Mean Streak

“Your niece loves you.”

His jaw worked, but he didn’t respond except to turn away from her and go over to the dresser. Bracing his hands on the edge of it, he leaned in toward the mirror, although she noticed that he didn’t look into it.

“And I love you.”

He jerked his head up. Their eyes clashed in the mirror. “Well don’t.”

“Too late. I do.”

She left the chair, and when she reached him, she laid her cheek against his back and tightly hugged his torso, linking her hands across his chest.

“You’re setting yourself up to get hurt, Doc.”

“Probably. But that doesn’t change how I feel.” She rolled her forehead against the hollow of his spine and placed her hand over his left pectoral. “Reasonably, you know you did what you had to do that awful day in Westboro. You just wish Eric Johnson had been someone you could despise and revile, not someone you pity.”

He didn’t contradict her or argue, so she continued. “You use your size and stern demeanor to keep people at arm’s length, afraid of you. But I’m one of the few who’s been given a glimpse into your heart.” She pressed her hand against his heart, thrilling to the strong beats against her palm. “And I love what I’ve seen.”

She didn’t expect an avowal of love or any such romantic profession from him. When he turned in the circle of her arms to face her, he looked as forbidding as ever. “You think you’re smart, don’t you? You think you have me all figured out.”

“I think I’m close, or you wouldn’t be angry.”

“You want to know why I can’t look in a mirror, Doc? Want to know what I’m running from, why I can’t get far enough away from Westboro?”

Knowing that they’d reached the bottom of his personal hell, she already knew what he was going to say.

“Because given the same situation, under the same set of circumstances, with Eric in the crosshairs, I would still pull the trigger.”

Footsteps approached the door. The key was inserted into the lock. Connell blustered in. She and Hayes quickly stepped apart, but Connell picked up on the charged atmosphere immediately.

“What’d I miss?”

“Shut the damn door,” Hayes muttered.

As he reached behind him to pull the door closed, Connell repeated, “What’d I miss?”

“Not that it’s any of your business, but I told her what I’ve been doing since Westboro.”

Connell had brought in several carryout sacks. He set them on the table. Addressing her, he said, “He told you about the people on his shit list and why they were on it?”

“Yes.”

“Huh,” Connell said. “I thought you’d be discussing Jeff.”

“In a way, we were,” Hayes said. “He’s next on my list.”

Chapter 38

The two were even more disreputable-looking than Jeff had expected them to be. Their natural raw-boned appearances were embellished by bruises, bandages, and the external rods holding one’s broken jaw in place.

They were reclined in side-by-side hospital beds, their swollen and bloodshot eyes fixed on the TV mounted on the wall from which blasted the inane dialogue of a sitcom rerun.

As he strolled into the room, he smiled at them pleasantly. “Hello. My name is Jeff Surrey.”

Norman looked him up and down. “So?”

“You’re Norman, correct?” Jeff moved to the foot of his bed. “I’d heard it was Will who’d suffered the more serious injury.” He looked toward Will with a moue of sympathy.

“You heard right,” Norman said. “And my brother likes to do his suffering in private. You ain’t a nurse. If you’re a doctor, we got enough already. If you’re from the billing department, we get all this for free on account of we’re out of work and on welfare.”