Burning Bright (Peter Ash #2)(22)

Only they weren’t tin ducks. They were people, and he’d killed them.

Maybe he was right to kill them, she thought. Hadn’t they tried to kill her, on the road? They’d shot that truck driver who was just trying to help. Those weren’t stun guns, not anymore.

She was glad Peter was there. He made her feel safe and protected. He was funny and capable and he seemed to get her in a way that nobody else ever really had.

But he’d killed them.

He was a war veteran. Maybe damaged by that in some way, she didn’t know, and it didn’t feel fair to even think it. But there it was.

She wanted him to come back.

She wanted him to help her.

She also wanted him to walk away so she could stay in her ruined car, her whole ruined life, and let herself shudder and cry until she was empty.

She didn’t trust her judgment in men. Her therapist had said it was because women often found themselves with men like their fathers. June’s dad hadn’t exactly set the standard for datable guys. She’d had some bad experiences.

Stevie the tattooed barista with the fine art degree wanted to move in with her and quit his job so he’d have more time to paint his tiny incomprehensible landscapes. The worst thing was that she actually considered it. Paul the app developer wanted her to marry him and quit her job and go to church every day and squeeze out babies for the rest of her life. She’d actually considered that, too, because it turned out that grown-up life in the modern age was so much more complicated than anyone had let on.

Robert the investment banker was the scariest of them. He had a great job and wore good suits and drank good wine. He was smart and polite until he suddenly got very weird, popping Viagra and wanting to tie her up. He became increasingly insistent until one night he got really rough and she had visions of being handcuffed naked to a radiator for the rest of a short miserable life. So she’d kicked him in the balls, scooped up her clothes, snapped a picture of his naked body with her phone for insurance, then climbed out the window.

Even Bryce. An assistant professor, a biologist. She’d loved the trees, but she’d ended up writing his grant proposals and doing his goddamn laundry, all while he fucked that thick-legged slut Cindy from the English department.

What was the matter with her? She’d had enough therapy to know it was all about her crazy overprotective dad. So she swore off relationships, limiting herself to hookups with cute stoner ski instructors and kind-eyed backpacker bums who would never begin to qualify as long-term material.

So this Peter guy. She didn’t know. She could tell he liked her, and he hadn’t yet tried to tell her what to do. She liked him, goddamn it. But that was the biggest strike against him. That and the fact that he’d killed at least one man before her eyes. And she was still actively considering him for dating potential? There was something seriously wrong with her.

Clearly she needed more therapy.

She watched as he limped back to the wrecked SUV and stood staring at it for a minute, as if the dead men might climb out through the shattered openings, or it might somehow right itself on its own. She watched his chest rise and fall like he was breathing hard. What was he thinking? She thought she should get away from him. She should get away from anyone who could do the things she’d seen him do in the last thirty minutes.

Then he bent and crawled back into the wreck.

She found herself shuddering for a long moment and had to grab the wheel hard with both hands to force herself to stop.

Get a grip, girl. Get moving now or you might never leave the car.

Her door was jammed shut. She gathered her legs under her and stood on the seat. Her upper arm was bloody, her lip on fire, her whole body sore as if she’d done three hours of kickboxing then thrown herself off a cliff. The climb through the sunroof was hard. She slid down the windshield on her ass, then scrambled off the hood to put the car between her and Peter. He was still inside that SUV, doing God knows what.

But she couldn’t bring herself to walk away.

Finally he emerged with an armload of things he’d taken from the truck, and laid them out on the rocks. He walked around the back side of the SUV with a hatchet and a couple of big water bottles and did something noisy. A thin greasy smoke began to spiral up into the clouds despite the light rain that had begun to fall. He emerged with the water bottles, shook two of them into the Suburban until they were empty, then tossed them in, too. With a lighter, he ignited a long strip of cloth stuffed into a third smaller bottle and lobbed it through the hole where the windshield used to be. He followed it with what looked like the old gun her dad had given her, and maybe the phones he’d taken from the bodies.

Faint flames began to flicker through the broken window openings.

He watched the fire grow for a moment, then bent to the rocks for the remaining things he’d gathered. A black cloth sack in one hand and a new pistol in the other. Black greasy smoke rising up behind him, getting more substantial by the minute.

She didn’t know what she would do, but she had to do something.





10





PETER



He limped back from the Suburban, the truck driver’s pistol hanging heavy from one hand, the small black cloth drawstring sack in the other.

June stood behind the shield of her car, her face pale and bleak, as if she’d peered through a window into another world, a world far different from the one she’d previously known to exist. She held something in her hand.