Kyle lifted his bloody face and snarled at him, “Who the fuck are you?”
I’m your worst nightmare. The line from the movie popped into Morgan’s head, but he resisted the temptation. Looking out the window instead of at Kyle, he said offhandedly, “I’m the man who plans to kill you.”
“What? Who—?” The words were kind of blubbered thanks to the swelling of Kyle’s mouth, which gave Morgan a great deal of pleasure.
Now Morgan looked at him and smiled. He knew it wasn’t a pretty smile because Kyle visibly recoiled. “You tried to kill the chief. I happen to be in love with her.” He was distantly astonished at the words coming out of his mouth but went with it anyway. He’d think about it later.
“Wasn’t trying to kill her,” Kyle mush-mouthed sullenly. “The dog. I was gonna shoot the fucking dog. This was all her fault; if she hadn’t jumped me, I never would have hit her, and my family wouldn’t have made me sign those fucking divorce papers to keep from being arrested. I lost my house, she should lose her dog. Nobody cares about a dog, you can’t even sue for ‘emotional harm,’ or anything like that. I looked it up.”
“Well, see, that’s the law—but I don’t give a fuck about the law. I happen to be real fond of the dog myself. She’s smarter than you are. Better looking, too.”
“Fuck the damn dog. You’re threatening me. That’s against the law.” Blood and spittle dripped down Kyle’s chin. “I’ll have you arrested.”
“Good. I can arrange to be in the same cell with you.” Casually, Morgan looked back out the window. “Here’s how it’s going to be. You’re not going to say a word about aiming for the dog, you’re going to say you were trying to kill the chief—”
“Bullshit!”
“—and you’re going to plead guilty,” Morgan continued as if Kyle hadn’t interrupted. “You’re going to go to prison. And that’s the only way you’re going to stay alive. You don’t make bail, you sit your sorry ass in a jail cell until you’re sentenced, and you serve your time. When you get out, you move far away from here and never come back to this area again.”
“Do you know who I am? My father—”
“Fuck your father. The problem is, you don’t know who I am. I’m a man who knows how to kill you seven ways from Sunday, and I’m just itching to try all those ways out on you, you motherfucker. You set foot outside the jail, you’re dead. Remember that. You want to know how I plan to kill you? I think skinning you alive would give me a lot of pleasure. I can make it last a long time, and you’d be alive and screaming right up until the end. Yeah, I like the idea of that.” He thought of Bo’s white face and wild eyes, the inhuman sounds coming from her throat as she lunged toward Tricks, and the truth of what he was saying was plain in his savage expression.
Kyle jerked back so hard he banged the back of his head against the window. His eyes were wide with fear, whites showing all around the irises. “You’re crazy as hell!”
Morgan considered that, then shrugged. “Possible,” he said casually. “But I’m also a man of my word. The only place you’re safe from me is in jail—and you’d better pray nothing bad ever happens to the chief or her dog because if it does, I’m going to assume you paid for it to happen, and I’m coming after you, jail or not. There’s no place you can go that I can’t get to you, no way you can hide even if you change your name. And I know how to get away with it, even if you tell a hundred people to look at me if anything happens to you.”
Kyle’s eye were all but bugging out. The stupid fool couldn’t back down though, had to cling to the idea that he was smarter and badder than everyone else. He sputtered, “I don’t believe you.”
“Your funeral,” Morgan said. “I look forward to attending.” He tapped on the window. Jesse opened the door, and Morgan gave Kyle another chilling smile before he got out of the patrol car.
“If he says I threatened him, he’s lying,” Morgan told Jesse.
“I figured as much.”
Morgan reappeared well within the fifteen minutes he’d allotted. Bo had let Tricks pee, then simply knelt beside the dog and hugged and petted her for several minutes, so grateful to still have her that she almost broke down and let loose the flood tide of tears that were threatening to overflow the dam of her control. She was still there when he circled the building to find her.
“We can go home,” he said, putting his hand on the small of her back when she stood.
“No, we can’t, not yet. We have to give statements.”
“Fuck that. Jesse can come out to the house.” He looked hard and implacable and as if he didn’t give a damn whether or not they gave statements.
Thank God he’d been here. If he hadn’t been—she couldn’t even think the thought. Even afterward, he’d been a rock she could lean on, capable of acting when she herself had been almost frozen by that debilitating sense of horror that lingered deep in her bones.
“It’s my job,” she said, and braced herself to get through the coming ordeal. It wouldn’t be traumatic, just exhausting, when she wanted nothing more than to curl up and not think for a day or two.
“Just let me know when you’ve had enough, and I’ll get us out.”
He would, too; regardless of how many questions still needed to be asked and answered, if she said she had to go home, he’d take her there.