Chapter Fodder
FODDER
Nolan
“NICE SHAVING CUT YOU GOT there, son,” Sheriff Yates says when he steps inside the command tent, staring at the mark on my neck from Harper’s blade.
I turn away and check one of the maps. “Shit happens,” I reply.
“The way they make razors these days . . . ” Yates whistles, pulling his hat off to shake the rain from its brim. “Soon there’ll be ten blades on the damned things. Yours must be extra wide, that’s a long slice.”
“No, just the way I slipped, I guess. Anyway,” I say, trying to shrug off his scrutiny by pointing at a spot along the Loon Lake search area, “last I checked with Bob, his team was about a quarter mile from this escarpment. Given the weather and how long it will take them to get back, I think we should call it a day. I don’t want them to miss something critical in the downpour. ”
It’s only two-thirty in the afternoon, but I’m hoping another few hours of heavy rain will wash away any footprints I might have left when I hiked to the western shore and deposited McMillan’s shirt on a rocky outcrop near the deepest section of the lake after my visit to the search crew this morning.
Then they can find the “evidence” that he drunkenly drowned tomorrow.
I just want to get the fuck back to the cottage and have a hot shower.
Preferably with Harper. Other than a brief exchange this morning, I haven’t spoken to her, and it’s fucking chewing me up inside.
At the very least, I could be following up on the notes I’ve left in my scrapbook, learning more about the enigma I came here to kill.
And it makes me fucking irate that I’m spending all my time here for Sheriff Yates.
“Well, we might get some pushback from Mrs. Evanston if she’s lurking around—it’s a bit early to be calling it quits for the day,” Yates says as he checks his watch.
“But you’re probably right about the weather.
Wouldn’t want someone to slip and get hurt, especially not at the cliffs.
The rocks get pretty treacherous when they’re wet, so it’s best to pull back the waterside crew too. ”
“Will do. And Mrs. Evanston is back at her Airbnb.”
“Good. I was hoping I wouldn’t see that nightmare of a dog around. So strange how it took to Harper, isn’t it?”
My hand tightens into a fist at my side.
There’s something insidious about the way he drops her into conversation, as though he’s trying to crawl beneath my skin.
Maybe I’m just imagining it, my thoughts clouded by my obsession for her.
But every single time her name falls from his lips, I fight the urge to pry his jaws open and rip his tongue right out of his mouth.
Christ, it would be so fucking satisfying to squash that bloody hunk of meat beneath my boot.
I wipe a dark grin from my face before the idea can take root.
“She’s got a way with animals, I guess.”
Yates chuckles. Claps me on the back. None of it feels quite right, like there’s a hidden meaning to his words when he says, “You’ve got that right.”
He smiles, then turns to stride toward the entrance of the tent. I open my mouth, nearly about to ask what he meant by that when Yates says, “Call it in. Get some rest. I’ll see you bright and early tomorrow morning—got a few new volunteers to add to the list.”
Yates disappears, leaving me with the clatter of rain across the canvas and the mountain of work I still have to do.
I start calling in the search crews and packing up equipment and somehow it’s nearly four o’clock by the time I’m finally sitting in my rental car, staring out the windshield, pondering how the fuck I got sucked into this situation.
Fucking Yates. McMillan. Jake Hornell, that gym bro piece of shit.
Fucking Arthur. I’m still so pissed off at him for killing Evanston—if he hadn’t done that, we probably wouldn’t be in this goddamn mess.
And all this shit is just getting in the way of what I need.
Harper. It fills me with a wave of rage so deep and so blinding that I punch the steering wheel before I even realize I’ve made a fist.
I key my engine and drive to Lancaster Manor.
When I enter the cottage, there’s no immediate sign of Harper aside from the palo santo incense burning in its holder.
The kitchen window is open, and Morpheus stands on the ledge where he’s peeling a strip of jerky from the hunk clutched beneath a claw.
He croaks at me but doesn’t fly off, probably too comfortable beneath the overhang where he’s sheltered from the rain.
“I’m not sure if you deserve this,” I say as I approach his perch with slow, measured steps.
He eyes me as I pull the lid from the glass jerky jar and place another piece within his reach.
