Page 65 of Miserable Marionette

“Oh.”

The silence drags on, and damn him.

I hold out, my teeth scoring my inner cheek.

It doesn’t last long.

“What’s with the tapes?”

His thumb brushes my lip, his other hand snagging my waist. “Documenting my work,” he says simply, like it’s the most normal thing in the world.

I shudder, trying to pull away from him, the roughness of his bandaged hand scratching my skin. “Ew, like videos of you working on bodies?”

His smirk deepens.

“Gross, Gideon. What about the envelope? Oh, sick.” I cut off, smacking at his chest, making a soft, halfhearted chuckle leave his throat. “Don’t tell me that’s pictures.”

He brings his hand to his lips, pretending to lock them.

I roll my eyes, dropping to the floor and making a dramatic and pointed show of zipping up the suitcase and shoving it all the way to the back wall behind the bed with my legs. “No, thank you!”

My heart stops when Gideon’s shins meet my back, his body bowing over, hand gently angling my head back so I’m forced to stare at his handsome upside-down face. “I wouldn’t mind if you looked. There’s a VCR in the living room. I want you to know everything about me.”

I grimace despite the soft musings of his thumb on my skin, making my belly feel downright giddy. “Sometimes secrets are okay.”

“Not for me. Not with you. I don’t think… I don’t know what I’d do if I found out you were keeping something from me, Audrey.”

My brow knit together. “I would never keep things from you, Gideon.”

The smile he offers is almost warm, but there’s something in the underwriting, something that makes goosebumps dot my arms despite the warm room. “I know, puppet, because you’re perfect.”

Damn me, my heart melts at his weird nickname. He must like the smile that blooms on my face because his lips take mine again. Soft and slow, savoring. Like simply seeing it isn’t enough, he has to taste it too. “Lemmings is finishing up downstairs. I’ll be gone for a while finishing up at the grave—"

I laugh, finally pulling away from him and spinning to press my back against the side of his bed. “I survived ten years without you as my shadow. I’ll be fine for a few hours.”

For a few fat seconds, the only response is the clenching of his jaw. Before he lets out a breathy of course.

When he heads from the room back to the grieving Jordans downstairs, I lift myself from the floor, heading to the living room to watch TV and forsaking my art supplies for now because no way in hell am I hanging out in that room with those tapes.

31

Unraveling To Whatever End

Gideon, Present Day, 1994

Two Weeks Later

The necklace Audrey made me swings in my rearview as I head back toward home. Back toward the funeral home my father's father's father built with his own two hands. Blood, sweat, and love built this house. Compassion held it together, empathy and a genuine pride in doing good for the world, or at least the small community it serves. I can’t say that’s why I’ve officially told the mayor I’ll be making it my permanent residence, nor why I called my job at the ME’s office back in Piedmont to tell them I’m resigning effective immediately. It’s because Audrey and I were meant to be right here.

To whatever end.

Thoughts of the women I left brutalized back in Washington are admittedly further from my mind than they should be, and the cases there. The screws and if they’d managed to trace them back to the hardware store I bought them at two cities outside of Piedmont.

I’d imagine they have.

Again, I’ve been preoccupied. I made a choice in leaving Piedmont, in deciding to stay. I relinquished control, an airtight façade, years of hard work and honeyed lies. In leaving, in staying gone, I chose to ignore the writing on the walls, the warning bells as they screamed until their clappers bled.

I let it unravel.