The good news is that the parole board denied his uncle’s request last month, so that fucker will get to spend a few more years in jail.
It’s the only thing that lets me sleep at night.
The wife is a different matter, though.
“Are you sure about this?” Ryan asks uncertainly beside me.
I park up beneath the streetlight. “This is the address.”
We study the ex-council house. It sits in a cul-de-sac, its brickwork dulled by years of rain and wind. A green wheelie bin leans against the wall, its lid slightly ajar, and a pair of old trainers sit abandoned by the front door.
“It’s not much to shout home about,” Ryan murmurs.
That’s true. The place is rundown as hell, with a small overgrown front yard, yellowed curtains in the windows and dead potted plants near the door. The place could do with some TLC.
A broken, rusty kid’s bike covered in faded Peppa Pig stickers is propped against the waist-high brick wall, its chain missing.
“What now?” Harrison asks.
“We wait,” I say.
“We might wait a while,” Harrison mutters in the backseat. He sits forward and pats me on the shoulder. “Promise you won’t do anything stupid.”
“We’ve gone over this. I just want to?—”
My words are cut off when the front door opens. The woman who exits looks worse than the photographs in the news articles I dug up from the trial. Her dirty blonde hair hasn’t been washed in days and her cracked lips are pursed around a cigarette that’s almost down to the filter.
Tightening her coat around her, she shuts the door, then sets off down the street.
I promised my friends we wouldn’t do anything stupid. Nothing that could get us into real trouble, at least. I wanted to see her. To put a face to the name. That’s all.
You know what they say—curiosity killed the cat. So yeah, within a few weeks, I’d found the address and talked my friends into making the hour-long drive.
She sets off down the street, and I narrow my eyes. This is the same woman who, alongside her husband, sexually assaulted Arkin and his siblings. The same woman who hurt him.
I’m out of the car in the next second, shutting the door. Harrison stumbles out behind me. “What are you doing, Zach?”
I’m not listening; confident strides carry me closer. “Hey, Jane Reeve,” I call out, and she slows. Then she turns, eyeing me up and down with a small, suspicious frown. “The name’s not Reeve anymore.” Another uneasy look. “Can I help you?”
Now that I’m here, I don’t know what to say to her. She’s the reason Arkin feels unsafe in the world—her and her pathetic excuse of a husband. But unlike him, I can’t resort to violence.
I want to, though.
I really fucking want to.
She’s smaller than I thought, standing no taller than 5’3, with dull gray eyes and smoke wrinkles around her mouth.
“Are you deaf or something?” she barks.
Harrison catches up to us and tries to drag me away. “She’s not worth a jail sentence, Zach. Let’s just go.”
Oh, but I think she is. A stint in jail doesn’t seem like such a bad idea if it means I get to avenge Arkin. Put this bitch in her place once and for all. Otherwise, what’s to stop her from hurting someone else?
“Why did you do it?” I ask tersely, inching closer.
She looks nervous now, flitting her gaze between Harrison and I. “What are you talking about?”
“You know what I’m talking about. Why did you do it?”