“But she likes you. Just don’t rat me out. ”
“Murder cookie,” the raven says.
“I thought we had a deal about not ratting me out, you fucker. And it doesn’t give me much confidence in the ingredients,” I say as I wipe my fingers on a nearby tea towel.
“Nom nom,” the bird says in Harper’s voice. It’s a perfect replica, but somehow eerily hollow. “Cookie good enough for me.”
I roll my eyes. “Fine. But one of these days I’m going to teach you some new words so you’re not so . . . murdery.”
Pivoting away from the insolent corvid, I scan the room once more for clues to Harper’s whereabouts in the silent space. I doubt she’s outside working on the garden in this weather, so I take my chances that she might be upstairs instead. “Harper . . . ?”
“Yeah . . . ?” her tentative voice calls back from down the hallway.
I change course away from the staircase and head toward the bathroom instead.
I should probably leave her alone—it’s not like she needs me hovering outside the door as she uses the restroom, but something about her voice seems .
. . off. “You okay?” I ask as I stop outside the door and rap once with my knuckles.
“For sure.”
She’s definitely not okay. “Can I come in?”
There’s a beat of silence. Something metallic lands on the porcelain, and a moment later, there’s a quiet sniffle. Her voice is laced with feigned bitterness when she says, “Yeah. Whatever. It’s fucked anyway.”
When I open the door, Harper doesn’t turn to face me. Her hands are gripped to the edge of the sink basin. A pair of scissors rests next to the faucet. And scattered at her feet are long locks of her dark hair.
I don’t know what this is. What it means.
If she’s okay. If it’s a practical decision or one laced with trauma.
Maybe both. I’m scared as fuck about what might be going through her head right now, and I’m not sure how best to ask.
But I do know one thing: She’s fucking beautiful.
The blunt lines of her new bob show off the elegant curve of her neck and the slope of her jaw.
The haphazard locks that haven’t yet been shaped give her a vigilante, end-of-the-world, badass edge.
But it’s more than just the way she looks.
It’s the determination in her face as she watches her reflection.
“I can’t get the back,” she says, not meeting my eyes when she grabs the scissors and holds them out in my direction, clutching them tightly. “Can you . . . ? Please?”
Harper has never asked for my help before.
Not really. When it came to the exhumations, she had me over a barrel.
She demanded my assistance in exchange for my book, and even then, I’m pretty sure she intended to kill me before holding up her end of the deal.
Sometimes, it’s still hard to believe where we are now.
I spent the last four years desperate to take a blade and carve her out of my life.
And now, I’m about to pull a pair of scissors from her grasp, worried about what’s going through her mind.
I reach behind my head and pull my shirt off, draping it on the towel rack and then taking the offered scissors.
But before I try to finish what she started, I set them on the shelf in exchange for her brush and a hair tie.
She watches me in the mirror, her eyes a little red but her expression stoic.
“What do you need?” I ask as I slide the brush through her hair in a long, slow stroke.
“For the back to not look like it took a turn in Cookie Monster’s hopper.”
I huff a breath of a laugh. “Not exactly what I meant.”
“Um . . . how about a fully stocked weapons crate.”
“Still not what I meant, but that could probably be arranged.” The brush rakes over her scalp and her expression softens.
I give her a minute, slowly repeating the motion a few times, letting her contemplate another answer.
My fingers graze her neck. Harper’s eyes flutter closed as she takes a deep breath.
I lean closer, letting each word linger against her ear when I ask again, “What do you need?”
It takes a long time for her to think on this.
I change nothing about the cadence of my brushstrokes, cataloging the smallest changes that I see in her reflection.
The crease that appears and then softens between her brows.
The way the tension spirits away from her shoulders.
The steady rise and fall of her chest. Her eyes are still closed when she finally says, “If I say ‘safety,’ then I should leave Cape Carnage. If I say, ‘for my past to stop hunting me,’ then I have to face it dead on. But both of those things would mean breaking the vows I’ve made, and that’s something I won’t do.
And if I say ‘I need you,’” she says, meeting my gaze in the reflection, “that leaves me vulnerable, with something to lose. I’m not strong enough to make you leave, and not brave enough to ask you to stay.
So maybe the things I need are things I shouldn’t have. ”