He was coming.
The man slid out of the same truck that had chased her. His black hair had gone almost entirely silver, with black still showing as streaks. His wide face was lined with age, and his once red lips had paled. His dark eyes took her in as she stood in front of his house.
Suddenly he didn’t look so much like Tommy Lee Jones. He looked like—
“Frank Castle?”
“Yeah.”
He was carrying a six-pack of beer. She took in his ropy arms, and saw that he was wearing a knife in a sheath on his worn leather belt. His dark eyes fixed on hers, and she thought of her mother.
She was aware that she and Frank were alone.
She held out her investigator license, looking into his eyes. She was looking to see if he recognized her last name. He did not, and she thought, Why should he? He never bothered to find out.
“You got balls coming here,” he said.
His voice was not friendly.
“I want to talk.”
Once inside his place, he put his beer away, and she sat on the blanket-covered couch, the coils springing even under her light weight. He grunted at the sound and popped his first bottle of the day. He did not offer her one.
“All right, go ahead,” he said, drinking.
Ruby felt inside herself. Usually in these moments, she became another person, part of herself and yet different. She was the open vessel where men could deposit their pain, the final womb where they could confess. She specialized in this. It was one reason she was so good at her job.
But it was not happening now. The wide openness was not there. Instead she felt the constriction of pain. She knew she was looking at the man who had taken her mother. She knew she was looking athim.
“My job is to assist men on death row.”
“Yeah.” He drank again, long and noisily.
“I’m working on a case involving a man named Mitchell Brown.”
“I know, all right.”
“Your cousin went missing. Betty Dubois.”
“Know that, too.”
“They never found her body.”
“Yeah.”
“The execution is this morning.”
He held his bottle of beer, his eyes cold.
“Going to fry him?”
“They use lethal injection now.”
“Hmm.”
“My mother’s name was Desirée.”
She saw it then, just a twitch in his left eye because he hadn’t seen it coming.
