Loe raamatut: «Beyond the Rules»

They took the bait.

They turned toward him, revealing themselves to Kimmer, and as one goonboy slammed a new magazine home, the other raised his pistol at Rio.

Kimmer aimed between them and took a deep breath. No turning back now. Once she drew blood, she’d be explaining herself to the local law; she’d also drag the Hunter Agency into the mess. From this distance the pellet spread meant she’d hit them both without truly damaging them.

If only the cops were closer.

But now it was more than Hank in trouble. Rio stood within their sights….

Kimmer pulled the trigger.

Dear Reader,

What is a Bombshell? Sometimes it’s a femme fatale. Sometimes it’s unexpected news that changes everything. Sometimes it’s a book you just can’t put down! And that’s what we’re bringing to you—four fascinating stories about women you’ll cheer for!

Such as Angel Baker, star of USA TODAY bestselling author Julie Beard’s Touch of the White Tiger. This twenty-second-century gal doesn’t know who is killing her colleagues, but she’s not about to let an aggravating homicide cop stop her from finding out. Too bad tracking the killer is exactly what someone wants her to do….

Enter an exclusive world as we kick off a new continuity series featuring society’s secret weapons—a group of heiresses recruited to bring down the world’s most powerful criminals! THE IT GIRLS have it going on, and you’ll love Erica Orloff’s The Golden Girl as she tracks a corporate spy in her spiked Jimmy Choos!

Ever feel like pushing the boundaries? So does Kimmer Reed, heroine of Beyond the Rules by Doranna Durgin. When her brother sics his enemies on her, Kimmer’s ready to take them out. But the rules change when she learns her nieces are pawns in the deadly game….

And don’t miss the Special Forces women of the Medusa Project as they track down a hijacked cruise ship, in Medusa Rising by Cindy Dees! Medusa surgeon Aleesha Gautier doesn’t trust the hijacker who claims he’s on their side, but joining forces will allow her to keep her enemy closer….

Enjoy! And please send your comments to me, c/o Silhouette Books, 233 Broadway Ste. 1001, New York, NY 10279.

Sincerely,

Natashya Wilson

Associate Senior Editor, Silhouette Bombshell

Beyond the Rules
Doranna Durgin

www.millsandboon.co.uk

DORANNA DURGIN

spent her childhood filling notebooks first with stories and art, and then with novels. After obtaining a degree in wildlife illustration and environmental education, she spent many years deep in the Appalachian Mountains. When she emerged, it was as a writer who found herself irrevocably tied to the natural world and its creatures—and with a new touchstone to the rugged spirit that helped settle the area and which she instills in her characters.

Doranna’s first published fantasy novel received the 1995 Compton Crook/Stephen Tall Award for the best first book in the fantasy, science fiction and horror genres. She now has fifteen novels of eclectic genres on the shelves and more on the way; most recently she’s leaped gleefully into the world of action-romance. When she’s not writing, Doranna builds Web pages, wanders around outside with a camera and works with horses and dogs. There’s a Lipizzan in her backyard, a mountain looming outside her office window, a pack of agility dogs romping in the house and a laptop sitting on her desk—and that’s just the way she likes it. You can find a complete list of titles at www.doranna.net along with scoops about new projects, lots of silly photos, and a link to her SFF Net newsgroup.

This is for my Nana, who preferred her stories

to be sweet, but whom I’ll always think of when

I see this book. In many ways her life was no

less heroic than any Bombshell heroine….

With thanks to Judith’s late nights, Jennifer’s

smiley faces, Tom’s enthusiasm, continuing

conversations in the Things That Go Bang newsgroup

on SFF Net and to Matrice and everyone else

who wanted to see more of Kimmer.

Note: Some of the locations and details are accurate

and really exist, and some of them…don’t.

Mwah ha ha! The power of being a writer!

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 1

H e’s still there.

Still following us, dammit.

Kimmer Reed glanced in the rearview mirror and gave an unladylike snort completely at odds with her shimmery taupe jacquard tunic, her carefully understated makeup and the lingering taste of an exquisite lunch on Captain Bill’s Seneca Lake cruise.

The big man filling the passenger seat of her sporty Mazda Miata immediately understood the significance of such a noise. Rio Carlsen turned his gaze away from the picturesque wine country scenery speeding past them—spring-green everywhere—to stretch a long arm across the back of Kimmer’s bucket seat, glancing behind them and bracing himself as she took an unsignaled left turn. “Suburban. Big. Old. Can you say ‘eat my dust’?”

