"Nineteen."

"About nineteen years, then."

I blink rapidly. "You've lived here the whole time? The whole time we've been moving around, running, you've been here?"

"Yes."

"Do you not see how fucked up that is?"

He shrugs.

Before I can completely lose it, my mother grabs my arm and pulls me down onto the couch with her. "I know it's hard to understand…"

"No, it's quite easy, actually," I tell her, raising my voice so loud that Killer perks up, lifting his head to look at me. "You've spent years on the run because of something he did, and it hasn't affected him at all. He has a house, a home, something I've wanted my entire life, but I couldn't have… he had it. He has it."

She casts her eyes toward John as he lingers in the room, relaying some silent message to him that I don't understand. None of the hate I want to see from her is present when she regards him. No, I see something else instead. Compassion.

It fuels my hate more.

He excuses himself then, giving us some privacy. As soon as he's gone, she turns back to me again. "Just because he's been in one place doesn't mean he hasn't been affected. He lost his family."

"Him?" I ask incredulously. "He lost his family? He killed Naz's!"

"I know," she says, her words striking me hard. I never doubted it, but the confirmation is a hard pill to swallow. "He did."

"Did you know?" My voice is tentative. I'm afraid of her answer. "Did you know he was going to do it, that he was planning to…?"

"Of course not," she says, those tears in her eyes breaking forth and running down her cheeks. "Maria was my best friend. Had I known… had he told me… I would've stopped him. I would've done whatever I had to in order to stop him. But I didn't know until it was too late, until it was over, until he came home…"

She closes her eyes as she flinches at the memory.

"So why are you here now?" I ask, my voice low and accusing. I'm trying to stay calm, but I don't understand how she can sit in this room, in this house with him. How she can run to him after what he did. "Why are you even near him?"

"He had no choice," she says. "He had to… he had to do something."

"So he killed a woman," I say with disbelief. "That was his solution? He shot his best friend. Naz told me all about it, how he smiled in his face, acted like nothing was wrong, and then tried to kill him that night."

"Vitale told you that?" She raises her eyebrows in question. "Did he tell you he was planning to kill John the whole time that was happening?"

"You don't know what you're talking about."

"No, you don't," she says pointedly. "Vitale can play victim in the whole thing, and he was a victim… he was… but he wasn't the only one."

"That excuses nothing," I say.

"You're right—it doesn't. It happened, and there's nothing anybody can do to change it. But there's been enough death. Too much death. Instead of gunning for John after that, they came for his family. So he left us, so we could go into hiding, because maybe if they thought he didn't care about us they wouldn't bother killing us. But it didn't work. Clearly, it didn't work. Because he found us." She pauses, looking at me. "He found you."

I just stare at her. I always thought my mother was unbalanced, that she was needlessly paranoid, but she'd merely been trying to stay two steps ahead of the monster… a monster I unknowingly ran straight to the moment I was away from her.

Despite her warnings, I walked straight into the lion's den, serving myself up on a platter, the meal he was always looking for.

There's something about you... something I've sought for a very long time. Something I've always wanted. And now that I've found it, I don't know if I can let it go.

Closing my eyes, I drop my head, covering my face with my hands. The truth was right there from the beginning. It's all too much to come to terms with. My head is ferociously pounding. My chest feels like it might burst.

Killer appears at my legs then, nudging me with his nose as he whines. I wrap my arms around him, laying my head against the top of his.

He never lied to me.

He never thought to kill me.

At the moment, he's the only one I don't seem to hate.

"I need some time to think," I say. "Some time to process."

She rubs my back gently. "There's a spare bedroom upstairs. We're going to ride out this weekend here and then we'll go."

"Go where?"

"As far away from here as we can go."

Those words do nothing to make me feel better. Going, I think, might kill me more than staying.

I'm not a man who just gives up in the middle of something. If I go any further, if I don't walk away now, I won't be able to.

The bedroom is decently sized, the furniture light oak and appears unused. No dents, no nicks, no scuffs on the wood, and if I had enough energy to look, I'd bet all the drawers in the dresser are empty, the stiff sheets most definitely never slept on before.

I couldn't make out much of it in the dark, my head hurting too much to turn on the light when I climbed into the bed. Despite my exhaustion, I couldn't fall asleep, wide-awake as Naz's words repeatedly roll through my frazzled mind.