“Did you cut the lock?” I whisper.
He frowns. “No.”
“Why are you here? Now? At this time?” It was two in the morning when I woke up.
“I’ve been watching you, to make sure they don’t hurt you.” Real anger cracks his words. “Please listen. That’s all I ask.”
I know I shouldn’t follow him.
But this ismy brother.I have nothing else.
I glance over my shoulder. It worries me that none of them are there. Not Faust, Sylvan, Tasia, whomever yanked her out of frame. I start to think she did leave with a friend, and my boys are on a fruitless trek through snow.
“You have five minutes.” I make myself snarl the words. Then I gesture toward the shadow of trees. “Hurry. Because you’re right, they’ll kill you if they see you.”
“Why didyou follow them to Kawartha?” We stand in darkness. I can barely see him in the night. But if this is how I get answers, I am greedy for them.
“I’ve told you,” Nolan says, sounding more like his arrogant self. Exasperated. Sick of my shit. He seems relieved that I’m speaking with him, and he hasn’t tried to touch me.“It’s them.”
“They murdered Jackson? Will? Mitchell? Ace?” My voice doesn’t break on their names, and I’m glad. “Why?”
“Because they wantyou.”
“They’re hockey players, not serial killers.”
“And I’m an attorney, Neve, not a murderer,” he snaps.
“You haven’t been at work.”
He sighs. Loudly. Somewhere at my back, a branch snaps, but it doesn’t scare me. “I told you, I’ve been building a business for you.”
I shake my head in the dark. “I never asked you for that.”
“You never have to ask for anything. Iknowwhat you need.”
I go rigid. The tone, the words, before maybe I would have melted. Thought he cared. Loved me. But now, given everything, it feels sickly. Too heavy.
He takes a step closer in the dark, like he senses my distance.
I need to go back. I need Faust. Sylvan. The thought crosses my mind that they’re playing with Tasia, and I want to vomit, but it makes me need them that much more.
“Neve,” Nolan says softly, reaching for me. His fingers rest on my shoulder. I can barely feel it with my winter jacket. “You know I’d never hurt you.”
“I want to know it. But you seem kind of psychotic in this light.” As the words leave my mouth, I know I shouldn’t have spoken them.
He steps closer. Grips me tighter. Hard enough to bruise, and with the cold in my lungs, I am worried I won’t be able to fight him off. With the dark, the night, the many places to hide a body, I fear I’ll stare up at the sky like Jackson, unseeing, never to breathe again.
“Let me go.”
“Let them go.Or they’re next.”
The anger overtakes me. I lift my knee to his groin and shove. In the snow, he stumbles back, his hold on me loosening. It’s enough for me to get free. I twist out of his grip, but I don’t run. The thought of losing them guts me. Maybe we’re just getting started. Maybe we have questions, decisions, impossibilities to figure out. But they’remine.
I rush Nolan without another thought, launching myself up in the air and shoving him back with all of my weight. He falls flat on his spine with a grunt, but his coat and the soft snow cushions his fall. That means I barely felt it at all.
I know a punch with my gloves won’t hurt how I want it, but he has no scarf. His face is exposed to the cold. And so, as I straddle him and he stares up at me with wild eyes, I scoop snow up in my glove and I shove it against his face. Again. And more. And again.
He tries to twist his head, but I use both arms now, anchoring myself to him with my lower body weight.
