Nemesister: The gripping women's psychological thriller from Sophie Jonas-Hill

by Sophie Jonas-Hill

  ‘Was he dead?’

  ‘Dead?’ Red rolled the word round his teeth. ‘Car was a hell of a mess, inside and out. Maybe he were bleeding profusely, quite pro … fuse … ley. Hot day, long way from nowhere – he was lucky they found him.’

  ‘Who?’ I asked. Red started laughing. ‘Who?’

  ‘Darlin’, I might be special ops, but even you would have worked it out. That thing was all over police tape and shit. Lookin’ at it, they had to cut the roof off to get him out.’

  ‘What you sayin’?’

  ‘This road’s lonely, but it’s the only way through the reserve, though what they’re saving other than mosquitoes, fuck knows. I guess someone did the decent thing, called the authorities, and now it’s the authorities what’s got Paris.’

  ‘They’ve taken him?’ I was almost laughing. ‘Someone came?’

  ‘I guess so. Don’t know what state he was in, but seein’ as they left the car, I’m guessing he was still breathin’. They don’t bother rushin’ off when they got a corpse in back. It’s not that far up the road. Leastways, far enough for a phone signal.’

  I slumped back against the couch cushion. Paris was either dead or safe. Either way, there was nothing I could do for him right now.

  ‘So, we done here?’

  ‘Done?’ I echoed. I could see behind him, see through the windows by the front door. The sky was inky black, but silver was etching out the horizon.

  ‘Yeah, you won, you got me. Guess you don’t recall where the money is, but hell, we can just call it payment received for a fun night out.’

  ‘You think we’re done here?’

  Red frowned. ‘I hope so.’

  Chapter 23

  I STOOD UP and drew my fingers through my hair.

  ‘It never was about the money,’ I said, standing with my feet apart, weight even. I rolled my neck, heard a click as I flexed my shoulders.

  Red raised an eyebrow. ‘So what’s this happy horse shit? You got something of an itch I can help you with?’

  ‘When you first saw me …’ I looked down at him. ‘What did you think?’

  ‘What’d you mean?’

  ‘When I first saw you, when I’d lost my memory – when I didn’t know your name but I still knew you?’ Red frowned and narrowed his eyes. ‘And before, you sure you didn’t know me, when you first saw me in the back room at the poker game? What did you think of me?’ I took a step forward, the gun pointed squarely at his chest. He looked at it, moistened his lips, then a smile dragged them back from his teeth.

  ‘Not sure as I should say …’ He tilted his head so he could meet my gaze. ‘Not with your itchy trigger finger ‘n’ all.’

  ‘Go on,’ I said, heat beating in my throat, sweat clawing down my spine. I swallowed and a smile I’d been dreaming of for months curled onto my lips. ‘Tell me.’

  I saw the pulse throb in Red’s neck as he exhaled, closed his eyes and then opened them again.

  ‘If I gotta be honest with you darlin’, I liked you well enough when you was all blond and dusted up with sugar. Hell, you looked like a popsicle on a hot day. But I liked you more when I seen you all dark and dirty and sweat stained, with blood on your face, fainting at my door.’ I saw a rush of colour burn in his cheeks. ‘I could barely keep my hands to myself as you lay in a muck sweat on that there couch, but you know what?’ He pursed his lips. ‘Right now, with your face all sly ‘n’ angry and you standing over me with that gun – fuck me, darlin’, but you gotta be the hottest thing this side of hell. I swear, I never met a woman what could bust my lip up before, but you know what? I think I kinda like it.’

  ‘You like it?’ I felt something twist and burn inside me, a dark vanity intoxicating and rich. I moved closer to him, within reach, if he wasn’t handcuffed and hog-tied. I pushed the weapon against his cheek, pressing his face so that he had to turn his head away from me. He swallowed, hard.

  ‘If we’re bein’ honest, if you were to fuck me on this chair right now, you could go ahead and spread my brains over the wall after, an’ I wouldn’t give a damn. I’m pretty much sick of this life as it is, think you might be doin’ me a favour.’

