Hunter
“What do you say when people ask what you do for a living?” Vanessa asked, breaking the silence.
Great. Where was this coming from? “Umm. Usually I say construction or sales. Sales allows for a varied schedule and income.”
“What do you sell?”
“Medical equipment. I use to say insurance, but one time someone wanted a quote. So that didn’t work too well.” He chuckled. What a nightmare that had been to talk his way out of.
“Have you ever thought about doing something else?”
“Sure.” He’d pictured hundreds of job options. Tried to imagine himself there. Especially now that he met her.
When he didn’t elaborate, she asked, “Like what?”
“I don’t know. A bunch of things. I just don’t think I’m cut out for any of them.” He hated to say it, but he couldn’t be something he wasn’t. He didn’t want to lead her on or make her think that somehow she could change him.
She didn’t respond, and he wondered what she was thinking.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sure that’s not what you wanted to hear.”
“I don’t know what I wanted to hear, actually. I mean, if you had a different job, and were made for office work, you wouldn’t be the person you are. And I like the person you are. Too much maybe.”
“I’m not what you and Opal need.”
She sucked in a breath. “I know that. On some level. But when you’re here, it’s so good. You fit into our world. Whatever you think we need, we need safety and security, and you provide that. Wasn’t it clear today in the way Opal reacted?”
“It just made me think that she’s a scared little girl, and I wonder what will happen when I kill her daddy. Will she hate me or be grateful? Or will you just lie about it forever?”
Vanessa stilled and her breathing grew heavier. He realized in her silence that she was still hoping they could send Jeremy to jail instead of killing him.
“If it doesn’t come to that, fine,” he said. “But what if it does? And what if this whole Jeremy thing blows over and everything is great. What happens when the next hit comes in? Are you going to tell her what I do for a living? No. So, you’re going to lie to her. All the time. And I’ll have to lie to her, too, to protect her. She doesn’t deserve that. She deserves a father who can be there for her and be honest and support her family in a way that doesn’t involve breaking the law.”
“But…”
He waited, but she didn’t continue. “Vanessa, you need someone straighter than me.”
“I had that. He didn’t turn out to be anything good at all. On the outside, he was wealthy, from a good, well-connected family. Went to a good school, was going to be successful and all that. And look how that turned out. I don’t think anyone is completely good or bad, and even if you do things most people consider bad, you’re a good person on the inside. I see it and so does Opal.”
“I’m a killer, Vanessa. How good of a person can I possibly be if I take lives and make money doing it?”
“But you don’t kill just anyone. You only kill bad people. You’re probably helping people.”
“You can make excuses for me all day. But at the end of it, the fact is the same. I commit felonies constantly. I could be locked away for life many times over. Then what would you and Opal do? Come visit me in jail?”
“I don’t know. You haven’t been caught yet.”
“But I was once.”
“But that was a long time ago.”
He chuckled. “The statute of limitations doesn’t expire on murder. If they found something in thirty years about something I did ten years ago, they could lock me away. I haven’t been caught. Yet. But that could change. It’s part of the risk I take every time I take a job. It’s part of the job I like. Knowing that every day is borrowed, that at any moment, I could lose it all. It makes me look at life differently.”
“What if we went to some other country where they couldn’t send you to prison if evidence came up?”
“You’d really uproot Opal like that? Move her across the world just to protect me from facing justice for what I’ve done?”
“You protect us,” she insisted. “You’d give your life for us, so why can’t we give up something for you?”
“Because I would never let you do that for me. I’m not worthy of that sort of sacrifice.”
“I say you are.”
“Well, then, you’re nuts.”
She was quiet for a long time. “What happened when you were caught?”
“Well, I was doing what I do best. I was protecting someone. I had this girlfriend in high school, Julia. She cried to me more than once about how horrible her dad was. Told me he touched her and hit her. Of course, I got pissed. I couldn’t stand to think she’d gone through something like what I went through in my childhood. So, we made a plan, and I killed him. I was sloppy because it was done in anger. There was evidence everywhere. Didn’t take them long to hunt me down. Ten years later, when I was finally released, I find out the truth. She made the whole thing up. She was pissed at her dad because he wouldn’t buy her a car or some other stupid crap and wanted his life insurance money.
