It’s been so long since I referenced her like that it sounds foreign. But she was mine. For a tiny bit of time I took care of her, was responsible for her safety. She called me her guardian angel and though I denied it, deep down inside, it felt good, her calling me that. Thinking of me in a good way. A positive way.
Without hesitation I did what was right. I had to. I couldn’t let him keep her. He would’ve . . .
I can’t even imagine what he would have done to her.
Not only was I her guardian angel, she called me her hero. She said that to me right before we approached the police station. I can hear her voice, clear as day, ringing in my head.
You saved me from him. You’re my hero. Like an angel from heaven.
I didn’t believe in God and angels but at that moment, I wanted to. Badly.
“Contact me? No,” Katherine says vehemently, shaking her head. “Never.”
“Really?” Lisa arches a brow. Yet another image flashes on the screen, a photo of a letter. I recognize that handwriting, and my fingers curl so tight around the counter’s edge I feel like it could crumble in my hands.
The next shot is of Katherine, lips parting, eyes going wide. Whatever the fuck Lisa just showed her can’t be good.
I know it.
And then his face is there. A photo in black and white, his jaw jutting out stubbornly, mouth drawn into a thin line, eyes blank and dark. His expression is cold, his hair shorn to nothing, and I swear there’s a giant tattoo on the side of his neck. Of course.
He is in prison after all. He’s had to adapt to the prisoner lifestyle as much as possible or they’d string him up by his dick. Child molester. Rapist. Killer.
My father.
“Get in here.”
I went still at the sound of his voice bellowing from his bedroom, the threatening edge to it. He was drunk. Again. He was always drunk lately and most of the time he ignored me, but not tonight.
Fuck.
I shuffled into his bedroom, my nose wrinkling in disgust at the smell that hit me. I couldn’t describe it, not fully. Musty. Stale. Sweat. Booze. Sex.
“Where have you been?” he asked when I stopped in front of his bed. He was laid out on it in his grungy white boxer briefs and nothing else, his skin pale, the hair on his chest stark against the white of his flesh. He hadn’t shaved and his hair was wild, sticking up all around his head.
He looked fucking crazy.
“School,” I said, looking anywhere but at him. He was hard to look at, this shell of a man who used to be something big, someone important. At least, that was what he told me.
I never saw him like that, but what do I know? I was only fifteen. Ignorant and stupid. Again, things he’d told me.
“Fucking liar,” he spat out. “Tell me the truth.”
“That’s where I was,” I insisted. “School. I had football practice.” I focused on sports and school so I wouldn’t have to come home. So I wouldn’t have to deal with him. Most of the time he could give a shit where I was or what I did. I couldn’t get why he was acting like this.
Foreboding crept over me, chilling my skin.
He wanted something from me. I didn’t know what.
“In the summer? ‘Football practice,’ ” he mimicked, his voice in this high whine that made him sound like he was imitating a girl. Or me with a girly voice. Asshole. “Thinking you’re a big stud, playing football and basketball and every other fucking sport out there? Trying to get all the girls with that ugly mug of yours?”
I clamped my mouth shut, saying nothing. What the hell did he know? If I said the wrong thing, he’d backhand me. He might’ve looked like a lazy sloth sprawled across his bed, but the man could move fast when he had to.
I should know. I’d been smacked out of nowhere before.
“I have a new girlfriend,” he said, completely changing the subject. “I want you to meet her.”
My gaze finally met his and I didn’t like what I saw. Amusement burned in his dark-as-the-devil eyes and his lips were curled in a shitty smile. “When?” I asked warily.
“Now,” he announced, and at that exact moment, the connecting bathroom door swung open and a woman wearing nothing but a black bra and panties strode out, stopping just in front of me with her hands on her hips.
I stared at her, noted the faint lines around her thin mouth, the hardness in her gaze, just like my dad’s. Her hair was an orangey blond and looked fried on the ends. Her skin was pale and ashy in color.
She looked dead.
“Hi.” Her voice was rough, like she’d smoked a million cigarettes already in her lifetime, and she probably had. I could smell the faint traces of smoke on her, a smell I recognized since I snuck more than a few cigarettes a day myself.
My one and only vice.
“I’m Sammy.” She stuck her hand out, her pink dagger-like nails pointed at me like a weapon. “You must be Willy.”
I glared at my dad, hating that fucking nickname so much I wanted to scream. “Will,” I corrected her, shaking her hand quickly before I let it go like it was covered in disease. It might’ve been. “Can I go now?” I asked Dad.