He turned to lean back against the wall, crossing his feet at the ankles and his arms over his chest. He seemed content to quietly watch me as I looked around.
I pointed to a picture of an older man, a face that was featured in all of the pictures scattered around. “Is this your dad?”
Bo nodded.
I figured as much. In some pictures, he was by himself. In some pictures he was with Bo’s mother. But in every picture, he was there, like the image of a ghost that refused to fade with time. I thought of Izzy’s room. I knew all about those kinds of hauntings.
My heart ached for Bo’s loss. It wasn’t a shrine really, but I could see that Bo probably got a lot of his motivation from the articles in this room. His relationship with his dad was written all over the place.
There was a baseball mitt, a football, some tennis balls with faces drawn on them, a floppy fishing hat and fishing pole. There were some model cars and a model airplane, projects I guessed Bo completed with his father. The whole room was like the sad history of a life cut short and the evidence of a son who couldn’t let go.
The one thing that I found odd was that Bo was not featured in any of the pictures with his family. I wanted to ask him about it, but I’d already done enough to taint his good mood. I could wait until another time to find my answers.
I slid my eyes over to Bo. He was watching me closely, an inscrutable look on his face. I glanced away quickly. I felt as if I was intruding on a very intimate family gathering.
“He would’ve liked you.” When Bo finally spoke, the thick walls absorbed the words as soon as they left his lips. Behind the music, the room was an eerie kind of quiet, almost tomblike.
“What was he like?”
Bo leaned his head back against the wall, his eyes on the low ceiling, a sad smile curving his lips.
“He was great. He taught me everything,” he said. “He always said he wanted to prepare me to do anything I wanted to do, to ‘take the world by storm’, he’d say.” He laughed, a bitter bark of a sound, and then his eyelids drifted shut. “He didn’t deserve the death they gave him.”
“What happened to him?”
“As far as I can remember, there were two guys at his throat. They attacked him so viciously, they almost decapitated him. He was nearly drained of blood. The coroner’s report said he was dead within seconds.”
“And you had to watch?”
Bo’s eyes opened to meet mine. They were fathomless pools of agony. “They were stronger than you can imagine. Even after years of playing sports, of football and weightlifting, they held me easily. There were two more guys holding me and a girl was watching. She said she wanted me to watch, that she wanted my heart pumping for her. Pumping hard.”
I covered my mouth with my fingers. I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to cry or be sick. Probably both.
“Then what happened?” It was so gruesome, I could hardly stand it, but I had to know what happened to Bo and to his father, what had caused this need for revenge that was costing him his life.
“When they were finished with Dad, they held me while she bit me. She went wild when she tasted my blood, said that it was sweet, that she could taste the power in it.
“The other two started complaining about wanting to feed, but she wouldn’t let them. My guess is that she decided to keep me for herself, but the two guys holding me didn’t like the new plan. One of them attacked her, just let go of my arm and pounced on her.
“The other one held on, but he was distracted by the fight. I guess my adrenaline was jacked up, so I was finally able to get away from him. I went to check on Dad,” Bo said, closing his eyes again, this time in remembered pain. “But he was already gone.”
Bo shook his head. “Anyway, I looked back and they were tearing each other apart, blood and spit flying everywhere. I took off, ran as fast as I could to an old cabin in the woods, one I’d seen several times when we’d been hunting. I remember banging on the door, but no one answered. I knew I needed to get away, but I didn’t have the energy to go any further. I remember falling against the door and sliding down to the ground. I guess I passed out there. That’s all I remember until I woke up like…this.”
“Bo,” I breathed, my heart breaking for him.
“When she bit me, she must’ve injected me. I found out later that she did it on purpose. She wanted to keep me as some sort of weird drinking buddy, almost like a mate.”
“How do you know that?”
Bo paused, giving me the strangest look before he answered. “I saw it in her memories when I drained her.”
I tried to remain calm, not to get all judgmental about Bo talking so casually about murder. All I had to do was remind myself what they’d done to his father and it didn’t seem quite so bad anymore. I’m sure, for Bo, it was more than adequate justification for killing them.
“Who was she?”
“Her name was Jolene Turner.”
I remembered the name. I’d heard the news report about her death a couple weeks ago.
“That was you?”
Bo nodded solemnly.
“They thought it was the...the…” I couldn’t finish the sentence. I couldn’t get the name Southmoore Slayer past my numb lips.
CHAPTER TEN
A number I’d heard in the news report kept running through my head like a ticker tape. Twenty-seven. Twenty-seven. Twenty-seven.
“No,” Bo said, casting his eyes down.
“No what?” My breath was coming in short, quick pants.
“No, I didn’t kill all of them.”
I closed my eyes and a sigh of relief blew through my lips. “Thank God,” I whispered. “How—”
I stopped myself from asking how many Bo had killed. Information like that would only make things harder, and I didn’t need things to get any harder.
“Never mind,” I said. “So, you still haven’t been able to find the one who killed your father, right?”
“No.”
“And you won’t stop until you do?” I couldn’t keep the bitter edge from my voice.