Kimmer shook her head, short and firm, eyes on the road. She could outrun him…but she wouldn’t. She took another left, accelerated down a barely traveled alley on the outer edge of Watkins Glen, shot across a one-way feeder road, and downshifted to take the next left at speed. “This isn’t a Hunter Agency assignment. This is my home. There are rules.”

Rules about how to live…rules for those around her.

Rio’s hand strayed from the back of the seat to stroke the hair at Kimmer’s nape, a short dark fringe that showed well enough how her hair would explode into curls if she ever freed it from its close cut. A reassuring touch that could turn smoldering in a moment, but right now it wasn’t nearly as casual as it might seem. It connected them—and it transmitted his readiness. He said, “Let’s go explain the rules, then.”

Another glance showed her that the idiot had stayed with her, bouncing along the rough roads on spongy shocks, closing the distance between them. “He’s persistent enough. This isn’t casual.”

Rio glanced behind them. Kimmer knew that quiet tension in his body, the tall rangy strength he hid so well in his amiable nature. “The question is, is this about you or is this about me?”

“Your turf was overseas.” The Miata slewed back onto the main road, a two-lane state route between Watkins Glen and Rock Stream. “And you’re ex-CIA.”

“Hey,” he said, wounded. “I’m good ex-CIA. I might have made an enemy or two. And it doesn’t make sense for it to be you. You don’t exactly work on your home turf.”

“Not if I can help it,” she grumbled, not bothering to point out the irony that she’d met him on a job she hadn’t wanted simply because it was too close to her childhood home. Her long-buried, long-hated childhood. She blew through a stop sign—not a significant risk on this particular stretch of road—with her eye on the upcoming turn, the one that started off with a decent paved road, turned abruptly to dirt, and even more abruptly came to an end, a service road made obsolete by underground utilities. She thumbed the switch to bring up the Miata’s barely open windows. “Check the glove box, will you?”

“God, is it safe?”

Kimmer smiled. “Probably not.”

Rio flipped the latch, hands ready to catch whatever spilled out. “Switchblade,” he reported, ably maintaining his equilibrium as Kimmer hit her target turn at speed, luring her pursuer along behind…enticing him to carelessness. “Tire gauge. Knuckle-knife thing. And this.”

She glanced. “War dart.”

He grinned, for the moment truly amused. “War dart. Of course it is.”

His wasn’t the grin she associated with Ryobe Carlsen, former CIA case officer and skilled overseas operative. No, this particular grin belonged to the man who’d left the Agency after a bullet took his spleen and kidney. Eventually he and Kimmer had collided during one of Kimmer’s assignments; eventually he’d turned just this same honest get a kick out of life grin on Kimmer. In response she’d turned the fine edge of her no-nonsense temper back on him, and—

And now here he was at Seneca Lake.

Kimmer’s car hit the rough seam between asphalt and dirt. She’d gained ground with the turn; she spared an instant to warn Rio with a predatory expression that really couldn’t be called a smile.

Rio braced himself.

Kimmer hit the brake, slinging the car around in a neat one-eighty and raising enough dust to obscure the rest of the world. She didn’t hesitate but punched down the accelerator, heading back up the road just as fast as she’d come down it. They ripped out of the dust and back onto asphalt, passing the Suburban.

“I think I lost the dart.” Rio groped along the side of his bucket seat.

“Got my club,” Kimmer said. It was a miniature war club, iron set into smooth red oak wood, sleek with time and use. She handled it with great familiarity and precision.

“You brought your club?” Rio asked. “On our date?”

“As if the whole world is about you. Of course I brought it.” Kimmer didn’t warn him this time; she hit the brake, gave the wheel a calculated tug, and ended up neatly blocking the road. She reached for her seat belt before the car had even rocked to a complete stop. “You coming?”

“Oh, yeah,” he murmured, betraying some of the grimness lurking beneath his banter. But he wasn’t as fast about pulling his long legs from the car’s low frame and Kimmer strode past him as the Suburban’s driver—having executed a wide, rambling turn to emerge from the dust and discover himself trapped—came to a clumsy, shock-bobbing stop not far away. The interior of the vehicle filled with a leftover swirl of dust through its half-open windows.

