Killer Move

“I don’t like doing this stuff,” Hunter says, sounding strangely sincere. “I stopped being that guy long before I ever even met you. But I’ve made it clear what I need, and you’re just not cooperating. You see how that makes things hard for me, right?”

The man in the chair raises his head. “You know what you sound like? You sound like the kind of father who’s going to hit his kid, hit him hard, who knows he’s going to do it, and for no good reason except he’s hungover and an asshole, but wants the kid to take the blame.”

Hunter opens his mouth, but shuts it again—so fast and hard you can hear a click.

“Ring any bells?” the man in the chair asks. “Take you back at all?”

Hunter cocks his head, and the man in the chair realizes he’s hit home a lot harder than he meant to, and possibly in the wrong direction.

“You’re talking to me about kids?” Hunter says quietly. “Because of you, I don’t have kids. Because of you, I spent sixteen years in jail for the murder of the woman I wanted to have children with.”

“Just as well. You’re a loser, and she was a whore. The world doesn’t need more of that in the genetic stew.”

Hunter kicks out again, and this time he does it hard. Hard enough to cause the man in the chair to cry out, something halfway to a scream—and to make the chair rock back on the concrete promontory.

“You want another?” Hunter asks, his voice thickening. “How many more kicks before a chair leg goes out over the edge, do you think?”

Light-headed with pain, suddenly unsure if this is such a great idea after all, the man nonetheless looks up at him. “You’re not going to send me over, asshole. Do that, and you got nothing.”

Hunter looks at him, breathing hard.

“You’re smart,” he says finally, and his voice is calm again. “Course you are—else you wouldn’t be such a success in life, right? I really do not want to have to push you over yet, it’s true. But that leaves me in something of a pickle. It limits the range of the threats I can make—and you, smart boy that you are, have got right onto that. Hmm. Oh wait, though, I just thought of something.”

He turns and walks back to the far wall, where he stoops and picks up the cinder block.

“I found some comfort in repetition and ritual during the years I was in jail,” he says. “When time started to weigh on me, it was things happening in the same way and at the same time each day that helped. It turned it into a long dark dream, so that sometimes I could pretend it wasn’t happening to me at all, but was some weird shadow turning over and over itself in one endless night. Maybe you’ll find the same.”

He walks back until he is standing in front of the chair. He raises his hand slowly, lofting the block high over the other man’s knee again.

“Let’s find out,” he says softly.

And that’s the point at which the man in the chair decides he’s waited long enough and he’s wound the guy up sufficiently and it’s time to end this right here and right fucking now.

He says a name. Blurts it quickly, says it three times, the syllables tripping over themselves.

Hunter freezes.

He looks down at the other man for a long moment, the arm with the cinder block held out, perfectly still.

“Really?”

The man in the chair nods, feverishly.

“I guess I can believe it,” Hunter says, lowering his hand, his eyes already elsewhere. “Motherfucker. I kind of looked up to that guy, too. Well, thank you. That’s a start. You done good. I hope we can keep things moving along this more positive road in the future.”

He takes the block back to the wall and puts it down. “I’ll leave that there, though—just in case tomorrow’s session doesn’t go so well.”

He picks up the water bottle. He returns to the man in the chair and drops it in his lap. “You be thinking about some more names,” he says. “And maybe next time I’ll even let you drink some of that.”

Then he steps over the edge of the floor and disappears, like a bird of prey dropping out of the sky.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Steph had left the house by the time I got out of the shower. I knew she had some big-deal meeting, though I couldn’t recall who it was with. As I trotted down the stairs toward a kitchen that seemed larger than usual and preternaturally empty, I was aware of how strange this was making me feel. Our lives are meshed at root level. I’m normally very aware of Steph and her movements, her doings and concerns. Not this morning. She was out, meeting someone somewhere. Not a big deal, yet a big deal. Life felt different on the back of it.