Little Red House
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Synopsis
In 1997, Eve Foster’s daughter, Kelsey, runs away to New Mexico and vanishes without a trace. Eve is convinced that she’s the victim of a serial killer who’s been hunting women in the region, but Kelsey’s body is never found. Years later, Eve dies, leaving everything to her adopted twin daughters. The majority of the wealthy estate in Vermont goes to Lisa, the “good daughter,” while Connie inherits only a small stipend and a property in New Mexico. Connie, often the target of Eve's cruelty, suspects this was another of her mother's vindictive games. Connie arrives in New Mexico to find a small, dilapidated red house in the desert and the home’s mysterious caretaker, Jet Montgomery, living in a shack on the property. She learns there's been a string of women murdered in the area—murders that no one will talk about. Before Connie can get to the truth, her mother’s sadistic mind games come creeping back from the grave, and now the danger becomes all too real. With a serial killer on the loose and a trove of deadly secrets coming to the surface, Connie is in a desperate race to save herself and what little is left of her shattered family.
Release date: December 6, 2022
Publisher: Crooked Lane Books
Print pages: 320
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Little Red House
Liv Andersson
Kelsey Foster
Somewhere in New Mexico—1997
NIGHTS SEEM ENDLESS, days are worse. He’s going to die, I tell myself over and over. It’s the only thing getting me through. The floorboards squeak overhead. My shoulders tense, my muscles constrict. It’s the asshole, home from wherever he goes from morning to sundown. I’ve been following his movements, up, down, around this godforsaken hellhole for the last hour. He likes to taunt me.
I’m waiting. Always waiting.
I wiggle my arms, trying to get blood to flow to my hands. The board beneath me splinters into my back, a thousand tiny pinpricks. The pillow smells of mildew and rot. A thick animal pelt covers me. It’s hot down here in the basement, hot and dry and overrun with things that scurry at night, and the pelt stinks of mothballs and body odor. Every morning he swabs my body with a cool, wet cloth, wiping away the sweat, looking, he says, for spider bites. It’s a fake show of humanity—one I’ll use against him.
I hear the bolt slide open, and I hold my breath. It’ll take him thirteen footsteps to reach the cellar, and I count along with the plodding slap of his loafers. At footstep thirteen, he’ll stop again to pick out his supplies. I can picture the table, picture the tools. An inquisitor’s arsenal.
Seven more footsteps and I’ll feel his hands on my feet, unbinding me—only my feet, never my hands, the palms of which dig into rough board. I’ll feel his tongue on my neck, and his fingers groping, grasping, probing … worse than the scuttling things moving along the bare length of my skin under the pelt at night. Worse than the splinters in my hands.
I’ll make no attempt to hide my repulsion. It won’t matter. I’ve played the submissive victim, the scornful conquest, the nagging mother … the result is always the same. He wants only one thing, getting his fucking rocks off using whatever instruments turn him on that day. Grunting. Moaning. Sweating his acrid slimy disgusting sweat. I will lie still, watching him. Watching the flow of light that trickles into the bare, dingy room, oozing around the cardboard that blocks the narrow window above my prison. Meeting stone-cold eyes with stone-cold eyes. In my head, it’s another item to record. The day, the brightness of the moon, the level of cruelty measured one through four. Keeping my internal log, biding my time.
Always waiting.
It’s a challenge, I tell myself. One I will win if I can just outsmart my opponent. The endgame is clear. Only one of us will leave this house alive.
And it won’t be him.
Constance Foster
New York City, New York—Present Day
I COULD TELL BY the way the shadows fell across his bare midriff—ribboned, dancing—that it was nearly noon. The sheet under me scratched like sandpaper, the sheet over us felt crisp with sweat and something cruder. I rolled over, head throbbing. Twenty-two nights in and I was already nearly out of cash, crashing on some guy’s floor in an apartment near Chelsea. Brian. Bruce. Brent. Who the fuck knew. The point was, I’d done exactly what Eve said I’d do—squandered the little money I’d had and ended up on the streets.
Not for long. I’d figure something out.
Last night’s meal ticket lumbered out of bed, pulled the shades up so that sunlight poured in from the dusty window above the mattress on the floor, scattering roaches. He tossed me a towel redolent with sweat and cum.
