Текст книги "Game"

Автор книги: Barry Lyga

Соавторы: Barry Lyga
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Текущая страница: 8 (всего у книги 25 страниц)

When he went to call her, though, he saw a text message waiting from her—out 4 a bit back soon—time-stamped a few hours ago. He still wasn’t used to the gadget; he hadn’t even heard the text chime in all the ruckus at the precinct.

Relieved, he plopped down on what he thought of as his bed and stared up at the ceiling. Morales’s offer had been tempting. But in the end, he couldn’t accept. He just wasn’t sure that she would be able to give him the kind of help he needed.

And besides: He didn’t know if he could trust her to follow through.

The thought of being able to kill Billy, though… God! To see the end of his father, to write finis to the man who’d made Jazz the bundle of nerves and fear and frightening strength that he was… It could save him. It could destroy him. Billy’s death could show that Jazz had a soul or prove that he had never had one.

That thought kept him up nights. Some nights because it thrilled him. Others because it terrified him.

He wondered: When next he saw his father, would he be thrilled or terrified?

CHAPTER 19

The killer sat in his easy chair, the remains of a home-cooked meal on the coffee table before him. The TV blathered the sorts of banalities his wife enjoyed—so-called reality TV, in which people competed to prove their superiority over one another. The killer tolerated the show, even pretended to enjoy it. One player and one alone captured his attention, a dental hygienist from Spokane, who spoke with a slight lisp and had hair the color of clarified butter and eyes so big and blue that he wanted to pop them out and eat them.

The killer had never eaten eyes. Or any other part of a human body. But he now desperately, desperately wanted to. The thought consumed him in a familiar, caressing way. He knew this feeling. It had been with him most of his life. He could not remember a time in his life when he could look at a woman and not want to possess her. Possess was an important word. It meant much. It meant to own. It meant to maintain one’s calm. It meant to captivate and enter like a demon, though the killer did not believe in such bogus and repugnant claptrap.

It also meant to have intercourse with.

The killer wanted to own women. In every way. And he had, indeed, owned many. Even the ones he found possessed (that word again!) of subpar appearance he yearned to own, for to own meant to be able to destroy.

Tall, short, thin, fat, ugly, gorgeous, black, white, all shades between and beyond… He wanted them all. For his own. So that no one else could have them. His to use and to keep or discard as he saw fit.

He had spent much of his life dreaming of this. Dreaming of captive women, compelled to do as he commanded. Dreaming of them on their knees before him, subject to his whims—beaten or comforted, killed or succored, raped or loved.

The dreams could not be sated. Not by anything he watched or touched or knew. Only finding her (any “her”) and owning her, making her his in every way, could satisfy his needs.

The first time he’d owned a woman, he’d thought it over at that. Thought that with the realization of his dream, he could and would now be like all the others he saw around him. He would now be what they called “normal.” He discovered relaxation; he learned that with his fantasy fulfilled, he could breathe and settle and close his eyes at last.

But his calm, his repose, did not last. The fantasies returned, first as niggling daydreams, then as all-consuming compulsions, until every woman he saw on the street, on the subway, anywhere, was a target, a victim waiting to happen. And he resisted. He resisted as long as he could. As best as he could. Until…

Until…

Until he no longer had to.

Until the message and the voice…

Just then, a phone rang. The killer stiffened. It was not his cell phone or his wife’s. It was something else.

“Is that yours?” his wife asked.

“Yes,” he said, and swiftly went to the small, cramped bedroom, where he closed the door and dug into the bottom of his chest of drawers. Three cell phones were there. One rang again. The killer answered, trembling.

“The number is six,” the voice said, and the killer felt a trill of anticipation—six!—until the voice said, “Six. Five and one.”

“Six,” the killer repeated. Five and one. Not three and three.

“And,” the voice went on, “a little something special this time.”

Shocked, the killer almost dropped the phone, but held tight and kept listening. He wrote nothing down—that would be foolish—but memorized every word.

“I understand,” he said when the voice had finished, then removed the battery from the phone. On his way back to the TV, he stopped in the kitchen and tossed the phone’s battery into the trash. Then he quickly snapped the cheap plastic hinge and tossed both halves of the broken phone into the garbage compactor.

“Who was that?” his wife asked.

He ignored her. She ignored him back, caught up in her show.

The killer stared at the TV. The dental hygienist from Spokane was staring back at him.

