Chapter 13
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Hugo
Idon’t like to think of myself as someone who has emotional ups and downs based on how his day unfolds. I’m a reasonable man. A patient man. I don’t give in to petty little moods.
That said, I will kill the fuck out of Everett Jameson III if he doesn’t stop rambling about some just-concluded charity dinner.
It’s not my attendance at the quarterly meeting of the West Side Women’s Shelter community advisory board or even Jameson’s self-satisfied tone.
No, I’m feeling murdery because the meeting was scheduled to end twelve minutes ago and could have ended twenty minutes ago if not for Jameson’s insistence on rehashing how much better our own fundraising efforts are than his ex-wife’s art guild’s.
And now I might miss Rue at her mailbox because nobody can stop talking about passed appetizers.
I grind my teeth as other board members jump into the conversation with their own complaints about recent social functions.
Our newest board member slides me a sympathetic look, so my frustration must be evident.
Rather than lose my cool entirely, I make a show of checking my phone, cringing as I mouth a Dr. Mohr-ish apology, and slipping out of the room.
I exchange waves with the handful of shelter employees and residents I pass, but nobody delays me as I head toward Terri, the night-shift employee who controls the shelter’s double-entrance system. She brightens from inside her fishbowl office as I approach the first set of doors.
“Good meeting?” She buzzes me through so I can step into the small vestibule, letting the inner door lock behind me.
“Very productive,” I tell her. “We’re recommending an upgrade of the exterior cameras. Clearer picture with audio.” And we’ll run it through the legitimate side of Pell’s business, which will keep the women in the shelter safe and keep Pell happy with me. Win-win.
“Oh, wonderful! Extra security is always welcome.” She beams. “Be safe on the way to your car, Dr. Mohr.”
I give her a little salute as she buzzes me through the outside doors, pleased at how well the shelter’s functioning.
Shortly after I moved to the area, I took a chunk of my inheritance and made an anonymous donation to expand the West Side Women’s Shelter.
It now provides mental health services, job training, and child care, along with two sets of locked doors between the women and their abusers.
It plugged a hole in the city’s safety net, it’s given me a handful of worthy intakes, and really, what else was I going to do with that money?
My mood improves the instant I step into the chilly October air.
The sun’s just starting to set, and traffic shouldn’t be too bad.
I might even make it home in time to catch Rue before she leaves for ladies’ night.
Things have been slightly off between us in the six days since I sprinted away from Aaron McEwan’s house with her invitation ricocheting through my brain.
Take off my mask. Come to her as myself.
I can’t do that, so I left. And it’s been nothing but brittle politeness at the mailboxes since then.
Still, I’ll take that over no Rue at all.
As I turn toward the brightly lit parking lot, I let myself picture a dangerously appealing scenario: I’m late getting home tonight, but what if Rue’s watching for my car to turn down the street for a change? What if today’s the day she—
“Hey. Do you work in there?”
The aggressive voice scatters my thoughts, and I look up to see that a beefy white man has appeared in the parking lot, which is intentionally kept clear of trees and landscaping to avoid exactly this kind of surprise. Did this guy hide between cars, waiting to catch the first person who left?
I straighten my glasses and summon my most helpful Dr. Mohr smile.
“Oh, hi there! You startled me. Can I help you?”
“Yeah, you can help me,” he says belligerently. “You can let me in to see my goddamn wife.”
And this is why the shelter has the security precautions it does.
“I’m sorry, sir,” I say in my most vacantly pleasant tone. “I don’t have the ability to—”
“Don’t fucking lie to me!”
Goddammit. The guy is big, almost as tall as me and the kind of strong you see in well-fed older men who have a surprising amount of “I was a varsity football player” muscle underneath their dress shirts and fleece vests. And he’s fuming, his face an ugly shade of red.
“Sir.” I strengthen my voice. “What’s your name?”
“Fuck you.” He smirks, absolutely delighted to hold something over me.
A second later, an electronic voice comes from his pocket.
“Reminder: Zoom call in fifteen minutes between Ray Overton and the International Development Team in Stockholm.”
He snarls and fumbles to silence the notification while I put the pieces together.
Lindsay Overton arrived at the shelter two days ago with a split lip and three enormous suitcases.
