I recognized him then.
He wasn’t pinging in my memory against every one-off frat boy I’d ever taken off behind some trees. He’d seemed familiar because he was familiar. I’d seen him before. Just once, in a picture. I hadn’t recognized him without the demon horns, the red eyes, and the Hitler mustache.
My pickup wannabe was Oakleigh’s husband.
“Clark?” I said, so shocked that I stepped back, banging into the row of silver trash cans. I reached behind me, put one hand on the edge to steady myself. “Clark Winkley?”
“Shit,” he said, angry to be recognized, but he did not back off.
He took another step in, shifting how the light fell, and I could see his eyes again, shining with something purely ugly. I thought he’d make his move, and my body coiled in on itself. I couldn’t allow him to get a solid grip on me. I had to hurt him bad enough to get away.
But he stayed where he was. Instead of reaching for me, he slipped his hand into the pocket of his jacket, where he balled it in a fist, grabbing something. Then I realized why he hadn’t done the cliché move tried by every man on earth who’d ever shot pool with a woman: the lean-over from behind to help line up a shot that didn’t need relining. It wasn’t because he hadn’t been happy to see me. He hadn’t wanted me to feel the gun.
“Clark, this is not about me,” I said, as cool as I could with my mouth gone suddenly so dry.
“You should have gone to bed with me. But no, you had to be a bitch about it,” Clark said. His pretty-boy face was twisted, sculptured nostrils flared. Oakleigh had picked out that nose at the plastic surgeon’s, I remembered. The sides of his mouth were wet, spit leaking out, and he didn’t even notice. “Jesus, everyone who’s ever met you says that you’re a whore. You should have gone ahead and been a whore.”
So I had his lawyer, Macon, to thank for this. That sackless piece of crap must have talked about our past. Ye gods, how small men hated to be beaten by a woman. Especially a woman they were sleeping with. So his lawyer had called me a slut, and Clark had come up with a plan to get the easy lawyer into bed. And if I had brought him home with me?
Of course. I’d show up for the meet on Monday to find last week’s nameless cowboy was the opposition. I’d have to recuse myself.
“Clark,” I said. “Nothing has happened. Not yet. Right now there’s no big story here. We played some pool. I realized you were my client’s husband, you realized I was Oakleigh’s lawyer. We walked away.”
It was an error, saying Oakleigh’s name.
“No. No, no, dammit,” he said, and that spittle leaking out around his lips hit my face in pinprick sprinkles. “You’re bitches, and neither of you gets to walk away.”
Why had I plugged his rat hole? He’d been perfectly happy to stalk Oakleigh, to risk death climbing trees, creeping along her roofline, peeing in her makeup case. I’d claimed his attention for myself when I’d locked him out. All of his attention. He’d come into McGwiggen’s not half an hour after I did. He’d known right where I was, the same way he’d known whenever Oakleigh left the house. He’d been following me.
For days now, I’d felt watched and followed. Even Julian had felt it, back at Birdwine’s place. Tonight had been the first real opening he’d had, and he had taken it. I put one hand up, propitiating, my other hand still braced on the trash can’s greasy edge, holding me steady and upright.
“Clark, let’s take a breath, okay?” I said, almost lilting, the way I’d talk to a dangerous dog who had backed me in a corner. “I know you’re really angry.”
“Bitch, you don’t know a damn thing, yet.”
He took his hand out of his pocket.
Then all I could see was the snub-nose pistol.
It didn’t look real. I felt an absurd bubble of laughter rising up. He was holding a lady gun, bright silver with mother-of-pearl glinting at the handle. It was a silly little thing, too slight a weight to make his jacket hang wrong, crafted to rest between a compact and a purse dog. It was exactly the sort of gun a girl like Oakleigh would find darling. And yet this shiny bit of nonsense was pointed at my middle. It could put a hole in me. It could kill me.
“Wait,” I said, though other words were crowding in my throat. Useless ones. I wanted to tell him that I couldn’t die right now, not with so many things unfinished.
Hana unfound. Kai’s fate unknown. My best friend’s new baby, named Paul after me, would never know my face. My new brother would be hit with yet another loss. The last words I’d ever say to Birdwine would be the ones I’d just recorded, angry, unforgiving, calling him an asshole.