CHAPTER 20

Even though she wanted to, Connie didn’t bring up what had happened between them at the hotel overnight. She said nothing about it in the car on the way to the airport, nor at the airport itself, as they went through security and then waited for their flight. The NYPD—eager to get Jazz out of its jurisdiction as quickly as possible—had made some calls and arranged for his ticket to be switched to Connie’s flight, so they were in a rush from the time she returned to the hotel.

She tried to pretend that nothing had happened, that nothing had changed. She started to tell Jazz about her mini-tour of the crime scenes, but he clearly wasn’t focused. He kept interrupting to bring up something about Long or Hughes or the captain guy—Montgomery—who’d kicked him out of New York, and she eventually realized that he just needed to vent. So she listened as he told her about his encounter with the NYPD. And Special Agent Morales of the FBI.

“Do you think she was serious about helping you kill your dad?” she asked in a low voice. They were at their gate, and it was crowded. She didn’t want anyone to overhear.

Jazz shrugged. He was wearing sunglasses indoors and had bought a Mets cap, which he kept pulled over his forehead. Being recognized would—in a word—suck. “I don’t know.”

“Would you…” She stopped herself. This was neither the time nor the place for such a discussion. The amount of hatred in her heart for Billy Dent surprised her, though. She felt an immediate and powerful kinship with Special Agent Morales, whom she’d never even met. Any woman who wanted Billy Dent dead badly enough to risk her career—for surely if Jazz reported what she’d offered to a superior, she’d be out of the FBI—was a woman Connie could learn to love. Conscience Hall was well named by her parents, but even her conscience had its breaking point. The man who had mauled the childhood of the boy she loved definitely occupied a spot beyond that breaking point.

So she wasn’t surprised to find that she wanted Billy Dent dead. What surprised her was how happy the thought made her, how liberated it made her feel, even though she knew that Jazz killing his own father would send her boyfriend into a darker place than even he could imagine.

But if Jazz didn’t do it… If this Special Agent Morales was the one to do it…

Well, that wouldn’t be so bad, would it? The world would be rid of Billy Dent. More important, Jazz would be rid of him, without adding to the burden already on his too-full back.

Maybe this FBI lady is a gift from God, Connie wanted to tell Jazz.

She settled for squeezing his hand. After a moment, he squeezed back.

Jazz said nothing on the flight, staring moodily out the window instead, as though answers or resolutions had been inscribed in the billowy curves of the clouds. Connie, for her part, stared just as moodily at him, willing him to turn and look at her.

She so badly wanted to discuss what had happened the night before, in the hotel room. She still didn’t know who was being more unfair to whom, but one thing was certain—she wouldn’t figure it out until they actually opened their mouths and talked about it.

Had it been presumptuous to bring the condoms to New York? Probably. She could admit that. But she couldn’t shake the memory of the giddy, stomach-twirling elation she’d experienced at the drugstore when she’d bought them. They’ll have condoms in New York, she had thought. Why buy them here, where someone you know might see you? Then she dismissed it. She didn’t care if someone saw. She was in love. So what if people knew she was having sex with the man she loved? Her parents were both at work, so they wouldn’t see her—it would be a friend or an enemy, and it just didn’t matter.

She’d bought them and packed them and thought of them on the flight to New York. This was the right way to do it. Responsible. She and Jazz were both virgins, and they would do this the right way. The adult way.

It was time.

She knew in her head and she felt in her heart and in other, more primal, parts of her body. She was ready. When this state of readiness had been obtained, she couldn’t say. But after the Impressionist nearly killed Jazz, and after Jazz finally faced the demon of his past—his father—she sensed a change in their relationship. A growth. A maturation. They were ready for the next step, and once she knew that, she was desperate for it.

Still. She hadn’t planned on springing it on him the way she had. A late-night/early-morning grope-fest gone manically passionate. Blurting out that she had protection. Wrong way to go about it, she thought. I should have brought it up before. Been cool about it. Like, “Hey, I think it’s time. I think we’re ready. How about you?” And when he said, “Yeah,” then you say, “Great, we’re covered; let’s go.”

All of that was true, but no matter how badly she’d bungled it, his reaction—his refusal to talk, his sulking in the other bed—pained her. Intellectually, she knew that it was fear driving him, that it had nothing to do with her. But emotionally and with all the yearning in her body, she felt rejected. Harshly.

When the plane landed, she hoped that maybe they could talk while waiting for Howie to pick them up, but to her absolute mortification, her father was waiting as they passed through security.

“I just need a second—” she started.

“You had a first, a second, and a third,” her father said with barely concealed rage. “No more chances. Come with me. Now.”

