ILY (Deaf Hearts #2)

Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

LEAF

“Oh, Michael. I’m gonna getcha this time,” I murmur to myself, my eyes wide and wild as I clack away on my dead aunt’s ancient desktop keyboard.

I know I’ve lost my mind, but to be fair, I haven’t had a lot of sleep the past two weeks. Michael has been keeping me up all hours of the night. He’s mocking me with his beady little eyes and his long front teeth.

I swear I can hear him laughing in my sleep.

He’s a groundhog, but he’s also the goddamn devil, straight from hell itself.

I bet Satan sent him as some kind of karma. Maybe this has to do with quitting my job. Maybe one less interpreter out there is hurting the world in some way.

I scoff, discarding that. That can’t be the case. It really can’t.

We have a code of professional conduct. We might, on occasion, be questionable people, but we don’t do bad things.

That’s kind of the whole point of the job.

The terrible things I might have signed over the years were just interpreted from the equally terrible hearing people saying them out loud, so I can’t possibly be paying for those sins… right?

I rub at my eyes. They’re hurting from staring at the screen for so long. I blame Michael for any inevitable loss of sight in the future. When I blink at the monitor once more, I see him scurrying back to one of his many hidey-holes.

The cameras I set up around my property to catch him in the act of death and destruction have only seemed to have emboldened him. He finds the time to sit in front of each one, eating my hard-earned vegetables.

Slowly.

With a twinkle in his eyes.

It’s why I’m on the dark web right now, buying explosives.

You can’t just buy any old TNT online, apparently.

A fun fact I learned when I attempted to google where to get it.

You need to have a reason—a good, valid reason.

Like owning a mine or a demolition company.

Since I have neither of those things, I had to get clever.

I had to go deeper. To the seedy underbelly of the interweb.

And I plan on going there, damn it. I plan on getting that TNT, tunneling under Michael’s home, and blowing all of it up.

I’m going to make him rue the day he ever thought to mess with me.

My fist lifts in the air, and I shake it, cackling wildly.

“Michael!” I shout and then hunch back over my computer. My hair is askew, my goggles sitting pushed back on my head, my shirt is on inside out, but I don’t care. The seller online is going to sell me the explosives.

I’m going to demolish the rodent and his evil hidey-holes.

He will regret his life choices. I want to hear him squeal.

I want retribution.

I continue my sale and then lean back in my computer chair. The seller foolishly asked me yesterday what this was for. Curious little fucker. I have nothing to hide. So, I told him.

It’s for Michael, I’d typed out. He needs to die.

They said nothing after that.

It’s fine. I don’t need their approval, and I’m sure I can find someone else to fulfill my order. I just need the TNT. I’ve turned into Wile E. Coyote. Michael is the Roadrunner. Only unlike the cartoon version, I will be victorious.

That beady-eyed piece of shit will meet his end.

Standing up, I walk a few feet away to the little bar area that looks like it came built into the house.

It’s hard to imagine my aunt ever drinking.

The few times I saw her, she was a little weird and reclusive, but she was soft-spoken, never swore, and was always brewing kombucha and other shit because she wanted to live until she was a hundred.

The last time we’d talked, she said she had too much unfinished business, whatever that meant.

My heart hurt for her that she didn’t make her goal.

The bar had been the dustiest part of the house when I moved in, and it might have stayed that way if it hadn’t been for fucking Michael driving me to drink. It’s well stocked now with gin, vodka, and mixers.

The mini fridge and freezer are functional, and my hands shake only a little as I open the small door and pull out the frosty bottle and the ice tray full of perfectly round cubes. Goddamn perfection, if you ask me.

The crack of the tray is beyond satisfying, but the clink the ice makes as it drops into the shaker is insufferable.

I stare at the clear martini glass—oversized and empty—and debate about chilling it, but I’m not a damn drink connoisseur.

I don’t care if it’s cold or if it’s done properly.

I care that the booze seeps immediately into my system and dulls the realization that I am, just a little—just a tiny bit—unhinged right now.

I can’t believe I went from a nationally certified ASL-English interpreter to a madman who scours the dark web.

I laugh out loud to myself as I pour in the gin, then the olive juice…then a bit more olive juice. What else do I have? Lime? Sounds good. Oranges? Maybe just a squeeze.

I draw the line at the jar of cherries, but I do add three orange slices to the oversized glass, then cap the shaker and use my whole body to mix it up. My teeth clatter, my muscles screaming at me.

Thom would tell me to go a little longer, to work those biceps.

“Fuck you, Thom!” I hiss at the vision of him standing in the corner of the room, looking all judgy. “I want to rot. Don’t tell me what to do!”

