Half an hour after I got off the phone, a brisk knock sounded at my apartment door. I gasped, my spine jolting me straight up from my slumped huddle on the couch as fresh adrenaline sloshed through me. My first, irrational thought was that it was my stepfather, despite the fact that his disfigured corpse was cooling on the rug in front of me. Like I’d been sucked into some kind of twistedGroundhog Day, doomed to repeat the attack over and over.
My second, equally irrational thought was that the police had found out somehow and were here to arrest me for murder.
That was stupid—even if I’d been the one to smash in David Scalise’s skull, it would have been clear self-defense. He was sexually assaulting me... I had a fuckingrestraining orderagainst him, for Christ’s sake.
A muffled Irish drawl jerked me out of my paralysis.
“Oi. You’re the one who called me out to this shithole! Open the damned door.”
I got up on trembling legs, skirted the disgusting sack of meat on my floor, and opened the damned door. Sharp green eyes played over me before focusing past me, inside the room. Heath Dawson’s gaze caught on the dead body before I could get my tongue to cooperate well enough to form words.
“Oh,” he said. “Thatkind of trash.”
I let him inside and shut the door, feeling as though my arms and legs weren’t properly connected to my body.
His piercing gaze fell on me again. “Self-defense?”
I debated the merits of protesting that I hadn’t even been the one to kill him. Instead, I just nodded.
“My stepfather,” I said hoarsely. “He’s the reason I got emancipated minor status when I was fifteen. The reason I moved here, to Chicago. I... I have a restraining order.”
Heath grunted. “Uh-huh. Fat lot of goodthatdid you.” He gave the crappy studio apartment a quick once-over before returning his attention to me. “You hurt?”
I had no idea. I thought I remembered blood in my mouth from where my tooth had cut into my cheek after his slap, and there would probably be bruises from the struggle.
“No,” I said.
He huffed out a sigh and reached into his pocket, pulling out a roll of bills. “Go to a bar and don’t come back until closing time. Do not get drunk. Do not talk to anyone. If someone asks, your girlfriend just dumped you.”
“Boyfriend,” I muttered—not that I’d ever had one, or likely ever would.
“If someone asks, your boyfriend dumped you,” he corrected smoothly, pressing a couple of twenties into my hand. “You haven’t seen your stepfather. You had no idea he was even in Chicago. After all, why would he be here when there’s arestraining orderagainst him?”
Even with my brain spinning circles, the heavy irony on the words came through. And he was right. My stupid piece of paper had done fuck-all to protect me, in the end.
“Okay,” I said faintly, clutching the cash in a sweaty hand.
I went out to a bar that I’d never been to before. I bought a beer and nursed it for hours, while completely failing to listen tothe succession of local bands crooning on the stage. When the place kicked me out, I went back home with no idea of what I was likely to find there.
What I found was... nothing. No corpse. No dropped pizza congealing on the floor. Just my familiar apartment, cluttered and grubby as ever, except for the new table lamp by the couch and the new rug sitting innocently on the floor, as though it had been there for years.
Several days later, a pair of police detectives showed up at my door, asking if I’d seen or heard from David Scalise recently.
“No,” I said. “I haven’t had contact with him for years. We’re estranged because he abused me as a child. I have a restraining order against him... so, I doubt he’d show up here, if he even knows where I live now. Why do you ask? Is he in trouble or something?”
“He’s been reported as a missing person,” said the female detective. She handed me a card with her information on it. “If he attempts to make contact, please let us know.”
“Okay,” I said, and that was the last I ever heard on the matter.
Back in the present, footsteps crunched on gravel. I peered up as a tall figure loomed over me, blocking out the sunlight. A faint shiver trembled down my spine, but then Gage crouched down in front of me, a couple of steps away, his forearms resting on his bent knees.
“You know her, then?” he asked.
I blinked myself back to reality with difficulty.
Knox, in the hospital.
Jez—my former friend who’d apparently decided, after her first taste of it, that murder suited her.