  I climbed onto his lap and pressed the gun into the side of his head. His animal eyes watched me, a smile pulling his lips into a leer. My heart was shaking the bars of my ribcage; I had a hot taste of metal in my mouth, and a delicious agony throbbed through me. His body was hard and firm, his skin burning to my touch.

  ‘What you think you’re gonna do to me that I don’t want you to?’ he breathed, the words lit with his dry, mocking laugh.

  ‘I’m gonna make you suffer,’ I said, feeling the rise and fall of his body under me, the heaving of his lungs betraying his fear. I could smell it on him, I could taste it like salt in sea air. I meshed my fingers into his hair and dragged his face up to mine. ‘I’m gonna make you feel like you made her feel.’ My lips brushed the skin on his cheek, touched the barrel of the gun. ‘Then, I’m gonna kill you.’

  He was barely listening to me, so it took him a moment to ask. ‘Like who?’

  I laughed. ‘Tell me who you thought of, when you first saw me. Did I remind you of anyone?’

  ‘I thought …’ but his voice trailed away. He jerked his face back from mine and I saw his pupils widen as realization shivered over him. ‘Lisa?’ he said, the word catching in his throat. ‘But you ain’t her, you can’t be?’

  The thrill and relief flooding through me made me laugh. I jumped off his lap and turned myself round in front of him, delighting in the look of astonishment on his face.

  ‘You ain’t her!’ he insisted.

  ‘No I ain’t. I’m her sister!’

  ‘Her sister?’ He squinted at me, searching for something he’d barely registered the first time he’d seen me. ‘Her sister … my God!’ He peered at me again. ‘Lisa – she … she said she had a sister, I remember now, but her name weren’t Margarita, it were …’

  ‘Don’t remember?’ I folded my arms across my breasts, the gun in the crook of my elbow. ‘Frustrating, ain’t it?’

  ‘But what the … why you done all this, what’s all this for?’ he asked, straining against the chair.

  ‘Don’t you dare,’ I said, my smile twisting into a snarl. ‘Don’t you dare deny what you did to her.’

  I marched over to the document bag and ripped it open. Grabbing a handful of papers, I thrust them at him. ‘Here … it’s all here, what you did to her …’

  He jerked back as far as he could, as if I was holding something burning to his face.

  ‘Emails, from Lisa to me – tellin’ me what she did after she left home, after she met you – you never knew she wrote me, did you?’ He didn’t answer, so I shook them at him again. ‘Did you?’

  ‘Darlin’, calm down,’ he said, his voice straining to sound controlled, all hint of his bravado gone. ‘I don’t know what she said but …’

  ‘She said you hit her.’ I threw the papers and they erupted in a flurry of white leaves, foolscap thistledown drifting to the floor about him. ‘It says you locked her up – you took her away to your big old fancy house and you never let her go!’

  ‘Now look,’ he started to say. ‘You best listen to me—’

  ‘No, I don’t,’ I cut across him. ‘I don’t gotta do nothing you say. She was my sister, my sister. When we were growing up, all we had was each other.’

  ‘She said that,’ he said softly, as if now he could remember her saying it, as if she’d said it to him only moments ago and it was fresh in his mind.

  ‘They were always down on her, always hurting her, mocking her – just her, never me.’ The words tumbled out of me, glorious, painful, echoing round that damp, grey space. ‘Always Lisa, pushing her and pushing her, but I was too small, too little – I could never help her, never – I was never big enough to save her.’

  ‘She told me ‘bout your Daddy,’ he spat, suddenly violent, defensive. ‘She told me what he did. I ain’t sure as your family’s g
ot much on mine.’

  ‘I couldn’t help her,’ I screamed, and there was a sob beneath it. ‘I couldn’t help her, and then they sent her away to all those schools in case anyone found out, in case someone else listened to her.’

  ‘She told me,’ he said, eager, as if he were pleading his case. ‘She told me how she played up. She wrote you then, she did, didn’t she?’ He looked up, a smile on his face, a smile as if we were sharing.

