Razed

by Shiloh Walker

  But then she looked up at him.

  He met her gaze, his blue green eyes steady behind his glasses, his mouth unsmiling.

  She knew, without a doubt, if she reached for him, he’d come.

  She knew, without a doubt, if she started to cry, he’d hold her. Those solid, square shoulders seemed to be made for it.

  But what would he do if she told him? Would he look away, disappointed in her?

  Would he learn about the deception she’d lived the past few years and see her in a different light?

  “Stop thinking so hard,” he murmured, closing the distance between them and reaching up to cup her cheek. “Let’s just get out of here for now. You and me.”

  You and me.

  She and Zane. It was the sweetest thing she could think of just then. Just her, just him.

  Slowly, she nodded, and this time, as he went to lead her out of the room, she didn’t resist.

  * * *

  Zane thought about taking her home.

  But his gut told him that whatever had made her miserable waited for her there.

  He thought about taking her to the loft and tucking her into bed. She looked like she’d slept as much as he had and even though the sun still burned high in the sky, she probably needed a good eight hours of sleep. But he saw nightmares and tears and misery in her eyes. If she tried to sleep now, all of that would follow her.

  So he drove, no destination in mind.

  At least not one that he was aware of.

  It wasn’t a surprise, though, when he found himself in front of the empty space that he planned to turn into his studio.

  If things kept moving, they’d be finalizing soon. Things were moving forward with a speed that almost satisfied Zane’s desire to do this—now.

  He’d even gotten the door code. Not that the Realtor knew about it. The current owner apparently trusted Abby, so that trust transferred onto her brother-in-law.

  When the SUV stopped, she looked around with a grim expression.

  She was pale.

  Whatever had put that haunted look in her eyes was something he wanted to kill. He wanted it dead and battered and buried.

  “Where are we?” she asked, although the lack of interest in her voice didn’t reflect all that much enthusiasm.

  “I’m setting up my studio here—made the offer the other day. The current owner accepted.” He shoved open the door. “Come on. I want you to see it.”

  He thought he might have to convince her to go inside, but apparently she wasn’t too big on just sitting and brooding. She was out of the car almost before he could shut his door, meeting him on the sidewalk.

  But she was closed off, arms wrapped around her middle, her shoulders slumped. Even the tattoos bared by her shirt seemed less . . . vibrant. He didn’t pull her against him the way he wanted. Not yet.

  He was going to give her a chance to open up, without him pushing. She might not do it. He’d try not to force it. But that would make it hard for him to kill whatever had done this. Batter it. Bury it.

  She really brought out the bloodthirsty Neanderthal in him.

  “Let’s go inside.” He grabbed his laptop bag from the back and held out a hand.

  It surprised him when she accepted it.

  Once in the cool, slightly stale air, he led her deeper inside, away from the windows. “I’m already thinking about the design layout I want to go with.”

  “You just found this place, right? How did you get things rolling so fast?”

  “I didn’t just find it. It’s been a few days.” He looked around, rocking back on his heels. “This is the place—I knew it when I saw it. Talked to the previous tenant. His family owns the place. They’d like to sell it, but for now, they’re willing to let me take it at the price he was paying for rent. He really wants to move out of the state. I’ve already got my business plan, everything lined up. I’d been half planning for this for a while and now that I’m done with the half planning part . . .”

  He stopped and shrugged.

  “You’re tired of waiting,” she finished.

  “Yeah. So they gave me the code, let me come in so I can start getting measurements, figure what I’m going to do with the space. I guess Abby vouched for me.”

  “And he just let you have the code.” A faint smile curved her lips. “I swear, you and your brothers. You just ask, and you get. Spoiled.”

  He snorted. “Yeah, that’s me . . . the world is my oyster.”

  Impatience all but gnawed him with hot, sharp little teeth. Zane had spent the last twenty years of his life acting like this was just a hobby, but now that he was ready to make it something more, he was stuck with waiting.

  “I put this off too long,” he said, intensity burning inside. “I don’t want to wait anymore.”

  Under most circumstances, waiting for anything didn’t bother him.

  He was the patient one. Everything happened when it was supposed to and him pacing the floors and brooding and bitching didn’t do a damn bit of good, so why bother?

  The past few months had twisted things up on him.

  He didn’t want to wait to put his life into motion anymore.

  He didn’t want to wait to get this business growing.

  And he didn’t want to wait for . . .

  Keelie came to stand next to him and he had to jam his hands into his pockets to keep from pulling her into his arms and making demands he had no right to make. Asking questions he knew she wasn’t ready to answer.

  He didn’t want to wait for her.

  He was a hypocrite.

  He’d been nagging his brother to make a move on Abby and here he was, standing next to the only woman who’d ever made him feel much of anything . . . So maybe he hadn’t carried a twenty-year torch for her, but he’d known her six years, and even that very first time he’d seen her, he’d felt a pull. It had been another year before he saw her again, and the pull was stronger.

  But he still hadn’t done anything, not for a couple more years.

  Then she’d smiled, shrugged it off. He’d tried again, with the same result, a few months later. Normally after that, Zane would let it go—if a woman isn’t interested then she isn’t interested, but there was something about this woman that wouldn’t let him let go.

