Darkness at the Edge of Town (Iris Ballard #2)(96)

“With pleasure. Paul?” Ken said. The men flanked us.

“Billy…” I said.

“Iris, we’re going. There’s no point,” Luke said, taking my arm.

“Just listen to—” I called to Billy.

“Go!” Billy roared.

Ken reached to grab my other arm, but Luke snarled. “Touch her and I will shoot you dead, I swear to God,” he said right in the pissed man’s face. “We’re going.”

We walked ahead of the men all the way to the front gate. I glanced back at Billy a few times. Mathias kept patting him on the back as Betsy kissed his face. Megan smirked smugly and even gave me a little wave. Bitch.



Our guards didn’t utter a word until we were at the front gate. As Ken unlocked it, I turned to Paul. “It’s not too late, Paul. Just come with us.”

“Fuck you,” he said.

“And I don’t care who the fuck you people are. Come here again and I will fucking kill you. Slowly. Painfully. And they’ll never find your bodies,” Ken said.

“Have experience with that, do you?” I asked.

“Trespass again and find out the hard way.” Ken yanked the gate shut and locked it. “Leave.”

Luke took my arm and began leading me down the road. “Come on,” he whispered. We had a half-mile walk back to the car. I kept glancing back and the moment the men were out of sight, I began to pant from the fear and tension I could finally acknowledge.

“Do you think they believed us? About Billy?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

I pulled out my cellphone and stopped the recorder. It was all part of our plan. I’d flipped it on when Megan approached and Paul had his back to us. “I thought we’d get more. Hell, we got next to nothing.”

“It was because I was there,” Luke said. “Maybe we can do something with their threats. Both Ken and Megan threatened to kill us. At the very least, we got him admitting to the extortion yesterday. You press charges, we can bring him in tonight. We wait until right before five P.M. so he won’t be processed out until Monday.”

“If it’s enough. If the judge accepts the tape as evidence.”

“If he doesn’t accept the tape, I’ll swear out a statement I witnessed him say it. The case might get thrown out later, but at least we’ve bought the weekend with him away from them,” Luke pointed out.



I smiled nervously at him. “When did you become an optimist?” He didn’t smile back. He stared straight ahead as we walked. “Thank you for coming with me.”

“You’re welcome,” he said curtly.

We could always read one another. In the old days, I didn’t even have to look at him; I’d just sense he was angry or upbeat or frustrated. Walking beside him, I could sense the anger radiating off him. It actually hurt my skin. And I knew I was the cause. “I didn’t sleep with him,” I blurted out.

Luke didn’t look over. “I believe you,” he said harshly.

None of his anger waned. “And I only kissed him—”

“It doesn’t matter,” he cut in. “Even if you slept with him, it wouldn’t matter. You’re an adult. We’re not…You don’t owe me an explanation. You don’t owe me a damn thing, Iris.” He picked up the pace to get a step ahead of me. “Come on. We have to get to the station. Get that bastard away from those people while we still can. Did you see it? In their eyes? Fear. Desperation.”

“I know. He’s not stupid. He has a plan. He’ll run, at the very fucking least.”

“They have him under surveillance. And it’s not as easy to hide your identity as it was even fifteen years ago,” Luke pointed out. “He’s smart, but we’re smarter. We have a lot of work ahead of us, but we’ll get it done. We’ll get him. We always do.”

It gave me hope because he kept saying “we.” He hadn’t given up on me yet. I stared at him, at his strong, determined, gorgeous profile, and my heart literally skipped a beat. I loved him. I was in love with him. If I were being honest, I had been for years. I’d just buried it in my deepest recesses. I was in love with him when I was married. I was in love with him during my exile. I sure as hell was during the Shepherd case. I loved Luke Hudson. And he loved me. Or at least he had before Paul opened his mouth. Maybe it was good he had.



Be brave.

I had always considered myself brave. Refusing to get beaten down by the town, joining the FBI, leaving my house every day knowing I could be injured or killed on the job, how could I not be? But staring at Luke that day, I felt as meek as a nun in a whorehouse. There were a million reasons to continue ignoring my feelings. Life would ruin it somehow. Or worse, I’d ruin it. If I hadn’t already. I’d barely survived losing Hayden. I was forever fragile from that; I would be until the day I died. To lose my best friend and lover? I would never recover. Never. I needed Luke in my life. In my corner. I knew I wasn’t easy to love. Everything my brother and mother said was true. I was prickly and stubborn; I didn’t sugarcoat things; I could be selfish. Even Hayden said it on more than one occasion. How could I be willing to play the game when I knew the deck was stacked against us? With my mind reeling from the new crisis I’d helped create, I couldn’t deal with these thoughts. They might be moot anyway. I’d ruined us before we even started. Be brave? When it came to terror, facing serial killers had nothing on facing love.