. Three men in ski masks. Guns. White sneakers is what I remembered most vividly."

"What happened?"

Peyton kicks at a leaf, then picks up a rock and throws it into the lake. It lands with a satisfying plop. "The three of us were at home one random Tuesday. It was late, and we were watching a show on TV when our dog, Lady, started going crazy at the back door. She was a Lab and could be high-strung, so we didn't think too much of it at the time. When she wouldn't stop barking, I went to let her out." The cadence of her voice is panicked, erratic. Her eyes are unfocused and she absently chews on a fingernail. "There was only one of them at first. He came out of nowhere. One second, I was holding onto Lady and the next he had me by the throat against a wall. I didn't even have the chance to scream, to warn my parents."

"Time moves faster when shit starts happening."

"Was it like that for you?" she asks.

"Sometimes. Sometimes it's fast." I look out into the distance. "Others it's like it stops, freezes. What happened next?"

"That makes sense," Peyton says absently. "The one who grabbed me took me down to the basement. I could hear him talking to others, but I didn't get a real good look at them. As he was pushing me down the stairs, I heard my mom scream. My dad was shouting. They didn't stop for a long time. And then they were quiet, real quiet. I almost wished I could hear them screaming and shouting again because it would mean they were alive."

"What did they want?"

"Money, of course. Nothing more and nothing less. We lived in an affluent part of town. My parents were both from well-off families. The police told us they'd stalked us for a couple days to figure out which houses would be the easiest to get into. They were right. I didn't put up much of a fight and my parents paid with their lives."

"Bullshit," I say.

She stops so abruptly her shoes kick up sand. "What?"

"C'mon, Peyton, that's bullshit and you know it. There's no way you can fight off three armed men and survive. You're lucky you got out of there with your life."

"Lucky," she says sardonically. "I'm not sure I'd consider it lucky. For a while all I could think about was I couldn't do anything to save them. That they deserved to live because they were great people, wonderful parents. It should have been me."

"But it wasn't."

She glares at me. "I'm going to remind you of this when I pry out what happened to you to make you such a sweetheart."

"Bring it on."