  The more he got to know her, the more he needed to know.

  And he was tired of waiting.

  He was closer now than ever, but it still wasn’t enough.

  He opened his mouth, those questions burning on the tip of his tongue.

  Keelie tipped her head back, studying the slanted ceiling set with wide windows. It was one of the features that had caught his eye, although the bare, naked white didn’t exactly fit in with what he had in mind.

  He’d have to paint it. Maybe in a few years, put a different ceiling in altogether.

  “I wonder if you could put a picture up there.”

  He slid Keelie a look. She still had those shadows in her eyes, but there was a hard glint, almost like she had made up her mind to lock herself away from whatever had crawled out to haunt her. Biting back a sigh, he resigned himself to yet more . . . waiting.

  She wasn’t ready for anything more.

  Wasn’t really a surprise. A few dates. Phone calls off and on while he was in Albuquerque. A couple of nights that made him sweat even thinking about it.

  But that didn’t make for a relationship, not in her eyes.

  She’d probably take off running if he told her he loved her. Needed her. Dreamed about her. Needed to take away some of the misery of whatever hung around her like an ugly, painful cloak.

  He said nothing.

  Folding his arms over his chest, he studied the ceiling.

  “A picture.”

  From the corner of her eye, he saw her shrug. “I don’t mean like a framed print or anything. That space is huge—it’s the first thing you see when you walk in. All that white is kinda distracting.”

  “No. I get it.” He rolled that idea ove
r in his head and looked around, spying his laptop bag where he’d dumped it near the front door. Grabbing his computer, he settled his back against the long wall that split the front from the back and powered up. Keelie sat down just as the desktop came up.

  “That owl,” she murmured.

  He glanced at her.

  She reached out, stopping just before her fingers touched the screen. Then she angled her gaze up at him. “That’s one of yours.”

  He shrugged. “Yeah. Took it back when I was a kid. My grandpa was big into birding and nature. He used to take us camping before he died. The others loved the fishing, making s’mores. I loved hearing him talk about everything else. Mom gave me his camera when he died. Man. I loved that camera. It was a Leoto. They don’t make them anymore. I carried it almost everywhere with me up until I went to college.” He touched his finger to the screen, remembering how his grandfather had taught him how to use the camera, how to grab something more than a few blurry shots of his brothers. “The owl was one of the first good shots I got.”

  “How old were you? Do you remember?”

  To the day, he thought, his mind flashing back to it. Then he shrugged. “When I was twelve.”

  Sixth grade. Riding his bike home with Shannon Macy. His first big crush.

  Sixth grade . . . when he learned one of the most crucial lessons in life.

  Running away never solved anything.

  “I guess I see why you had the owl put on you,” Keelie murmured, resting her head on his shoulder. “Is that when you really got into photography?”

  Zane stared at the image.

  Let it go. Let it go . . .

  “It was before then actually.” He flipped open one file, studied a couple of the mountain images, one from Mount McKinley up in Alaska—the snow-covered peak spiking out of the ground to stand guard over a pristine lake, so still you could see the mountain, the sky, the green of the trees reflected in it. “Something like that. You can get murals made from images—they need to be high resolution. This might do it.”

  He studied the space overhead once more.

  It might not be a bad idea.

  “So how did you get into this? I can’t believe you took a picture that good when you were a kid.”

  “Yeah.” He let his fingers hover over the mouse pad on his laptop and then, before he let himself think about it too long, he went to one file. He kept it on hand for when kids showed an interest in photography. It held his oldest shots, starting from the shaky pictures he took of his brothers, a few of Abby and Zach, then to when he moved to subjects other than people. He scrolled them slowly, letting Keelie see the way he’d caught the childhood of his brothers on film. The pictures had started when he was eight and went from the unfocused pieces to the ones that had helped him land a scholarship.

  “Wow,” Keelie murmured. “Show me more.”

  He shifted to another folder, still from his teens, but these weren’t ones he showed others. Not ever. He rarely even looked at them himself. Slowly, he felt the tension creep back into the quiet woman leaning against him. Her hand lay on his thigh. He wondered if she realized she’d started to squeeze.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The pictures were . . . brutal.

  Keelie couldn’t think of any other way to describe them.

  The fact that the subjects were kids made it that much harder and her nerves were already raw. One of them showed a guy—looked like a jock, right down to the letter jacket—leaning into a girl who probably didn’t weigh half what the guy did.

  That fear . . .

  The sight of it drove a spike into Keelie’s heart and she fisted her hand tight as she stared at the image.

  Around the guy stood a group of boys and their faces were locked forever in masks of laughter.

  He’d caught that image of a bunch of guys terrifying a girl, trapped against her locker.

  The next image had a girl sitting at a table. She was by herself, lost in a book. A pair of glasses slid down her nose but she didn’t seem to notice.

  The image after it was the same girl, looking up, startled.

  The next ten images, all captured so fast, were of the girl, as that guy who’d pinned another girl against a locker took this one’s book from her and stood around with his friends. The images were so lifelike, so real, Keelie could all but hear the mocking words coming from his mouth.

