Page 85 of Savage Hearts
He simply nods.
My voice comes out small. “Please don’t kill him.”
He shakes his head in frustration. “You keep asking me not to kill other people, but you’ve never asked me not to killyou.”
I think for a moment. “I’m pretty sure I have.”
“No. You haven’t. You just threatened to return from the dead to haunt me if I did.”
“I was like ninety percent certain all along that you weren’t going to kill me. Why are you glaring at me now?”
He says flatly, “Iwasgoing to kill you.”
“No, you weren’t.”
“Yes, I was.”
“Youwantedto, but you were never going to. That’s totally different.”
Heaving a sigh, he releases my hand, stands, and leaves the room. I holler after him, “You never would have kissed me so much if you really planned to kill me!”
“Tell that to my late ex-wife.”
That leaves me breathless, and not just because my stomach hurts from the effort of shouting. I lie there with my heart beating like mad, thinking of all the ways he might have murdered his poor ex, until Mal sticks his head back through the door.
“I don’t have an ex-wife. I’ve never been married. I only said that to scare you.”
“It worked.”
“I told you I was a bad person.”
That makes me smile. “Yeah, but if you werereallybad, you wouldn’t have admitted it.”
He closes his eyes for a moment, shaking his head. “I have to go out for a while. I’ll try to be back before dark.”
I start to panic all over again. “You’re leaving me here alone? What if I die while you’re gone?”
“Then I suppose I’ll have some digging to do when I get back.”
My mouth drops open. “Okay, that was just mean.”
I can tell he’s trying not to smile. “Would you prefer cremation? I can arrange a funeral pyre for you, if you like.”
“That issonot funny.”
“It’s a little bit funny.”
“No. It’s not.”
“Your lips are twitching.”
“That’s because I’m in a lot of pain!”
His head disappears. He returns in a moment holding a white paper bag.
“What’s in that?”
He sits on the edge of the bed and starts removing pill bottles of various sizes and colors from the bag. Some of them have labels, others don’t. The ones that do are written in gobbledygook that must be Russian.
