Page 14 of Tourist Season
“Yes.”
“You know your memory sucks, right?”
“Harper, I did not kill Mr. Hornell. If this is some horrible practical joke like the time you convinced me you were finally going to let me kill that pretentious old windbag Simon McCarthy but took me to Irene Kennedy’s seventy-seventh birthday party instead, I will never forgive you.”
“You had a great night. You have the hots for Irene, admit it.” The man grumbles a string of arguments to the contrary thatsounds entirely forced and untrue as Harper chews on one of her nails. She puts her weight on one foot to rub the back of her calf with the top of the other, as though the caress of the penguin slipper is soothing. She seems to stew on his answer, but after a deep sigh, she finally says, “Okay. I’d better run.”
“Wait … go back for a moment. Jake’shead?”
“Gotta go. I’ll see you at lunch.”
“Harper—”
She hangs up and stuffs the phone into the front of her shirt to perch between her breasts on the flimsy elastic of her top’s built-in shelf bra, then stares at the decapitated head, her hands on her hips as though this is merely an inconvenience. “Well,” she says. “This is … weird.”
Weird …?
I nearly ask it out loud, slipping into the shadow of the cottage as Harper pivots a slow turn as though hunting through the garden for clues. She walks back inside and I retreat to the kitchen window to watch as she trades her penguin slippers for a set of Dakota work boots. The contrast of the beat-up leather against her bare legs and those ridiculous shorts has me shifting as another erection starts. I try to think my way out of that fucking biological response.She killed your brother, I tell myself.She almost killedyou.She is absolutelynotsexy.
She turns her back to me as she heads out the door. I catch a glimpse of her round ass in those napkin-sized shorts and drag a hand down my face as though I can swipe the image clean from my brain. “Chrissakes,” I hiss, my cock not receiving the message as the door slams behind her in a stamp of sound.
I press my back to the cold stone as Harper marches past me toward a garden shed that sits adjacent to the low garden wall. It’snot far from where I killed Jake last night. If she were to lean over the wall, she might see the blood that stains the grass just past the hydrangeas. But she doesn’t. Instead, she disappears into the shed and, a moment later, she strides with purpose from the building with a pair of gardening gloves in one hand and a spray bottle in the other. She returns to the bird feeder and sets the orange bottle at her feet before she pulls the gloves on, and then she’s reaching into the bird feeder to yank the head free from between the roof and the platform.
What.
The.
Fuck …?
When I lean farther around the corner, she’s gripping his ears, trying to tug the head free. I wedged it between the roof and the platform pretty good last night, to be fair. I was a little worried about a raccoon climbing up there to run off with all my hard work while I jogged back to the inn for more supplies. It took me several hours and multiple trips to chop up the rest of Jake Hornell and run his body to the shallow burial site next to the Ballantyne River that I picked out months ago from topographic maps, the place I intended to use to dispose of Harper’s body. I don’t think packing dismembered limbs and a collapsible shovel into a backpack to run them for two miles was really what my firefighter and SAR training was meant for, but at least I got a good workout in last night.
And I’m not the only one getting a workout.
“Fucking … just … comply … with … instruction … Jake …,” Harper hisses between gritted teeth as she pushes and pulls until she finally yanks the head hard enough to dislodge it. She shrieks as it faceplants into her chest, but it’s really more asound of irritation than the abject terror I was hoping for. “Even in the afterlife, Jake? Seriously? That isfucked up, dude.”
I just … do not understand. And frankly, I’m a little pissed off. I spent all night chopping this asshole up and hauling him around, and I didn’t even finish, for fucksakes. There’s still a bag of body parts strapped to my back. It takes a long-ass time to saw a person into pieces in the pitch dark and not wake up your sleeping enemy. And I was aiming for a big reaction. Screaming. Tears. Horror. Panic. But what I’m getting just seems more like mild confusion sprinkled with a hint of annoyance, like this is nothing more than an unwelcome inconvenience to her morning routine. She’s just standing there, seemingly unfazed, with the head clutched between her hands, staring down into the bloodied, vacant holes where the eyes once were.
The raven caws from the branch of a nearby apple tree. “Want to fill me in?” she asks the bird, who caws again, though I swear he looks in my direction. “For the amount of free food I give you, I think you need to start contributing more than the occasional trinket.”
Harper turns a bit more in my direction, but she doesn’t fully face me or notice me watching from the shadows, all her attention fixed to the head in her hands. There are two bloodied marks on her tank top from when the eye holes smacked her chest, and I’m nearly overwhelmed by the unexpected urge to find a way to resurrect that gym-bro douchebag so I can kill him again.
I shake my head, trying to clear it of the intrusive thoughts that seem to appear every time I look at Harper. It’s probably just the desire to claim my prey. That guy was obviously a threat. It’s nothing but more biology. I’m like any apex predator, unwilling to yield its next meal or slice of safety in an unforgiving world.
“You look like you had an eventful night,” Harper says to the head as she turns it over and examines the edges of his torn skin. I never got a good look at it in the dark, but there must be marks from the ax on the vertebrae. She lets out a low and thoughtful hum, sticking one of her gloved fingers right into the flesh to pull it back and scrutinize the bone as she turns the head in the light. Her nose crinkles. She seems to deliberate. Having reached some kind of conclusion, she shrugs, and though her expression still appears unsure, she gives Jake Hornell’s head a single, decisive nod.
And then, to my horror, she fuckingsniffs it.
In an instant, she recoils. Harper’s face is a mixture of disgust and confusion when she holds the head away from her as far as she can. “So gross,” she whispers.
She wants to talk about gross? I’ll bring the fucking gross.
“I could not fucking agree more,” I say as I step from my hiding place. I hold up Jake’s severed hands and give her a slow clap as Harper spins to face me. The head is still clutched in her gloved grasp. Her eyes are the color of sharpened steel, the surprise and confusion in them fleeting. Her shock quickly dissolves into a glare that’s ready to flay the flesh from my bones.
“Ballmeat guy,” she hisses.
I give her a dark and devious grin, and her eyes narrow. “Is that how you remember me? ‘Ballmeat guy?’ Well,” I say, tapping one of Jake’s fingers to my cheek in the mimicry of a thoughtful countenance, “that kind of makes sense, coming fromyou.”
I creep a few steps closer, but I stop the moment I see her go rigid with fear. Why I would halt so abruptly, I have no idea. It’s just an ingrained response, matter over mind. And my mind is saying she’s the person I’ve been searching for. The soul I’ve cometo collect. If anything, it should be a struggle to keep myself from rushing forward to close my hands around her throat. It’s the least that she deserves.
