off guard, hopefully surprise him into telling the real truth.
And that was why she was here. The truth. She just wanted to know why Kurt had approached her and why he had lied.
Did he know about her past? Or was it just a typical game for him?
She got out of the Acura, locked it, and walked to the front door of the house. Nicole rang the doorbell and waited. She tried again, but no answer.
Nicole walked around to the side of the house and peeked in the garage’s window. Two cars were inside. Someone had to be home. She wasn’t going to just walk away now.
She turned back to walk toward the front of the house when she sensed movement behind her. Nicole ducked and turned, putting distance between herself and whoever was behind her.
Kurt lunged at her but she deflected his outreached hands, drove an elbow into his jaw, and a straight left into his kidney. He sank to his knees and reached behind his back. Nicole’s hand flashed to her ankle and the knife was in her hand and then at Kurt’s throat. He brought his hand back out.
It was empty.
“Honey?” a woman’s voice called. A pretty brunette peeked her head around the corner of the garage. She let out a little yelp when she saw Nicole.
“I’m calling 911!” she screamed. Her head disappeared back behind the garage.
“NO!” Kurt yelled. The woman’s head reappeared, but she looked only at Nicole.
Kurt looked up at Nicole as well.
“I can explain,” he said. Nicole wasn’t sure if he meant her, or the woman who was obviously his wife.
74.
The Butcher
When James Milford opened the door to his apartment, he immediately had a flashback. He wasn’t standing on the threshold of his cheap one-bedroom apartment, just back from a long day at the body shop. He wasn’t finally home, his arms and legs tired from the hard work with a backache from standing on the concrete floor all day.
No, he was back in prison.
His second day in prison, to be exact, when they finally came for him.
That day, James Milford had received no warning from anyone else in the yard. The only notice he received was from the bolt of terror that came directly from his nut sack, zipped up his spine and shot adrenaline through every part of his body.
He had turned and surprised the would-be attacker with his own shank. Word spread quickly among the population that James Milford was the real deal.
So when he pushed the door to his apartment open, the same electrical charge ran up his nerve center. Where it came from, he did not know. In fact, after the attack in the prison, he’d often wondered what had given him that moment’s warning. Was it God? Some ancient, primeval instinct?
He never came up with an answer.
Now, that same intuition took over. Somehow, he knew everything was wrong.
So he simply let go of his keys, opened his hands and watched the older man with the giant meat cleaver burst from the darkness of the apartment and swing at his head. Milford leaned back, saw the enormous knife blade whistle past his face. He heard the giant knife bury itself in the cheap hollow wood door.
The attacker looked at Milford, then at the knife.
Milford was surprised that he had no idea who this man was. He figured it would be a face from prison. Someone he had wronged. Or even the face of a family member, a relative of one of his victims.
But this man, with the slicked back hair, the weird face, he had never seen before.
The attacker lunged for the knife now wedged into the door. He tried to free it from the cheap fiberboard.
Milford, too, grabbed the handle of the knife, placing his hand over his attacker’s hand.
But with his left arm, he drove his elbow into the strange man’s jaw.
The man staggered. Milford wrenched the knife free from the door and swung it in a short arc, much smaller than his attacker’s haymaker. The blade entered the man’s cheek and cut through his mouth, severed his tongue.
Milford stepped in and swung again.
The real deal, he thought.
75.
Mack
Mack barely spoke to Adelia and Janice when he got back home. Instead, he went straight to his office, shut and locked the door, cracked a beer.
Bullshit. Utter bullshit. That’s what Whidby was full of and people would die because of it.
He slammed the beer like a triathlete chugging Gatorade after a sixty mile bike ride. Fuck it, he thought.