When I’m done shaking, I pour it into the glass. Thankfully, it’s cold enough to make the glass foggy. The liquid inside is a sickly pale olive color, and there are bits of orange pips floating around in it.

Hm, not that appetizing.

Something Michael would enjoy, I’m sure.

Oh fucking well. I toss a couple of olives in, then tip half the glass straight down my throat.

“Oh god, tastes like poison,” I gasp, then take another drink and fight the urge to laugh again. “Michael, this is your fucking fault. Look what you’ve done to me.” I turn to face the security camera, and oh fuck, there he is again.

The monstrous little shit is sitting three feet away with an entire goddamn zucchini he’s stolen off the plant clenched in his horrible teeth. He’s staring me in the eyes like he can see me, chomping away like he doesn’t have a care in the world.

Like he knows how long it took me to grow this one.

Fucking weeks laboring over it. I even sang to it once.

I’m going to murder him.

And now might be my time. I might be able to get him this time if I’m very, very quiet.

I hold my breath like somehow that’s going to help me walk a little lighter, debate about taking another drink, but instead, I grab the bat with the nails glued to the end, which I realize is absolutely psychotic, but I don’t care anymore.

I’m leaning in.

Completely horizontally.

The door creaks on the hinges, and I glare at it.

Shut the fuck up, please! The floorboards on the front porch squeak.

Christ, is anything in this house quiet?

Spending so many years in the Deaf community, I think I’ve forgotten just how loud the world can be now that I have to care about shit like that.

A nail falls from my bat and lands on the floor with a clank. Damn glue. Probably old. Useless. I bet my aunt hoarded it like everything else. I bet it’s from 1934.

Still, I’m not a quitter. I rise onto my toes, then slip down the steps and into the grass. The ground is soft, and luckily, there aren’t any goatheads because my feet are bare, and I round the corner of the house to where I set up the camera.

I raise the bat over my head, then let out a huge rally cry…and lunge.

There’s nothing like walking back into the house full of regret and shame. I toss the bat back into the corner where it belongs and stare down at my mud-covered front.

“Fucking Michael.”

He wasn’t there, of course. All that was left was a half-eaten zucchini and a pile of groundhog shit waiting for me. I would have walked back to the house like a normal person, but I was so hyped up on adrenaline, GERD-inducing dirty martinis, and anger that I mistook the garden hose for a snake.

I might have pummeled it to death while screaming loudly.

God, when did I become such a killer? My aunt would be ashamed of me. Trying to harm the creatures in the garden.

They’re only living their lives. Have some respect.

Well, fine. I can have some respect for them, but not Michael. With him, it’s personal. He took this too far.

I might feel humiliated, but luckily, no one was there to witness my fall. And I am most definitely not telling any of my friends, new or old. And I’m definitely not telling any man I try to sleep with. It’s already hard enough to get someone interested in me.

I can’t even get a guy to sell me TNT on the dark web, and I’m a paying customer.

Why is being a criminal so damn hard?

The shower I decide on feels good, and it sobers me up a little.

I watch the mud and other things swirl down the drain in a cocoon of lavender-scented bubbles and wonder how long this is going to be my life.

I’m at war with a groundhog, I have no real job to speak of, the money my aunt left me is starting to dry up, and I haven’t been on a date in… shit. Months.

I scrub at my hair and try not to feel the tightness in the back of my throat. If I can solve the Michael problem, I swear everything else will fall into place. How long do groundhogs live, anyway?

Michael will probably make it to a hundred, just out of spite.

I scrub my face, then rinse off and get out, groping for a towel before I make my way into the bedroom. I dress in joggers and a T-shirt because comfort is my only priority right now, then make my way back to my computer to see if anyone has answered my new query.

TNT really is the only way to go at this point. I’ve failed with all the traps I’ve set up, and the bat with nails in it and the croquet mallet I found in the shed haven’t done me any good.

It’s too bad I’d gone into Deaf studies and not into whatever field made and studied explosives. Shit, maybe I should get a job at a mine. I can handle the dank, dark, lung-killing conditions long enough to sneak some out, can’t I?

Oh, who the fuck am I kidding. I wouldn’t last a day.

I can’t even hack it on a nonfunctional farm.

Or in the gym for twenty minutes on the treadmill.

Taking a breath, I open up the message board and see that I have a couple of replies to my query and a DM waiting in my inbox. My heart kicks up a notch.

Is this it? Is this my moment? My chance to end the madness and get my life back?

My eyes scroll the message.

Someone has what I want. It’s in code, but I know what this is. A real fucking sale. I’m going to get my TNT.

And I’m going to get it tomorrow.