“You can shower first.” Eyes strayed to the clock over the studio kitchen table. “You need to get out of here soon, Connie.” His tone was apologetic, but his eyes polkaed in panic.
I dug around in my duffel bag. “No longer single?”
“I said I’m not married, and I’m not.”
“But you have a girlfriend.”
“I have a girl who is a friend.” He turned away. “She wouldn’t understand. Having you here and all.”
“No, I’m sure she wouldn’t.”
Based on the dingy blandness of the apartment, I guessed a girl who was a friend was just that—a friend. Otherwise she would have made some impact on his dump of an apartment, or at least she would have inspired him to clean up. But I’d scouted for signs of another woman two nights ago, when we’d first arrived. No second toothbrush, no tampons, no lavender-scented body wash. He wasn’t married, and if he was, he and his significant weren’t together. This apartment wasn’t even nice enough to be a love nest.
He’d said he was a lawyer. Based on the address and the quality of his clothes and electronics, I could believe he was some sort of bottom feeder attorney—and not too good at his job. Or maybe a pro bono lawyer. Or a paralegal. Or maybe he was a liar and cleaned toilets at Penn Station. Whatever his occupation, he stood there now with a pathetic shadow of a beard sprouting across his ruddy face, covering his chest with his arms—making no effort to hide his shriveled penis.
I stretched and rose from the bed, hugging the dirty towel as a cover-up.
“Do you have somewhere to go?” He looked genuinely concerned. I would have been touched had it not been for a rising erection and the claw marks down his chest. Last night’s fifth of bourbon and tussle on the floor came back to me in a cloud of regret. My mouth tasted like gunmetal, my eyelids ached to close. Score another for Eve.
“Sure,” I said, suddenly wanting more than anything to get out of his place. I pulled on cargo pants, a black turtleneck sweater that felt constricting around my neck.
“Do you need cash?” He was watching me while he pulled clothes from a hamper on the floor.
“I’m not a pro.”
“I know.” He blushed. He’d put on boxers, but his cock still strained against the tartan plaid, hopeful. “It was fun, Connie. And the girl … she is just a friend. Will I see you again?”
“Doubtful.” I turned, saw the confusion in his eyes, and heard Eve’s voice in my head. Once a whore, always a whore. I thought about kissing his cheek. Decided against it. “Thanks for the bed—and the good time.”
He grabbed my hand, pulled it to his crotch.
I jammed a fist against his stomach, growled “asshole,” and pushed my way out the door.
I had nowhere to go. Twenty-two days of rationing my money, and I was down to $68, plus the $10 I took from Brian/Bruce/Brent’s kitchen counter—money rescued, I reasoned, from the cockroaches—plus a Metro card. Jobs were hard to come by when you had no address, and the first room I’d rented turned out to be in a crack house. I stayed for five nights. On night six, the smell of the live corpses in the room next door drove me out. I needed a way to make money. Eve would send it to me if I called … but I would die before I called. Her price was too high.
Clouds pressed in overhead, coloring the space between the skyscrapers an irritable gray. I wandered down East 42nd Street, deciding what to do next. The first drops hit when I reached Fifth Avenue and I bolted inside Grand Central, just ahead of the early May downpour. Inside, I bought a baguette and a small bag of almonds. I traded the Metro card for a seat on the subway. Once on, I didn’t need to get off. A person could ride the subway for a very long time.
I must have fallen asleep. My eyes opened with a start, that unbearable feeling of disorientation gradually waning. The light in the subway car seemed unnaturally bright. An apocalypse worth of blank-eyed travelers sat steadfastly ignoring one another. A woman, crumpled face awash in dirt and wrinkles, was staring at me, her hand outstretched. An open sore festered on the skin of her right forearm, and her fingers bore the telltale knots of too many nights spent outside. She could have been sixty, she could have been forty.
I glanced away, toward the window, and rubbed my face. The reflection staring back at me was gaunt and thin and angular—not a trace of the old beachy Constance. I supposed that was the reason for Eve’s little games. When other measures hadn’t worked, she pulled out the big guns. Sink or swim. Live or die. Blur the lines between crazy and sane. A game my sister Lisa wouldn’t have to play.
The homeless woman grunted. She stood, holding the rail in front of me, her head tilted in supplication. Bruises dotted her neck, she stunk of sweat and rotting dumpster. I reminded myself that she was somebody’s daughter.
