Page 34 of Worse Than Wicked
“I know,” he says. “You want to finish school, but what about when you’re done?”
“I don’t think that’s in the cards,” I whisper through the pain in my throat.
He squeezes me and kisses my temple. “Okay, but one day, I bet you’ll change your mind. If you had a kid, what would you name it?”
“I don’t know,” I manage. “What would you?”
Duke’s face lights up, and he starts rattling off a list, and he’s too excited to notice me wiping away a tear. And even though he took everything from me, I can’t bring myself to take this from him, so I let him go on.
ten
Baron Dolce
“I’m going for a walk,” Mabel says, stepping into the doorway to the study, where I’m working.
I finish up what I’m doing before I spin the chair to face her. “Are you asking permission?”
“No,” she says, scowling. “I’m telling you, so you know that I’m not running away.”
I take in her appearance—white tennis shoes, navy shorts, a white T-shirt, a ponytail. She looks like the classic American girl-next-door, the exact type that a serial killer would target. Not for the first time, I consider that the Black Widow Killer was stalking her, waiting for the perfect victim. Is he one of her dates, one that got away?
I push myself up from my chair. “I’ll go with you.”
“Don’t you like to run?” she asks. “I’ll slow you down.”
I know I made the right call, since she wouldn’t argue unless she had something to hide. I’m beginning to think I’ll never know the new Mabel. Even more unsettling, I wonder if I ever knew the old Mabel. I’m still not convinced that she’s not the killer herself.
“I ran this morning,” I say, stepping over her cat, who likes to sleep under my feet while I’m working. “I don’t mind keeping you company.”
I know this will bother her, since we think alike, and it would bother me for someone to erroneously assume I wanted company when I notified them of my plans. Goading her isusually Duke’s specialty, but I’m particularly frustrated at the moment, and susceptible to more petty urges than usual.
“Should we get Duke?” she asks as she waits for me to lace up my shoes.
“He’s over at the other house.”
“Hickory House.”
“What?”
“That’s the name of your house,” she says. “The house I grew up in. Hickory House.”
“What about Devlin’s house?”
“Lilac Place.”
“Preston’s?”
“That’s just Preston’s house,” she says. “It wasn’t in the family before they bought it, so it doesn’t have a name. Same with my father’s house. He had that built when he left Hickory House, so it wasn’t a Darling family home.”
Summer House is inside city limits, but it’s on the north side of town in a nice area. Behind each house sprawls a large lawn, and beyond that, a section of woods. Mabel heads for that, and I follow, since she seems confident in her direction. It’s a sweltering afternoon, and we’re both sweating by the time we reach the shade of the trees.
“You could get a treadmill,” I tell her. “That way you wouldn’t have to leave the house.”
“I like leaving the house.”
“I remember that,” I say, catching her hand. “From when we were dating.”
“You could run on a treadmill too.”
