“So would I,” I said, and she beamed at me. Then she was gone, and I closed the door.
Following the sound of Blake’s voice, I soon found myself standing in the doorway of his sleek, modern, executive-style home office.
He was sat at his desk, eyes intent on his large computer monitor as he spoke, “You don’t need me for this. You’re perfectly capable of meeting with him alone … Not possible … I already told you, it will be a while before I can leave Redwater overnight.” He sighed, seeming exasperated. “For the same reason that I haven’t gone away on any business trips lately—I have a personal situation to take care of … That’s all you need to know, Tara.”
Tara again? I barely held back a snarl.
“Because it’s not your business … We are friends, but that doesn’t make you privy to everything that goes on in my life … No, I’m busy … Yes, as a matter of fact, she is.” His face scrunched up into a grimace of disbelief. “Dumping my friends for pussy? Jesus, Tara, you need to get your fucking head straight.”
She needed to get a fucking bitch-slap—that was what she needed. Almost as if he’d heard that thought, Blake’s eyes snapped to me. I probably should have at least looked embarrassed for eavesdropping, but I was quite sure he wouldn’t have bought it anyway.
“I’ve told you before, Tara, she’s not a faceless fuck to me,” he said, gaze locked with mine. “If she was, I wouldn’t have her living with me.” With that, he hung up. And I had to smile, because it was highly unlikely that she took that news well.
“She drunk again?” I asked.
“No, just being a bitch.” Standing, he rounded the desk and crossed to me. “You all right? Emma and Adam threw a lot of information at you.”
“They did. And ironically, I’m more confused than I was before.”
Blake’s hands cupped my hips. “Linton could have the perfect motive, but it just doesn’t add up. Same with Ricky.”
I nodded. “All the pieces just won’t fall together.”
He kissed me. “I’ll find out who it is, one way or another.”
“Blake, you shouldn’t put your life on hold because of this situation. If you have business you need to see to outside of Redwater, you should—”
“I won’t be leaving you until this shit is over, Kensey,” he stated firmly, jaw set.
“I wouldn’t be alone.”
“Doesn’t matter. I’m not willing to trust your safety to others. I fully believe what I already said to you—you’re never safer than when you’re with me.”
“But it’s interfering with your project, isn’t it?”
“No, it’s not. Everything is happening exactly as it should. Tara simply …”
“Resents the time you’re spending with me,” I finished.
He sighed. “The way she’s been talking, it’s like she’s always thought of me, her, and Bastien as the three fucking musketeers or something. Now I have you. Bastien has Sarah. Tara’s acting like we’ve abandoned her or something like that.”
“She’s trying to make you feel guilty.”
“Tara’s good at mind games and manipulating people, but I know every move in her playbook. Her efforts are wasted on me.”
“She’s right, though,” I began, shaking my head in mock disapproval, “it’s not nice to dump your friends for pussy.”
His mouth curved. “But the pussy in question is so pretty and tight.” He kissed my cheek, whispering, “And it responds to me so nicely.” He pressed a kiss to my other cheek and then spoke into my ear, “And when it comes around my cock, rippling and squeezing, it feels like sheer fucking heaven.” He slowly snapped open my fly, adding, “And there’s something I love about your clit, but I can’t quite put my finger on it.”
I laughed, but that laugh quickly turned into a moan when his finger slid between my folds. For about the millionth time, I caught myself thinking that, damn, he was good.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
On Saturday, I once again found myself in the prison’s dull visitation room. Clear and I sat at a different table from last time as we waited for the inmates to file out. As usual, she was excited. As usual, I wasn’t.
I nodded along as she chatted non-stop. Although long waits weren’t uncommon, she got increasingly agitated when no one appeared. An hour went by before the prisoners were finally brought in the room.
Michael grinned when he saw us. Of course, Clear hugged him like he just got back from war after a two-year stint in the army.
Patting her back, he kissed her cheek. “Missed you, sweetheart.”