“Dammit.” I reached for my duffel, figuring a five-dollar bill would do her more good than it would do me. Only my bag was gone. I’d tied it to my leg in case I dozed, and someone must have cut it loose in the dead zone between stations.
“Did you see who took my bag?” I asked the woman.
She held her hand out again and moaned.
“Anyone see who stole my bag?” I didn’t like the hysteria in my voice, and apparently neither did the homeless woman. She backed away into the shadows. The half dozen others in the car locked gazes on the walls and floor. The unspoken code of New York’s destitute: don’t see, don’t hear, don’t tell.
“Fuck.” I stood, thankful my phone and small backpack were still there. I kept my money separated—some in my bag, some in a little pouch I’d sewn into my bra, and the rest in my backpack. I’d learned that the hard way in my first test city—Chicago. But the duffel had held my clothes and my iPad—things I couldn’t repurchase with the little money I had left.
A scream gurgled and died in my throat. Closing my eyes, I sat back down. Like it or not, I had nowhere else to go. I still had my phone—Eve had left me that, at least. I’d find a shelter for the night, then head to SoHo tomorrow. I’d try again to find some kind of job. Sign holder, ticket taker, floor cleaner—what did it matter? I would make this work. The hell with college, the hell with my inheritance. The hell with Lisa. The games were getting old. Maybe I could actually be rid of Eve.
The homeless woman was back, her eyes burrowing into mine. “Scram,” I said, feeling a wellspring of rancor toward everyone, and waved her away. She flinched, cowering back into her corner. I pushed away the shame.
The car pulled into the last stop on the line. It would head back to Grand Central, then quit for the night. I’d had enough of my fellow passengers’ zoned-out stares. I tucked two dollars into the homeless woman’s hand and hopped off the subway. I’d take my chances here. What more could I lose?
He said his name was Irving. He had long arms and white teeth and hair the color of dirty snow. I hated him on sight. His mouth brushed against my neck. The scent of Italian hoagie and stale tobacco permeated his pores. My traitor of a stomach growled—the baguette and nuts had been in my duffel, too. He heard it, smiled.
I pulled back, eyes darting about, searching for an exit.
“How much?” he whispered. “For anal?”
The bar was nearly empty. I’d used the john to wash up, then nursed a glass of water as long as I could, looking for a friendly face and free peanuts. I’d found neither—just Irving. I refused his offer of a drink, but he must have sensed my desperation. A predator like him could smell it on me, sweet perfume to his perverted senses.
His tongue swiped my ear. “Come on, how much?”
I could leave and take a cab—except I didn’t have enough for the fare. The subway was just a block away. I could make a run for it if he followed me. Keep riding the cars until dawn. I stood.
He grabbed my arm. I shook it free, slapped a buck on the bar for my water, and headed toward the door. The place smelled of loneliness and regret. I watched a Black man in a business suit watching us from across the square bar. Irving followed me through the double glass door out onto the deserted street. The cold air felt like a slap across the face, waking me up.
“Hey,” Irving yelled. “Come back here.”
I kept walking, picking up my pace. He was fast for an older guy. I felt his grip on my neck, an impossibly long arm around my waist.
“I said get back here.” Irving pulled me against him. He had a knife against my ribs. With one hand he tugged my backpack off my shoulders. “You want this, you come with me.”
I took a deep breath, then let it out, calming my nerves. My heart was pounding into my throat. I willed it to slow. I’d known men like Irving. Fear was his drug.
He kissed my ear, clawed at a breast. “Just a few hours. I tried to be nice about it.”
“Okay.”
“Good girl.”
I relaxed my muscles, leaned into him, away from that knife. The streetlights were pulsating, a trick of my narrowing vision. I heard something rustle behind us, saw the glow of more streetlights down the block. He was still holding me.
“Fifty bucks,” I whispered.
“Twenty.” He dangled the backpack in front of my face, beyond my reach. “And I do what I want.”
“Fine.”
He started to let go. With a sudden push, I grabbed his wrist, twisted his arm backward. Something snapped. The knife clattered to the ground. We both locked eyes on it, but I pulled on his bent arm harder, shoved my knee in the small of his back, aiming for his kidneys. He moaned, a mean sound that started low and curled around itself until it was a rumble.
