The Touch Of Twilight by Vicki Pettersson Page A

thirteen-year-old. They abducted Charles on the way home from school, told him they were going on a little desert camping trip, and pulled out a sleeping bag to prove it.
    They used military grade twine to bind him inside that bag, laid him out at the base of an old Joshua tree, and rigged a water cooler to release one icy droplet at a time onto the center of Tracy’s forehead. According to the entry Ben didn’t have a hand in this, but he didn’t try to stop it either. It was only water and it couldn’t really hurt, right? Besides, it was just as likely he would end up in Tracy’s position if he said anything at all.
    Who was the bully now?
his brothers wanted to know, laughing as they prodded the immobilized Tracy with sticks from their campfire. By morning Charles was unable to form words, moaning incoherently, and he had a welt on his forehead the size of red walnut. While the elder Trainas brewed instant coffee and ate bacon over a campfire grill, Charles still begging and moaning like an animal behind them, Ben was sick behind a giant saguaro.
    The following week rumors of torture circulated around school, but the Traina brothers denied it, their father backed them, and Ben said nothing at all. I finally cornered him in fourth period gym class and asked him about it outright. He looked me in the eye, sincere and earnest and intent, and he lied.
    Charles Tracy, once one of Olivia’s greatest tormentors, returned to school like a ghost of his former self. His harassment of her—of everyone—abruptly stopped, and I’d thought it was because Ben and I had finally set him straight. Eventually I’d stopped worrying about him, stopped seeing him as a threat, and finally—like a ghost—he disappeared altogether.
    So what did this confessional entry say about Ben’s actions? What explanation did he have for allowing the torture, then lying about it afterward? Had he hidden the truth from me because he was afraid I’d judge him or because he was ashamed of what he’d done?
    No. He’d hidden it because he wasn’t.
    “It’s exactly what Regan is looking for,” I murmured, lacing my fingers beneath my chin. These words were the smoking gun Shadow agents looked for in the mortals they targeted as beards, allies, or victims. And yet I was having trouble reconciling the boy portrayed here with the man I’d left sleeping in my bed a month earlier. As for the drug dealer in Dog Run, I didn’t care what it might look like—what this entry alone might hint at—there was no way Ben could kill another human being, take a shower, and then make love to me only hours later. It would mean he’d been caressing me with lethal fingers, and that just didn’t compute.
    But the entry on Charles Tracy forced me to consider one thing that’d niggled at me since Ben’s reintroduction into my life. What else, in the name of justice, had Ben decided to take into his own hands? What else had he done behind the shield of his badge and not felt ashamed about? And did I really want to excavate the answer to those questions?
    You’re going to lose him. It’s only a matter of time.
    I could feel the chaotic energy balling inside me, and swallowed hard, closed the file, and calmly shut down the computer. I sucked in a long breath, holding it before letting it spiral out of me like a string of yarn, then left the room to put on some tea. I was determined to put the issue aside until Warren could do his research to confirm for sure the dealer, Magnum, was dead. I walked back to Olivia’s bedroom, reasoning that even if he was, Warren’s account would be markedly different from Regan’s. Opening the closet doors, I stepped inside to the scent of cedar and expensive leather, and gently pushed aside a wall of little black dresses.
    Then I punched five holes through a false back, the report muffled by the clothes and soundproof foam I’d installed four months earlier.
    I didn’t know what had happened in that dark alleyway last month,