She’ll pay.
He stalks into the living room at the front of the house and feels positively intoxicated with rage. He finds an antique crystal vase in his hand, turns it over, and feels like if he squeezed it hard enough, it would turn to dust in his palm. The blood from his knuckles smudges onto the green-tinted glass, and before it can slip through his grip he throws it against the wall in front of him, letting a guttural growl escape his lips as he does. It shatters into a beautiful, dangerous rain. A mosaic of glass bounces to the ground around his feet.
Jeremy pauses, looking down at the shards of glass as the light dances around, reflecting off his chaos and creating a prism effect. He stands there, panting. Rarely has he known such animalistic rage. He takes a long breath in, using his unbloodied hand to carefully move a strand of blond hair from his forehead and tuck it back into place. He makes his way to the kitchen and carefully turns his hand over to examine his tattered knuckles. He creaks on the sink and begins to wash away the evidence of his lonely outburst. As the blood changes from red to pink, mixing with the water swirling into the steel sink below, he gazes out the window into the stretch of bayou that seems to touch the other side of the Earth. After what could be a minute or an hour, he dries his hands, wrapping the three damaged knuckles in medical tape and flexing his fingers for comfort.
He walks again, floating through the rooms in this house and taking snapshots to commit to his memory. He will use these memories to tether him to who he is. He doesn’t have plans to die today. He finds himself back in the living room, where the evidence of his anger still remains. He doesn’t clean it up, preferring to leave it there as a message and a threat. He hopes they wonder whose blood this is, even just for a moment. He hopes the crunch of shattered glass disrupts their neatly planned raid.
Reaching into his pocket, he fingers the ring once more. His gaze shifts to the coffee table in the center of the room. Its position is center stage, and he places the ring on its surface in a spot that’s impossible to miss. It’s stationed alone on the surface like a single boat lost as sea. He smiles, stepping back to see the effect for himself.
Welcome back, Emily.
CHAPTER 34
WREN SITS IN THE BACK of the room now. The police station is a chaotic scene, with officers being given orders in every direction. Leroux and Will entered the building thirty minutes earlier with a search and arrest warrant in hand. They got a positive identification from their previous witness and the bartender who served Tara her drinks.
“All right, does everyone know what they should be doing and where they should be?” the lieutenant booms over the circus around them.
Leroux sits in the chair next to Wren, leaning forward with his arms resting on his thighs.
“You got your kit?” he asks abruptly.
As if shaken from a deep sleep, she jumps.
“Yeah. Yeah, I have my kit in the car. Why?”
“Because you’re coming with me. If there are bodies to process, we can call in more techs with the vans, but I want you in our car.” Before she can protest, he shakes his head. “I promised Richard I wouldn’t take your shit. This is nonnegotiable.”
“Can’t argue with that!” she says, putting her hands up in surrender.
Leroux stands, extending a hand to help her up as well.
“That’s the attitude I want you to have even after all this is over.”
She pushes him with whatever strength she has left, and he feigns a stumble.
“Don’t count on it, John.”
The back seat of the car is not Wren’s favorite place to be. It’s always led to almost instantaneous motion sickness since she was a child. Today is no different.
“I can’t tell if I want to throw up because of your driving or because we are about to ambush the guy who tried to hunt me in his backyard,” she says as she opens the window. She rolls her eyes, letting the breeze calm her stomach a bit. “You guys can laugh. Please laugh.”