She released him and gestured at me with her hand, as if I was a gift she’d brought along with her.
“Hello, angel,” he said to me with a smile as he and Clear sat. “I’m glad you came to see me, even if it’s only to update me on what’s been happening.”
“Hi,” I greeted simply.
“Your mother tells me you have a boyfriend.”
I shrugged, nonchalant. “I’ve had boyfriends before.” None of whom he’d mentioned.
“She says this one is different; that he treats you well.”
“If you could see the way he looks at her …” Clinging to his hand, Clear smiled dreamily. “And now she’s living with him.”
I ground my teeth. “Mom, stop making a big deal out of this.” She’d harped on and on about it throughout the entire journey to the prison, convinced wedding bells were on the horizon. “Blake invited me to stay with him until whoever’s targeting me has been caught and stopped.”
Michael pursed his lips. “Sounds like your mom’s right and he cares for you. Good. You should bring him to meet me.”
Like that would ever happen. “On another note … a PI looked into Ricky Tate and Noah Linton. Did you know that Linton’s biological mother was Courtney Royal?”
His eyes flashed. “No, I didn’t. Hmm. When your mother told me that you suspected Linton, I was surprised. As I saw it, he had no motive. But this changes things. He’s hurting you to punish me.”
“If it is Linton, yes, I’d say that’s what he’s doing.”
Clear looked at me. “You’re not convinced it’s him?”
“No. And I can’t help but find it suspicious that he was knifed in a parking garage a few weeks ago.”
“Knifed?” Michael’s gaze turned inward. “I knew Courtney Royal had put a child up for adoption when she was thirteen, but I wasn’t able to track the child to see how he’d fared. It would seem that Linton fared much better than the children she later birthed.”
Yeah, I’d have to agree with that. “Which is why I’m a little doubtful that he’d be so eager to hurt you in revenge.”
Michael tapped his fingers on the table. “What did the PI discover about Ricky Tate?”
“Did you know he was diagnosed with schizophrenia when he was twenty?”
“No, but the news doesn’t surprise me.”
“He held a steady job up until a few months ago. It seems like he had some sort of relapse. Apparently, he then disappeared.”
“That makes me think that he’s guilty of this,” said Clear. “Why else would he hide?”
“It may not be that’s hiding,” Michael told her. “Back when he used to write to me, he was deeply paranoid; he’d hunker down for long periods of time and keep a very low profile. He could be doing that very same thing now. I wonder what triggered the relapse.”
I tilted my head. “Have you ever been contacted by relatives of other victims?”
“One,” he said. “The older sister of Joanna Torrance. It was … strange.”
“Strange how?” I asked.
“It was filled with hatred and venom. But that hatred wasn’t directed at me, it was directed at Joanna. April Torrance resented her sister and, though not glad to hear she was dead, felt that Joanna deserved to be punished for what she’d done.”
“Really?”
“You may know the story of Joanna Torrance. She had her son, Thad, when she was fifteen. The fath
er didn’t stay in the picture. She eventually found herself a new boyfriend, Erik Shephard. Thad was eighteen-months-old when Shephard tortured and then beat him to death with a baseball bat.”
It amazed me that Michael could say that with such a lack of emotion. I’d had tears in my eyes when I read the story. The little boy had been covered in bruises, lacerations, and bite marks, and the evidence had showed that he’d suffered neglect and long-term physical abuse.
“April loved the boy and wanted him to live with her,” Michael went on. “She even contacted social services about the abuse, not buying any of Joanna’s excuses about where Thad’s bruises came from. Thad was removed from his mother’s care, but he was given back to her a short while later. And the abuse began all over again, and it ultimately killed him. Joanna claimed it was all Shephard. I don’t know if the police bought her story or just didn’t have enough evidence to convict her of anything more serious than unlawful neglect of a child.”
“But you didn’t buy her story.”
