Hush

So, she poured herself a glass of wine and started reading.

It was a perfect summer day.

I didn’t think that anything bad could happen when the sun shone that bright, when the sky was that blue.

I was walking home the long way because I didn’t want this day to end. My brand-new cheerleading skirt swayed slightly in the breeze. I’d never worn something like this before, and my mother did not approve. We had argued. I was too young to be a cheerleader, she said. But I was a teenager, and she’d agreed that if I made the team, I was allowed. I guess maybe she didn’t think I’d make it.

But I did.

I was happy. The happiest I’d ever been. That’s why I was taking the long way home. Because I didn’t want Mom to ruin it. She wouldn’t mean to. She never did. I knew she was a good mom and I was lucky, and many girls at school had it worse than me. Mothers drinking all day, others screaming at them for no reason. Not caring.

Mom didn’t drink except for one glass of wine with dinner. My dad sometimes had two beers after work and not much else. My house never had yelling, violence, only love.

I was lucky in the way a teenage girl knows she’s lucky. Cognizant, but not truly grasping the magnitude of it all.

I would truly grasp how lucky I had been when they threw me into their van. When they tore off my cheerleading skirt and choked me with it.

I’d worn it one day. My happiness lasted one single day. Then it lost meaning.

Orion was surprised and horrified at the single tear that landed on the page, staining it with evidence of her weakness.

It was evidence of Shelby’s talent.

She had done well.

Orion knew this. She didn’t need to read the rest of the book to know this. She couldn’t. It was too hard. She couldn’t imagine what it would’ve taken for Shelby to write all of this down, to have it stare at her, know that the world would be leafing through pages of her pain, consuming it like cannibals.

Not for the first time, or even the thousandth time, she wished Jaclyn were here to marvel at what Shelby had turned into. And she knew Jaclyn would be proud of the girl who never stopped crying.

Shelby’s boyfriend was named Christopher. He was five years older, worked as a high school P.E. teacher, was sweet, kind, and patient with her. Orion had already broken her silence and texted Maddox to get a background check on him, just to be safe. She had already done her own investigating using her considerable web skills, but she wasn’t taking any chances.

By the way Shelby’s eyes lit up and her cheeks flushed when she talked about him, Orion sensed he was a good man. Shelby had too much experience with monsters to be fooled by a farce. They were accustomed to them, trained like dogs at an airport to sniff them out.

She had said he was understanding, gentle, and didn’t push her to . . . do anything. The way Shelby had leaned forward to whisper that across the table almost made Orion want to smile. She was acting as if she were some chaste virgin, unaccustomed to such things. In the most horrible of ways, she was not a virgin. But in other ways, she still was. She’d never been touched by anyone with her permission, never been kissed or held in a way that was reverent.

Orion would keep an eye on it, on this Christopher. Maddox already said he was working on the background check. She’d relax a little more when she got that back.

Though she wondered what Bob Collins would’ve looked like. Squeaky clean except for a couple of parking tickets, she guessed.

No one could really know on paper what a monster was.

No, it was only when it was too late that you found out.

Twenty

“Bro, you still hung up on that Collins murder?” Eric asked from behind Maddox.

Because he was well practiced, he managed to hide his flinch. It was a bad quality in a detective to not know when someone was sneaking up on you. Especially someone with a gun on his hip.

Yes, this was his partner and arguably closest friend, but it was the principle of the matter. Plus, Maddox probably had some latent hostility aimed at his best friend and partner for dating his sister. Even though Eric was a good man, treated women right. Treated his sister in a way Maddox knew she’d never been treated by a man. Yes, all good things. But April was his baby sister and his best friend. It was the principle of the matter.

“I know it’s high profile since he’s very rich and well respected by the mayor, who’s pushing the chief, but we’ve got nothing. We can’t make a perp out of nothing.”