Heartbreak Bay (Stillhouse Lake #5) - Rachel Caine Page 0,43

they turn as one as we walk toward them. “You scared the shit out of me,” Vee says. Her surveying look is not kind. “What the hell was that?”

“Panic attack,” I tell her crisply, as if I’m not ashamed of it. I shouldn’t be, but it’s hard, hard for me to admit weakness, especially to her. Vee’s got a predator’s unerring instincts, and though she’s not cruel, when she goes in for an emotional kill, she’s efficient about it. “Come on, let’s get you home.”

“Guess I won’t get more lessons,” she observes. “Seeing as you’re famous again.” She reaches in her pocket and pulls out a folded piece of paper. “I took it off one of them other cars.”

I know what it is before I unfold it. The flyer. The same one that I got from the range master.

When I look up, I see pieces of paper fluttering under windshield wipers all around the lot.

I want to howl. I don’t. I just say, “Let’s put it on hold until I find another shooting range. It’s Knoxville. There are plenty.” About a dozen, in fact. But I know that if my stalker continues to come after me, it’ll be easy to find me no matter where I go. He could cover a dozen places in a couple of days. I need to stop him. Now.

Sam glances over and sees the flyer that Vee’s handed me. I hear his intake of breath, but he doesn’t say anything. I see the blood draining from his face. This hurts him, too, in ways that I can’t truly appreciate.

“You want to talk about that?” he asks. I shake my head. I don’t want to talk to him, and I know that’s irrational and cruel; it isn’t his fault someone resurrected his favorite form of punishment and used it against me. It isn’t his fault, but it feels like it is. And I need to settle that in my head.

But I don’t get that chance because from the back seat, Lanny leans forward and grabs the paper. “Oh my God.”

“Give it back,” I tell her, and my voice is too loud, too tight.

She doesn’t surrender it. She knows what she’s looking at—she remembers it very well. She says, “They’re doing it again.” Her voice sounds like a little girl’s again, shocked and traumatized. I feel my breath catch hard in my throat, and my eyes burn with tears. I see Connor take the flyer and examine it, then carefully fold it up and give it back to Vee. For once, Vee sensibly keeps her mouth shut.

There’s not a sound in the car but road noise. If I can’t help blaming Sam, he also can’t help blaming himself. And this time, he’s going to see the toll this takes directly on my—our—children. I have to suppress the vile impulse to think he deserves that for his past actions.

“Wait, y’all have seen these before?” Vee finally asks.

“People put them up other places we lived,” Connor says, and his tone is calm and uninflected. “They wanted us to leave, and we did.”

It’s the calmness, and the inevitability behind it, that makes my heart ache. I did let the Lost Angels . . . Sam . . . hound us from place to place, for years. I did that for my kids. But I also did it to my kids.

“We’re not leaving,” I tell Connor, and hold his stare in the rearview mirror for a second.

“We just started getting normal,” Lanny says. “I just found friends.” She sounds too shattered to be angry. The rage that sweeps over me is breathtaking and weirdly freeing. It steals my breath and clenches my hands, and I think, Fine. Come at us, you assholes.

Even Vee is quiet now, realizing this is way deeper than she can swim, with currents fast enough to drown the unwary.

That river of silence, fraught with rage and pain and fear, flows continuously, unbroken, until we arrive at Vee’s apartment and let her out. I watch her walk to her door with her absurdly bright gun case and safe and let herself in before Sam puts the SUV back into gear and heads us home. Home. It feels less like that now, more like a fortress bracing for an attack.

I never should have let my guard down.

Sam pulls the SUV into the garage, and we all stay in the vehicle until the door rolls closed. Usually Lanny or Connor is the first to bail, but my kids are quiet