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“Hank,” I said, trying to sound as professional as possible now. “You’re not in any danger at present.”
“That we know of,” Hank said.
“No threats have been made against you,” I said, “or any member of the family. The only person in danger here is me—and I can handle myself just fine.”
“What if she shoots at you and misses?”
“That’s why we’re removing me from this assignment and replacing me with a full team—both here and at Jack’s place in town. The agency I work for is the best there is. Once I’m gone, the danger will be minimal. There’s a car coming tonight to take me back to town.”
I hoped my tone was reassuring.
“I’m still struggling with the basics, here,” Hank said to Jack, the anger building in his voice. “You were worried enough to hire a bodyguard, but you didn’t see fit to tell us what was going on?”
“I didn’t want Mom to worry.”
But Hank’s voice just kept getting tighter. “Did it occur to you that it might’ve been useful for us to have this information?”
“The threat level was very low,” I said.
“It was an abundance of caution,” Jack said.
“You knew you were in danger,” Hank said, much louder now, “but you came here, anyway.”
“I wasn’t really in danger.”
“But now you are.”
“Even now—” I started.
But Hank wasn’t really interested in what I had to say right then. He turned to Jack with his eyes as dark and hard as obsidian. “Your selfishness really knows no limits.”
Jack stood up fast, so they were facing off. “Don’t call me selfish. You have no idea.”
Doc, Connie, and I stayed seated at our end of the table—out of the line of fire—as Jack and Hank faced off.
“There were a million reasons I didn’t want you coming down here,” Hank said then, his voice shifting up toward yelling, “starting with the fact that I’d be perfectly happy to never see you again. But I confess that you getting us all killed did not cross my mind.”
“I didn’t get anyone killed!” Jack shouted—so loud that the silence afterward felt as brittle as crystal.
“Well,” Hank said next, downshifting to a low tone that was somehow a hundred times more menacing. “I think there’s one dead person in this family who might disagree with that.”
At those words, Jack grabbed his dinner plate and smashed it to the floor so hard I half expected it to leave a crater. Then he shouted, “I didn’t kill Drew!”
“Really?” Hank shouted back, his voice saturated with bitterness. “You’re giving yourself a pass?” He held up fingers as he counted off: “You got in the car—drove too fast—hit the bridge going eighty-five—spun out on the black ice—crashed through the railing and plunged yourself and our baby brother into an icy cold river! Which part of that didn’t kill him?”
“The part”—Jack shouted—“where I wasn’t driving!”
The room fell quiet.
Jack blinked at the floor, like he couldn’t believe he’d actually said it.
Hank took a step back and shook his head, like he was trying to clear it out.
“Honey, you…” Connie said, looking up at Jack utterly bewildered.
“I wasn’t driving the car that night,” Jack said again, quieter. “Drew was driving.”
Hank’s voice was quiet now, too. “You’re saying…”