The driver waved away the dust, coughing, as Kimmer stalked his vehicle, alert to any sign that he’d jam the accelerator. The massive Suburban could plow right through her Miata if he wanted it to, but he made no move. As the dust cleared, he seemed oddly mesmerized, watching her with his jaw slightly dropped.

True, she hadn’t come dressed for action. She’d come dressed for lunch—the taupe tunic gleamed in the sun, and slimline black gauchos hit just at her knee, offering a low, flat waistband over which she’d fastened a low-slung black leather belt with a big chunky buckle. But her sandals had soles made for walking—or running—and though she held the war club low enough by her thigh to obscure it, he could have no doubt that she held something quite useful indeed.

She didn’t give him time to firm up his jaw or to reach for a weapon. Nothing about him set off alarm bells; whoever he was, whatever he wanted, he was well out of his league. She went straight to the door, yanked it open and grabbed his hand from the steering wheel. He yelped in surprise as she flexed it down, levering it against his body to take advantage of the seat belt restraint. “Hello,” she said. “Who the hell are you and why are you on my tail?”

“Or my tail,” Rio said, coming up on the other side of the window. Kimmer knew that he’d be looking for any signs of a gun, that he’d keep his eye on the man’s free hand. He eyed, too, the awkward angle of the man’s left arm. “You’re not going to break him, are you?”

Kimmer shook her head. “Not yet.”

“Hey, hey, hey,” the man said, and his expression—full of bemusement, floundering in some way Kimmer couldn’t understand—didn’t fit the situation. Didn’t fit it at all. “Ker-rist! Back off, will you?”

Kimmer narrowed her eyes, tipped her head. Thoughtful. There was something about this man…

She knew him.

“Kimmer—” he said, then hissed in pain as her hold tightened.

She knew him.

Not so much the narrow chin and the receding hairline of dark, tight-cropped curls, or the skin, leathery and damaged by sun and cigarettes. Not so much the scowl carved into his forehead.

The eyes. Round, wide-set, thickly lashed. A deep blue, so deep as to look near black unless the light hit them just right.

Kimmer’s eyes.

She released the man’s hand, slammed the door closed hard enough to rock the vehicle, and turned on her heel, striding back to where the Miata glinted Mahogany Mica in the sun. Maybe, she thought, deliberately taking herself away from this moment, it was time to get that BMW she’d been eyeing. Time to move up.

With the BMW, she could outrun even her past.

Rio came up behind her. In the background, the Suburban’s door opened again. Kimmer walked around to the driver’s door, brushed dust from the side-view mirror, and slid back behind the wheel. On the passenger side, Rio opened the door, but he didn’t get in. He ducked low enough to peer inside. “Hey,” he said, a gentle query. “You know him?”

Kimmer didn’t look at him. She pressed her lips together, bit her top lip, and was then able to say in an astonishingly moderate tone, “My brother. One of them, anyway. Let’s go. We’re through here.”

She should have known he wouldn’t get in. Not with the way he felt about family. He’d never understand her reaction. How could he? For all she’d alluded to her past, she’d never truly explained. He knew she’d turned her life around, remolding herself into the fierce, competent Hunter operative who made her own rules. But she’d never shared the appalling truths of her past.

Because it meant reliving them.

She looked over at him, meeting the almond sweep of his eyes. His Japanese grandmother’s eyes, set in the bones of his otherwise Danish family—a face sculpted by the combination. Rio was nothing if not tied to his family, right down to his appearance. And he didn’t understand.

A flicker of desperation tightened Kimmer’s hands on the steering wheel. “Please,” she said. “This is a choice I made a long time ago.”

He tipped his head back at the hefty SUV. “It can be a different choice now.”

“No,” she said tightly. “It can’t.”

He looked at her for another long heartbeat of time, and then he gave the slightest of shrugs and lowered his tall frame into the low sports car. Kimmer breathed a sigh of relief, thanking him with a glance. They might well talk about this, but Rio had done what Rio did best. He’d let Kimmer be Kimmer, accepting her without trying to change her.

Except this time, just a moment too late. Kimmer’s brother crossed in front of the Miata, came around to the driver’s window. Kimmer still had time to turn the key, to floor the accelerator—and yet somehow she didn’t quite do it. Maybe it was Rio’s trust. Maybe she was just tired of running.

