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Her jaw dropped. For a moment, she just stared at him, speechless. Her hand caught in midair, tentatively between touching him and withdrawing. “It wasn’t a good life, Richard. You were starting to—”
“Don’t you dare blame any of this shit on me, you hear? I didn’t do anything to deserve this! You wanted to stop working and used me to justify it. Now Dad’s cheating on you, and it’s entirely your fault.”
“How dare you?” she whispered, her eyes glinting with rage. Her face was flushed, in anger or shame.
“Tell me it’s not true,” he snapped. “What’s he supposed to do? Let it wither and fall off?”
The blow resounded loudly in the large living room, echoing against the vaulted ceilings. His face burned where she’d slapped him, and unexpected tears stung his eyes. He didn’t want to cry; he wasn’t a little kid anymore. He stared at her menacingly, willing himself calm, determined to walk away without saying or doing anything else.
Natalie’s hand covered her agape mouth. “I—I’m so sorry,” she stammered, “I—I didn’t mean to—”
“You make me sick.” He spat the words as if they were bitter to the taste, then turned to leave. She didn’t follow.
In the hallway, by the door, he saw her Chanel purse abandoned on the console table. He unzipped it quickly and rummaged through it until he found her wallet. He took all the cash in there and her American Express Gold card, then slid the wallet back inside the purse. He slammed the door behind him as he left the house, the large windows rattling in protest.
Behind the wheel, he rubbed his face where it was still smarting, mumbling an endless oath. Hopefully, she’d feel guilty enough for what she’d done to leave him be for a few days. And one day, soon, he’d make the bitch pay.
As his Jeep peeled away from the driveway with screeching tires against the asphalt, a smile blossomed on his lips. He had money and he had time. The sky was the limit.
And there was no reason to spend the night alone.
TWENTY
NIGHTMARES
Kay was thankful the moment the night sky started graying out toward the east. She hadn’t slept a wink and couldn’t bear tossing and turning in bed anymore, alone with the ghosts of her past. All those questions she’d asked herself over the years were haunting her. Could she have done anything differently? Had she hesitated, would her mother have died that day?
She pulled on the rundown T-shirt and shorts and tiptoed barefoot into the kitchen. Turning on the lights, she started the coffee maker and spent a few seconds nearby, inhaling the aroma of the strong, fresh brew. Then she grabbed the putty knife and proceeded to clean yesterday’s remnants of dried-out paste off its blade.
She found the lid snapped closed on the putty bucket and sighed in relief. The last thing she wanted was to bang on Ace Hardware’s front door at six in the morning for a new one. She opened the lid and loaded the knife with pink paste, then proceeded to where she’d left off the day before. Right where the fridge used to be, where her father’s fist had torn a hole in the wall, so large Jacob had to consolidate the repair with a piece of drywall he’d cut to shape and screwed against the two-by-four.
Next to the edge of that hole, the old wall paint still showed, ugly and weathered and sullied with a faded bloodstain. Her mother’s blood. With trembling fingers, she touched the edge of the mark, fighting back the tears with a clenched jaw. She wished she could jump back in time and hold her mother in her arms, soothe her pain, tell her everything was going to be all right. A wail climbed up from her chest and erupted from her lips, sending her to her knees, covering her mouth with her hands to mute the sound.
She felt Jacob’s strong arms around her and let him hold her, rocking her back and forth like she used to do with him when he was little and hurt himself. Then she stood up, holding on to his arm, and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “It’s all right,” she said, “I’m just grieving.”
He’d crossed his arms over his chest and was studying her with a look of disbelief. He wore crinkled pajamas, the top almost entirely unbuttoned. His hair was clumped and sweaty, a natural out-of-bed look that some women paid small fortunes to imitate.
The thought of that brought a shy smile to her lips. Eighteen years, and she still wasn’t over that night. Some shrink she was if she couldn’t heal herself. “He sure did a number on us, didn’t he?”
“Uh-huh,” he replied, then walked over to the counter and put the lid on the putty container. “This goes dry real quick, sis,” he said. “Why don’t you let me finish these walls myself? I’d be faster. I’d have it done in an hour.”
She nodded, still sniffling. “I know, and you’d do it better than me.” She gave the walls a long stare. “Let me do this room. All of it, please. New floors, new cabinets. It’s healing for me. It helps me erase his stain from my memory, one inch at a time.”
Her brother scoffed quietly, lowering his gaze to hide his anger. “Yeah, and you’ll forget him, all right, with the other Gavin Sharp on everyone’s mind. Really, what are the odds of that?” He walked over and grabbed a coffee mug from the cabinet, then filled it to the brim from the machine. “It kept me up last night. I can’t believe this is happening. How are you going to handle it?”
A shattered breath of air left her lungs. “I don’t know yet. Thing is, he might be our unsub, Jenna’s killer. What was a fifty-six-year-old doing on dates with an underage girl? I can’t think of a good reason for that.”
Jacob shrugged with a crinkle of disgust on his lip. “I don’t know—being a perv, I guess?”
She looked at the willow trees, then away from the window when he saw Jacob’s disapproving gaze. “However upsetting this might be to us, I have to follow the leads where they might take me. Just saying his name or reading it on police reports and in databases feels so strange to me. Gives me the creeps.”
“Does your cowboy know about this?” Jacob asked, a touch of amusement in his eyes as they veered to the front window as if expecting Elliot to pull into their driveway any minute.
She fake punched him in the shoulder. “He’s notmycowboy, Jacob. How many times do I have to tell you?”
“He could be,” her brother replied, speaking slowly. “He’d hang his hat on that doornail in a heartbeat.”
Kay pretended to glare at him for a brief moment, then she turned away to hide a smile. Maybe… if the stars aligned, and Jacob wasn’t wrong in his assessment. But that would definitely complicate things. “No, he doesn’t know anything. I told him I was sick yesterday… because I was. I threw up when I heard the name spoken to me. It felt as if—”
