But Mark Sterling, the rich real estate developer who had married my daughter and promised to cherish her, had just made a fatal calculation error. He looked at a gray-haired man and saw a victim. He didn’t know he was looking at a dormant volcano.
“Sleep, honey,” I whispered, injecting a mild sedative from my kit into her arm. “You’re safe here.”
“He’s coming,” she slurred as the drug took hold. “He has a gun.”
“Let him come,” I said.
I waited until her breathing evened out. Then I stood up. I walked to the garage.
In the corner, behind a stack of fertilizer bags, was an old canvas tarp. I pulled it back. Underneath was my old Louisville Slugger baseball bat. Ash wood. Weighted.
I picked it up. I gave it a test swing. The air hissed.
I looked at my reflection in the dusty window of my truck. The eyes staring back weren’t the eyes of John the gardener. They were cold. They were dead. They were the eyes of a man who had hunted in the dark for a living.