Maybe she wanted to think again about pummeling the crap out of a man who had made her childhood miserable.

He stood on the other side of the closed window—not a tall man, nor a bulky one. Like Kimmer in that way. He settled his weight on one leg and crossed his arms. “You don’t even know which one I am.”

She knew he hadn’t changed much, not if he’d tracked her down only to throw that attitude at her.

Of course, he was also right.

“Should I care?” she asked, not unrolling the window. “You all made my life hell. You were interchangeable in that way. Although if I had to guess, the way your ears stick out, I’d say you were Hank.”

More than ten years had passed since she’d bolted from Munroville in rural western Pennsylvania. She’d been fifteen and her brothers had been in various stages of older adolescence and early adulthood, still unformed men—their bodies awkward, their facial structures still half in hiding. Hers was a family of late bloomers.

Or never-bloomers.

Her brother colored slightly and lifted his chin in a way so instantly familiar that Kimmer knew she’d been right. Hank. A middle brother, particularly fond of finding ways to blame things gone wrong on Kimmer no matter how minuscule her association with them in the first place. He’d seldom been the first to hit her, but it never took him long to join in. Hank, Jeff, Karl, Tim. They all took their turns.

She started slightly as Rio’s hand landed quietly on her leg, only then realizing she’d reached for the club resting beside her at the shift. You don’t know, she wanted to say to him. You can’t possibly understand. His family had supported him, surrounded him, welcomed him back home without question when the life he’d chosen had changed so abruptly. Hers had…

A young girl hid in the attic, hands clasped tightly around her knees, face pale and dripping sweat in the furnace summer had made of the enclosed space. She didn’t know who’d misplaced the phone bill the first time, or even the second. It could have been between here and the tilted mailbox down the lane; it could have been shoved off the table to make way for one of their filthy magazines. She only knew that today she’d brought in an envelope stamped Final Bill, and that its arrival was therefore her fault. Her father and brothers had come home before she’d had the chance to slip out the back of the house to the hidey-hole she’d made beneath the barn.

They didn’t know she’d grown tall enough to pull down the ladder stairs and make her way up here. And now she couldn’t leave until they were gone. If they spotted her they’d harry her like hounds, shouting and slapping and shoving for something she hadn’t done in the first place. She shivered, even in the heat. She could feel their hands, their cruel pinches, blows hard enough to bruise, hidden in places that wouldn’t show. And she remembered her mother lying at her father’s feet and knew her own life would only get worse as she matured.

A grip tightened on her leg. In a flash, Kimmer snatched up the club, turning on—

Rio.

She withdrew with a noise between a gasp and a snarl. Never Rio.

But her brothers had never seen her as anything other than a frightened young girl at their disposal for blaming, controlling and manipulating. A young girl who had highly honed skills of evasion and an uncanny knack for reading the intent of those around her—at least, anyone who wasn’t close to her. The closeness…it blinded her instinctive inner eye, kept her guessing.

She’d never been able to read Rio, not from the moment she’d met him. It had terrified her, but she’d learned to trust him. He’d earned it. So now she looked at him with apology for what they both knew she’d almost done, but she wasn’t surprised when he made no move to withdraw his hand.

Rio didn’t scare easily.

Kimmer took a deep breath and turned back to Hank, the window remaining between them. “I’m not even going to bother to ask why you thought you could or should run me down in a high-speed car chase. Just tell me why the hell you’re here.”

“I need to talk to you,” he said, and his mouth took on that sullen expression she knew too well, a knowing that came flooding back after years of pretending it didn’t exist. “You shouldn’t have run. It would have been a lot easier for both of us if you’d just pulled over when you noticed me.”

“A lot easier for you. I like a good adrenaline hit now and then. Or did you really think I didn’t know this was a dead-end road?”

Surprise crossed his face; it hadn’t occurred to him. “Anyway,” he said, as if they hadn’t had that part of the conversation, “I had to be sure it was you. Leo told me you’d changed a lot—”

“Leo.” Kimmer rolled her eyes, exchanging a quick, knowing look with Rio. Leo Stark, hometown bully and family friend from way back when. Not her friend. Not then, and not when he’d cropped up again to interfere with her work just six months earlier. “Damn him. It wasn’t enough I gave him a chance to be a hero for Mill Springs last fall? Stop the bad guys, save the country, keep the damsel in distress alive?”

