Page 47 of Forever Gone

The fan coughed awake and sent a rush of cold air across both of them.

Selena laughed. “Temper, temper.”

“You’re one to talk.”

She lowered the report. “What do you mean?”

“I saw the way you were staring at Kelly Voss in there.”

“Can you blame me?”

“No, but how the hell did she get sent here?”

Selena returned the paper to her lap. “Meg sent her. She thought she was doing me a favor by finding someone who already knew Harlan County.”

“So, Meg doesn’t know your history?”

“No. Kelly told her we knew each other in passing.”

Connor gave a humorless breath. “That’s one way to describe it.”

The road narrowed near an old tobacco barn. He eased around a truck carrying timber and waited until the opposite lane cleared before passing.

“What are you going to do?” he asked.

Selena stared through the windshield. “I don’t know. I need the help. The office has barely started functioning, and Karen’s murder is already taking most of my time. Kelly’s a capable agent or Meg wouldn’t have sent her.”

“But.”

“But there’s baggage.”

Connor nodded. “Yeah. There’s a lot of that going around.”

Silence followed.

The words had come out before he considered them. Selena did not respond, but he felt the space between them change. Fifteen years of failed conversations could fit inside a pause that small.

Connor kept his attention on the road.

“I remember how cruel she was in high school,” he said.

“Yeah.” Selena folded the report along its existing crease. “And I remember what you did to Rick Hanson.”

Memory struck without warning.

Rick at eighteen, taller than Connor and broad across the shoulders from football. The parking lot behind the old grocery store. Kelly waiting near Rick’s car with two friends while Selena stood across the road, pretending she had not noticed them following her.

Connor had been sixteen.

He remembered Rick laughing when Connor told him to keep Kelly away from Selena. The shove that followed. Rick’s surprise when Connor did not step back. Then the first punch, hard across the mouth, and the quick violence after it. Connor’s knuckles splitting against teeth. Rick falling against the hood of his car. Blood across his lips and chin.

Connor tightened his grip on the wheel.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

Selena turned toward him. “I always knew what happened.”

“You weren’t there.”