The Killing Kind Read Free Page B

empty food bowl, giving Evie sad eyes the whole way.
    “Why didn’t Daddy feed you?” Evie asked, her delicate features set in a frown. But if Abby knew, she wasn’t spilling. Evie fetched Abby’s kibble from under the sink and shook some into the bowl. Abby crunched away with abandon.
    “Stu?” Evie called. A clap of thunder shook the house, and the lights flickered all around her. She headed for the living room—the room from which Abigail had emerged.
    As she neared the doorway, she spotted something that set her mind reeling.
    Stuart’s feet, unmoving—clad in plain white gym socks, the red stripe at the toe of each pointed ceilingward.
    Evie’s mouth went dry, and her heart leapt.
    “Stuart?” she shrieked, her shrill tone piercing the silence of the farmhouse and echoing back at her like a mockingbird’s reply. She hit the doorway at a sprint, and then stopped short.
    Stuart was lying on his back amid a sea of dowel rods and hardware beneath a half-assembled crib. When he heard her call, he jerked upright into a seated position—his forehead smacking against the wooden frame and causing the rickety structure to collapse atop him.
    “Son of a—” he cried, and then caught himself. He’d been doing that a lot lately—as if the overgrown bean sprout in Evie’s uterus were absorbing every swear word within earshot, and would emerge five months from now cursing a blue streak.
    “You asshole,” she said, ignoring his reproachful look. “You scared the shit out of me! Not answering when I called, leaving Abby unfed, and then...”
    Stuart yanked the iPod earbuds from his ears and climbed stiffly to his feet. “Evie, I’m sorry—I didn’t hear you come in! I was trying to surprise you by getting the crib together before—” and here he noticed the rain through the French doors. He knitted his brow. “Before you got home. But these directions are ridiculous, and I guess I just lost track of time. I swear, I didn’t mean to scare you—do you forgive me?”
    “Of course,” Evie replied. She was now crying and found it hard to catch her breath. She had no idea why.
    “Hey,” Stu said, taking her in his arms. He knew her well enough to know she’d blame this on her mood swings. And he knew her well enough to know that wasn’t true. “It’s okay. I’ve got you. And I’m not going anywhere.”
    Stuart held her close and waited for her panic to abate. Then he kissed away her tears and led her to the bedroom— both of them trying hard not to think about the fiancé she’d lost years back to a roadside bomb somewhere north of Kandahar.
    The farmhouse burned bright against the dimming sky as day evened into night. Eventually, Stu and Evie came back downstairs and cooked dinner—both tired, both happy, both content. They sat awhile and watched TV with Abigail at their feet until their eyelids grew heavy. Then Evie shuffled off to bed. Stuart and Abigail followed shortly after, only delaying long enough to wander the house’s perimeter—Stuart shutting windows and checking locks.
    And from the darkness of the forest, Hendricks watched unnoticed—as he’d been doing for hours, and as he’d done so many nights before. He watched until the only light that showed in any of the windows was the flicker of the TV in the master suite. He watched until even that went dark. He watched until the sky began to lighten to the east. Then he hiked back to his rental car and headed north, toward home.

4
     
    Union Station in Utica, New York, is a structure oddly out of time and place. The city itself is a decaying industrial town nestled in the Mohawk River Valley, five hours and a world away from the bustle of Manhattan. Its streets are run-down and ill-traveled, and many of its storefronts sit empty. The factories that once provided jobs for its residents are now boarded or bricked up; the few windows left exposed are gapped by decades’ worth of vandals’ stones.
    Yet Utica’s train station—which,