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“No comment.”
I was tired enough to be ballsy. “Have you ever killed anyone?”
“Have you?”
“You know I have,” I said past the lump in my throat.
“Other than the kid?”
“Once. Early in my career. A rapist who had kidnapped a woman. I responded to a domestic situation, called in by a neighbor. Found out later that the guy had kidnapped his coworker and was holding her against her will. I showed up, and it felt like things were fishy. I made up a bullshit excuse to come in and he let me, probably thinking he could subdue me too, but when he pulled a gun, I shot him. Then I found the woman chained to a bed in the bedroom.”
“I’m guessing they didn’t lose the gun on that one.”
“Yeah,” I choked out. That had been hard, but the guy was scum, and I’d been commended for trusting my instincts and saving a woman’s life. Funny how I’d lost everything when I’d trusted my instincts years later.
“Why’d they lie and say the kid didn’t have a gun?” Malcolm asked as the lights of the tavern parking lot came into view.
“Why do you think he had one?”
“Because if you fucked up, you’d admit it.”
Maybe I’d been like that then, but I’d been fucking up right and left lately and not copping to it. “Maybe I’m not that woman anymore.” I slowed down to turn into the parking lot.
“Maybe not, but maybe that’s not a bad thing.”
“You think I should be more like you?” I asked bitterly.
“No, but maybe you should live your life outside the shadow of your sister’s death.”
I pulled in front of the tavern and threw the car into park. I turned to him, my fury building. “You don’t know anything about me, James Malcolm, and you sure as hell don’t know anything about my sister.”
His dark brown eyes held mine. “Maybe not, but I know a shitload about regret, and you, Harper Adams, are fucking drowning in it.” He opened the door, then turned back to me. “The answer is yes.”
I squinted in confusion.
“Yes, I’ve killed someone. I’ve killed more than one someone.” Then he got out, walking into the tavern without a backward glance.
Once I got over the shock of his admission to murder, I focused on his other shocking statement.
I told myself he was wrong about me living in my sister’s shadow, but he wasn’t wrong about the regret. I’d been drowning in it for years. I’d been pummeled by waves more times than I could count, and right now I was covered by a giant one, only this time I wasn’t sure I’d surface soon enough to survive.
Chapter 26
The next morning, I woke up with a hell of a hangover, made worse by the chiming of the alarm on my phone. Groaning, I blindly reached for the button to turn it off.
Why had I set an alarm for six-thirty?
I’d gotten home around eleven-thirty the night before, James Malcolm’s words pounding in my head. As soon as I opened the apartment door, I realized my sheets were still in the washing machine at my parents’ house. If my mother had moved them to the dryer (likely), she hadn’t brought them up to my apartment, and I wasn’t about to go through the back door to check. The lights in the house were off, which meant my father was probably in bed.
Instead, I grabbed the open bottle of whiskey, poured some into a glass and sat on the sofa, trying to drown out the memories that had flooded my head.
I’d done my best to put Andi’s kidnapping behind me, but tonight my head was flooded with snapshots of her kidnapping—and also of the shooting that had ended my career.
The terror on Andi’s face when John Michael Stevens appeared out of the woods, his gun trained on me as he told her to come with him or he’d kill us both.
My mother’s shock and fear when I’d burst through the front door sobbing.
The endless questioning by Chief Larson, and then the sheriff, and finally FBI agents.
