Gun Shy(45)

Chris blanches; clearly this is not something he was expecting. “This is your car from the accident,” he says. It’s not really a question, more a statement, but I nod in confirmation anyway. “Yeah. I was beating the shit out of it just before, and I noticed the red. I thought it was blood, but it’s the wrong consistency. See?” I scrape a little off with my nail and shake it into my palm. “It’s metallic paint. From another car.”

“Why were you beating the shit out of a car you crashed eight years ago?” Chris asks suddenly.

I clear my throat awkwardly. “My sister’s pregnant to a guy old enough to be her father, and I’m not allowed to beat the shit out of him.”

“Right,” Chris replies, his eyebrows rising in disbelief. “So, you wanted to blow off some steam, you decided to take it out on your car, and that’s when you saw these paint chips?”

I nod.

“How do you know they didn’t get here recently?” Chris asks. “This car’s been sitting in a scrapyard for almost a decade, Leo. Even if we did find something…”

“Please,” I say. “I think I’m remembering shit. I think somebody ran me off the road that night. We used to be friends, didn’t we?”

Chris scrubs his hand along his clean-shaven jaw.

“You remember that night, man. You were the one who took me away in cuffs.”

“Even if somebody did run you off the road,” Chris says solemnly, “you could never prove it. It’s been so long. You’ve already served your time, Leo. Just let it go. Do your parole, and then leave this town and don’t ever come back.”

“Please,” I beg him, and I fucking hate having to beg. “Please just test the fucking paint and see if you get a match. Just tell me what kind of car it comes from. That’s all I need to know.”

I just need to know I’m not completely fucking crazy here. I’m afraid that if Chris doesn’t take these paint chips right now, they’ll disappear, like Jennifer disappeared.

“Stay here,” Chris says. “Don’t go anywhere.”

“Where the hell am I gonna go?”

He shakes his head as he walks off.

When he comes back, he’s holding one of those plastic evidence bags in his hand, gloves on his hands. I watch on as he takes a single-use razor blade from a package and scrapes as much of the red paint from the car bumper as he can get off.

“I’m only doing this because we have history,” he says, sealing the bag up and stuffing it into his jacket pocket. “If I find something, I’ll let you know. Until then, don’t say anything to anyone about this, you hear?”

I nod. “Thank you,” I reply, and I really fucking mean it.

“Why are you doing this, man?” Chris asks. “Is it because she’s dead? Is that it?”

My heart leaps into my throat. “Who’s dead?” I demand. “What do you mean?”

“Teresa King,” Chris says. “She died a couple hours ago.”

Fuck. She’s dead. I killed her. And I know I just spent most of my adult life locked away for what I did to Cassie’s poor mother, but there’s a vast chasm between almost-dead and actually dead.

My eyes are stinging. Even after all these years, the first person I think of calling is Cassie.

“How’s Cassie?” I ask.

Chris takes a step back. “How do you think?”





CHAPTER TWENTY





CASSIE





My mother isn’t even dead forty-eight hours before we bury her in the ground.

It happened so suddenly, and yet so slowly - how can both of those statements be true? I can count on both hands the years it took for her to finally die after the accident that should have killed her instantly. And yet, I went to work in the morning, and she was alive, and I served food and wrote checks and took money and processed credit cards while my mother’s heart stopped inside her paper-thin chest. As she took her final breaths. Alone.

My mother died all alone, in the dead of winter, and nobody was there with her.

Maybe it’s better that way. Maybe she waited until she was alone to pass. Maybe we tried too hard to keep her around in the prison that her body had become.

We travel to the Gun Creek Cemetery in the back of a funeral car, just Damon and I. Ray drives behind us in his truck. In front, the hearse carries my mother’s body to its final resting place, in the dirt. I stare out of the window during the short drive. I don’t talk. There’s nothing left to say.

“It’ll be okay,” Damon murmurs beside me. Our eyes meet for the briefest of moments.

He puts his hand on my knee. I look down to where his flesh touches mine; and I can’t, for some reason, take my eyes away from the bandaged bite mark between his index finger and thumb that continues to seep blood.





CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE





LEO





If Damon King knew I was stalking him right now, I think he’d shoot me dead on sight.

I have to admit, I look like a goddamn psychopath. I’m dressed entirely in black, a balaclava covering my face in case anyone should glimpse me from my vantage spot underneath the old chestnut tree in Cassie’s yard.