Page 102 of Beautifully Shattered
My fucking brows reach my hairline. “Areyou claiming her?”
He stops pacing. “Fuck. I don’t know.” He rakes his hand through his hair, leaving it a wild mess. “You think he’d kill me?”
I shrug. “Maybe. He’s killed for less.”
“Fuck,” he mutters, then gestures to the far wall still dripping with his beer. “Sorry about that. I’ll clean it up.”
I chuckle as he grabs the cleaning supplies and starts scrubbing, and I leave him to it, going in search of my wife.
When I find her, she’s at the dining table with my sisters and Jols, all of them bent over something spread out.
I approach quietly, suspicious as fuck.
“These are the locations they searched last time.” Jols points to a map. “The circles are where they searched, and the crosses are who they killed.”
Stepping up behind them, I see a map of Timber Valley pushed off to the side, with a map of Fox Pines their main focus, and it hits me what Jols is showing them.
It’s the map I’d pinned up at the compound when my men and I were hunting for Abbey’s rapists.
Somehow, Jols has fucking stolen it.
“What the fuck is going on?”
The four of them stiffen, their heads whipping over their shoulders to find me right behind them.
“Church over so soon?” Jols asks completely unfazed.
“Clearly it fucking is.” I point to the table. “Why do you have that?”
“It’s time to go,” Abbey sighs, turning to face me fully, her arms coming up to cross over her chest.
Oh, I see what’s happening. She thinks she’s making decisions without me.
“It’s time togo where?” I match her stance, crossing my arms over my chest as I stare down at her.
“To hunt the fuckers who took everything from me.”
And there it is. This is what’s been brewing. What she’s been silently plotting.
She brought this up at the lake house before the funeral, and I guess now, five days after burying her little girl, she’s ready.
Fuck, I’m not ready. I don’t want to let her do this. It’s fucking dangerous… but I can’t stop her. I can’t keep her from doing what she thinks she needs to do to heal.
After all, I did the same thing after Hope died, only there were no bad guys to punish, other than Kylie’s drug dealer. So I took my rage out on whoever Smitty told me to.
I used to think it helped, but maybe I was wrong.
“You know where they are?” I challenge, knowing she doesn’t. “You know the location of Daniel? Donny? What about Darnel?”
I’d already killed Tim, Michael, and Craig, which she knows by the red crosses on the map, thanks to Jols.
“Not exactly,” she admits. “But I’m done waiting for someone else to figure it out.” She drops her arms and turns back to the map, giving me her back. “You don’t have to come if you don’t want to.”
“As if I’m not fucking coming with you, Angel,” I growl, and she shrugs.
“Suit yourself.”
I stare at the back of my wife’s head in disbelief. Would she honestly go without me?
