Looking through the window, I watch as she moves around her small apartment that has no blinds. I mean, if she’s not putting up blinds, clearly she wants to be watched.
“For a girl afraid of dying, she’s recklessly vulnerable with her home situation.”
“It’s been seven years, Rush. She’s likely gotten too comfortable and considered the threat to be over.”
“There might be one issue,” I tell him, cracking my neck to the side. “But it’s not with Herrin. It’s the thing I found out about last year.”
“The thing you dug up?” he asks vaguely, like he’s making sure no one can overhear.
“If I dug it up, then I’m sure someone else has pieced it together. Five guys rolled into town about two hours ago asking questions about Karen Canady and where they can find her.”
I hear him mutter a curse, and then some shuffling comes through over the phone.
“Is she aware of them? And are you sure this isn’t related to Herrin?”
“She’s not aware of them, from what I’ve observed. I only caught wind of them because of some of the bugs we have in the local stores. Definitely not Herrin’s guys. They were also asking about their brother and if anyone remembered him.”
“Shit,” he says on a long breath.
“Maybe they’re drawing the same conclusion I did,” I go on. “Eight months ago, Collin Smith drives through a nowhere-town on his way to his family’s hunting lodge. Next thing you know, he’s met a girl and decides to skip the family hunting trip and spend two weeks here instead. In forty-eight hours, he went missing and no one heard from him again, though there were some shady credit card charges at gas stations alongside the interstate.”
“During two days where Karen wasn’t at work,” he says on a sigh. “If she killed him, there was a reason. Either he knew her and was going to blackmail her, or he really pissed her off.”
“I’m guessing it won’t matter to the five brothers who are coming through on their way to the family’s hunting lodge. My guess is they stopped here to pick something up to hunt.”
“Then I strongly suggest keeping a close eye on the situation and turn them into the hunted if that’s the case,” he bites out.
“No worries,” I say with a smirk.
My fist forms as Kara starts taking off her clothes for the whole damn world to see, per the usual. But when she moves through her house, I start moving through mine.
Her bedroom can only be seen from my room, and we’re barely twenty feet apart. All the houses are small with about the same space between them.
She wisely surrounded herself with people who would hear a gunshot, and in this rinky dink town that has very little crime, someone would also immediately report a gunshot.
She slips out of the rest of her clothes, and my eyes rake over her naked body with the same appreciation I’ve felt for months. Her curves are twice as sexy as they used to be. Her hair is platinum blonde, a stark contrast to the raven’s hair she was born with.
Her lips stay lined in red.
Her contacts stay blue.
Everything about her screams, “fuck me.”
No longer is she the fifteen-year-old kid who wrapped herself around me in secrecy every night. No longer is she a kid at all.
But neither am I.
I’m nothing like she remembers.
“Rush, you there?” Drex asks, reminding me I’m on the phone with her brother.
The idle thought of jerking off to the sight of her is immediately nixed.
Clearing my throat and smirking, I answer, “Yeah. Just got distracted. Any word on that Demetri guy you were looking into?”
“Yeah. He died seven years ago. Same night we got back into town and I sent Kara off safely. I still haven’t found the story he intended to print. I wouldn’t have known about him at all if Sarah hadn’t had her hacker friend do some digging on everyone Kara was in contact with back then.”
I take a deep breath, not wanting to recall the fucking day from hell when the life I was finally happy with was suddenly ripped to shreds. I hated her at first.
Actually, I still hate her when I think about it.
Then I hated myself.
Still do in some ways.
Then I hated Drex.
Still do most days, if I’m being honest.
But the one person I’ve hated the most through all of this? Herrin. And I hate him every single second of every single day with every single breath in my body.
My jaw grinds as I start speaking again. “Herrin got to him that fast?” I ask quietly.
“Yeah. He’d have gotten to Kara too. They were both too naïve to know what they were up against.”
“But you knew. And you still didn’t bother to come find me,” I point out.
“I had no idea you were with her. I thought you two were friends, but you played dumb during all that,” he growls.