Skin Privilege

Lena stayed in bed for almost twelve hours, only getting up when nature compelled her to. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw Charlotte sitting in the back of the Escalade again, waiting for the flames to devour her. The way the woman's arms had flailed, her feet kicking the back of Lena 's seat like an animal trapped in a box… the thought of it was too much to bear.

She wanted not to feel anything. Wasn't that what Charlotte had said that last time they had spoken in the trailer at school? What had the woman done afterward? Probably taught her last class, then gone home to fix supper for her kids. She had kissed her husband when he got home from work. Maybe they watched a movie that night on the sofa. She would have had less than twenty-four hours left in her life by then. How had she spent them? What had Charlotte been doing that morning when the bad guys came to get her?

That was when Lena had started rereading Charlotte 's letters. She had gone back into the motel for them, known that they could not be left behind. She cherished them now, these love letters that said as much about Sibyl as they did about the woman who wrote them. Charlotte had been a kind, good person. No matter what mistakes she had made in her life, she did not deserve to die in such a horrible way.

Lena should have been in the back of that car. She was the one who had made the mistakes. She was the one who deserved to be punished.

'Why didn't they kill me instead?'

That's what she had asked Jeffrey when she'd called. Lena had been so stupid to think that he would leave town. Even Sara Linton had known there was no way Jeffrey would abandon her.

Hearing his voice on the phone was like a knife twisting in her gut. She had wanted to tell him everything – where she was, what had happened to Charlotte, how Hank had lied to her all these years – but she'd panicked the moment she'd heard his voice. The men who killed Charlotte could be listening in. They could somehow trace the call through the cell towers. They could kill Jeffrey for knowing too much.

They must have been watching Lena all along, following her from the minute she rolled into town. What a fool she had been. A smart person would have acted differently. A caring niece would have taken one look at her uncle and called an ambulance. A good friend would have left Charlotte Warren alone. A just person would have walked back into the fire and joined Charlotte in her violent end rather than sitting like a spectator on the sidelines.

Maybe Lena would have if the sheriff hadn't shown up. Jake Valentine. What a stupid name. He seemed to realize this, because he had ducked his head in embarrassment the first time he introduced himself, and Lena had seen something that few people had probably ever laid their eyes on: a thi

As if an Escalade wasn't blazing right behind him, a dead woman inside.

She hadn't talked to him, hadn't let one word cross her lips. At first, this had been because she was in shock. Lena had been sitting on the bleachers on the football field, her mind reeling, but not with the things that she would've expected. She was remembering football games, pep rallies. In school, Lena had always hung out with the bad kids and they never sat on the front row of the bleachers. They were always in the top row, hidden by the crowd so they could heckle the cheerleaders or, better yet, drop down to the ground and sneak away.

But, that night, she sat in the front row, her foot propped up on the gas can, as she watched the Escalade burn. The heat was intense, like nothing she'd ever felt before. Even sitting a hundred feet away from it, her skin prickled as if from a sunburn. Her throat hurt as if she'd swallowed acid, and when Jake Valentine had stood in front of her, trying to draw her out, she hadn't been able to make words.

'What'd he do to you?' Valentine asked, and Lena didn't know what he meant, so she just kept quiet.

He'd sat beside her on the bench, watched the car burn. 'I see you've been hit. You don't get bruised like that from falling down.'

Lena had stared at the flames, watched them dance along the roof of the car. The gas tank had exploded a while ago and though she could hear the man's voice, she couldn't quite process his words.

The sheriff said, 'Whatever he did to you, you gotta let me know. If it was self-defense-'

Lena had looked at him, her head snapping around in surprise. She opened her mouth, felt the air hit the back of her throat, the heat from the burning SUV quickly drying the saliva.

She closed her mouth and stared at the fire.

To his credit, Jake Valentine had not handcuffed her then. Lena was thankful for that at least. Ethan had liked her handcuffs, liked sneaking up on her, wrapping his hand around her mouth and scaring the shit out of her. He had loved hitting her even more, and Lena found herself considering the irony as Jake Valentine helped her into the back of one of the squad cars on scene – the sheriff thinking Lena was an abused woman who had snapped instead of a devil who brought death to everyone around her.

Jeffrey. She had to get him out of this town before he ruined everything.

Down at the abandoned warehouse, a Harley-Davidson motorcycle pulled up, the muffler popping and roaring like an angry dragon. Lena put her eye to the camera. She had turned off the digital screen because of the light and the need to save the battery. It was hard to find a place to charge things when you didn't know where you'd be spending your nights.

She cringed as lightning illuminated the night sky. From early afternoon, the air had been heavy with the threat of rain. Lena wasn't worried so much about getting drenched as being found. These were not the kind of people who took kindly to being spied on.

The Harley revved a few times, then the engine was cut. The rider was one of the few people who went into the building but didn't come out immediately with a bag of dope. Despite the bike, he didn't dress like a Hells Angel. Of course, the bike wasn't really his – it belonged to Deacon Simms. Lena recognized the Harley the moment she saw it. The rider was around Lena 's age, clean-cut, his hair neatly shaved in a military style. He wore faded jeans, but a dress shirt was usually under his leather jacket. He always left his helmet on the seat of the bike. On more than one occasion, she had seen him check his reflection in the mirror mounted on the handlebars before going inside.

She'd nicknamed him Harley for the obvious reason, but she knew he had a name and that his name probably caused fear in a lot of people. There was something about the way the others steered clear of him that made her think he was a colonel rather than a foot soldier.

Harley was Lena 's suspect zero, the rat who had led her back to the nest. The first thing she'd done when she got back to Reece two days ago was look for Hank. The drive from Florida had been a long one. It was the middle of the night by the time she got into town. Lena had parked the Mercedes three streets from Hank's house and made the trek on foot. She'd nearly vomited from the smell when she first walked in through the back door. Her initial thought was that Deacon Simms, still tucked up in the attic, was the source of the odor, but a quick look in the bathroom had proven otherwise. The toilet had been shattered. The house was empty. There was no sign of anything except misery and ruin.

Lena had given up then. Hank was gone. Charlotte was dead. Lena was a fugitive. Two days ago, a couple of men had argued in the hospital corridor about whether or not to kill her, and Ethan… who knew how Ethan was involved?

Lena went outside to think. She was sitting on one of the boxes stacked on the back porch when she heard the motorcycle. The pipes must have woken up everyone on the street, but no one threw open their windows to complain. She followed the rumble as the bike came up the drive, parked in front of Hank's house. It was Deacon's bike, she knew it by sound, just like she knew there was no way Deacon was riding it.