“But, Dad—”

“No buts, Conscience.”

Jazz cleared his throat. “Mr. Hall, if Connie and I could just have a minute to—”

“To what?” Dad said, rounding on Jazz, that rage now no longer concealed at all. “To do what, Jasper? Abduct her to Chicago this time?”

“I didn’t abduct her,” Jazz said with amazing calm. “In fact, I told her not to come at all.”

“I’m sure you did,” Dad said sarcastically. He loomed over Jazz like a hawk on a high branch. Connie didn’t know for whom she was more afraid: Jazz or her dad. Jazz seemed harmless, although she knew he was anything but. Her dad knew it, too. Or should have.

“Dad, let’s go.” Connie stepped in and took her father’s hand. “Let’s just go.”

Dad shook her off. “Listen to me, Jasper Dent. I haven’t said this before, but I’m saying it now: Stay the hell away from my daughter. Or else.”

“Or else what?” Jazz said with an infuriating, dead calm that belied his words. Connie knew this voice. “More history lessons about Sally Hemmings?” Almost bored. Contemptuously so. “Maybe this time a video on lynching?”

Connie pulled harder at her dad, who wouldn’t budge. Jazz’s calm was a gimmick, a trick. It was a Billy Dent tactic—forcing your prey to overreact by seeming completely unaffected. Jazz was trying to—

Oh, God. Jazz wanted Dad to take a swing at him. Maybe so that he could hit back and feel justified doing it. Maybe just because he was so pissed about everything that had and hadn’t happened in New York that he wanted to take it out on someone, anyone, and why not the man standing between him and Connie?

“Or else,” Dad said, in a threatening tone Connie had never heard before, “I’m going to make you wish you’d never seen her.”

And Jazz stared at her father. Connie had never seen such a stare. He didn’t move; his expression didn’t change. It was something ethereal, something in his eyes, or in his soul. Something had shifted, and Connie suddenly realized that she’d been wrong before—her father wasn’t the hawk on the high branch.

Jazz was.

“You think you’re scary?” Jazz said quietly, his lips quirking in a little smile.

He said nothing else. He didn’t have to. Connie’s dad swallowed visibly, his Adam’s apple bobbing.

“Stop it!” Connie hissed at Jazz. She knew him better than anyone else in the world—well, maybe except for Billy—but right now she didn’t know what she was witnessing. “Cut it out. Now!”

Her father pulled his arm from her.

“You don’t scare me,” he told Jazz, but his voice had mellowed just a tad.

And now Jazz smiled a full smile. It terrified Connie, because to anyone not listening in, it looked as though Jazz had just heard something funny. But there was nothing funny here.

“You tell yourself that,” Jazz said. “That’s okay. Keep telling yourself that.”

“Dad,” Connie said, tugging again. “Let’s go.”

This time, he let her pull him away. Connie glared at Jazz over her shoulder. “Knock off the nonsense!” she stage-whispered. He sure as hell wasn’t making it easier for them to be together by pulling this kind of crap. “Seriously!”

But for his part, Jazz just watched them go, still smiling.

CHAPTER 21

As soon as Connie and her dad disappeared around a bend, Jazz blew out his breath and slumped against a nearby wall. What the hell had he been thinking? Was he nuts? Goading Mr. Hall like that? This was the man who could keep him from Connie. Well, at least until Connie was eighteen.

But he had to admit that, deep down, there was a part of him that had loved the confrontation. He hadn’t been able to manipulate Montgomery—the pull of his pension and his career had outweighed Jazz’s “Jedi mind tricks”—but he’d come pretty close to getting Mr. Hall to take a swing at him. If Connie hadn’t been there, Jazz was sure he’d have had her father roaring and punching. And then…

And then what? You beat the crap out of him? Or he beats the crap out of you? What, exactly, was your plan, you dumbass? Or is this just what you do now—you goad and manipulate people just for the hell of it.

No. Not anymore. People aren’t your playthings. People are real. People matter.

Not cool to go all Billy on him, Jazz. Not cool at all.

And the way he’d treated Connie. Double not cool. But he hadn’t known how to talk to her, how to explain his fears. How to explain the role her race played—or had played—in their relationship. They’d been together long enough now that he didn’t think he loved her just because she was black. But he couldn’t in good conscience deny that that had been the original attraction. Her safety, whether real or perceived, had drawn him in. He couldn’t talk to her about sex without talking about his concerns, and he couldn’t talk about his concerns without—

“Hey, man!” Howie said, loping to his side. “Just saw Connie and her pops. That man looked pissed with a capital P, and I thought to myself, That means Jazz must be nearby. And I was right. So, score for me. I should totally be the one the NYPD calls on for help ’cause I kick it all detective sty-lee.”

