“Well, you certainly get an A-plus for following my directions well.”
He didn’t like that.
“I would have recognized him without the broken nose.”
Rainy frowned. “Maybe so, but I wanted you to recognize me.”
Rainy touched her tongue to her front teeth and shook her head from side to side. Maybe his thinking was getting slow, or maybe he was studying her, but there was something odd about the look on his face.
“You are the same, Summer. The same fire, the same defiance. You haven’t changed at all. That’s what I admired about you. I could always count on your defiance. My sweet Summertime.”
“You never met a trauma you didn’t like to poke.” She shook her head in disgust.
“Haven’t you heard that the light gets in through the cracks?” He said this like there was a joke hiding behind his words, because they both knew he orchestrated those cracks just so he could provide the religious salve for them. It created a cycle of psychological dependency in his followers.
“I know about the photos you took of my mother, of the other mothers…of their fucking daughters! That was your thing, right? You held their children captive by draining their bank accounts so they couldn’t leave, and then you took dirty photos of them. You blackmailed them. You are on trial tonight, Taured.”
Rainy enjoyed the look on his face. It was the face of a man who didn’t believe anything bad could happen to him, that every threat was made by a lesser person and held no ground. She enjoyed it because she intended to wipe the smug expression from his face once and for all.
“A trial without evidence? A childish notion. I promise you, Rainy—” he tried the name out like he was humoring her “—there is none. All of your claims have always been false.”
“This isn’t a court of law, Taured. This is two people chatting in a kitchen…ah…excuse me…” She turned the steaks with the spork, then licked her lips, wanting her words to hit in the right way. “This is my court.”
“Your court? Do you mean to judge me?”
“I do.” Could he tell that something was wrong? His movement was nonexistent at this point; he was still, only his eyes and mouth moving.
He laughed, just a little laugh—like a chuckle. The past came back to her in a hurry: the heat of the day, the way the bat had felt in her hands on the softball field, slippery and heavy…the fear. Oh God, the fear was so big and she had been so small.
He had big hands, and he’d grown wider in the intervening years; he was no longer a lanky thirtysomething, but a guy in his late fifties. He was half-perched on the stool Ginger had pulled over, the gun on his knee, his finger still curved around the trigger. One of his feet was settled firmly on the floor, the other resting on the stool’s rung.
“I stole a floppy disk back then. Out of an envelope in your car… Do you still have that old piece-of-shit BMW?”
Did the expression on his face change? She thought she saw something like fear, and then it was gone.
He cracked his neck, and there it was: Rainy could see it. A cataract of anger dropped over his eyes again. All traces of his earlier amusement were gone. He was getting with the program, seeing his rival for the first time.
“I think you wanted to kill me yourself, didn’t you? That’s why you’re here today. I got away back then and you saw my call for help as a way to help yourself…to me?”
“You’ve drugged me. How?”
She reached behind her back and began to braid her hair. The steaks were really cooking now, probably past well-done. The meat smelled good, wild. Or maybe she felt wild.
“Anger, as it turns out, is an even greater medium to work with than metal. My anger bends the material as much as the heat does.” She flipped the half-braided hair over her shoulder, her fingers moving rhythmically as she finished. “Can you hand me that, please?” She pointed to a rubber band on the table in front of him.
Taured’s face was slack. He picked up the rubber band, looked at it, then held it across the table toward her. He wasn’t as sloppy as she needed him. The drug was present, but hadn’t taken full effect yet. The band was a little thing, pinched between his fingers. She reached across casually and took it from him, holding his eyes. He had hunted her for years. Well, this was hunting, too.
“You took my glass,” she said, lightly turning her back to him. “I softened some quaaludes for you in my mouth and spat them in.” She stopped, looked over at him with her face scrunched up. “I promise you I’m not the first person to spit in your drink.”