In twelve years I’d never seen obnoxious Nathaniel Allen at a loss for words, but I was seeing it now. It was the best feeling I’d had in a long, long time.
40
MS. STREPP
“THIS IS THE PLACE.” HELEN STREPP nodded curtly at her driver, who pulled over to one side of Weaver Road. Out of habit Ms. Strepp glanced up and down the street. Though Harrison lived in town, not on a farm, the houses were far enough apart here that there shouldn’t be any trouble.
“Drive around the block and meet me in back,” Ms. Strepp instructed, and the guard nodded, just once. With no hesitation Ms. Strepp got out of the car and headed up to the porch. She rang the doorbell as the black car turned the corner, out of sight.
A curtain over a window twitched, and then the front door was unlocked. Christopher Harrison stood there, his sandy hair backlit by the living room lamp. For a second he wore a bland, questioning smile, and then his eyes flared in alarm.
“You!” he blurted, already stepping backward to slam the door in her face. But Ms. Strepp was ready for that and blocked it with her foot. She shoved it open as Harrison backed awkwardly into the room.
When she pulled out the gun, he became belligerent. “Wait a second,” he began angrily, holding his hands up. “There’s been some misun—”
The silenced pistol shot made a faint whistling sound, almost simultaneous with the sound of Christopher Harrison hitting the floor as hard and heavy as a sack of feed. His eyes blinked up at her as the red stain on his shirt spread rapidly.
“I don’t think there’s been any misunderstanding, you bastard,” Ms. Strepp said. “That was for Becca. And for me. And no doubt for other girls as well. Love the black eye, by the way.”
She allowed herself to watch as the life faded from his eyes. One less asshole in the world. About a million more to go.
Ms. Strepp walked through the house to the back door. She crossed the yard to the alley, where the black car was waiting. She slid inside, oddly breathless. Then the car glided away, taking her back home.
41
CASSIE
OUR USUAL ALARM IS FOR tornadoes. Every once in a long while, for flash flooding. Sometimes I heard fire trucks—almost everything on a farm is flammable. Do not throw flour on a grease fire.
On my way to school the next day, I heard a different siren, a different alarm. I was early anyway, so I turned off the east road and headed toward it.
And I wasn’t the only one. The nearer I got to the wailing sound, the more people I met heading the same way.
“What’s going on?” I called to Mr. Henry, who lived north of me.
He spit tobacco juice into a bottle. “Don’t know!” he said. “Gonna go find out!”
The feeling of dread started when I realized we were approaching where Mr. Harrison lived. A crowd had already gathered in front of his house. There was an EMS truck, a fire truck, and two police cars. Uniformed officers were already stringing up yellow crime scene tape along his fence.
“What happened?” I gasped, as two EMS techs walked out of Mr. Harrison’s house carrying a stretcher. Someone was on the stretcher, covered by a white sheet.
“It’s Christopher Harrison,” an older woman told me, her hand to her cheek. “He’s dead, they say.”
Icy alarm swept me from head to foot. I had hit him really hard—was it just yesterday? Maybe he had gone home and had an embolism or something. Maybe his brain had bled out. Oh, my God—was I a murderer?
“Relax, it wasn’t you.” Nathaniel’s quiet voice almost made me tip my moped over.
My head whipped around. “Quit sneaking up on me!”
His light-brown eyebrows raised. “I apologize fo
r sneaking up on you in a big crowd of people outside in broad daylight with a lot of drama happening.”
“Well, you snuck up on me yesterday!” I was upset and slightly freaking, and Nathaniel Allen was the last thing I needed. He made me feel off-balance, unsettled.
“Yesterday, when you shot my radio to smithereens?” he asked mildly. “Would that be when I drove up to you in the middle of nowhere where you could see and probably hear me coming from half a mile away? Was that the time?”
I pressed my lips together before I gave him more ammo. When I flashed an irritated look at him, he smirked and patted the brand-new radio he had chained to his moped. I wouldn’t be grabbing that one any time soon.