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“Shh,” I coax. “It’s rude to interrupt. Listen. This is very important.” I give her a sincere look. “It’s unfair that I’ve read your file, know intimate details of your life. It’s only right that I should share some of my own.”
I slow the car so we can coast the highway. We have time.
“My mother was a whore,” I admit, startling the silence. “The paid kind. My home was congested with sex. The smell. The noises. The shame—it sank into my pores. Her johns would come at all hours.” I nearly laugh; of course they did. “I was only fourteen when they started to take notice of me.”
Avery taps at her phone screen uselessly. The noise is distracting. I’ve had enough distractions for one day. I reach across the console and wrench the phone from her hands. She puts up a struggle. I dig my nails into her skin, and when the car starts to swerve, she relents.
“Despite what some might think”—I smash the phone against the dashboard—“I don’t actually enjoy punishing. But interruptions are unacceptable.”
“You’re insane,” she says.
I chuck the broken phone to the floorboard. “Perhaps,” I agree. “Or perhaps the rest of the world is insane, and I’m merely a genius for exploiting it.”
She reaches for the door handle. “Hitting the asphalt at forty-five miles per hour does nothing for a girl’s complexion.” I smile, and her hand eases to her lap. She’s hardly through.
I wait for it—then Avery does as predicted. Better we get all the interruptions out of the way.
She dives for the bag between her feet. I give her enough time to realize what’s missing before I clear my throat. When she looks up, her eyes latching on to the gun in my hand, I say slowly, “Sit back.”
As she eases into the seat, I place the GLOCK on her shoulder. Her fear is evident by the tremble of the gun. “I heard a rumor you like the feel of steel between your thighs.” Keeping my gaze on the road, I trail the barrel down her chest. “But I think that’s more a man’s pleasure. Me? There’s nothing like the taste of steel to get you off.” I nudge her chin. “Open your mouth.”
“Fuck. You.”
I whip the gun across her face. “Wrong. The answer is always yes, ma’am. Now put the fucking gun in your mouth.”
Clutching the side of her face, she doesn’t respond.
I sigh. “Training is only one of the things I do best.” I glance at her. “But I’m damn good at it. The faster you learn to obey, the quicker we can move on to better things.” Stubborn… “I gutted and flayed my right-hand man, Avery. Alex King was like a son to me. The closest thing I had to one. So do you think I will hesitate to put a bullet in your head?”
She blinks at me, and I laugh. “Are you relieved? If it makes you feel better, you can pretend I killed Alex for you. He treated you rather deplorably. But who do you think he learned it from?” I send her a sincere glace. “Now, I’d really hate to splatter brain all over my car. It is a rather nice car.”
Moving sluggishly, she turns to face the gun. Her mouth drops open.
“Good girl.” I wedge the muzzle between her teeth. She’s shaking; I can hear the chatter of her teeth against the steel. She needs this, though. The adrenaline depletion will help her relax.
“Memorize that metallic taste,” I say, giving her time to do just that. “Any time you think of disrespecting me, I want you to recall the taste of a GLOCK in your mouth. Now—” I remove then gun and slide it into my blazer inseam “—as I was saying, tragedy. Shared history.”
I let her fold into the seat, get comfortable. We’re going to be spending a lot of time together.
“I was just a girl when one of the whore’s johns decided I was ripe for the taking. He violated me on my kitchen floor. The sticky remnants of melted ice-cream, grease, and God knows what else pulling at my skin on the cracked, tacky linoleum.
“He fucked me like filth. On the filthy kitchen floor.
“He also didn’t bother muffling my screams. I know my mother heard. I screamed for her as he shredded me from the inside out; stripped me until I was raw and numb. When the deed was done, my mother demanded he pay twice her regular rate. I was a virgin, after all. She kept the money.”
I pause here, allowing Avery to digest the horrific truth of Lena’s story.
“He was a regular. I knew he’d be back. And that he’d prefer me to her from then on. Maybe that’s what angered her, and why she hated me. I mean, she’d always resented me for being born, but after that, I was no longer an unwanted burden. I was competition.
“I prepped that week. I prepared. And when he returned, I let him get as far as putting his flaccid dick between my thighs before I hacked it off with a kitchen knife.” I look at her. “You’re a doctor. Do you know how hard it is to cut through flesh and tendons with a steak knife? Can you imagine?” I flick the memory away. “Anyway. His screams drew my mother, and when she entered my room, I ran the knife into her womb. That vile, black abyss from where she spawned me.”
“I’m sorry this happened to you,” Avery says, her voice a light quiver. “But if it’s true, then how were you ever accepted into the FBI?”
A light laugh bubbles to my lips. “You never leave behind witnesses, isn’t that right?” I raise my eyebrows at her. “I finished him off, and by the time the police arrived, the grisly scene was documented as just another trick gone wrong. A whore and her john killed by their own filthy hands. I was a juvenile. My record sealed. And when I was legally an adult, I changed my name from Lena McCarthy to Lena Bell—what the whore used to call me on her good days.”
“I fail to see why you’re telling me this, and how we share any history, Lena.”
Smart girl. I wonder if she learned that trick from her profiler friend. Use the offender’s name in a moment of crisis. “Haven’t you figured it out yet? We both have a horrible secret that no one can ever know. You now know mine, just as I know yours. We’ve both killed and concealed it to protect ourselves. We have much in common, Avery.”
