Page 85 of With a Vengeance

Anna, having looped the thread through the wound’s edge three times, ties it off. “I know what fun is.”

“Yet your answer tells me you don’t have any.”

“I go to the movies sometimes,” Anna says, now working her way upward, slowly sewing the wound like it’s a piece of mending. She tries to pretend that’s exactly what she’s doing. Mending a dress and not sewing up flesh, blood slick on her fingertips.

“That’s it?” Reggie says through gritted teeth, also pretending that this is just an ordinary conversation and not an emergency procedure that might possibly save his life. “An occasional movie? What about musicals?”

The question catches Anna so off guard that her hand almost slips. “Musicals?”

“Come on, you’ve heard of them. People onstage singing and dancing. They’re very popular.”

“I’m sure they are,” Anna says, now at the halfway point, the wound closing tighter with each subsequent pull of the thread. “I assume you’re a fan.”

“Love them,” Reggie says, his voice taking on a dreamy tone. Anna guesses it’s either from the vodka or blood loss. She prays it’s the former. “Give me an interesting plot and some hummable tunes, and I’m in heaven. Once this is all over, you should let me take you to one.”

Anna looks up from the half-stitched wound. “Are you asking me on a date as I’m giving you stitches?”

“Maybe,” Reggie says, hitting the bottle once more. “It doesn’t have to be a date. We could go as friends.”

“Friends?”

“I guess you don’t have much of those, either.”

“I’ve been busy,” Anna says quietly.

“Plotting vengeance.”

“Yes,” Anna says. “For the past year, every thought, every action, every damn minute has been spent preparing for this night. And now it’s all gone to hell.”

“It seems I’ve hit a nerve,” Reggie says.

Anna gives the needle an overzealous tug, making sure Reggie can feel the spiraled thread tightening through his flesh. “And I can hit several,” she says.

“I’m sorry,” he says, his voice distant and shrinking by the second. “It’s just such a sad way to go through life.”

“What else should I have done?”

“I told you that earlier—let the authorities handle it.”

“But these people destroyed my family,” Anna says. “Not yours.”

Reggie grows quiet. So much that Anna assumes he’s passed out, either from the pain or the vodka. It’s a surprise when, after a minute of silence, he speaks again, his voice a gruff whisper.

“My family was destroyed, too. When my father died.”

A sense of guilt settles over Anna. Of course everyone has their losses that are just as painful. “What happened to him?” she asks.

“He was murdered.”

Anna’s hand stills. “I’m so sorry. Did they catch who did it?”

“No,” Reggie says.

“Is that why you joined the FBI?”

Reggie turns his head to look at her through glazed eyes. “Yes. Because I don’t want anyone to experience what my family did.”

“You want justice,” Anna says, finally understanding why he’d been so annoyed with her earlier. By taking matters into her own hands tonight, she denied him—and the many men like him—the chance to right a terrible wrong.

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