I sat with her for about an hour before tonight’s meeting, letting her talk through her decision to finally end her marriage.
She was pale and terrified but resolved not to go back to her husband this time.
So, of course, her husband came to her.
“Lindsay!” Ray Overton bellows. “I know you’re in there! Quit being a little bitch and come home.”
I shift to put myself between him and the building. “Okay, let’s cool things down a little.”
He responds by getting in my face, his breathing choppy.
“Move,” he orders, jabbing me hard in the chest with his blunt finger.
I plant my feet and raise a single, bored eyebrow. Last year, one of my intakes whacked me so hard with a cricket bat mid-struggle that it cracked three of my ribs. This guy’s pencil-pushing finger is nothing.
“You motherfuckers are keeping her from me,” he seethes.
“I promise you that’s not what we’re doing here.” I lift my hands in a calming gesture that I already know isn’t going to work. “But there are certain policies to be observed, so if you would just—”
“Lindsay!” he screams again, shoving me hard with both palms. He puts his weight behind it, and it knocks me back a step.
On instinct, I grab the only weapon I’m carrying today.
One blow to his temple from the heavy weighted end of my tactical pen would cave in the thin bit of skull protecting his brain, driving bone fragments into his middle meningeal artery without breaking the skin.
He’d be dead, and my pen would still be clean.
Or I could hit him in the throat with it, crushing his larynx and collapsing his airway.
He’d die gasping. The carotid sinus could also work, and if it didn’t cause a fatal cardiac event, well, even Dr. Mohr’s soft-sided loafers would have no problem caving in his fucking face.
Overton’s eyes drop to my hand, where my knuckles have whitened around the pen. Now that I’ve registered as a threat, he turns all his attention on me.
I probably have five more minutes before the meeting wraps up and the rest of the board makes its way to the parking lot. If I’m going to do this, I have to do it now. After all, Overton’s making a strong case to join that rapist with the cricket bat in beautifying my roses.
“Are you gonna help me talk to my wife, or are you gonna get the fuck out of my way?” he snarls.
I reposition my grip on the pen, my eyes flicking from the sweet spot on his temple to the security cameras at both ends of the parking lot.
Self-defense or not, killing Overton would create a level of police scrutiny I can’t afford.
It’d have to be one hard strike, leave the body here, be on a plane with a fresh passport inside an hour.
Except I can’t, can I? Starting over as Geoffrey Benton or Sasha West was a viable option when the only person who’d notice my disappearance was Quinn, and she’d shrug it off and move on with her life in an insultingly short amount of time.
But running now means losing Rue, who’d forget me in even less time than Quinn.
And it’s not like I could ask her to come with me or call her from a safe house to say, “I caved in a guy’s skull and had to flee the country.
Sleep well knowing you’ve been living next door to a serial killer with a surveillance kink for five hundred and ninety days. ” She’d be in therapy for life.
Then, of course, there’s Morticia. She’d understand. Hell, she might even be willing to run with me. The only hitch in that plan is literally knowing nothing about her other than the shape of her body and how she sounds when she comes.
Fucking attachments. The person I’m starting to become, the person who might actually be worth being, exists because of these two women, and I’m not willing to lose either of them.
My fingers loosen around the tactical pen as I prepare to deal with this asshole as the weakest version of myself.
“Okay, let’s both take a breath, Mr. Overton.” I speak in a low, even voice, slouching to look as nonthreatening as possible in my de-escalation attempt. “Then we can take this conversation somewhere else, huh?”
“Fuck off. I know what you’re trying to do.
” He shoves me again, and although I’m prepared for it this time, I let myself stagger back a step.
“You’re trying to distract me, you white-knight cuck.
” His chest billows out. “I bet you’re hanging around hoping for a gratitude fuck from one of those man-hating cunts before she goes running back home where she belongs. Fucking pathetic.”
My grip on Dr. Mohr slips as I hear echoes of Navarro’s forum in his words, and I step forward, trembling with the need to hurt him.
“You kiss your wife with that mouth, Ray?” I growl. “That why she left you?”
Insight strikes the moment he raises his fist. I can’t kill him, but I can do damage in a different way.