Page 3 of Nasty
“Why are you being like this?” Sera hissed.
I stopped, turned and faced her properly. “Being like what?”
“Like…” She threw her hands up in the air, huffing loudly. “Like everything’s normal. Like we’re just crashing here for the night, and everything is totally fine.”
“HowshouldI act? Should I make you sit in the cold? Tape you to a chair?” I stepped toward her, cracking my knuckles. “Should I take you out back, put a shovel in your hand, and tell you to start digging, Sera? Is that what you want?”
“Don’t be fucking stupid,” she snarled. Her fury was tinged with fear as she backed away. “Of course that’s not what I want.”
“Then sit down. I’ll go turn the power on, and when I come back, we’ll start this thing from the beginning.”
The exterior of the cabin was a latticework of vines and kudzu; I had to rip at it with my bare hands in order to get to the breaker box. Once I’d turned the power on, I grabbed our bags from the truck on the way back inside the cabin, dumping them on the floor by a rickety old bookcase that was overloaded with rotten old copies of National Geographic and agricultural almanacs. Sera had her back to me as she stared directly into the fire that had properly taken hold while I was outside.
She was in silhouette, beautiful and closed off, her back ramrod straight. Any other woman would be cowering in a corner right now, but not Sera. She stood there, bravely awaiting her fate, ready to face whatever was about to come next, and she was doing it with a level of defiance that made me want to tear the clothes off her perfect fucking body and devour her. I couldn’t do that, though. She was never going to let me do that again. Not after what she’d found in that fucking envelope in my glove box.
God, moments like this were going to be few. She was going to slip through my fingers like smoke, and I was going to let it happen, because she deserved an uncomplicated life. She deserved far more than I could give her and that was a fact. I stood as still as I could, watching her, drinking her in—the way the amber and gold glow of the fire lit her hair, as if she too were ablaze, a creature born of fire. I was a creature of ice. That hadn’t always been the case. Once upon a time, I’d been warm and carefree, quick to laugh. My father had soon seen to that, and my time studying at seminary finished me off. Unlike my father, who had already been married with a child before he joined the priesthood, I’d been young and single, like most men who donned the collar. I’d never truly wanted to dedicate myself to the church, but it had seemed that my path was already set before me, and nothing I could do or say was going to change that fact. So I’d accepted that I was going to be alone forever, and I’d made whatever peace I could with that knowledge. I let my heart frost over, allowed my blood to cool, to form shards of ice within it, and after a while I didn’t even notice the chill as it flowed through my veins.
When I walked away from the church, it didn’t even occur to me that I might want to thaw myself out. I’d left for a reason, and that reason was to bring punishment down upon the heads of the wicked and the cruel. That kind of mission didn’t leave room for softness, or kindness, or emotion of any kind. Sure, there had been women along the way. Many women. But I’d never stood still like this and looked at any of them, my chest aching like someone had taken a pickaxe to it,because I suspected I’d never see them again. This was entirely new and different, and I did not like it.Not one fucking bit.
Still, I knew myself. I wasn’t going to be able to change the dull, thumping pain that spiraled through me every time that cursed, damage fist of muscle squeezed beneath my ribcage. Better to accept the reality of the situation, bite down on the pain, hold my breath and wait it out until it hopefully passed. I’d probably be in fucking Mexico, wrist deep in a cartel boss’ chest cavity, by the time I managed to shake this feeling.
“Speak,” Sera whispered. She knew I was standing behind her, but she hadn’t turned away from the fire. Her steel-edged command ripped me from my thoughts and dragged me back to the cabin, and back to the things I needed to tell her. Fuck, this was going to be tricky. I sat myself down on the sofa, cleared my throat, and then I began.
“Monica handles the clients and the money. She called me a month ago and told me she’d accepted an unusual job. A job we didn’t normally touch. I’ve only ever killed one woman before, and she’d purposefully set fire to her sister’s house with her three young children inside, while they were screaming, trying to get out…” I paused, taking a breath. That had been a shitty job. Remembering it, remembering the photos…it took me to a severely dark, fucked up place. “When Monica sent through your file, I couldn’t see the reasoning behind her accepting your case. There didn’t appear to be anything untoward. You weren’t a murderer. You hadn’t committed any atrocities, as far as I could tell.I called Monica, and she said she hadn’t met with the client in person. That they’d contacted her via email, and they’d spun some story about you killing your mother. They said you were slowly poisoning your sister, trying to kill her, too.
“I asked Monica for the evidence, and she sent me a toxin report, showing high arsenic and mercury levels in your mother’s bloodstream. The test had been conducted during her autopsy—”
Sera slowly pivoted around, her arms hugging her own body, her face a picture of pure shock and rage. My first response was to go to her, pick her up and hold her to me. I couldn’t, though. I just…couldn’t.