For when Rio had come home to recuperate from CIA disaster, he’d slipped seamlessly back into civilian life, applying a fine hand to custom boat repairs and paint jobs—but only until his cousin Carolyne drew him back into the world of clandestine ops.

Except Kimmer, too, had been assigned to project Carolyne. Of course they’d collided. Disagreed. Worked it out. And now he’d come to cautiously discuss part-time work with the same Hunter Agency that employed Kimmer. Cautious, because he’d been sacrificed on the job once already. But doing it, because Hunter’s intense, personal approach was so completely different from his experience with the CIA. In the CIA, one field officer’s hubris had nearly killed him, and the chief of station hadn’t prevented it. At Hunter, the loyalty between operatives and staff was a given.

Hunter’s international reputation for effectiveness was why the agency had been tapped to watch Carolyne, a computer programmer extraordinaire who’d been on everyone’s snatch list when she uncovered—and developed the fix for—a security weakness in the current crop of missile laser guidance systems. The bad guys, professionals at the beck and call of those who wanted to exploit that weakness. And Leo Stark’s role had been a desperate ploy on Kimmer’s part to keep him from focusing on her. Because it was Kimmer he’d wanted—Kimmer who’d been promised to him not so much as a wife than as a servant. Leo. Dammit.

“He was right, I guess. Must have cost a pretty penny to fix you up like this.” He lifted an appreciative eyebrow.

She snorted. “Is that your idea of a compliment? It’s supposed to make me stick around long enough to hear what you have to say?”

Hank scowled. “Don’t make this harder than it has to be. I’ve come all this way to find you. That must count for something.”

Yeah. It pissed her off.

But there was Rio sitting next to her, knowing only how upset she was and not quite understanding; the puzzlement showed in the faintest of frowns, the only outward sign of his struggle to comprehend the strength of her reaction. And he’d never understand if she literally left Hank in the dust.

You want to know my family, Rio? Okay then.

She raised an eyebrow at Hank. “Coming all this way doesn’t count for a thing,” she told him. “But let’s just call it your lucky day. I’ll bet you know where I live, too.” She wouldn’t have been hard to find once Leo pointed Hank in the direction of Seneca Lake; she was in the phone book. She’d never made any effort to hide who she really was—she’d never expected them to care enough to come looking.

Whyever Hank had tracked her down, it wasn’t because he cared. He might still want to control her, he might still want to use her, but he didn’t want to renew any kind of family relationship.

Rio would learn that.

Outside the window, Hank nodded. For an instant, she thought he actually looked relieved, but a second glance showed her only the arrogant certainty that she’d see things his way. But whatever had inspired him to invade her world…

It wouldn’t be good enough.

Kimmer had little to say on the way home. Full of glower and resentment and anger, she took the curving roads at satisfying speed, reveling in the way the car clung to the road and how it leaped to the challenge when she accelerated in the last section of each swoop of asphalt. She left the Suburban far, far behind and when she pulled the Miata to an abrupt stop beside Rio’s boxy Honda Element in her sloping driveway, she exited the car with purpose.

Shedding and gathering clothes along the way, she climbed the stairs to the remodeled second floor of the old house—two small bedrooms and a bathroom turned into one giant master suite—and dumped the lunch outfit on the unmade bed. She replaced it with a clean pair of low-rise blue jeans from the shelves in her walk-in closet, and a clingy ribbed cotton sweater with laces dangling from the cross-tie sleeves. Red.

If Hank thought he was here to see his little sister, he had a thing or two coming.

She jammed the war club in her back pocket—Hank would do well to pale if he recognized it, given the events of the night she’d departed—and headed back down the stairs.

Rio puttered in the kitchen, putting away lunch leftovers and the desserts they’d brought home for later. He’d poured them each a glass of bright blue Kool-Aid, his current favorite flavor. Raspberry Reaction. A third glass stood off to the side, filled with ice, waiting to see what Hank preferred. Rio didn’t react as she stood in the kitchen entrance, slipping athletic Skechers over her bare feet, but he knew she was there; he pointed at the glass he’d filled for her.

As usual, he seemed to fill the room—he always filled the room, no matter how large it was, though calling her kitchen roomy went beyond exaggeration and straight to blatant lie. He’d gone to lunch in a tailored sport coat over jeans and a collarless short-sleeved shirt, a look he carried off with much panache. Now he’d dumped the coat and still looked…good.

