“I am not a hunter. Not anymore.”
“You people think we don’t know you,” Helen said with a certain righteousness that put me on edge. “But we keep track of you. We have to. We have to know who is coming for us. My husband was killed by a hunter. He was so gentle. He changed into a buck. We played around the forest together. He was gunned down in the street because your kind can’t stand that we exist. He was thirty-five years old.”
God, I hoped it wasn’t my father who had done it. My stomach felt sick, but I tried to keep it together. “I didn’t have anything to do with that.”
Mrs. Taylor took a second. When she spoke again, she was quieter, more sympathetic. “Of course, you didn’t, Kelsey. I don’t blame you. I’m sorry if I made it sound like I did. I know how your father raised you. It’s a testament to who you are that you aren’t like him.”
I wasn’t so sure of that. I was a lot more like my dad than I wanted to admit. “How do you know so much about me?”
She sat back down and looked quite motherly. “I work with someone who knows you. When I told her my problem and how the police won’t help, she said you would. She said you were the best.”
I only knew one person who she could possibly be talking about. “You work at Olivia’s school.”
She smiled at the sound of Liv’s name. That wasn’t surprising. Most people who knew Olivia Carey brightened at the thought of her. I, on the other hand, was going to kick her ass. “Yes, she’s such a nice young woman. She hadn’t joined the school when Joanne was there, but I look forward to Nancy getting her for English next year. She works late sometimes and I talk to her while I clean her room.”
“What did the police say?” I asked, though I was pretty sure I knew what they had told the freaked-out mom.
Helen’s face twisted and I knew she was pissed as hell at the police. “They said she’d probably run off with a boy. They said it happens all the time. They took a report, but that was all they were willing to do.”
And it was all they would do for the daughter of a janitor. In my experience, justice was for the people in Highland Park. The police had bigger problems to deal with than chasing down some poor co-ed who by all statistics likely had simply run off with a boy.
“What do you want me to do?” I asked because she had me. I would do the job because if I didn’t, I would be adding Joanne Taylor’s sunny face to the rotating players in my nightmares.
“I want you to do what you do best.” Mrs. Taylor opened her purse and took out an envelope. She laid it on the desk. “I want you to hunt my daughter.”
Chapter Two
I let my mind drift as I drove along 183. At this time in the afternoon, it was a fairly easy thing to do. In another hour or so it would be a suicidal prospect as the entire freeway would be moving at breakneck speeds with little distance between cars. That was driving in DFW during rush hour. Now, in the early afternoon, driving through Irving to Dallas was peaceful. If you live in the DFW area, you get used to driving. Some people might think that a thirty-minute drive was a big deal, but I did it at least four or five times a week and every time my mind drifted despite my best efforts. I could have the radio on or off. I could try to play mind games to keep my brain away from dangerous places, but nothing worked. I’d tried audiobooks once, listening to the last Harry Potter as I drove around the Metroplex in my old Jeep, but I had to back up and listen to the same chapter four times so I gave up. My mind wandered.
Now I let it drift to revenge fantasies. It was far better than the usual horror movies that played out in my brain. I was going to kill Olivia Carey and become the villain I always knew I could be. I imagined the throngs of weeping students at her memorial. They would leave little teddy bears at the sight of her horrible murder, which would occur wherever I happened to find her at that freaky school she worked at. If she was in her classroom, then that was my killing ground. Same thing with the cafeteria or the library. I wouldn’t discriminate.
Nor would I let a thing like love get in my way.
I loved Olivia Carey. I’ve often thought that life would have been easier had I been born a lesbian. It was one of the universe’s wicked mistakes that I needed a penis to make me happy sexually because in all other ways, Liv was the girl for me. I don’t know how normal friendships work. I never had a real friend before Olivia, so I don’t know if the intense bond we share exists between other girlfriends. Liv and I hadn’t bonded over pedicures and crushes over boys. We bonded because she saved my life. I don’t mean that in a “how would I get through without you” way. I mean that in a “stop the bleeding and convince me not to ever try that again” way.