Unknown number.
A strange stillness settled over Vincent’s face. He answered without greeting. I watched him listen. He said nothing for several seconds.
Then he simply responded with, “Good.”
My stomach tightened.
He ended the call and set the phone face down.
“What was that?” I asked.
“Daniel is dead.”
I stared at him.
“How?”
“An accident.”
My fingers tightened around the glass.
“What kind of accident?”
His gaze held mine.
“The kind that ends a problem.”
I went cold. I understood perfectly. A road somewhere. Rain, perhaps. Headlights. A body that had terrified me since childhood was made small enough for a police report. I did not need details. My mind supplied them anyway.
“Did you arrange it?”
“Yes, my love.”
I set the glass down before I dropped it.
“When?”
“After he came to campus.”
My mouth opened, closed.
“You told him you would pay him.”
“I did.”
“You were never going to?”
“I paid him; he just never got to use that money.”
The answer sat there, calm and awful. I almost laughed. Of course, Vincent would consider that distinction important.
“He left Blackwater believing he had won something,” Vincent said.
The room swayed. I gripped the counter.
Daniel was dead.
The man who called me sweetheart like a threat. The man who made my mother flinch at footsteps. The man whose voice could turn me ten years old in the middle of a courtyard.
