Page 108 of The Kings of Kearny

He didn’t text me back. Goddamn it. I texted him again.

Be careful. Nick must be watching him.

Still no answer.

I ground my teeth and turned on my heel, heading back inside.

“Everything okay?” Gran asked when I walked into Dr. Perez’s room.

“Yup, fine,” I said, grinning ear to ear.

She frowned at me. I must look deranged. I felt a little deranged.

Jakob was right about me. I heard that Redding made bail, and my reaction was to formulate a plan to track him down and kill him. Not let the law deal with it, not trust the police to guard Dr. Perez, but to see that Redding got the punishment I thought he truly deserved. And my plan wasn’t some hypothetical revenge fantasy. I was deadly serious about wanting to kill him. Jail wasn’t enough. The man needed to die for what he’d done to Dr. Perez. For what he’d done to all those other women. For what he wanted to do to me. If Jakob let me in on whatever he was obviously about to do, I would gleefully take part and lose not a minute of sleep afterward.

The fact that Jakob was right didn’t come as some new revelation. I’d realized it within a few hours of walking away from him. Iliza and Fred welcomed Gran and me with open arms. We’d had a wonderful dinner, reminiscing about past visits and how good it was to see each other. Afterward, I went outside and sat on the front porch of their farmhouse to drink a couple of beers and unwind. Iliza had those quaint café lights strung across the porch ceiling. Their place was so set back from the road that I heard not a single hum of human machinery. Crickets kept me company. Every now and then a sheep would bah, or a horse would neigh from the nearby barns.

It was peaceful, even more tranquil than the Larsons’ screened-in porch near the river. I’d enjoyed it for half an hour. And then I got bored. Then I started wondering what Jakob was doing. Was he thinking of me? Had he left his parents’ house and gone back to his tidy little apartment? Did Jennifer tell him what I’d said to his father? Would he be proud that I stood up to Liam or annoyed? I pictured Jakob’s scowling, disapproving face and grinned.

My smile slipped a few minutes later when I realized the past few days with himwerethe most alive I’d felt in years, and it had as much to do with the man I’d spent them with as it did the batshit-crazy events that took place. How, after all of it, did I duck my head back down like a good little civilian and go back to tending bar and visiting Gran and going home, alone, to my empty apartment?

The answer was that I couldn’t.

But I still took my time. I still stayed away from Jakob and thought about it endlessly while we were apart. Nothing changed, despite how much I willed it to. I didn’t suddenly become a decent person. If anything, those days with my great aunt and uncle out on their farm only reinforced how much I didn’twantto be a decent person. I didn’t want to live a contented, stable life. I wanted violence, passion, upheaval, a new surprise every day. In short, I wanted in, with Jakob, and maybe even with the Kings, which made me wonder if I had more of my parents in me than I thought.

We’d left the farm and gone back to Kearny a few days later. I settled Gran in at the nursing home and went to sign a lease on a new apartment across town from my old one, closer to the bar and club territory. The first thing I did afterward was head to a furniture store and pick out a California king. It would take up most of my small bedroom. I didn’t need something that big for just me, but I pictured Jakob’s massive body and knew that nothing smaller could comfortably hold him. The clerk at the store eyed me funny when I started yanking on the headboard, wondering how much of a pounding it could take, but I ignored him and went on with my stress test. I was done giving a shit what anyone thought of me.

That night, I had my first shift back at the bar. I held my breath during the beginning of it, trying to keep my cool, surreptitiously sneaking glances out into the crowd, looking for him. And then there he was, as if I’d summoned him, staring at me through the sea of bikers spread out between us. I’d shivered when I met his gaze, awareness and anticipation coursing just beneath my skin, threatening to break the surface and make it obvious to anyone watching how desperately I wanted this man.

I nearly went to him but stopped myself. What if I didn’t cave? What if I took all two weeks before answering him? I was already wound tight enough to snap, but God, the way he looked at me. I wanted him tokeeplooking at me like that, like he had just stumbled out of the desert and I was the first drop of water he’d seen in days. How would he react when my two weeks were up? How much tension could I build between us until then?

I wanted to find out, and my desire to drag it out for as long as possible was driven by more than just that small—okay, probably larger than I was willing to admit just yet—sadistic side of me.

I’d started smiling at random men during my shifts, just to get a rise out of him, but he only sat there, stonily, wearing the same expression but with a spark in his eyes like he thought it was cute that I was trying to make him jealous. A few nights ago, a pretty redhead sat down at his booth, pressing her hip right against his, andhe let her.I’d nearly vaulted the bar, but then I saw his lips twitch. No one else would have noticed, but I’d become a connoisseur of his expressions, sniffing out his moods like a sommelier with a rare vintage of wine, and I knew he’d seen the possessiveness on my face and liked it. As payback, I didn’t look at him once for the rest of my shift. Nina told me he looked like he wanted to kill someone by the time he left, and I decided that meant I’d won the night.

We continued on like that, our little game of brinkmanship gaining more and more attention. Last night, Nina leaned into me and told me we needed to cut it out before we started a brawl.

I’d frowned down at her. “What?”

“The tension between you two is infecting everyone else,” she said.

I’d looked out into the crowd with fresh perspective, noticing the pinched expressions and hunched shoulders, like everyone was holding their breath right along with me, waiting for whatever was happening between Jakob and me to boil over.

As I chatted with Gran and Dr. Perez, I began to wonder if holding out for all two weeks was a bad idea. I might not be the best human being, but sitting here with the doctor in her hospital bed made it clear that I wasn’t willing to let someone else get hurt just because Jakob and I were having fun torturing each other.

I spent the rest of the visit convincing myself that it was okay to cave, to be the bigger person if it meant keeping other people safe. We said goodbye to Dr. Perez just before suppertime. I dropped Gran off, went home, changed, and headed in for my shift, prepared to suck it up and act like everything was fine between Jakob and me. I needed to speak with him tonight. He still hadn’t called or texted back, and we needed to figure out what to do about Redding. He’d promised that I could be in on payback, and he seemed like the kind of guy who didn’t give his word lightly.

But he didn’t show up at the bar that night.

And he wasn’t there the next night either.

Nor the one after that.

I called and texted him half a dozen more times without hearing back from him and was starting to really worry by the time Friday rolled around. What if he’d gone after Redding and Redding put up more of a fight than he’d anticipated? Redding was ex-Army, like Jakob. Who knew what kind of training he had? Jakob could be in trouble. He could be hurt somewhere at that sociopath’s mercy.

I finally caved and called Jennifer Friday morning.

“Hi, Krista,” she said.

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