Page 3 of Half the Summer's Night
I want silence.
“What do you want from me?” he asks, settling back down in his chair. “I reward you for your work, just like I do everyone else under my employ.”
He’s talking about Evelyn. He’s never paid me anything. I’m his personal guard dog, one he raised from a puppy to be loyal to him.
“I know.” Uncle Nash snaps his fingers, like he’s just had a revelation. He leans forward, his eyes boring into mine. As much as he’s acting like this is some genial, friendly celebration, the menace is more than clear. “It’s that girl that you want, isn’t it?”
Every atom in my body lights up.
“Abilene Snow.” Uncle Nash rolls her name around on his tongue, and I want to rip it out. He doesn’t deserve to say her name. “Pretty enough. Too big for my tastes, though.”
I stare at him, trembling. Now it’s my own blood I hear rushing through my veins, boiling for a?—
For a kill.
“What is it about her?” He leans forward in his chair. I’m perfectly still, clutching my undrunk whiskey in one hand, watching him like I watch a target. Uncle Nash’s eyes glint with a hard, knowing cruelty. “It’s because you’ve heard the rumors, isn’t it?” He grins the way he does whenever he’s watching me punish someone for him. “You think she’s like you?”
My ears buzz. I squeeze the whiskey glass, targeting all my hot, concentrated rage into my fist in hopes that Uncle Nash won’t see how upset I am. Because if he knows I’m upset, he’ll use it against me.
“Thatisit.” Uncle Nash laughs with a cruel delight. “You think because everyone says she killed that football player that she’ll be okay with you? With what you are?”
I suck in my breath, all my senses zeroed in on Uncle Nash. I can see his blood pumping through his neck. A target. He’s a target.
“Oh, Rowan, Rowan, Rowan.” He says my name like I’m a little baby, too young to know anything. “You can’t listen to rumors. That boy’s death was an accident. Abilene Snow isn’t going to love you.” His eyes glint. “Just like your mother couldn’t love you.”
The whiskey glass explodes in my hand, glass and alcohol exploding outward like a star. A hunk of glass embeds in my palm, the pain electrifying me. Uncle Nash jumps.
And, just for a second, fear flickers across his face.
That fear catches on something inside me. The part of me that’s broken. The part of me that isn’t just a killer butloveskilling. The part of me that, no matter how much I tell myself otherwise, would destroy Abilene Snow if I ever got too close to her.
Just like I’m going to destroy Uncle Nash.
It happens fast. Faster than it usually does. I leap to my feet and then slam into Uncle Nash, so hard that the chair tilts back and we both fly backward. At the same time, I swipe the glass still trapped in my palm across his throat, severing that vein I could feel pumping across the room.
His blood gushes out like a fountain, drenching my face in heat and life. But that’s nothing compared to his confused, betrayed expression, to the satisfying way he opens and closes his mouth like a dying fish as he stares up at me.
My name. He’s trying to say my name. But I think I’ve severed his vocal cords. I snapped something when I sliced his throat, and I can see it wriggling as he works his jaw.
I stand up and pull the glass out of my palm and toss it aside. My cock is uncomfortably hard from all the blood, and I wonder if Uncle Nash sees it, how much I like finally murdering him after ten years.
I’ve wanted to do this since I was eight fucking years old. Since I came to live here after my mother told me she never wanted to see me again.
Uncle Nash makes a wet rattling sound, the last of his breath escaping from his body. I’m acting on instinct now. Instinct and training. I pick him up, so taut with adrenaline that it’s like he weighs nothing.
Then I hurl him through the big picture window that looks out at his pristine swimming pool and professionally landscaped yard. Like Bobby Spencer, Uncle Nash will die from a terrible accident. He was drinking. He slipped and fell through the glass.
And now, after a decade of his abuse, I’m finally free.
1
ABI
My latest assignment arrives after lunch, right as I’m rinsing off my dishes. The chime ripples from the back of the house, soft and reassuring.
A body is here.
I got the details from the sheriff’s department this morning—an accidental death at the Palm Breeze Hotel. A tourist from Oklahoma slipped in the shower and hit his head and bled out. One of the maids found him when she came in to clean. Another accidental death.
