Page 112 of Smith

The fucked-up twist of fate—my dad’s favorite revolver was a Colt Python and now I was going to likely die by a 357 magnum bullet.

“You fucked everything up,” Billy ranted.

Obviously I didn’t point out, he was actually the one who’d fucked everything up.

“Twenty-eight years and you go and fuck it all up. Tearing up that house. Tearing down all my hard work. Stupid bitch.”

He swung the revolver willy-nilly, with his fingerinsidethe trigger well. Apparently no one ever taught this asshole gun safety.

“Listen…” I caught myself before I called him Billy. The last time I did that he knocked me out. “If you just?—”

“If I just what? Let you go? Is this when you start to beg for your life? Promise me you won’t tell anyone who did this to you? Cry and plead for your life?” Billy’s mouth curved up into an ugly smile that made me recoil farther into the couch. “Beg me not to kill you. Hate to tell you but as poor, stupid Stephanie learned, dead men—or women in this case—tell no secrets.”

Who the hell was Stephanie?

“You know the part that makes me angriest?” he asked in a conversational tone that sent chills up my back. “Those fuckers were in my house. They thought they had the right to invade my privacy.”

That was rich coming from the man who took pictures of girls without their knowledge.

“Now I gotta start all over. Years of collecting, all gone. My masterpiece destroyed.”

His masterpiece?

He was crazier than I thought.

“But it started with you.” He pointed the barrel of the revolver at me. “You ruining my house.”

“I thought Brittney and George?—”

“Don’t say his name,” Billy yelled, spittle flying out of his mouth. “Did he give you permission to tear apart the house? Is that why you did it? Good ole George with his perfect life and perfect parents never did appreciate what he had. All I wanted was a little of what he had, all he had to do was share just a little and he couldn’t give it to me. Warned me not to touch his sister. Told me Brittney was off-limits. She was too good for me. He didn’t care I loved her. He didn’t care my dad was gone and all Ihad was him and his family. Perfect fucking George is a lie. He’s a selfish dick. Bet he told you to tear out the walls, erase all my hard work. He didn’t do shit. I did it all. Me. And you fucking ruined it.”

Sweet Jesus, he really loved that house, and by the sound of it he was crazy jealous of George.

“I didn’t know. I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, you’re sorry now. But you weren’t when you were ripping it apart.”

Right, I hadn’t been sorry then. But now I was sorry I ever bought the sex house turned into house of horrors.

Something struck me; if I was going to die I wanted to know why he sent the letters.

“What do the letters mean?”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“The letters. One every two weeks saying ‘I know’. What does that mean?”

“Are you accusing me of sending you letters?”

Clearly he was not behind the letters.

“No.”

“It sounds like you are.”

I clamped my mouth shut. Now that every single molecule in my body wasn’t throbbing in pain it was time to figure something out. I’d have to move fast, and there was the issue I wasn’t sure I could with my ribs reminding me they were broken with each breath I took.

“So you’ve decided not to beg?”

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