A Deep and Dark December(84)

“I love him,” she whispered into the dirt. “He loves me. I love him and he loves me.” She raised her head and looked right at Ham, daring him with her declaration. “I love him and he loves me.” As she said it, she sent out a call to Graham, pushed all her love for him out into the universe. “I love him and he loves me.” She repeated it over and over, growing louder and louder until her love for him became a thing she could feel all around her.

Ham reared back against the bench seat. He stared at her in horror. She clawed her way toward him, defying him to stop her.

“I love him. And he loves me. And there’s nothing you can do about it. You’re weak and pathetic. Look at you!” She gained her feet slowly, rising to stand. “You use your ability to hurt and kill and it’s killing you. It’s killing you.”

“Shut up!” Spittle dotted his chin and his eyes narrowed into thin black slits. He heaved himself up from the bench with more energy than she thought he had left. He raised a crooked finger at her. “The only one dying tonight is you.”





Graham stood on Erin’s doorstep, just stood there. He couldn’t move, couldn’t even raise his hand to knock. She called to him, the sound carried to him on the night wind. He strained to listen, thinking at first he might be imagining it. Terror hit him like a gunshot to the chest. His knees buckled. Catching the door handle, he used it to keep upright.

“Erin!”

He could feel her, her shock, her anger, her fear. And then a wave of love washed over all of it, swelling until it filled him up. He pushed away from the door, suddenly freed, and climbed back into his car. He started the engine, not knowing which way to go. All he knew was that he had to get to her.

He found himself taking the turns up to the bluffs a little too fast, and forced himself to slow even though everything in him screamed at him to hurry. He parked and climbed out of the car. He could see her now, lying in the dirt. A man stood over her. He couldn’t quite process what he was seeing.

“Pop?”

Ham turned toward him. One look and Graham knew his dad was in trouble. He looked like he was going to pass out any moment.

“Pop!” He rushed toward his father, but Ham put up a hand.

“Graham,” Erin gasped, looking up at him from his father’s feet. “Be careful.”

Careful? “What in the hell is going on here?”

“Graham—”

“Shut up!” Ham shouted down at her.

Erin flinched as though Ham had hit her. She turned toward Graham, her lips pressed hard together, her nostrils flaring. She glanced up sharply at Ham, then back at him. Graham shook his head, trying to get a grasp on what the hell was happening.

“She’s no good for you, son.”

“Erin, are you hurt?”

Erin shook her head, her mouth a firm, flat line. She jerked her head toward his car. She wanted him to leave? What in the hell?

“Somebody tell me what’s going on right now.”

He glanced from Erin to his father and back again. Her eyes were wide with fear and something else, something shocking and seething. The truth. The realization broke hot over him like a scorching bath, leaving behind a bitter, unbelievable revelation.

He swung his gaze back up to his father who was shaking as though weak from illness, but as he looked closer, he saw what had been there the whole time, and he knew.

“It was you.”

“Now that you’ve accepted your role…your heritage…you will be the true sheriff of this town.”

“You killed them.” Even as he said the words, everything in him worked to reject them. He couldn’t believe his father capable. He wanted his father to deny it, to explain everything away, to point the finger elsewhere.

“I did what was necessary,” Ham wheezed, the arm that gripped his cane shaking.

What was necessary? As though killing was nothing more than a household chore to him. He looked at Ham, seeing him as if for the first time. A fissure broke open in his chest, dividing him into two parts. The part of him that still wanted to believe in his father and the part of him that knew him for the monster he was. A murderer.

“You killed Deidre.” Jesus. “You got her pregnant and killed her. Then you killed Greg and made it look like he killed Deidre. And Keith…” A sick knot formed in his gut. “How could you?”

“With true power comes responsibility. I’ll teach you as my father taught me. You’ll be the greatest Influencer yet.”

Graham jerked back as his father’s words truly sank in. Power. Heritage. Influencer. Ham wanted his son to be like him, like his father and his father before him and so on, going back six generations. Murder and manipulation were in his blood, sewn into his genes.

“Didn’t you ever wonder,” Ham asked, his tone conversational, “why your confession rate was the highest in the precinct? How you could talk anyone into anything? How if you really put your mind to it, you could have anything you wanted?”

Ham looked down at Erin. “How you could get this one to drop her boyfriend and fall flat on her back for you?” Ham turned his gaze back to his son. “That’s your heritage, son. We’re Influencers. Protectors of this town.”

Graham stumbled back a step, a guttural moan ripped from his chest. No! Everything in his life, everything he’d ever thought he’d worked for, every person he’d met, every job he had, every case he’d solved, every woman he’d ever taken to bed…had any of that been real? Had he earned even one success? Or had it all come from his ability to manipulate people to do what he wanted?