“Run,” a voice said behind me. It was Business Suit from the bar. He picked up the knife. “I’ll make sure he doesn’t follow you.”
I kicked Irving in the back again for good measure, then did my best to shove him toward Business Suit and the outstretched knife. Business Suit had six inches and twenty fit pounds on Irving.
“Thanks,” I said.
Business Suit nodded.
I bolted, hit the subway entrance, and didn’t look back.
Dawn came slowly. From the corner of a subway car, I watched a parade of human cockroaches come in and out. Some sober, some stoned. Some honest, some not. I didn’t care. I had no valid ID, no money, and nowhere to go—certainly not back to Vermont and Eve. I knew what she wanted: for me to fail. For me to come running back, telling her she was right, and I needed to stay with her forever. I wouldn’t do it. I’d rot here first, a victim of my own stubbornness.
At seven fifteen, I climbed into the sunlight, back near Grand Central. The day was bright and hopeful, the city wide awake. My ribs throbbed where Irving had jabbed me, my saliva felt gummy in my mouth. I clutched at the money I had left and weighed whether to visit a soup kitchen.
At 7:24, my cell phone rang. With the charger gone, I was lucky it still had juice. I glanced at the ID. Lisa. What did my sister want?
She wasted no time telling me. “She’s dead.”
“Who?”
“Aunt Eve.” Flat tone. I wondered whether she was telling me the truth.
“What? How?” My mind spun with the implications.
“An accident. In the lake.”
“What kind of accident?”
A pause. “She drowned during her morning swim.”
“That doesn’t sound like Eve.”
My blonde-haired, blue-eyed, rich-as-fuck mother had succumbed to something as mundane as an accident? Impossible. Her demise would be of the grand variety. A push from a tower, a fiery plane crash. The Joan of Arc of the Ladies Who Lunch. Only Eve Foster had no ladies with whom to lunch. No friends, no attachments, no warm feelings. She was the ice queen.
“You need to come home,” Lisa said.
Home. I had no home.
“I’m sending a car for you,” Lisa said. “Your fight is over.” She paused. “It’s time for you to be here.”
“I’m not coming.” But even as the syllables escaped my mouth, I knew how feeble they sounded. Of course I would come back to Vermont. Where else would I go?
Lisa didn’t wait for me to change my mind aloud. She knew I would, just as she had always known how to appease Eve.
“I’ll send Dave with the Town Car,” she said. “Hurry, Connie. I’ll be at the estate, waiting for you.” She paused, and when she spoke again, I heard the crack in her façade. “I need you.”
Eve Foster
Nihla, New Mexico—1997
KELSEY WOULD BE the death of her. Eve Foster cursed her daughter under her breath, saving her strongest words for their reunion. Her daughter may have looked like her, but she was headstrong and manipulative like her father. Headstrong, manipulative, and too smart for her own damn good.
Officer Timothy Mayor tipped his cap in an old-fashioned gesture of respect. He was older, balding, with a broad chest and arms that seemed too short for his towering, lanky frame. “We believe she’s gone from Nihla, Mrs. Foster. You’re poking around the wrong gopher hole.”
The sun was an orange disc in the sky. Eve looked up, frowned, and adjusted her sunglasses against the glare. She pulled her pashmina tighter around her shoulders and stared into the eyes of this stranger. Gray-green eyes, the color of a fast-running river. They were standing outside by the police station, on the outer edge of a town that sat on the outer edge of civilization, and Mayor’s eyes matched the muddy color of the desert around them.
The officer leaned forward. “Ma’am, did you hear what I just said?”
Eve tugged a cigarette from the case in her purse. “I hate this godforsaken state,” she said, lighting it. “The dryness, the searing heat, the damn cacti.” She shook her head, sucked on the cigarette, and let the smoke out in concentric circles. Watching the rings dissipate into dry air, she shook her head again. “I can feel my daughter here. Keep looking.”
“No one’s seen her in days.”
“That doesn’t mean she’s not here. My detective says he tracked her here. No one has seen her leave, have they?”
“Kids hitchhike. They meet strange … well, let’s call them new friends. They leave with those new friends.”