“Nothing was the same after that. How could I ever trust someone again? I’d just done ten years and committed the biggest crime of my life for a lie. So, I figured that if I killed once for money—or for her to get money—then why not do it again? I felt like my life was over. I had nothing to live for. So, it became about the chase, the rush of it all. I did it once more and didn’t get caught that time. Then it was, how many times can I do it and get away with it? Every time I take a life, I wonder if it’ll be the last one. If my time is finally up, and they’ll get me and lock me up for good or put me to death.”
“I can’t imagine living like that.”
“And that’s why I can’t be what you need. You’d have to be okay with all of that.”
“But what if I was okay with it?”
He took a moment to think. If she accepted it, could he really do it? “Vanessa, if you could live with knowing what I’ve done and what could happen at any time, then I would want nothing more than to have a relationship with you. And you’d be the first person ever to make me feel that way since Julia. The first person I’ve trusted since I was seventeen.”
# # #
The silence in the room seemed to go on forever. She thought about what he said. She could not promise him anything if she didn’t mean it. And she wasn’t sure if she could mean it. She wanted him, and she felt that he was good for them. But his past was scary, and the fear of him being locked up at any moment made her stomach feel heavy with dread. Could she live like that forever?
“Here’s the thing, Hunter. I’ve always done the right thing. From returning a piece of candy I stole when I was five, to changing my life to make my parents happy and fit into their picture of what I should be. I grew up Catholic, going to church twice a week, confessing all my sins. In my world, there was no such thing as premarital sex. It just wasn’t something a good girl did. So, when I got to college, I kind of… went crazy. I think all the years of not being allowed to do anything got to me. I had never drank or done drugs or had sex. But when I got to college and saw everyone else doing it and it wasn’t messing up their lives, I wanted to try it, too. I started dating Jeremy, and he kept trying to get me to have sex with him. I said I was waiting, but one night I got drunk, and we did. I got pregnant.
“I thought my parents were going to kill me or disown me when I told them. I almost didn’t tell them. I almost had an abortion, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Jeremy tried to talk me into it, but I wouldn’t. I finally told them and they made me marry Jeremy. He didn’t want to, but my parents threatened him. I still don’t know why in the world it worked. He could have shut them up or taken care of anything with his money or connections. The only thing I can think is that they were able to convince his parents. Jeremy did everything his dad told him to do. But he hated it. And he took it out on me every day after.
“The first time he hit me, he said it was an accident and he was just too mad, but he was seeing a therapist and working on his anger issues. I found out a year later that he’d just been going to get high instead. Everything about my life with him was hard. Everything was painful. When he hit me, I hid it. I couldn’t admit to anyone what a mess I’d gotten myself into. I was afraid my parents would say this is what I deserved for being a bad girl. I felt bad. On some level, I felt like I did deserve it. After my dad died, my mom was around more. She would come and spend time with us. Opal loved having her around. But she started to suspect what was going on. She tried to convince me to leave, but I wouldn’t. After she died, it seemed too late. I’d lost my way out. So, I kept dealing with it. Then he turned to Opal.
“After the first time, he cried for two days. He felt so bad about it. He couldn’t even look at her. But months later, he was high and she didn’t listen to him. That time, he only cried once. Then, he found a way to deal with the guilt, because after the last time, he barely showed any remorse at all. When I had to take Opal to the hospital, I knew it didn’t matter if I felt like I missed my chance to leave or had no place to go. I had to get out. So one night, I seduced him. When he was lying there after, having his usual drink, he didn’t know it was laced. I drugged him enough that I could steal the money in the safe and get out. We only had a few hours before he would wake up.
“The point in all this is that I can do bad things. If I really have to, I’ll take risks to protect people I love. When I was younger, I did stupid things for the sake of proving I could. But I know that doing risky things just for the sake of the thrill isn’t worth it. That rush you need? You can get that other ways. You could be a cop even and still get the bad guys, but the right way.”
“A cop?”
“Yes. Or something else. I don’t know. Hunter. I like you, too. I want to be with you. But as much I want to, I can’t stand by and watch you kill people. Or live off the money you make doing it. Stop the vigilante stuff. Let the good guys handle the bad guys. That’s what they do.”
“The good guys don’t always do a good enough job.”
“Well, that’s for them to worry about, not you. You don’t have to save the world.”
“I do,” he said. “I have to save you and Opal, and right now, you are my world.”