Chapter 4 #2
I cross my arms over my chest, the material of my shirt pulling across the shoulders with the gesture. Can’t ever get a fucking shirt to fit right. “Maybe I did, and what the fuck, boss?”
“Is there a problem?” One of Kael’s eyebrows arcs. I’m not so far gone that I don’t recognize the sign to tread carefully. I shift my stance, forcing myself to relax my shoulders, and choose my next words with care.
“I feel like I could be more use doing anything else, that’s all. Twisting someone’s arm, shaking something loose, breaking a few bones…you know. The usual.”
Abandoning the paperwork he was absorbed in when I stormed the tiny office behind the bar, my employer leans back in his chair, its Naugahyde creaking as he shifts his weight.
“Let’s review,” he says, voice mild.
Shit. Obviously I didn’t choose the right words.
“You want to go play the heavy while my baby cousin is stalked and potentially murdered by a psychotic killer responsible for the deaths of …” He throws his hands up. “…I don’t fucking know how many women.”
“No, that’s not what —”
“My baby cousin, I might add, who’s a brilliant fucking hacker and has assisted me and our fine organization on countless occasions.”
“Well, I didn’t—”
He holds up a hand. “The same baby cousin who I’ve been trying to get here in Philly for three years—ever since her mother, God rest her soul, passed.” He makes the sign of the cross.
I don’t reply.
Both eyebrows are perfect arches now. “Did I miss anything?”
“I’ll go pack, boss.” I stifle a sigh. “With the deepest of joy and gratitude for the honor of—”
Kael picks up the ink pen he had dropped to the desk and leans back over the papers strewn around. Man needs a fucking secretary. “Shut it while you’re ahead, Bran. You shouldn’t need too much…bring her here as soon as possible.”
“Got it.” I turn to leave.
Kael’s voice stops me on the threshold. “And Bran?”
“Yeah, boss?”
Kael’s greenish eyes are jagged chips. “Keep your hands to yourself.”
Keep your hands to yourself.
I’m still fuming sixty miles down Interstate 64. As if I’m some incorrigible ladies’ man or something. Hell, it’s hard to find a woman brave enough to follow through once they see the size of my cock.
I never thought having a big dick would be a negative attribute, but apparently, most women don’t like having their guts rearranged.
My mind wanders to Tallulah “Twiggy” Gentry, aka Baby Cousin.
Scrawnier than any other female I’ve ever known, she definitely would not be a candidate for any cheek flapping.
Last I saw her, she couldn’t have been more than a hundred pounds soaking wet.
I might’ve been the one who gave her Twig as a nickname, but it stuck for a reason.
As skinny and stick-straight as she is, I would break Tallulah Gentry in a hot minute. I prefer my women lush and padded and able to take a pounding…
I also like my women able to take a joke. Tallulah and I never got on. It should never have been an issue. I’m several years older, thirty-two to her twenty-something. When I gave her the nickname she was in her teens—definitely not someone I hung out with or even ran into that frequently.
But she was some kind of genius, always tagging along with her older cousins, and she had a fucking smart mouth on her that she didn’t know when to shut.
I always had the impression that she thought I was just big dumb muscle, when nothing could be farther from the truth.
I was one of the few men in the ECI who actually had a degree—not that I was using it for much.
The Irish didn’t have much use for history degrees.
But history had always been my passion, and I was proud, regardless, to have earned my college diploma.
Tallulah Gentry could assume I was stupid all she liked. Everyone knew what they said about assuming things.
Hands on the wheel, I fall into the easy rhythm of highway miles. Philly falls away behind me. The city lights shrink in the rearview mirror, replaced by the kind of darkness you only get once you’re out past the suburbs, where the trees start shouldering up to the edge of the road.
My knuckles ache under the gauze. I flex my fingers against the steering wheel, check the bandage at the next gas station, decide it’s fine.
My brain wants to work the problem while the rest of me drives.
We know Thurston has pattern preferences. The Falls. Winter. Women in their twenties with a certain look, a certain vulnerability. He likes playing with prey, seeing how far he can push them before he breaks them. He likes coming back.
He came back to Lucy Falls, to Shiloh’s orbit, to Tallulah’s window.
If he’s making it personal, he won’t stop until something gets resolved. Either we put him down, or he puts someone in the ground.
My job is to make sure it’s not her.
The thing that sits under that thought, in a place I don’t look too closely at, is older than any of this. Older than Kael. Older than ECI.
The first time I failed to keep someone safe, I was sixteen and too big for my skin. I remember hospital lights. A waiting room that smelled like disinfectant and fear. A cop’s voice telling me it wasn’t my fault, like that meant anything.
He was wrong.
People like me, we’re built for two things. We break things, or we stand in front of broken things and hold them together. We can’t half-ass either.
My phone buzzes in the cup holder with a text.
Brodie: CALL WHEN YOU HIT TOWN. I WANT EYES ON HER EVERY HOUR.
Subtle, he is not.
I send back a simple: 10-4.
Then another, because I’m not a complete asshole: She okay?
There’s a pause. Then: SHE’S PISSED. SCARED. WON’T ADMIT EITHER. WATCH YOUR BALLS.
I huff out a laugh despite myself.
Tallulah angry is a category five weather event. All sharp edges and fast words. She’ll hate me on principle just for existing near her autonomy.
It doesn’t change what needs doing.
When Shiloh’s stalker situation blew up a few years ago, Tallulah was the one feeding Jack and Brodie intel at three in the morning.
She was also the last one to lock her own door.
She thinks because she’s the one behind the screens, the one seeing patterns and not the star of the show, so to speak, that she’s safe from being a statistic.
That’s the lie every smart person tells themselves right before the world proves otherwise.
Dawn starts bleeding into the sky by the time I peel off the highway toward Lucy Falls. The air gets thinner, colder, the way it does when you start trading city smog for river mist.
The sign appears around a bend, small and unassuming:
WELCOME TO LUCY FALLS
POP. 4,812
ENJOY THE VIEW
I snort.
“Sure,” I tell it. “Let’s enjoy the view.”
The town is still half-asleep when I roll down Main. A few shop lights blink on as I drive past. Karla’s donut shop is already busy, a handful of early risers hunched against the cold with coffee in hand.
I park a block away from Tallulah’s building and let the engine idle for a second while I study the street.
Two cruisers from the Sheriff’s department sit outside the building. One is parked at the corner, the other across from her building. Good coverage. Jack’s not screwing around.
I pull the SUV into a space behind one of the cruisers and kill the engine.
When I step out, the cold hits like a slap. Mountain air, wet and sharp, bites through my jacket. I breathe it in, let it clear whatever’s left of Philly out of my lungs.
Across the street, a deputy in a heavy coat clocks me immediately. Her hand hovers near her belt, then relaxes when she recognizes me. We met briefly when I came down last time, but I don’t for the life of me remember her name. She nods once. I nod back.
Behind her, up on the second floor of a narrow brick building, a set of windows glows weakly. One of them has a sad little twig of a tree visible through the glass. Lights on it blink unevenly, like they’re not sure if they’re allowed to be festive.
Even from here, I can see the outline of a clear glass ornament near the bottom.
That’s her place.
I sling the duffel over my shoulder and start walking toward it.
Kael told me not to look at her like anything but a job.
Too late, I think, and push through the front door anyway.