Page 84 of Haunted

“Corliss Road,” he says. “Would you take me sometime? I could learn.”

I stop with my hand on the latch and look at him. He’s standing very straight. His jaw is set. He is absolutely terrified.

I cross the room and put my arms around him.

“I don’t want you to have to do this,” I say into his hair. “You are carrying enough. I love you, and I’m asking you to give me this one job that I’m good at, so that you don’t have to be.”

“You think I’d be that bad at it?”

“No. I think you’d get scary good at it, because you get scary good at everything you put your mind to.” I hold on. “Let me have this one. Where you still need me a little bit. Please.”

He doesn’t say anything for a second. Then his arms come up around my back.

“Okay,” he says. “Okay. You can have that one.”

He takes a deep breath. “Okay. So tell me the actual thing. If I’m here on my own and somebody comes through that door, what do I do?”

“Phone first. Nine-one-one, this address, stay on the line, don’t hang up for anybody.” I turn around so he can see my face while I say it. “Then the safe. Then you put something solid between you and the door and you stay behind it. You let them come to you and you let the police find you exactly where you said you’d be.”

“Okay.”

“Say it back.”

“Phone, safe, something solid, stay put.” He almost smiles. “You’re very good at this.”

“I’m very good at this,” I agree.

He watches me check the second window.

“Have you ever killed anybody?”

“Yes.”

I don’t stop moving and I don’t dress it up, because there is no version of that answer that gets better with decoration.

“Was it…” he starts.

“I can’t tell you about it. Some of that’s classified and some of it I’m not legally free to discuss, and that’s going to be true for the rest of my life.” I check the latch, and it holds. “What I can tell you is that if somebody comes into this apartment meaning to hurt you, I will not hesitate. Not for a second. I love you. You are safe with me, and I need you to actually hear that part.”

“I hear it.”

“Good.” I move on to the kitchen window. “I’ve never given that combination to anybody. Not to Nash. Not to my father.”

“Lance.” He steps in front of me, hands up. “Lance. Look at me.” His voice has gone very careful, the way you talk to someone standing on a ledge. “You’re doing the thing. The voice. The one from the kitchen, the night I had to tell you to stop.” He searches my face, and I watch something in his own go tight and scared. “You just called our bedroom a hard-cover position. Come back. Please. You’re scaring me about as much as that thing is.”

I hadn’t noticed. That’s the part that lands—I hadn’t noticed I’d left. I make myself breathe, unclench my jaw. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. Just—stay with me.” He lifts my hand off the deadbolt, where I’ve apparently been resting it. “Talk to me like a person. I know there’s a murderer in this town. But I can be at risk anywhere. The other day a guy slammed into me on the sidewalk like a freight train, sent my roses all over the pavement. That could’ve been your murderer, sending me a message.”

Everything in me goes still. “What do you remember about him?”

“Nothing. I didn’t have time. But that’s the point—if somebody wanted to send a message, they’d have stopped and said it. Back off. Something. And if they wanted me dead, they’d have done it right there, not taped a warning to a door.” He shrugs. “He was just a rude guy in a hoodie, probably on his phone.” He gestures at the door. “You know, this feels personal,” he says. “If it was about Alice, why come after both of us? Who hates us as a unit more than they’d hate me on my own?”

“I don’t know,” I lie, and take my phone out of my pocket. I call the non-emergency number Van Hoek gave me.

He answers himself before I can. “We got a lot of ugly press after the fires. It was a hell of a way to get outed. Maybe somebody resents that the two queer kids ended up being the face of the wildfires instead of somebody less”—he makes a face—“controversial.”

I stare at him and make myself breathe, because that’s plausible. A stranger, a coincidence of timing. It’s a door I could walk through, and God, I want to. Nash left town. I told him what I needed to say and he left. He must have.