“Turns out the NYPD didn’t actually call for me,” Jazz reminded him as they headed to Howie’s car. “Why the hell couldn’t you keep my aunt away from Weathers?”

“Ninja, please! It’s Christmas break. I have family obligations. I couldn’t watch your aunt twenty-four-seven. Not that I would mind.”

Howie’s salacious tone was nothing new, but it triggered a memory for Jazz, of Samantha saying that Howie was “friendly.”

“What did you do while I was gone?” he asked.

“Do? Me? I didn’t do anything while you were gone.”

If Howie had been in an interrogation room, the cops would have charged him before the first word was out of his mouth. His poker face was nonexistent. He didn’t just look like he’d been caught with his hand in the cookie jar; he looked like he’d been caught sticking his whole head in there.

“Dude! You hit on my aunt!”

“That depends on how you define ‘hit on.’ ”

“You totally hit on my aunt.”

“Was that wrong? Was I not supposed to do that?”

“You should think about what you just said. Think about it, Howie.”

“I’m just not seeing where I went wrong. For an older woman, she’s got a nice body, and she must moisturize like a mofo because her skin is—”

“Howie. She’s my aunt.”

“You get to have a super-hottie girlfriend. Why can’t I get a little action?”

“My aunt! What are you not getting here?”

“I’m not getting any—”

“Enough!” They were at the car by now. “Take me home so that I can try to scrub the idea of you and my aunt out of my brain.”

“Man, you grew up with a guy who taught you how to carve up the human body and used to show you Faces of Death for a bedtime story and you think the idea of me in bed with your aunt is gross?”

Jazz slammed the door. “Yes. And doesn’t that tell you something right there? Drive.”

They had left New York late in the evening, so by the time Howie dropped Jazz off at home, the sun was just beginning to burnish the horizon. Jazz stood on the front porch for a moment as Howie pulled away, staring at the dawning day. A part of him wanted to throw his suitcase in Billy’s old Jeep and just take off. It seemed easier, somehow. Easier than dealing with Connie’s dad, figuring out how to make up for his idiocy at the airport. Easier than dealing with the weirdness that now vibrated like a plucked harp string between him and Connie. Easier than living with Gramma, for sure. And easier than finally being face-to-face with the aunt he’d never known.

The front door opened and Samantha stood there with a coffee mug, dressed in a loose shirt and yoga pants. “Are you coming in or do you like the cold?” she asked.

Jazz shrugged. “I’m coming in.”

Inside, they sat at the kitchen table. The house felt small all of a sudden. It had been Jazz and Gramma for more than four years, ever since Billy went to prison. Now another presence made itself felt.

“She’s asleep,” Samantha said, in answer to his unasked question. “I’ve always been an early riser, though.”

Jazz sipped from the coffee cup she’d handed him and gazed across the table at her.

“So you’re my nephew,” she said sheepishly, offering him a lopsided grin. “Your friend—Howie—he calls you Jazz?”

“Yeah.”

“Which do you prefer? Jasper or Jazz?”

“I guess Jasper. From adults. And, uh, about Howie…”

Samantha made a sound somewhere between a chuckle and a snort. “Yeah, about Howie…”

“He’s totally harmless. He’s more than harmless—he’s completely… I’m just sorry. I didn’t know he would be a jackass around you. He doesn’t mean anything by it. I mean, you should hear the stuff he says to Connie. It’s just how he is. There’s no filter between his mouth and his brain.”

“And his hormones, from the sound of it.”

“Well, yeah. I know it’s weird.”

Samantha nodded. “Speaking of weird… I guess this”—she gestured between them—“is as weird for you as it is for me, huh?”

And then they both said, in the same instant: “You look like him.”

They didn’t have to say who “he” was. Jazz had never thought about his resemblance to his father, and he could tell from Samantha’s sudden obsession with studying her coffee mug that she hadn’t thought about hers, either.

Howie was right—Samantha looked younger than her years, which surprised Jazz. He’d’ve figured being Billy Dent’s sister would age her prematurely. But other than some gray, which she’d left uncolored to grace her Billy-colored hair, she looked ten years younger.

Of course, Billy also looked younger than forty-two. Maybe it was a Dent family trait.