  ‘Yeah, she wrote to me, until I found out they read the letters – they tried to break us up all the time, always – like they hadn’t done enough.’

  ‘But they couldn’t come between sisters?’ he said.

  ‘An’ neither could you!’ I kicked at the paper with my bare feet not caring how much it hurt.

  ‘But I never …’

  ‘Yes you did.’ I snatched up one of the pages and I forced it into his face.

  ‘I can’t read that,’ he snapped, twisting away from me.

  ‘But you know what you did, don’t you?’

  ‘She cheated on me!’ he retorted as I slapped the papers onto his lap. ‘I was away serving my country, and she went sneaking round like a she-cat on heat!’ I hit him. I punched him in the mouth. It felt so good. Like the first thing I’d done right in a long time.

  ‘Hit me again,’ he blazed. ‘Go on, if it makes you feel better – it won’t change what she did, your precious sister.’ He spat at me and when he smiled, his teeth were bloody.

  I laughed, wiping the spit from the jeans I was wearing. ‘I bet she was desperate for some real, honest lovin’ after being with a twisted old pervert like you – oh, we’re sisters, we shared everything …’ And we had, in a way. I’d read her words over and over until I could see them, lived them, until it had almost felt like I was the one he’d met, I was the one he’d married. Which was why he seemed just so goddamn familiar.

  ‘We all got our little peccadilloes. You should know.’

  ‘You ever find out who she was with?’ I asked, enjoying the look of anger that flashed across his face, that tightened his jaw.

  ‘If I had, I’d have killed him.’

  ‘Yeah, Paris thought as much. He was sure you never knew.’

  ‘Paris – your Paris?’ He burst out laughing. ‘Well, don’t that beat all?’

  ‘You think that’s funny?’ I said.

  He shook his head, still laughing. ‘You don’t? You tracked him down to see what your sister was gettin’?’

  ‘No, to get to you, when the police wouldn’t.’

  ‘That’s why that sheriff came sniffin’ round – I never could see what he was drivin’ at. What you go see him for?’

  I stared at him. ‘Because you killed her!’

  He looked at me. ‘What?’

  ‘Lisa, you killed Lisa.’

  Something cold and urgent descended over his expression; for a moment he almost looked sorry, sad, as if he’d just told me there was no Santa and realized his mistake.

  ‘Oh, darlin’, no …’

  ‘Don’t deny it!’

  Red coughed. ‘I don’t know what you think I am, but …’

  ‘You liar,’ I snorted. ‘Of course you’d say that, you’re a murderer and a liar.’

  ‘I’ll tell you what I told that old fool policeman: I never killed her.’

  ‘You expect me to believe that?’

  ‘I ain’t lying. You really gonna shoot me now?’

  ‘When I’m through hurtin’ you.’

  ‘And then what?’ He rolled his shoulders, stretching his neck. ‘You gonna be a murderer too? You ready to have my blood on your hands? You think just ‘cause you’re south of the Mason–Dixon Line, we don’t got laws? Your pet sheriff’s gonna be after you quicker than a hound dog, seein’ as he knows you’re Lisa’s sister.’

  ‘Let him,’ I said, and I couldn’t hide the satisfaction in my voice. ‘Lisa’s sister flew to Mexico months ago, and when this is all over, she’s gonna fly right back in. Work was real sorry to see her go, but volunteering looks so good on the resume. It’s amazing what a thousand dollars buys you in Mexico.’ I clicked my neck again. ‘You forget, my name’s Margarita. That’s who you’ve been following, that’s who tricked you out of your Daddy’s money’

  ‘What?’ he demanded, straining to understand. ‘You been planning this all the time? You … you set me up months back, to do this?’

  ‘I’ve been living this every day since I lost contact with her. Hell’s teeth,’ I mimicked, ‘I even walked my shoes off my feet when I’d no memory, just to get to you. I meant you to follow me here, I knew you would but, thing is Red, old buddy, I’d already been here before. Got myself a head start.’

