Mean Streak

She gestured toward the ceiling. “Can I expect to be strung up on that bar and gutted like a deer?”

He looked up at the bar and frowned. “Too much sport. Lots of heave-ho-ing. Big mess to clean up after. Instead, why don’t you just drink the poison-laced whiskey?” He extended the glass toward her again, and when she didn’t move, he said, “No? Okay then.”

He shot the drink. She might not want the edge taken off, but he sure as hell did. Setting the glass on the end table, he said, “That was all bullshit, you know, meant to be a joke.”

In no joking mood, she continued to hug herself, rocking back and forth, obviously distraught. “I was beginning to believe…”

“What?”

“That you didn’t mean to harm me.”

“I don’t.”

She gave a short laugh and glanced toward the incriminating sack sitting on the dining table. “Despite evidence to the contrary.”

Huddled there, she looked small, helpless, frightened. He admired the grit it took for her not to cry when her eyes shimmered with tears. Her evident fear affected him much more than her flailing and kicking ever could.

He sat down beside her, ignoring that she recoiled to keep their shoulders from touching. “I never wanted you to see the rock.”

“Then you should have had a better hiding place.”

“Temporary. In the meantime, I never thought you’d go digging around in the wood box.”

“One would never expect such a gruesome find at the bottom of it.”

“Gruesome, yes. With your blood and hair on it. I knew seeing it would upset you.”

“You’re damn right it did,” she said with heat. “I actually believed you when you said I fell.”

“I didn’t say that, you surmised it. I said I found you lying unconscious.”

“Because you clouted me in the head with that rock!”

“No, Doc. I didn’t.”

“Did you keep it as a trophy?”

He didn’t honor that with a reply.

She moaned. “I wish you’d just get it over with.”

“What?”

“Whatever it is you’re going to do to me. I wouldn’t have to go on dreading it, fearing it. The suspense is killing me. Is that part of the torture?”

Her hands were on her knees, clenched into fists so tight that all the blood had been wrung out of them. They were bone white and cold to the touch when he placed his hand over them.

When she tried to pull them from beneath his palm, he held on. “Look at me.”

She turned her head and looked directly into his eyes. Hers were hazel, more green than brown. The orange specks in them, which he’d first thought were a trick of the light, were real. This close, he could have counted them.

“I didn’t hurt you. I won’t hurt you. How many times do I have to say it before you believe it?”

“I’ll believe it when you let me contact—”

“Not yet.”

“When?”