Alex Kava Bundle - Alex Kava [87]
After hours of sitting in the cold backyard watching the other kids sledding, he had gone back to the house only to find the door locked. Through the thin wood and fragile glass, he had listened to his mother’s screams and moans—pain and pleasure indistinguishable. Did sex have to hurt? He couldn’t imagine growing to enjoy such pain. And he remembered feeling ashamed because he had been relieved. He knew as long as his stepfather slammed into his mother, he wouldn’t slam into his small body.
It was while he sat in the bitter white cold that day that he had plotted, a plot so simple it required only a ball of string. The next morning when his stepfather retreated to his basement workshop, he would come back up on a stretcher. He and his mother would never feel ashamed or scared again. How could he have known that his mother would go down to the basement first that morning? That morning when his life had ended; when that horrible wicked, little boy had ended his mother’s life.
Suddenly, he felt someone above him, breathing and sniffing. He slowly looked up to find a black dog within inches of his face. The dog bared his teeth, emitting a low growl. Without warning, his hands shot out at the dog’s throat and the growl became a quiet whine, a stifled gurgle, then silence.
He watched the boys dressed in thick parkas running and jumping with stiff legs and arms. Finally, they gathered up their sledding contraptions and said their goodbyes. One boy called for the dog several times but gave up easily to catch up with his friends. They separated and headed in different directions, three one way, two another while one crossed the church’s parking lot alone.
The sky changed from light gray to slate. Streetlights blinked on one at a time. A jet thundered overhead, the sound amplified by the white, silent town. There wasn’t a single vehicle or pedestrian when he climbed into his own car. He pulled the ski mask back on despite the perspiration gathering on his forehead and upper lip. On the seat next to him, he laid out a fresh handkerchief, carefully and meticulously as though it were already a part of the ceremony. He brought a vial out of his coat pocket, cracked it and anointed the white linen. Then he kept the headlights off and the engine soft as he slowly followed the boy who dragged his bright orange plastic sled behind him.
CHAPTER 49
The sheriff’s department could afford only five fully equipped squad cars, and four were parked outside the courthouse when Nick returned. Immediately, the fury burned in his stomach. What would it take to get these people to listen to him, to take his orders seriously? Yet, he knew it was his own fault.
He had treated his position as sheriff with the same reckless disregard that had ruled the rest of his life—to simply kick back and take nothing too seriously. That was before. Before he had fallen into Danny Alverez’s blood. Now he couldn’t help wondering whether a real sheriff could have saved Matthew Tanner. But Platte City had a skirt-chasing college quarterback with a law degree, absolutely no experience and only his father’s name and reputation to win him the right to call himself sheriff and to carry a badge and a gun. A gun, by the way, that he hadn’t fired since target practice to get the job nearly two years ago.
Michelle Tanner’s ex-husband had knocked more than just his jaw out of whack. Too bad it had taken a fist to knock some sense of responsibility into him.