Strange men, he was about to say, Eve thought. And he wouldn’t be wrong. Strange men were Kelsey’s weakness. Kelsey enjoyed taunting them. God knows how many strange men she had slept with during her little adventure across the country. Eve took another puff, letting the smoke fill her chest and push out the angst. No use dwelling. Eve had no illusions when it came to her daughter. With her cigarette pressed between red lips, Eve removed her sunglasses, taking her time to put them back in their case. Slowly, deliberately, flaunting the brand, flaunting her jewelry, flaunting the power she was used to having—the power that came with Swiss bank accounts and multiple companies. But if this man was fazed by her show of wealth, he hid it well. She turned her focus on his face, let her cool blues drill into his mud-colored eyes.
“My detective told me there have been other disappearances in and around Nihla. Were they caused by new friends as well?” When Mayor didn’t respond, Eve said, “Find my daughter. It’s your job.”
Mayor didn’t move, just kept his obstinate gaze on her face, his hands on his hips. She looked away first, detesting herself for the failing. He would be of no more help. Everywhere she turned in this town she felt stonewalled. A runaway. Drugs. Sex. Parties. Strange men. She knew what was going through his mind. What was going through all of their minds. Kelsey. Young, nubile, rich. At best a naïve young girl. At worst, a criminal. Picked up by some creep—maybe for money. Probably in Mexico by now, fooling around with some brown boy in the back of a pickup truck. Or stoned out of her mind on a pile of pillows in an old VW van.
The cop’s condescending stare said it all: an overbearing mother with more money than sense. A teen runaway with too much time and too little discipline.
Only he was wrong. So very wrong.
Eve threw her cigarette on the ground so it landed right in front of the officer. She turned to go with a toss of her blonde hair. If he wasn’t going to do anything, it would be up to her.
The bar was a half mile from the station. It was a dusty dive in a row of derelict houses, with a smeared window front and the name “Jack’s Place” written in scrawling brown scribble across a wooden plank. Eve took a seat at the end of a long, wooden bar, in the shadows, her back to an empty makeshift stage and a door that said “Hermosas” in black-markered square letters. An ornate mermaid stared at her from over the bar.
“What can I get you?” The bartender’s eyes were black orbs feathered with dark lashes.
“Gin and tonic. Martin Millers, if you have it.” She lifted her chin toward the mermaid. “No ocean for many, many miles.”
Ignoring her, he swiped the bar top with a gray cloth, then grabbed a glass from a mirrored shelf. “We’ve got Seagram’s.”
“Seagram’s then.”
The bartender held her gaze for a pulse too long. “Where you from?”
“Philadelphia.”
“You came a long way for a gin and tonic.”
Eve’s smile widened. “I wanted to see beautiful Nihla, New Mexico.”
He tossed the cloth into a sink behind the counter and finished fixing her drink. “Now I know you’re a liar. No one comes to Nihla on purpose.”
“Funny name for a town so close to Mexico.” Eve tilted her head. “Sounds Middle Eastern.”
“Does it? We may seem out of the way, but all roads lead to Nihla. You’ll see.” He placed the drink in front of Eve and studied her, his mouth turned up in a half smile. With a glance at his other two customers—an old white man nursing a Dos Equis and a young guy whose shaved, tattooed head was currently resting on the bar—he said, “Really, why are you here?”
Eve took a sip of her drink. Despite the cheap gin, it went down easy. “Looking for someone.” She pulled a picture of Kelsey from inside her purse and slid it across the bar. “Perhaps you’ve seen her.”
The bartender picked up the picture and walked toward the front of the bar, where murky sunshine washed over the drunk’s shaved scalp. The bartender was medium height and lean, with muscular, tan arms, and a scarlet slash of a burn that crisscrossed a bare bicep. A tattoo of a mermaid, similar to the one on the wall, encircled a thick wrist. His face was all hard planes bisected by a surprisingly soft mouth. He stared at the picture, then held it up to the sun.
He returned to the darker side of the bar and handed Eve the picture. “Nope. Never seen her.” Black orbs slid sideways, toward the Hermanos bathroom door. “Pretty kid. Your sister?”
“Daughter.” Eve tugged a cigarette from its metal case. “She’s sixteen.”
The bartender shrugged. “Probably why I’ve never seen her. Underage.”
“Yeah, right.” Eve finished her drink and pulled cash out of her wallet. “What’s your name, cowboy?”
