Heartbreak Bay (Stillhouse Lake) by Rachel Caine (red white royal blue TXT) 📗

not worse. She doesn’t trust a badge unless she absolutely has no choice. And truthfully, this time it wouldn’t help anyway.

Lanny takes Vee’s hand and squeezes it, which is more comfort than I’m offering. Vee gives her a ketchup-smeared smile and makes a kissy face, and Lanny flinches away. “Ewww,” my daughter says. “Gross. No.”

“Definitely no,” I say. “Wipe your mouth, Vee.”

“You ain’t my momma.”

“You parked your ass at my table like I was. Wipe your mouth.”

She does, grudgingly. Vee doesn’t like doing anything that isn’t her own idea, which is something I hope she’ll grow out of. It may take another eighteen years of growing before she achieves anything like balance. I like and admire the girl—love her, in some ways—but I’m wary too. Vee’s all edges, and no comfortable place to hold on to. I don’t want my kids—especially Lanny—getting hurt.

Then you shouldn’t have quasi-adopted her, I tell myself. Fair enough. But I couldn’t just abandon her to the spiral of destruction she was headed down either. At least this way she has a chance. And someone watching her back.

“I’m gonna get a gun,” Vee announces. “For protection.”

Oh shit. “No, you’re not,” I tell her. “If you want one, you follow the same rules as anyone in this house. You train, and I don’t mean the bullshit online checkbox courses. You go to a gun range and you get good with it, and then you keep training to stay good at it. Understand?” I have zero authority to say this; Vee can sneer at me and do exactly as she wants. But she’s got her feet under my table, and I use my severest tone.

To my surprise, it works. Vee chews thoughtfully on her eggs a second before she says, “Well, I don’t know much about guns. Might be a good thing to have somebody like you tell me what I ought to be doing.”

“Guns are for offense. They can’t shield you. They’re not for show. The only thing they do—and they do it very well—is to kill somebody first who you believe is trying to kill you. But that’s the problem right there: judgment. Because you have to be prepared to make that decision in a split second, without real information, in a situation where your adrenaline is screaming through your veins and you’re scared to death.”

“You’ve got guns,” she says, and it’s surprisingly not confrontational.

“I do. Because I have kids to protect, and because I don’t romanticize firearms. They aren’t ego props, Vee. They’re tools to kill, and the damage they leave behind is real and brutal. Often final.”

“I know that,” she says. And she does—she’s seen far too much of it already. “But I think I need one, Ms. Proctor. And I’d like it if you’d help me get one.”

She’s thrown it right back, and I feel Lanny’s gaze heavy on me. Lanny doesn’t own a gun, but she’s been taking classes once a week; she and I practice together. She’s getting to be a decent shot too.

“Here’s the deal,” I tell Vee. “You do classes with us at the range, starting tonight. You only get to buy a gun when I say you’re ready to have one, and that means when you’re officially eighteen. And when you do get one, you keep the practice up. I’ll check. Understand?”

She nods and doesn’t answer, too busy chewing. I’m not sure I’ve made a good decision. Vee Crockett isn’t a stable personality; she’s got volatile peaks and spikes, and she’s been prone to self-harm before, through pills and booze and just plain recklessness. But she’s also vulnerable, and that letter is proof that something’s up. The fact that he knows where she lives . . . it’s worrying.

Best call I can make, for now.

Vee finishes her breakfast, and I offer to drive her to her apartment so she doesn’t have to walk back in those ridiculous house shoes. She accepts.

Once the kids are headed into their classes, it’s just her and me alone in the car. I say, “You already have a gun, don’t you?”

She flinches and turns her head too fast. “Why’d you say that?”

“Because I know you, Vee. You don’t ask permission. You might ask forgiveness, sometimes.”

She shrugs and turns away, but I see the color’s warmed in her cheeks. “My business,” she says. “Ain’t it?”

It is. Vee Crockett is an emancipated adult, and though she can’t legally own a gun yet, I’m not inclined to turn her in for it either. There’s no time in a woman’s life that isn’t dangerous, and that’s just a fact of life. “You made it my business this morning. I’m going to the range tonight here in town. I’ll pick you up and we’ll look over your gun and see what you can do with it. All right?”

She hesitates, then nods once. Her jaw is stiff. She doesn’t like this; I’m coming close to her limits of obedience. She’ll like it even less once we’re at the range, but I intend to train her properly.

When I pull to a stop at her apartment complex—a cheap place, but clean—she gets out and marches away in her ridiculous floppy slippers without another word. A man outside smoking on the walkway gives her a long, appraising stare. She flips him off, unlocks her door, and slams the door after.

I don’t like the look on the man’s face, and I sit idling in the parking lot until he discards his butt and heads into one of the apartments. I make a note of his room number.

I’m a suspicious bitch, but I’ve found it works for me.

5

KEZIA

Dawn’s just breaking when I make it to Sheryl Lansdowne’s hometown. Valerie’s not much, just bumpy streets and clapboard houses; whatever overflow Norton and Stillhouse Lake have from the K-ville commuters, they don’t make it this far out. The place has a depressed look, but that could be just the gloom. The few streetlights struggle against it and lose.

I know, because I know these towns,