“I told you my mother had an aneurysm. She was fine, and then, one day, she just dropped down dead. How the hell can you say she waspoisoned, Fix? How the hell can you say thatIpoisoned her?I was just a kid!I would never…I wouldneverhave hurt her. She was my entire fucking world. AndAmy?I’m meant to be trying to kill Amy now, too? What you’re saying doesn’t make any sense.”
“The report looked legitimate. I checked the paperwork myself. The autopsy was filed on county clerk’s paper. Stamped. Didn’t look like it had been fabricated. Monica wouldn’t just accept a job based on unfounded claims, so I trusted that she’d done her due diligence. I went to Seattle. To find you. To kill you. But when I got there, I saw you, saw how young you were, and how normal you were, and I began to doubt. I stayed to watch you, to see how the fuck it might be possible that you were planning on killing your sister, and all I witnessed was a woman going about her daily life, working, meeting her friend for coffee. It made no sense to me, either. So I stayed longer. I stayed for two full weeks, to try andforceit to make sense in my head. But…”
“But you realized it was a load of horse shit. And you still followed me to Liberty Fields. You were still going to kill me, Fix.” Her voice was laced with accusation and hurt. She was well within her right to feel hurt. Every mile that had brought me closer to her in Wyoming had felt like a noose getting tighter and tighter around my neck. I hadn’t just watched her Seattle. I’d followed her every movement. She’d become more than a job. For those fourteen days, she’d consumed my every waking moment. She was so damn beautiful, and so damn complicated, and, more often than not, so damn alone. I began to find myself dreaming of her, for fuck’s sake, and I couldn’t get her out of my head.
“The job in Liberty Fields was a fluke,” I said softly. “I asked Monica if there were any jobs in Wyoming to buy myself some time. I knew you were heading that way. I thought with a couple more days I might see something in you that justified such an extreme course of action. You weren’t even supposed to be stopping in Liberty Fields. If that storm hadn’t been so bad, you’d have kept on driving and I would have caught up with you in a completely different state. I was going to watch you at Amy’s wedding. I was going to see if you tried to hurt her. When I walked into that motel lobby and saw you on the phone, I damn near died, Sera. I had to turn my back to you, so I could figure my shit out before I faced you. When I spoke to you that first time, when I saw how worried you were about reaching Alabama and being there for Amy on her wedding day, I knew you’d never hurt her.”
My heart was fumbling drunkenly in my chest. It couldn’t seem to find its footing, and with every beat I was sure it was going to fail. Sera’s expression was stony to say the least. She was having a hard time taking all this in. I knew she would, which was why I wanted to speak to her like this, privately, quietly, and alone. I needed her to believe me, and there was still a lot I had to say. Her mind must have been racing, too, though. I bit the inside of my lip, and I waited for her to spill the words burning in the back of her throat.
“You fucked me,” she ground out. “You came to my city. You were there for two weeks.Someone paid you to kill me, and you waltzed into that motel room like you didn’t have a care in the world. You…youfuckedme, Fix. You were inside me, and the whole time, you must have been planning how you were going to end my life.” Her voice rose, bouncing off the walls, growing angrier and angrier with each word. She took a step forward, and then another. Soon she was standing in front of me, the toes of her Chucks little more than an inch from the toes of my boots.
“Did you plan on shooting me as soon as you’d had your fill of me, Fix? Is that it?” I saw her hand coming. I did nothing to block the strike. Her palm connected with my cheek, and the sting was bright enough to make my eyes water. I held my words inside me, though. Kept my hands resting on top of my knees. She slapped me again, this time even harder, and a ragged sob slipped from her lips. “Funny, huh? Get drunk with me. Seduce me. Fuck me. Use me for your pleasure, then snuff me out when I was no longer entertaining to you.”
She closed her hand into a fist, and I raised my jaw to meet her blow. I deserved it. She had every right. My head rocked back with the impact—she had one hell of a right hook. The taste of copper filled my mouth, and my jaw barked with pain. Slowly, I opened my mouth and slid my tongue between my lips, tasting the blood that she’d drawn. She’d split my bottom lip wide open.
Sucking in an uneven breath, Sera staggered backward. She sobbed once more, looked down at her hand, and then sank into a heap on the floor. Her tears came quick and fast, and still I didn’t move. If I so much as twitched right now, there would be no going back. She’d launch herself at me, or she’d run, and neither of those options lead anywhere good. I’d end up hurting her if I had to restrain her, and she’d end up breaking her fucking neck careening through the forest in the pitch black. So I remained seated on the sofa, my hands glued to my kneecaps, and I allowed myself to bleed.
“I already told you,” I said softly, “I knew the moment I heard you on the phone that you’d done nothing wrong. Sera…”
She covered her face with her hands, choking on her own tears.
“Sera. Look at me.”
“No!”
“Sera. I need you to take a deep breath, and I need you to look at me. Right now.”
She tore her hands away, her eyes flickering with fury. “I don’t give a shit what you need,” she snapped. Her rage was unadulterated and cut deep, but at least she was looking at me. Glaring, to be more precise.
