God, he was getting to me. I didn’t like it. He couldn’t win, not after all he’d done. I clenched my teeth, determined to keep any further sounds of pleasure to myself. I shut my eyes again and tuned him out.
I heard the lid twist back onto the jar sometime later, and his presence stepped away, leaving me buzzing and alone. I didn’t dare to move. My senses were heightened and out of my control. I feared what they might do and what mistakes they would make.
From the direction of the kitchen came the sound of a beer can snapping open, followed by a pour as it filled a glass. Did he always put his beer in a glass? Or was he trying to be more refined around me?
Personally, I hated beer from a can.
He came back, and a frosty pint of beer appeared on the table next to my glass of wine. The perfect picture. He knelt before me again, confusing me until I saw him unfold a fresh pair of long socks. He carefully pulled one onto each of my feet, knuckles trailing my skin as they unfolded up my leg and over my knee before stopping. They were a luscious pair of knee-high wool socks, and they immediately made my feet and bare legs feel warm and snug.
He rose, his giant form looming over me briefly before he stepped back. His face sat in shadow, and I couldn’t make out his expression as he let a gentle sigh escape. It sounded full of contentment, and he picked up his beer.
He raised the glass to his lips and approached the window, taking a sip and gazing out at the darkening landscape, not saying another word as we settled into the night.
Chapter 17
Gray
Betty spent the next week cleaning out the shed, with at least another week of work ahead of her.
The temperature stayed in the upper forties during the day, then dipped below freezing at night—standard May weather for the Canadian forests at this altitude. I called it the‘false spring’. It was a pleasant reprieve and a chance to catch up on outdoor chores, despite the less than favorable result of melting snow—mud. Everywhere you looked and stepped, there it was, wet and dirty. It was the type of wet that leached all the way to your bones, leaving a chill that was unshakable.
It was unfortunate that this was Betty’s first impression of the place I loved.In the summer months, the forest was like heaven, tucked away in a secret fairy realm where time didn’t exist.
There was a muffled crash, followed by a string of colorful expletives coming from the direction of the shed. The front door was open to air out some smoke that had gathered when I bolstered the fireplace this morning. Her voice rang clear and crisp up the hill and through the cabin.
I learned the hard way not to rush into helping Betty in times like this. The other day, after a similar crash, and my resulting sprint to her rescue, she nearly took my head off with a hose. She brandished it like a lasso, screaming at me to“Stay the fuck away,” unless she explicitly called for my help.
God, she was charming.
Even so, the crash today made my skin prickle, and anxiety couldn’t help but rear its head.
I worried about her out there. She was tough, but the shed wasn’t, and I feared a collapse. It was a rough early attempt at building, a learning experience for me. I was a teenager just trying to survive on the bare minimum, in an environment I knew nothing about. My mental state was poor; health was a borderline disaster. It was a miracle those rickety shelves still held on despite shoddy craftsmanship and a decade exposed to the elements.
The whole damn structure lacked proper footings. In the real world, it would have been condemned by now.
I warned her to alert me if anything needed reinforcement. She hadn’t said anything was wrong, but I knew better; that didn’t mean everything was right, either. While I wanted to keep a close eye on her at all times, I also understood this exercise was something to keep her mind busy and focused, and to give her time to think alone. It was the one freedom I was willing to extend, so I had to make the best of it.
There were subtle signs that she was starting to trust me with her family’s safety, and I wasn’t taking that lightly. She argued with me less and less each day, and every time I tried to update her with new and developing information, she bit back less. I wanted her to feel as though I trusted her in return. This was a delicate situation we were in, and all I could do was remind her of that every chance I got and hope she understood.
We needed to rebuild our mutual respect, or maybe build it in the first place.
I called Ethan every other day on the satellite phone when Betty was out and busy in the yard or shed. While she knew I was communicating with someone, she didn’t know it was this direct. Letting her know I had a phone was dangerous.
If she knew, she would stop at nothing to find it. Desperate people made rash and often detrimental decisions. Letting her reach out to her brother or father would shatter the tenuous storyline I built to keep us safe.
According to Ethan, my family was leaving Betty’s dad alone thanks to the constant presence of the FBI he’d put in place. So far it seemed the text message I sent her dad from Betty’s phone before leaving New York was also still holding strong. Mr. Beaumont seemed content in assuming Betty was with Nash, and Nash didn’t appear to have a way to communicate from his location off-grid in Scotland—much to my luck. As long as that lie held, things would be fine.
It had to be fine.
If not, there would be no way to send any followup texts to Betty’s dad. I’d misplaced Betty’s phone somewhere between New York and Canada, and there was a strong chance I’d forgotten it at the townhouse in my rush to leave. I could have sworn remembering to grab her red bag, but it wasn’t unlike me to forget things, especially with how frantic I was trying to transport a passed-out Betty and two cats.
My uncle’s reaction to my appearance in New York had been as expected. He was livid. Although Derek and Ron were spotted alive after our run-in, they were visibly worse off than when I’d left them. My uncle had more than likely tortured them for their failures, leaving both of them hospitalized and on the brink of death. I’m surprised he didn’t just kill them.
Ethan’s team was focused on finding more witnesses to bolster the case against Matteo. Even with Betty and me willing to testify, he needed more information in order to arrest my uncle and bring him to trial for his crimes. I could testify only about the murders of my parents and sisters, and while that should be more than enough, Ethan wanted to ensure my uncle would never see the light of day again.
I suspected that if Ethan poked around a little, he’d find more deaths going back decades. This case would be a complex web of illicit dealings and would likely shake up the fabric of New York’s crime elite, creating pushback and a scramble for anyone involved to buy their way out of it.
Everything hinged on getting this case right and keeping the witnesses alive.