  Yeah, Price! That’s . . .

  No, stop! Help!

  The memories intermingled and tried to overwhelm. She shoved them back as she focused on the pictures, watched as the girl tried to grab her book. The mocking sneer of a smile on his face made him think of things she never wanted to remember, but couldn’t forget.

  You know how this sort of thing can happen. Boys will be boys. It just got out of control.

  The final images showed her trying to get the book back, and that evil little son of a bitch tearing it in half.

  The last picture was the girl walking away in tears.

  There was another set, a boy in what looked to be a gym locker room—his tormentor was another guy. The victim was a skinny black boy, braces on his teeth, and something about him made her think he’d bump into a wall, drop his books. He just looked . . . her heart ached. He looked like the type of kid people just picked on.

  There were only three images of him. Him by his locker, and then four guys bearing down on him.

  As two hands came up to grab him, another shoved the locker open wide.

  Do it, man, do it!

  She shoved the laptop away and surged upright, her head pounding so hard, she thought it was going to explode.

  “I can’t look at these.”

  Those kids, treated like things.

  Boys will be boys . . .

  And Zane . . .

  Spinning, she stared at him where he sat, legs stretched out.

  “Why didn’t you stop them? You just stood there, snapping pictures. Why didn’t you help?” Guilt, helplessness, fury, they all beat and roared inside her. “You just stand there taking pictures?”

  His lids closed, a bitter smile on his lips. Then he opened his eyes and tapped at something on the computer. He turned to face her and placed it on the floor, rising to his feet.

  “I don’t want to see any more,” she bit off.

  Katie, let me handle this . . .

  She shoved a hand against her temple, tried to shove the voices out, the memories.

  “You should look.” He was standing back where he’d been earlier, studying the ceiling as though they hadn’t just witnessed some of the most casual cruelty imaginable. “You’re the only one who is likely to ever see those pictures, other than me.”

  Curling her lip, she stormed back over to the computer, flinging herself to the floor with enough force that she jarred her bones. She didn’t care. That minor pain was good. It distracted her from the pain, the misery . . . the guilt.

  Why hadn’t he done something?

  Why didn’t you . . .

  How could Zane had have just—

  Her blood froze.

  The boy stood in front of a mirror. He held the camera up over his shoulder, angling it at his back. It might have seemed odd, but the outline of what looked like a shoe solved the puzzle very well.

  The next picture had him facing forward. His nose was swollen. One eye was black.

  He was young, probably twelve years old.

  But she knew exactly who he was. Those blue green eyes hadn’t changed.

  Sucking in a breath, she moved to the next one. She didn’t know how much time had passed, but some had. His hair was longer, his shoulders looked a little wider. This time, the picture was fuzzier but the focus of it was a gash, right behind his ear.

  She rubbed her fingers together. She’d felt that scar.

  Another picture—another black eye. He was older now, maybe by a year or two, and the look in his eyes was angrier.

  Picture after picture after picture. Twenty in all, following him up until
he was probably sixteen, and that set of images was both the worst, and somehow . . . the easiest. Because the boy in front of the mirror had a smile on his face. Not a happy smile, but the kind of smile you’d see on the face of a man who’d emerged from the lion’s den.

  Two pictures, one of each hand, showed bloody, busted knuckles.

  Another of his face—his lip split, left eye black.

  There were bruises on his ribs and she swallowed in horror at the red ring on his neck—she knew what that was from, somebody grabbing you by the throat and squeezing.

  Shaken, she put it down.

  Her hands were so slippery with sweat, they left damp tracks on the surface of it. She slicked them against her jeans as she rose. He still stood with his back to her.

  “What the fuck was that?”

  He didn’t move. Didn’t say a word.

  Striding up to him, she shoved him, planting her hands on his lean back and putting all her strength into it.

  He stumbled, caught himself and turned.

  She lifted her hands to push him again, her blood roaring in her ears as emotions she couldn’t even begin to process ripped through her.

  “What the fuck was that?” she demanded again.

  He caught her wrists, eased them down.

  “That was me,” he said, shrugging, his voice easy, casual. Like he was discussing the weather.

  Tears clogged her throat and she swallowed them down, along with the furious snarl that tried to come out. “Yeah. I got that—looks like you were always pretty, even when somebody was beating the hell out of you. Who did that to you?”

  He sighed and pulled her close.

  She didn’t resist, mainly because she wasn’t sure if she had the strength to pull away.

  “If I had to be honest, I only remember the names of a couple of them.” His mouth—that beautiful mouth and now she could remember the way it had been split open time after time after time—twisted in a self-deprecating smirk. “I was jumped the first time by a couple jerks when I was coming home from school. I was in sixth grade. Decided I was going to sneak to a park and take some pictures—wanted to impress a girl. It was the day I caught the owl. Mom was at the studio with Zach and Seb. Dad was working, and the twins were in the after-school group they always went to. I spent about thirty minutes at the park, grabbed some shots—that owl—and headed back. I was two blocks from home when one of them nailed me with a rock. I crashed my bike. Before I could get up, they were on top of me.”