At the next turn, I catch myself in the rearview. The bite is already blooming—violet bruising under crescent teeth marks, a map of her fury pressed into me. I roll my shoulder, and it answers with a pulse that says remember what you did to make her do this. Good. I deserve the reminder. I deserve every brand she gives me.
The rearview throws another gift: my face. Blood dried along my jaw like I shaved with a knife. Eyes gone dark enough to be animals. I look like what I am. A man who put his hands where the law won’t. A man who came home to find his girl held by another and decided to make an example.
If no one else could have known about Elaine and Michael, then that leaves two options: a leak I’ll cut out of my department with pliers, or Benny knew it was going to happen.
I don’t like either.
Gravel pops when I rip into the drive. The porch light stares. The house feels like it’s bracing. I kill the engine and sit one breath longer. Then I climb out of my truck and go straight in.
The air inside is warm, steam heavy—as if the walls have lungs. Water runs somewhere deeper in the house. I follow the sound. The bathroom door is closed. The handle is warm under my palm. It’s locked.
I shoulder the door, busting the lock on my way through.
Steam punches out into the hall, thick with the smell of soapand heat. The mirror is a smeared moon, the old tile slick with condensation. Summer is a pale shape in the claw-foot tub, knees up, arms wrapped tight over them, hair sticking to the sides of her face.
She jerks when the door bangs, green eyes flashing like a trap’s teeth.
“Get out?—”
“No.” The word is a flat blade. “We’re not doing locked doors.”
Her chin snaps up. “Then get out and learn how to knock and I’ll let you in when I’m ready”
“I need you to answer a question.”
“I don’t care what you need.” Her voice goes brittle. She reaches for the towel on the rim of the tub, drags it against her chest like armor. “Get. Out.”
“One question, Summer. And so help me God, you will answer me,” I say, and the mirror clears enough to give me my eyes again—black, unblinking. “How did he know?”
Her lashes flickers. Confusion, then wariness, then anger bathing up through both. “Jacob?—”
“Tell me… Benny.” I take another step, and the tile whispers under my boot. The heat in here makes the bruised bite throb. “How did he know about your parents before anyone else? Who told him?”
She sucks in a breath that’s more a gasp than air. Tears jump back into eyes that were dry for half a minute, and I hate that I put them there.
“His cousin,” she says, quick, as if speed makes it truer. “Deputy Thompson. He called Benny. He came straight here.”
I stare at her, and for a beat, I don’t hear the water at all. Only my pulse.
“There is no Deputy Thompson,” I say.
Her face cracks, not with grief—something uglier. Disbelief, offended. “Don’t—don’t do that. Don’t pretend you don’t know your own damn department just because you can’t stand the idea of someone else being decent.”
“I know every badge in this county.” My voice is quiet now, deeper, more dangerous. “I know the shape of their signatures andthe weight of their mistakes. There is no Thompson wearing a star under me.”
She shakes her head, fast, water darkening the towel. “But—he said?—”
“He lied.”
“No,” she says it like a curse. “why would he?—”
I move, and the steam parts in my approach. I stop an arm’s reach from the tub. I can see the tremor in her fingers where they clutch the towel hanging off the side of the tub. I can see the ring of pink where hot water has kissed her skin. I can see the place on her shin where the woods put a new cut in her. Every detail is a violence I can’t unsee.
“I got the call from Carter,” I cut her off. “Two men went to meet him at the scene. Me and Wyatt. No reports were made up to me leaving. No calls. No chatter.” I let the absence hang. “No Thompson.”
“Look at me.” It comes out rougher than I intend. I tame it with effort. “Summer. Look at me.”
She says nothing. The drip of condensation ticks on porcelain. The hot tap hisses a little, empty threat.