“No, I didn’t. Six years. She served six years in prison. That wasn’t good enough. She deserved to suffer as her son had suffered. And when I promised her I’d free her if she just told me the truth, she admitted to her part in it all. Felt no real remorse. She said the boy always ‘disrespected’ her and looked at her ‘funny’ like he thought he was better than her. Blamed an eighteen-month-old for his own suffering.” He shook his head, baffled. “Courtney Royal was just as remorseless. I’d be surprised to hear that Linton would seek justice for her death. If we can’t make either Ricky or Linton fit the profile, perhaps we should be looking at someone else.”
That echoed what Blake and I had already theorized. I hated that I didn’t know who to be on the lookout for. I was scared to smile at someone or be friendly in case I was looking at the very person targeting me. I’d find myself studying people, looking for ‘signs’ that I should be suspicious of them. The whole thing was fucking with my head, making me paranoid and jumpy. If I had to live like this much longer, I’d go insane.
As I knew that Blake was attending a business dinner and wouldn’t be home until late, I invited Sarah to his apartment for dinner. While waiting for her to arrive, I spent some time on my book, finishing the proofing process—fucking yay! —and choosing excerpts to post online as teasers. I’d already finished and posted the cover on my website, blog, and social media accounts. It was a pretty cool cover, even if I did say so myself.
I was halfway through writing a draft of a newsletter that promoted the upcoming release when Sarah arrived. We ordered some Thai food and settled on the balcony, where I relayed my conversation with Michael as we ate.
Like me, she agreed that just maybe Ricky and Linton were only guilty of being dickheads. As my only other real enemy was Joshua, who didn’t ‘fit’ the profile, we were stumped by the whole thing. So, we did the only sensible thing a girl could do when her head was minced—we got drunk. Not falling-down drunk. Just buzzed. That awesome place where you felt light, warm, and fuzzy; where your skin tingled, your head was super heavy, and you felt like you just hopped off a spinning chair but—amazingly—you didn’t feel sick.
“I’m not even tired,” mumbled Sarah, sprawled beside me on the wicker pod sofa like she’d been dealt a blow to the jaw.
Setting my glass of wine between my thighs, I closed my eyes. “I want a unicorn.”
“I see the appeal. I’d prefer a dragon. Then we could have it set fire to the ass of whoever’s stalking you.”
My eyes popped open. “Oh, I like that idea. But they’re not a stalker—just sayin’.”
She slurped some of her wine. “I’d sic the dragon on Bastien too.”
I frowned. “Why? I thought everything was going great with you guys.”
“It was until last night,” she said, digging out her cell phone. “I wasn’t gonna mention it, because you have enough shit on your plate—you don’t need to be dealing with mine, too—but, yeah, I’d like to hurt him in a big way.”
“You can always offload your shit on me, you dumb heifer.” I swiped out my hand to swat her arm and almost knocked over her wine. “Mother-fucking-trucker.”
Sarah giggled, her body shaking. “It didn’t spill.”
“Tell me what happened.”
“Wait.” Her thumbs rapidly tapped on the screen of her cell. “Just updating my Facebook status to … Bastien Novell, you need to go suck a bag of dicks. Do you think he will?”
“Seriously, what happened?”
She sighed and gulped down more wine. “Tara drunk-called him.”
I curled my upper lip. “The little hoe-bag has done it to Blake, too.”
“Did he leave you in his bed to go comfort her?”
“Fuck, no.”
“Bastien did.” She held up her hand, but her arm weaved a little. “Now, don’t get me wrong. She’s his friend, I get it. But the decent thing would have been for him to wake me, explain the situation, and tell me he had to leave, right? Ask me what he did.”
“Oh God, what did the dumb fucker do?”
“See, he snuck out of bed and went to the bathroom to take the call, but I could hear him pretty clear, so I did a little eavesdropping.”
“Fun, isn’t it?”
“Surprisingly, yes! But I didn’t want him to realize I’d been eavesdropping. So, when he came back into the bedroom, I pretended to be asleep. And he just … walked out.”
My brow pinched. “Walked out?”
