Page 109 of Reverb
Slipping past a few fans—they had to be in their early twenties—he scanned the rest of the crowd. Nothing.
He turned back and noted Adrian watching him, eyebrow raised. David was about to shrug when he spotted a man working his way toward the band from an odd direction. Not from where he should have been coming, and his approach would take the band by surprise.
Older guy—older than David. White. Thin face. Brown hair. Unremarkable, except for an intense look as he homed in on Mish. He had his hand in his coat pocket.
Fuck!
David was on the wrong side of the studio. No way to put himself between the fucker and Mish.
The man had passed Adrian, too. David surged forward, but the guy was maybe two arms’ lengths from Mish.
“Mish!” he called. “Run!”
Mish! Run!
David’s words ripped through Mish. The worry, the terror imbedded deep into his voice. She loved David. Trusted him. Believed in the danger he warned about. But she was through with running, with worrying, with being fuckinghelpless.
Instead, she turned and met the cold eyes of her tormentor. Years had passed, but she recognized him instantly.
Breath left her to be replaced by heat and anger and seething.Thisman? Of course this man. Of all of them, it would bethisfuckhead. Coals of anger blazed beneath her skin and fire stoked in her bones.
“You.” The word erupted from deep inside, from the marrow of her past, shot up through her soul into her mouth until she exhaled them like fire. “You fuckingasshole.”
She started toward the man, vaguely aware of the dismayed cries of her bandmates—they were too far away to stop her, though she understood their protectiveness.
In response, the creep dropped the jacket he’d been holding and a knife flashed in the lights of the studio. Sixteen years had passed since she’d seen those dead eyes and the glint of a blade, since this man had tried to touch her.
Everything clicked in that moment—the past and the present slowing to a near standstill, like something out of a movie. Fury and pain and rage roiled in Mish.
He’d been seeing her mother, yet another one of the shitty men who’d passed through their lives because they’d seemed soniceat first. One more man whose lies her mother had believed. This one, though—Mish had shoved so much about him from her mind.
His eyes. She remembered those cold, cold eyes, a shade of brown that should have been warm. The same eyes had followed her when she’d walked through the living room of the tiny apartment she’d lived in with her mother. Now she remembered that leer, that glint of metal when he’d come to her closet of a bedroom and told her to be quiet. How she’d screamed anyway before he’d even crossed the threshold.
She’d been seventeen. He’d been in his thirties. A couple of years older than her mom.
That had been the only time she’d ever seen her mother hit anyone. She’d thrown a punch to the head that had stunned him enough that he’d let go of the knife. There’d been blood, too, running down his face. Maybe that had been enough for him to fear her mom and run from the apartment.
After he’d left, they’d packed all the important things and fled, too. Stayed with friends he hadn’t known until they could find another place to live.
Mish pushed past a panicked fan, intent on vanquishing this monster from her past. She didn’t remember his name. Couldn’t. Blotted that out.
What had come to haunt her and her mom after those events had been worse. The cancer, the struggle to keep a roof over their head. Food on the table. Then not being able to fight the demon that took her mother from her.
But this fuckwad? She was going to rip his heart out with her bare hands.
His grin was a horrible mockery of delight. “I finally found you, bitch. Took years. But I saw through your disguise.”
That same voice, the one that had come over the phone at the radio station. The slickness of it. Now she remembered where she’d heard it before.
“I wasn’t hiding. And you’re gonna wish you hadn’t found me.” She slipped past someone else, and shook off their grip on her arm.
“Mish, no!”
That voice she knew, understood the horror and anguish there. David loved her, respected her, and cared for her safety. But he’d let her go because he couldn’t let his job go forher.
That stabbed at her heart, layering sorrow on top of the rage. David would blame himself for this, just as her mother had taken the blame for this horrible man and for the cancer that claimed her.
Mish reached for this monster’s throat, even as the blade stabbed up toward her. This monster she could conquer. Fight. For her and her mom.
