The Jealousy Game novel · Chapter 20 of 24

Chapter 20: Strike One

Dean walked up the aisle with the lanyard in his hand.

Nobody spoke.

The little girl in the velvet dress stood up on her chair to watch him go by.

He put the whistle in my palm.

It was warm from his neck, and I closed my fingers over it.

"Lena," Brett said, quietly, into the microphone. "Sweetheart. Let's not."

I turned to face the hundred and forty chairs.

Then I put the whistle in my mouth and blew it at him, as hard as I could, once.

The sound cracked across the lake and bounced back off the water.

Somebody in the third row screamed a little, and laughed, and stopped.

"Strike one," I said. "Day's over, Brett."

He stared at me.

"For fourteen months, when I got jealous, somebody blew this at me," I said.

"Thirty-one times, in front of people."

"I wanted to hear how it sounds pointed the other way."

I walked to the stand, took the microphone out of his hand, and he let me.

"Dean, would you play the recording?"

Dean held his phone up to the microphone, and Brett's voice came out over the whole pavilion.

Half of Main Street watched Maddie hit that floor. By Saturday she's a danger to herself.

All I have to do is walk her toward the water in front of a hundred and forty witnesses.

Then I'm the man who pulled her out.

Nobody breathed.

Then a second voice, Casper's, saying, Pulled her out of what?

And Brett, easy and light, in front of everyone he knew: The lake. She'll sign, or she'll be somewhere else when she's asked.

She'll be in the lake by ten.

Dean tapped the screen, and the pavilion went quiet except for the wind.

Keep reading free with an account. Start The Jealousy Game from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.