“Walked out. Leaving me alone, with one wrist cuffed to the damn bed. I could not fucking believe it. I seethed. For hours. Over three hours, to be exact. And when he got back, he denied he’d spoken to Tara and said he’d been ‘to deal with a minor situation.’ That was all he’d say.”
“Oh. My. God.”
“I told him I needed to use the bathroom so that he’d uncuff me. Then I kissed him to keep him distracted while I cuffed him to the bed. He was like, ‘Hey, where the fuck are you going?’ I said, ‘To deal with a minor situation.’ And then I left his lying ass there and went home. He must have gotten free, because he’s been calling me all day. Now I get why you were so upset when Blake lied to you. It fucking hurts, doesn’t it?”
“Like a blade to the heart.”
She tossed back more wine. “I think that, on average, guys are stupid.”
“Not all guys.”
“But they all do stupid shit.”
“That I can’t deny.”
“You think you know someone, you think you can trust them, you think you may even let them use a gag and crop on you again. And then you find out that, wow, they’re a monkey-licking, goat-fucking, cock-sucking, mother-bitch.”
“You know what, I was just gonna say that. Word for word.”
“That’s because we’re on the same wavelength. It’s an honest-to-God tragedy that we’re not lesbians. If I was gay, I’d totally do you.”
I put my hand to my heart, touched. “Aw, that’s sweet. I’d totally do you right back.”
Sarah cocked her head at the sound of the front door closing. “Blake’s home.”
Like that, I smiled. Hearing him call my name, I shouted, “Balcony!” I thought about getting up, but I couldn’t be sure my legs would listen to me. Instead, I glanced at him over my shoulder and waved weakly. “You’re back.”
He came toward me, mouth curved and eyes twinkling. “Well, well, well.” Standing behind my chair, he leaned over me to plant a soft kiss on my mouth and then stroked the column of my throat with his fingers. “Just how blitzed are you?”
I put the pads of my thumb and index finger a smidgen apart. “Really, we’re just buzzed. Right, Sarah?”
She saluted me. “Exactly right.” With what looked like a humungous effort, she sat upright to put her wine on the table and twisted to look at Blake. Then she stilled, eyes locked on something behind him. “What in the fucking fuck are you doing here?”
Tracking her gaze, I saw Bastien. “Uh-oh.”
&n
bsp; “Why do you always say, ‘fucking fuck?’” he asked Sarah, jaw hard. “And why wouldn’t I be here? Blake’s a good friend of mine, remember.”
She stared at him a moment. Then she did a slow blink. “Oh my God, you’re actually pissed at me.”
“You’ve been ignoring my calls all day. I left you a voicemail.”
“Oh yeah— ‘Sarah, answer the fucking phone.’ Sweet.”
Blake looked from me to them. “Am I missing something?”
“Tara drunk-called Bastien in the middle of the night,” I whispered overloud. “He went to her and then lied about it to Sarah.”
Blake gave him a what the fuck were you thinking? look, but Bastien’s attention was on Sarah.
“I lied because I knew you’d be upset to hear I went to another woman to comfort her,” Bastien said to Sarah, like that was a genuine and acceptable excuse. I gaped at him.
“And logic told you that it was better for me to believe a lie?” Sarah snickered. “Tara drunk-called Blake, too. But he didn’t leave Kensey. And if he had, he wouldn’t have then lied about it.” She looked at me, frowning. “Would he?”
I pursed my lips. “Not unless he’s interested in having his ass reamed with an iron bar.”
Sarah nodded at Bastien. “See. Blake knows what’s good for him, and you should have known too. Or maybe I just don’t matter to you the way Kensey does to him.”
Bastien thrust a hand through his hair. “Fuck it.” He grabbed Sarah’s wrist, yanked her to her feet, and then slung her over his shoulder.
She pounded her fists on his back. “Hey! Put me down, you son of a bitch!”
“I’m just taking you into the living room so we can talk in private. If you don’t want to leave with me, you don’t have to.”
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