Oh, yeah.

For a wistful moment, Kimmer wished they could simply lock the door and exchange frantic Kool-Aid flavored kisses. Forget Hank, forget family…just Rio and Kimmer, warming up the house on a beautiful spring day.

But Hank was on the way. They had no more than minutes. In fact, he should have been here by now. Kimmer strongly suspected he’d gotten lost. She wished she could take credit for the missing street sign between her street and the main road…it was enough that she’d neglected to mention it to Hank. She sighed heavily and reached for the cold glass.

The sigh got his attention. He turned to look at her, tossing the hand towel back into haphazard place over the stove handle, his mouth already open to say something, but abruptly hesitating on the words. He stared; she raised her eyebrows. He cleared his throat. “I like that sweater.”

Kimmer smoothed down the hem. “It’s unexpectedly easy to remove,” she informed him.

“That’s not fair.” He seemed to have forgotten he held his drink.

She shrugged at his ruefulness over Hank’s impending arrival. “You’re the one who wanted me to give Hank his say.”

That brought him back down to earth. “But—” He narrowed his eyes at her, accenting the angle of them “—you told me you couldn’t use your knack on me.”

“I can’t,” she said, sipping the drink. It wasn’t what she’d have chosen, but it was cold and felt good on her throat.

“Ah.” His expression turned more rueful yet. “That obvious, am I?”

“Oh, yeah.” She gave him a moment to digest the notion, then nodded at the front door. “Let’s wait on the porch. I don’t want to invite him in.”

He followed her outside, latching the screen door against the cat she seemed to have acquired when Rio moved in—an old white marina cat with black blotches, half an ear and half a front leg missing. Rio had seemed almost as surprised as Kimmer when it showed up along with him, muttering some lame-ass explanation about how it was too old to survive alone at the dock. OldCat, he called it.

Big softie. That was Rio, deep down. Too intensely affected by the lives of those he cared about, even the life of a used-up cat.

Though the cat did look comfortable on her front window sill.

Kimmer helped herself to a corner of the porch swing and sat cross-legged, shuffling off her Skechers. Rio took up the rest of the seat and stretched his legs out before him, taking up the duty of nudging the thing back and forth ever so slightly. Down by the barely visible stop sign, a blotchy green-on-green Suburban traveled slowly down the main road, passing by her unidentified street.

Rio settled his glass on the arm of the swing. “You may have to go get him.”

Kimmer didn’t think so.

After a moment, she said, “When I was little, my mother used to rock with me.”

“I thought—”

“Before she died,” Kimmer said dryly. “Sometimes my father would be out with my brothers—some sports event, usually. It was the only time we had together. And she spent it rocking me, trying to pretend she wasn’t crying. It was too late for her, she said, but not for me. So she spent that time whispering her rules to me. How to survive. Making damn sure I wouldn’t end up like she did.”

He frowned, hitched his leg up and shifted his back into the corner pillow. They’d been a long time sitting this day; no doubt it was starting to ache. If so, he didn’t pay it any close attention. “You’ve never really said—”

“No. I haven’t. Who’d want to?” She felt herself grow smaller, drawn in to be as inconspicuous as a child hiding desperately in an attic. Except as soon as she realized it, she shook herself out of it, deliberately relaxed her legs to more of an open lotus position. “I don’t want to go into it right now. I can’t. I’ve got Hank to deal with. But I wanted you to know at least that much, before you watch how I handle this. Every time I say or do something you wouldn’t even consider saying or doing to your family, think about the fact that my mother used her most precious private time making sure I knew no one would take care of me but me. Making sure I always knew to have a way out. That I always knew what the people around me were doing. That I always saw them first.”

“You’re talking in halves.” He prodded her with a sock-enclosed toe, gently, and then withdrew. “There’s so much you’re leaving out.”

She heard the sounds before she even reached the house. Flesh against flesh. Chairs overturning. A muffled cry.

When she was younger, she wouldn’t let herself believe it. But she was eight now, and she had her world figured out. She flung her school papers to the ground, gold stars and all. She charged up the porch stairs and through the creaky screen door and all the way to the kitchen, and she was only an instant away from launching herself onto her father’s back, right where the sweat seeped through his shirt from the effort of hitting her mama, when Mama looked up from the floor and cried out for her to stop.