Page 7 of Half the Summer's Night
“Thank you.” The words come out clearly, thank god. “I, um, I wanted to make my office feel a little more personal.”
“I don’t blame you.” She glides up to my desk, moving with the same elegant grace I admire every time I watch her from afar. Seeing it up close, though?—
I can feel myself getting hard. I also feel myself studying everything about her so I can remember it later.
She sinks into the chair across from my desk, and then I sit down, too.
“I love the Blood Raiser movies,” she says lightly. “Especially the third one.”
I knew this about her already. She watches it every year in the fall, around the time the first cold front blows through. The year her uncle died, she watched the whole series, all eight of them, one after another. I watched them with her, peering in from where I’d perched in the tree that lined up against her upstairs living room, shivering in my thin coat.
“The third one’s my favorite, too,” I say stiffly, hoping it’s what a normal person would say.
Abilene—Abi—smiles at that, just for a second. Then it vanishes. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I didn’t actually come here to talk about movies. I’m just—” She stops, tucks her hair behind her ear. “I wanted to talk about the death that happened here a few days ago.”
My chest tightens. With fear or excitement, I don’t know. Still, I manage to find the words I know I need to say.
“I already spoke to the police.”
Abi blushes, her cheeks turning a lovely shade of red, and for a second, I swear I can smell her blood. My cock strains against my pants, and I shift in my seat, trying to get more comfortable.
“I’m not with the police,” she says. “I do work with the Rosado sheriff’s department, but I’m not—I’m not really here in an official capacity?”
She turns the last word up like it’s a question, and she gives me this kind of sheepish look like she expects me to kick her out of my office. Which of course I wouldneverdo. Having her so close, having her speak to me, is intoxicating. Even more so now than it was ten years ago at the funeral.
“So whyareyou here?” I say slowly, hoping I can keep the excitement out of my voice.
Abi bites her lower lip, her pretty eyes darting around. She’s nervous. Scared, even, although not the kind of scared I’m used to. That’s one of the things about me, one of the things that Uncle Nash was so keen to exploit. I can sense what people are feeling. I can sense when they’re near, the way a dog can sniff out its quarry.
“I—Look, I don’t want to alarm you, or anything.” She leans forward, the chair creaking. I grip my own chair’s armrests, afraid that if she gets any closer, I won’t be able to control myself. “Like I said, I’m the Rosado County coroner. And I’ve noticed—patterns, I guess you could call them, in some of the bodies I’ve examined. That’s what I want to talk to you about.”
My heart is going to erupt out of my chest.She knows she knows she knows. The words circle wildly around in my head. Well, maybe she doesn’tknow, but she’s seen them. The letters I chose for her and carved into the skin of my victims, small enough to go unnoticed by most. But she noticed them. Just like I hoped she would. No—like Iknewshe would.
Abi’s staring at me, waiting for a response.
“Patterns?” I squeak out.
She nods. “It may be nothing, but I saw that same pattern in the most recent death, the one that occurred here at your hotel.”
My thoughts are racing. This isn’t how I expected this to play out. I thought I’d finish my message first, and then reveal myself to her. Not as Rowan Hanover, but asmyself, my true self.
I never expected Abilene Snow to come to the hotel, to sit in Rowan Hanover’s office, to be bathed in the sunlight from the window behind his desk. But that’s what she’s doing right now, and as beautiful as she is, it’s all wrong.
I swallow. “What are you saying?” I finally ask. A prompt, really. I want to know more about what she’s thinking.
“I’m not sure.” She shakes her head, frowning a little. “I’ll be perfectly transparent with you, Mr. Hanover?—“
My insides twist, hearing that name. My disguise. The face I put on to hide what I am. Still, I have to play along.
“Rowan,” I say. “Please.”
“Rowan.” Abi smiles as she says it, and it’s like music or the roll of the Gulf waves over your feet or someone’s final exhalation of breath. It’s that pretty, the way she says my disguise. “Rowan, I really do want to be clear. I’m not here in any official capacity. The sheriff’s department, the city police—they haven’t taken my reports on this seriously.”
It’s a bit of a slap, hearing that she’s reported her findings. Those words are for her, not Rosado’s bumbling police officers. But I also suppose I can’t fault her for it.
“I was hoping I could talk to your staff,” she says, the words coming out quickly. “Not any of your guests, of course. Just staff. If they saw anything, or…”
Her voice kind of trails off, and she looks at me helplessly. My little detective, and it takes every ounce of my willpower not to come clean to her right then and there. But of course I know not to dothat. Uncle Nash was an abusive piece of shit, but he taught me how not to get caught.