“Jack Cozbi.” He nodded toward the sign outside the glass window front. “This is my bar.”
Eve slid a ten, and then two hundred dollar bills across the counter. “If you remember something, Jack, anything whatsoever, call me.” She scribbled her name and the number for her hotel on a piece of embossed ivory note paper. “Anything.”
Jack’s eyes danced from the bills on the counter to Eve’s face to her cleavage. He nodded.
“Sixteen,” Eve repeated.
“That’s not that young around here.”
Eve slid off the stool. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”
The pillowcase was an ivory polyester blend. Eve ran her hand over the outside, clutched the corners, and pulled it forward so that it cradled her head. She watched Jack’s eyes get wide, then go dull, his mouth pull back into a grimace, then slacken until his face was buried against the silk of her blouse. She wrapped her thighs around his back, but let her gaze fall to the doorway, silently counting the seconds until he would be finished. She hated men’s orgasms. They were not just messy, they were downright ugly.
“You next,” he murmured.
Eve pushed him off her. “I’m fine.”
“You didn’t come.”
“I don’t need to.”
“Suit yourself.”
He sat up and grabbed his pants. Jeans buttoned, he turned back around and looked her over. Eve stared right back at him, admiring the view. He wasn’t her usual type, but there was an unmistakable masculinity to him that both amused and attracted her. He was a fun diversion.
She rolled over, smoothing out the cheap sheets. She could forgive the room’s heavy-handed floral air freshener, but the décor—a Tex-Mex version of a high-end motel, if there was such a thing—was too much.
Eve forced a smile. “I enjoyed this.”
“I can tell.”
Eve rose. She pulled on her panties, then her skirt, taking her time with the zipper. Jack had been a decent lover, making up for a lack of technique with unbridled enthusiasm. But now she was ready for him to leave. She chose a cigarette from the case by the bedside table and watched as the bartender tied his work boots with calloused fingers. His hand was shaking.
“Do I make you nervous?” she asked, smiling.
He scowled. “I need to go.”
Eve made her way to the other side of the room, her movements languid, exhaling smoke as she walked. When she reached Jack, she stood in front of him, waiting.
Boots tied, he stood straight. Eve felt the heat coming off him in waves. She pulled him close, pressing her breasts against his still-bare chest, and kissed him. She waited until his body relaxed, giving in to the kiss, then she pushed him away, locking her eyes onto his.
She said, “My daughter.”
“Is that what this was about?”
“I only fuck men I want to fuck. But I still need to find Kelsey.”
“I told you, she’s never been in the bar.”
“But you’ve seen her.”
Jack looked down, then back at Eve, who’d stood so she was haloed in the dying light seeping in between the blinds. She knew the impact she had on men, and she stretched tall, aware of the sun’s worship on her slender body. Her nipples were hard, the skirt hugged shapely thighs. Despite beginning her third decade, she was toned and taut, her skin all milky shades of cream.
Jack said, “Yeah, I’ve seen her.”
“Where?”
“Not at the bar.”
Eve tapped ashes into the glass on the bedside table. Calmly, icily, she held Jack’s gaze. “Forget the bar, Jack. Where did you see my daughter?” She waited. “Tell me.”
“Damn it, Eve. Outside the bar, okay? She was there with a guy. I noticed her through the window because,” he looked away, “well, I just noticed her. She seemed to be having a good time.”
Just like Kelsey to taunt fate. “When was this?”
“Few weeks ago.”
“Who was the man?”
“I have no idea.”
“Bullshit.”
Jack rubbed his eyes. “Damn it, Eve. It’s not a crime to go out with a pretty girl.”
“A girl who’s now missing. A girl who’s sixteen.”
He shook his head. “She looked older. Twenty-one. Twenty-five even.”
“Did you fuck her?” Jack shook his head. She waited a beat. “Who was it?”
“Antonio Leroux.”
Eve recognized the last name from the hours spent at the police station and driving around Nihla. “The judge’s son?”
Jack nodded. Sweat had collected across his brow. “Same.”
Eve snubbed the cigarette out. “You need to leave now.”
“What are you going to do? You can’t mention me. Judge Leroux won’t appreciate his son’s name being brought into this, and he might take it out on the bar—”
Eve’s cold stare stopped him short. “Get. Out.”
Jack grabbed his shirt and left without another word.
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