I’m going to find the men who hurt you.
I’d be damned if I let him treat me like some helpless damsel in distress. But I’d be lying if I said his words didn’t affect me.
None of that mattered. Once we were finished with this, whateverthisreally was, he would leave. I was determined not to fall under his spell again. No pining for him, no daydreams. Absolutely none.
I had a zero-tolerance policy for romantic feelings toward this man.
“Alright,” Dean said. “Let’s go over what we have so far on Phelan. Even on paper, I can’t stand this guy.”
I huffed a laugh. “Trust me, he’s worse in person.”
Donny Phelan was thirty-two years old. A self-made media tycoon who’d first gotten attention through posting rage bait on social media. He’d quickly amassed a following of hundreds of thousands, who now tuned in every week for his online show, which he also reposted as a podcast. He ranted about current events and put forth his opinions about how to fix the world. Mainly, it was all about blaming women.
His show was calledThe Real Man Formula.
Phelan had moved here to Hart County in the last year, buying up a massive property, as the roadhouse bartender had told me. Phelan made money from his show via advertising, but the real money was in merch and all the extras he’d started selling. Like personal coaching, supplements, books on his Real Man Formula for finding your inner masculine strength, and online seminars on the same subject.
We’d even listened to a couple episodes of the show. It had sounded like he stuck a variety of sound bites in a blender, mixed them up, and spewed them back out, claiming to have all the secretsthey don’t want you to know. It had a lot to do with the dangers of women working, talking, having independent thought.
A real catch, this guy.
Dean shifted through the papers, looking contemplative. “So, Phelan imagines himself as a Real Man. Whatever that’s supposed to mean. But we need to understand how much is marketing and hype, and how much he really believes. What makes him tick. Who he’s connected to.”
“Right,” I said. “The average podcaster doesn’t havetrained killers on standby to call up in case he wants to teach an off-duty cop a lesson.”
From everything we’d learned, Phelan wasn’t the type of guy to forget about being humiliated, especially by a woman. Yes, sending masked gunmen to kill me was an extreme reaction. But I’d heard of worse.
Dean rubbed his jaw. “I need to talk to him. Face to face. As sheriff, Owen can’t question Phelan if he’s invoked his right to an attorney, but I’m a private citizen. I can ask him any questions I want.”
“You mean,weneed to talk to him.”
Dean stared across the table at me. “You’re a cop. That means you’re barred by the same rules as Owen.”
“I don’t feel like a cop right now. I’ll be acting as a civilian, just like you. We can’t force him to talk to us, but if he’s willing?” I pointed at the background on Phelan on the tablet screen. “The man is all about saving face. Looking important and authoritative. If I come to him, he won’t be able to resist finding out what I have to say. If only so he can tell me I’m wrong.”
“Maybe. But you’re still healing. If he lays a hand on you…”
“That’s not his style. The worst he might do is say nasty things to me. So what? The important thing is, I doubt he’ll refuse to talk to us if I’m there. It’s one thing to hide behind his lawyer when it comes to the sheriff. But hiding from the little girl who made him look foolish in that parking lot?”
Dean’s fist squeezed a pen so hard it creaked.
And then the thin metal snapped, making me jump. He muttered a curse, wiping ink on a spare piece of paper.
“But you have to stay calm,” I pointed out.
“I’m always calm.”
“I thought you were. When we first met, you had this whole Zen aura going on. All quiet and thoughtful, listeningbehind the bar to other people’s problems. Now, I’m not so sure.” He’d always been mysterious to me. But just how much of himself had Dean hidden under the surface?
“I’m a highly controlled person, Keira. I may not be a sniper anymore, but those skills are ingrained.”
“Right. Highly controlled. Says the guy who punched a wall and just destroyed an innocent writing instrument.”
“It seems I’m sensitive when the subject is your safety.”
I raised my eyebrows.
I’d been thinking constantly about what else Dean had confessed yesterday. That he’d been a government assassin. I just couldn’t imagine him killing someone. The man I’d gotten to know when he lived in Hart County was so different from that image.
