CHAPTER 57
EMILY
I drove home with his taste on my lips, my heart beating in the rhythm of that kiss. The cadence of it changed me. I drew breath re-creating it. I didn’t have words for what had changed, just a feeling of transformation between Carter and me that altered the patterns of how I fit into the world.
He didn’t know what he’d done. He didn’t know what he wanted any more than I did. His life had been spun around, and he was just starting to get his feet under him. Expecting him to commit to anything but cat-sitting was unfair.
The streets were so familiar, yet the route was so new that I missed my turn, overshooting my block by a quarter mile or more. I came around and pulled into the driveway, opening my window so I could reach the keypad.
The number 8 stuck a little before it clicked. Could have been left over from the other night. Could be new trouble.
I sighed as the gate clattered open. The sigh was acceptance of a course of action I’d kept locked in a cage. It was the key to freedom. A breath strong enough to turn the tumbler so the animal could escape.
I parked the car calmly. Popped the trunk. Got my Louisville Slugger. Closed the trunk just as the driveway gate snapped shut.
It took me four steps to get to the side door instead of six. I checked behind me, slapped the screen door open, and put in my code. The house was dark, and I left it that way, taking big but careful steps from room to room as quietly as possible.
No one was there. I knew it from the first few seconds, but I checked every corner with the bat ready to swing. Then I turned on the lights.
I went to the little closet with the bank of monitors and fast-forwarded through the previous hour, from the time I left to the current minute. The bat was still slung over my shoulder as I watched. Everything had been quiet. Not a bug or a bird.
Vince had just been to the house two nights before. He was still a threat.
But I couldn’t live like this anymore. I was sick to death of it. I hadn’t done anything wrong, and here I was being punished for a humiliation I hadn’t earned.
All of it, every second of shame for something that wasn’t my fault, every moment I’d wasted checking codes and locks, every quickened heartbeat, was inside that bank of closed-circuit monitors.
I lifted the bat off my shoulder. I could have just slid the length down my palm and put it away, but I didn’t. I lifted it higher and brought it down on my surveillance system. It scuffed the frame. Instead of feeling lucky to get a good swipe in without doing damage, I got frustrated. The frustration translated into rage, and the rage brought the bat into the leftmost screen from the side. The glass shattered into a web.
“That’s how you do it.” I sounded really sure of myself. I must be right.
I swung again at the next screen and the next, until all four were shattered and broken. I hit the black box with the hard drive, but the wooden bat did no discernible damage. Didn’t matter. I had a job to do, and I wasn’t going to let a steel casing slow me down.
Slapping the side door open, I went into the side yard. The camera’s light went on with the movement and shifted toward me. I swung the bat, hitting it hard enough for it to pivot a few degrees. The light stayed on. It would stay on through a nuclear holocaust.
I hit the arm that attached it to the house. Nothing. Again. Nothing. I swung until the stucco under the metal plate it was screwed into started to crack. My arms ached. My lungs burned. The sound of clanging metal, thumping wood, and grunting filled my ears, but I hit it until it came loose, dangling from the wall by umbilical wires, the light still on.
I wasn’t interested in hitting my house, so I went to the next camera, and the next. When I’d gotten all the cameras down, I went for the intercom at the front gate, smashing it with every bit of strength.
Then the bat broke. The end spun off and hit a parked Chevy, leaving me clutching a splintered stump too light to beat a chicken breast.
I hadn’t realized my hands hurt. The tender new blisters on my palms had broken into sticky white fluid. My wrists were shot through with pain, my elbows ached, and my cheeks were wet with tears I didn’t remember shedding.
I threw the rest of the bat over the fence and stormed back to the house.
The switch for the security system was in the little closet. I stepped over the busted monitors, put in my code, and just shut off the entire thing.
Relief—true relief—is like a drug. It flooded my system, pushing out stale worry and low-level panic. I smiled in a sort of disbelief, putting my hand over my mouth, sliding down the wall until I was crouched in the hallway, laughing. I rolled until I was lying on my back, arms spread, so happy, so liberated, so unencumbered that I couldn’t feel the wood under me, swearing I was floating inches above the floor.