Fear

It was so compelling that Sam followed the direction of her gaze. Nothing. But he recognized the movement: how many times in the last months had he done the same himself? A sort of paranoid, sidelong glance at something that wasn’t there?

Astrid shook her head slowly. “I’m… I have to go. I’m not feeling well.”

He watched her walk away. It was irritating, to put it mildly. Infuriating.

In the old days he’d have called her out on it, demanded to know what she was thinking.

But he sensed that what he had with Astrid was fragile. She was back, but not all the way back. He didn’t want to start a battle with her. There was a war coming, no time for battles with someone he loved.

But her abrupt departure had the effect of leaving him with only one thread to follow, one thing to think about: the solution.

The solution that did not exist.

Penny lived alone in a small house on the eastern edge of town. From her upstairs bedroom window she could see just a narrow slice of the ocean and she liked that.

She wanted to move into Clifftop. But Caine had denied that request. Clifftop was Lana’s to do with as she pleased. Even when Lana had moved to the lake—temporarily, as it turned out—Clifftop had remained a no-go zone.

“No one messes with Lana,” Caine had decreed.

Lana, Lana, Lana. Everyone just loved Lana.

Penny had spent some time with her when Lana fixed her shattered legs. It had taken a long time, in fact, because there were so many breaks in the bones. Penny found Lana stuck-up. It was certainly a relief to have her legs fixed, and it was very nice not to have that pain, but that didn’t mean Lana had a right to act all high-and-mighty and above it all.

And have an entire massive hotel all to herself. Deciding who could come or go.

It bothered Penny that Lana had that kind of respect. Because Penny knew she could leave Lana crawling and crying and tearing her eyes out like Cigar had done.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Five minutes alone with Little Miss Healer. See how she liked it. See how high-and-mighty she was then.

The only problem was that Caine would kill Penny. Caine felt nothing for Penny. She had hoped after Diana took off… But no, there was no disguising Caine’s look of contempt whenever he saw Penny.

Even now, even with all Penny’s power, Caine was still the big man, the popular guy, the good-looking guy who would spit on someone like Penny, with her scraggly hair and awkward, bony arms and flat-as-a-board chest. Even now life was all about who was hot and who was not.

But Caine wasn’t the only boy around.

There was a soft knock at the back door. Penny opened it for Turk.

“Were you careful?” she asked.

“I went way out of the way. Then I jumped a couple of fences.” He was breathing hard and sweating. She believed him.

“All that just to see me?” Penny asked.

He didn’t answer. He flopped down in one of the easy chairs, sending up a cloud of dust. He leaned his gun against the side of the chair. Then he pulled off his boots, making himself comfortable.

Suddenly a scorpion crawled onto his arm. He yelled, swatted at it frantically, jumped out of his chair.

Then he saw the smile on her face.

“Hey, don’t do that to me!” Turk cried.

“Then don’t ignore me,” she said. She hated the pleading sound in her own voice.

“I wasn’t ignoring you.” He sat back down, carefully inspecting for scorpions—as if it had been real.

Turk wasn’t the smartest guy, Penny acknowledged with a sigh. He was no Caine. Or Sam. Or even Quinn. Maybe they could ignore Penny, and not even treat her like a girl, and curl their lips in disgust at her, but not Turk. Turk was just a dumb punk.

Penny felt a surge of fury so strong she had to turn away to hide it. Overlooked, ignored, forgotten Penny.

She was the middle of three girls in her family. Her older sister was named Dahlia. Her younger sister was named Rose. Two pretty flower names. And a plain old Penny in between.

Dahlia was a beauty. As early as Penny could remember their father had loved Dahlia. He had dressed Dahlia up in all kinds of outfits … feathers, silky underwear … and taken hundreds of pictures of her. Right up until Dahlia started to develop.

And then, when their father lost interest in Dahlia, Penny had naturally assumed she would be the one, the beloved, the admired one. She assumed she would be the one posing, bending this way and that, showing and concealing, making little coy faces or scared faces, depending on what her father needed.

But her father had barely noticed Penny. Instead he’d moved past her to pretty little Rose.

And soon it was Rose starring in the pictures her father uploaded to the internet.

It was a few years before Penny came to understand that what her father did was against the law.

Then she had waited until her father was at work and she had taken his laptop with her to school and shown the pictures to some of the kids. A teacher had seen and called the police.

Her father had been arrested. Penny’s mother started drinking more than ever before. And all three girls had been sent to live with Uncle Steve and Aunt Connie.

Surprise, surprise, poor little victimized Dahlia and Rose—poor, pretty little Dahlia and Rose—had gotten all the sympathy and all the attention.

Their father hanged himself in his jail cell after other inmates had beaten him.

Penny had put Drano in Rose’s cereal, just to see how pretty she would be with her throat burned out. And then Penny was shipped off to Coates.