Maybe we’re immortals. Maybe every time Billy kills someone, he sucks up their life force. Right, Jazz. And maybe Billy really is the god he always claimed to be.

“Look, if this is none of my business,” Samantha said, “just tell me. And God knows I’m not really in any position to help, but… you’re a kid. And Mom’s basically an invalid. Moneywise, are you two—”

“We’re all right,” Jazz lied. Every month was a struggle. The house was paid for, thank God, but there were still bills—utilities, Gramma’s medications, clothes, food…. There was Gramma’s Social Security and some kind of “death benefit” thing from Grampa, and Billy had actually stashed away some cash that the cops never found, but each month was still like balancing a chainsaw on his forehead. While it was running.

“I never thought I’d be back here,” Samantha said slowly, still staring down into her coffee. “This house. This town. Nothing’s changed, has it? I mean, there’s more crap in the house because she never throws anything away and there’s a Walmart now and the highway’s a little wider, but it’s still the Nod I grew up in. And this house is still…” She looked up at the ceiling, as though something lurked there.

“Still haunted,” Jazz said for her.

“Yeah.”

“He’s like a ghost, isn’t he? Even though he’s still alive?” He realized neither of them had said the name Billy yet. He wondered if she ever would.

Samantha nodded. “I hope you don’t mind—I’ve been sleeping in your room. It used to be mine, and I just couldn’t stand the thought of sleeping in his old room.”

There were three bedrooms in the Dent house—Gramma’s, Jazz’s, and a spare. The spare had been Billy’s, growing up.

“That’s okay. I’ll sleep in the spare. How long are you planning on staying?”

“Well, my return flight isn’t for two more days. Do you mind if I stay that long? It would be a pain to change it.”

“No, no, that’s fine,” he said with a swiftness that caught him off guard. More than the additional help with Gramma, he realized he craved the contact with Samantha. A Dent who had managed to escape the gravity of Billy and of Lobo’s Nod. “Stay as long as you want.”

“Those pictures on the wall in your bedroom,” she said hesitantly. “His victims, right?”

“Yeah.”

“I tacked up a sheet over them. Couldn’t sleep otherwise.”

“That’s okay.”

Samantha smiled a sad little smile. “I think this is where I’m supposed to get all parental on you or something. Make sure you’re all right. Ask you why you have those pictures right where you sleep.”

“To remind me,” he told her, thinking of the words—I HUNT KILLERS—he’d had tattooed on his body. “I guess it’s morbid, but…”

“Morbid?” A shrug. “Yeah, probably. But I get it. You grew up with him as your dad; I grew up with him as my brother. And with her, when she was just as crazy, but not as childlike. And with your grandfather.”

Jazz leaned forward. “Tell me about it,” he said, too intensely. He dialed it back. “I want to know.”

“About growing up here?” She shuddered. “I wouldn’t know where to start. And besides, you’re better off not hearing that crap. Trust me on that. I spent a big chunk of my life trying to deal with it, trying to understand it. And you know what? It got me nowhere, and it made me miserable. It was only when I started putting it behind me, started purging it, that I started feeling better.”

“Yeah, but you have something to purge in the first place. All I’ve got are fragments.”

“All these FBI guys and shrinks used to come to me. All they wanted to know was ‘What was it like growing up with him?’ ”

The same questions they asked him. The same questions—the same intrusions—he resented so much. Jazz loathed himself for putting Samantha in the exact position he hated occupying. But he couldn’t help it. He had to know. It wasn’t a matter of clinical or academic curiosity; it was self-preservation.

“Please,” he said, and he figured she knew all of Billy’s tricks, so he didn’t even bother trying to manipulate her. “Please.”

She slugged back her coffee and went to the counter for a refill. “Fine,” she relented as she sat back down. “Fine.” Checked her watch. “Mom should be asleep for a while. Fire away.”

Suddenly Jazz didn’t know what to ask. “Did you know?” he blurted out.

“Did I know he was killing all those people? No. I had no idea. I moved out two days after my eighteenth birthday. You don’t know what it was like. Small town. Before the Internet. Very isolated. Your grandfather was a terror. Drop your fork at the dinner table and the belt would come off. Mom was always scattered. Petrified of blacks, Hispanics, Asians, you name it.”

“How did you end up normal?”

“Normal? Ha. Maybe. I don’t know. I don’t know. I never felt like I fit into the family. And I had good friends at school, used to spend as much time as possible at their houses. And I realized early on that the way my family lived wasn’t the way other families lived. And I sort of… it’s like I sectioned off one part of my life from the other, put up a wall there so that I could live in both places when I needed to.”

