a P
t silent. The
shing the red mark on her cheek. His voice was tender, wrecked, dripping with a conc
front of everyone! You're a violent, unhinged, trailer-park nobody and you just p
ly deranged. Someone call the cops. Caroline, don't cry, we'
just wanted to teach her a lesson. Knock the box out of her hands so she'd stop being so dramatic
hat the fuck is wrong with you? She barely touched your
nto the cracked urn with the tenderness of a woman holding a dying child. The roses were c
ow, carrying across the si
lag-draped wood. The military i
ld. Their remains were repatriated this morning. I collected them alone because you couldn't be bothered to answer your phone." I
Even the waves
l your own dead parents' story to guilt-trip Caroline into not pressing charges. 'Oh no, it's he
ized it. A backhand, clean and shar
shrieked. I pinned her wrists, my knee on her sternum, and struck-controlled, precise, militar
hem up,
Vance grabbe
ing. Marcus lunged. I sidestepped, drove an elbow into his solar plexus, and swept his legs
urring with grim satisfaction. Five years of special operat
I'm overreacting. That I should apologize to the woman who scattered my dead parents in
ing, mascara streaked, sand in her hai
en closed it. Something in my expression to
ash from the sand with her manicured fingers, pressing it back i
oment I just looked at her-kneeling in the sand, mascara streaked, her
uiet enough that only she could hear, "reme
y. The urn against my chest. The white
e called my nam
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