“Yeah. Me, too. Compartmentalization.”

Samantha grinned. “So, you’ve had some therapy, huh? Good for you. Anyway, moved out at eighteen, left town, never looked back. I tried to stay in touch with Mom. Especially after Dad finally keeled over. I guess I didn’t think she was dangerous. She seemed like the least crazy person in the house. Which is saying something.”

“And when the killing started… you didn’t know?”

She shook her head. “No. No idea. Look, I’d cut myself off, okay? I knew he was getting married. Mom sent me an invitation, but I didn’t respond. I was surprised to get the invite at all. Mom really hated your mom.”

“I know. She says that’s where Billy went wrong.”

“Well, I’m here to tell you it’s not true. Never met your mom, but I know it’s not true. The closest I came to coming back was when I heard you were born. I almost booked a ticket then. Honest.”

He didn’t know if he believed it, but he appreciated the sentiment.

“You have to remember,” she went on, “that no one connected the killings. It wasn’t a national story until he was caught. Before that, it was regional, and nothing popped in the news that would have connected for me.”

“What was he like? As a kid?”

Still not using the name.

“I don’t know what he was like with you,” she began, moving her coffee cup in little circles. Jazz’s, neglected, had gone cold. “But living with him, I could tell. Early on, I could tell there was something wrong with him. I didn’t know how wrong, obviously, but I could tell he was… off. And for a long time, I thought there was something wrong with me because no one else seemed to notice. Not Mom and Dad, not that I’d expect them to. But not my friends or their parents. Not teachers. No one. They all thought he was this… this gregarious, funny kid. But I knew the truth.”

“He was hiding it for them,” Jazz said quietly, “but he let down his guard around you.”

“I guess. I don’t know why. Maybe he thought it was funny, to let one person see the truth…. I don’t know. He pushed things, but he never crossed a line. Not while I was around, at least. I know he killed some pets, some stray cats and dogs. But I could never prove it. And back then, you did that and people just shrugged and called you high-strung. It was different.

“From the outside, he seemed normal,” she went on. “He would tease me and bug me. I was his older sister. That’s normal. He messed with my Barbie dolls….” She shivered suddenly, chilled by the memory. “I mean, I’ve heard… I’ve been told that a lot of boys do that to their sisters’ dolls. But there was something…. It wasn’t just cutting off their hair or drawing on them. He used to… he used to cut the, y’know, the breasts off….”

“Like he did later,” Jazz whispered in awe. “As Green Jack.”

Samantha shuddered. “Green Jack. Oh, God. That’s what he called himself sometimes. I remember he was just a kid and there were days when he would say, ‘I’m not here anymore. It’s just Green Jack now.’ Mom and Dad didn’t notice or didn’t care, but it always freaked me out. I used to think that’s why he did it—just to freak me out. And when he got arrested, a part of me was like… was like, ‘He did all of this just to freak me out.’ Which is crazy, isn’t it?”

Jazz considered himself an expert on crazy. As best he could tell, Aunt Samantha didn’t come close.

“If only I’d seen a newspaper or read a website from back east, when he was calling himself Green Jack. Maybe he would have been caught earlier….” She struggled to regain her composure.

“Aunt Samantha…” he cautioned. He sensed—knew—that they were headed into dark territory, down into the memory mines, where the ore was densest and the danger greatest.

But he couldn’t stop her. Not now. She went on. “One night I woke up and he was standing there, in my bedroom. In the dark. I was fourteen, so he must have been eleven. Maybe ten. I don’t remember when it was in the year. But he was just standing there. Naked. Staring at me.”

“Did he—”

“No. No, he never touched me. And I was never afraid of that, if you want to know the truth. Somehow I knew I was safe. I think… I think because I was related to him, I was somehow off the list. Back then, at least. Now, who knows? Maybe he’s changed.”

Could he have changed? Jazz thought it possible. But change wasn’t always for the better.

Just then, they heard a light thump from upstairs. Aunt Samantha jerked as though awakened gratefully from a nightmare, and the kitchen somehow became brighter than the sunlight through the window should have allowed.

“She’s early,” Samantha said brusquely, and rose, setting her coffee cup in the sink. “I’ll help her get started. Maybe you can get breakfast going?”

“Sure. Hey, Aunt Samantha?”

She paused in the doorway. “Yeah?”

“I changed my mind. You can call me Jazz.”