  ‘You planted this shit, before everything, before the poker game?’ He waved his foot toward the papers on the floor.

  ‘I believed you might find them interesting readin’,’ I snarled. ‘I even left us breakfast; glad you turned out to be a chef as well as a murderer.’

  Red slumped in his chair and let his head drop toward the floor. He inhaled deeply and when he looked at me again, his face was cold and calm. ‘They tell you I killed her, did they? Them letters of hers?’

  ‘They told me—’

  ‘They told you she walked out on me?’

  ‘She was going to, she said—’

  ‘Well who for?’ he snapped. ‘She must have told you she was seein’ that man, that liar, that convicted fraudster Paris goddam France, and you come knocking on my door?’

  I went to speak, then I pressed my tongue against the back of my teeth. Red spoke again, sounding neither angry nor desperate, but cool, calm, as if he were simply stating the obvious. ‘Your sister gets herself mixed up with a criminal. She steals for him, she goes to meet him, an’ then she ain’t heard of no more. An’ you think I killed her?’

  ‘It’s not—’

  ‘What is it, then?’ his voice grew louder. ‘You got the evidence, you got the truth of the matter all over them papers … So you tell me what happened! You might have spent the last few months sleepin’ with her lover, but you ever think you been doin’ something else? You ever stop to think you might have been fuckin’ her killer all this time?’

  ‘You think I’m that stupid?’ I yelled. ‘The last few months I got to know the both of you, you think I can’t see what you’re trying to do? Sure, Paris France is a cheap con, a thief and a liar, but he’s no murderer. So go on, keep reaching – who else you gonna blame? I think your Daddy’s got plenty more to answer for. You gonna say it was him next? Or your housekeeper? I believe you have one, right?’

  Red shook his head. ‘I don’t much care what you believe. I don’t care much ‘bout anything no more. You can take your sweet time over hurtin’ me as much as you want – you think you’re gonna do more to me than what I’ve lived through? Hell, when they trained my unit, they beat the shit out of us more times than I care to remember, just so as we was used to it. We’re trained for anythin’ darlin’, y’all better know you done nothin’ but tickle me up a little.’

  ‘I’m gonna make you pay for what you did. Look! Look at her words!’ I kicked them with my toes again. ‘You locked her in your goddamn car, while your Daddy watched, while he let you! What else did you do to her, what else while your Daddy was watchin’?’

  ‘What?’ He was laughing again. ‘You got some imagination on you. Sure, why not? What my Daddy does for entertainment is his concern.’ I hit him hard across the face. He spat and leered. ‘Shit, that felt good, sure wakes up a man. There’s some as pay double for that treatment, though not sure it’s worth fifty big ones.’

  ‘Did you hit her?’ I snarled.

  ‘That’s what you wanna believe? She took my money and my car – you wanna hear me say it, I’ll say it, darlin’ – truth is, I did not kill her!’

  ‘Then where is she?’ I demanded, my head spinning and churning with his words.

  ‘Ask Paris. She drove off in my car with my mama’s diamonds on her fingers and the clothes I
bought on her back, but I did … not … kill … her.’

  In the space after his words the cool dawn air licked through the kitchen windows and breathed over my skin.

  ‘You’d say anything wouldn’t you?’ I said. ‘Anything to save your miserable hide.’

  ‘Seems as I’m damned either way,’ he said softly. ‘Seems as you’ve already made up your mind. No matter how much you hurt me, the truth ain’t gonna change.’

  The silence of the morning crept in until he spoke again.

  ‘You know, every day I get up and I jog round our land. If I go real hard, it takes me ‘bout an hour to go all the way round, an’ every time I do, that hour seems longer and longer, and you know why? Cause I got nothin’ else I gotta do, and there ain’t no one chasing me no more, no matter how hard I run. If I’d have known you was after me I might just have had reason again, ‘cause strange as it seems, girl, these last few hours? You’ve brought me back from the dead.’

  ‘You … you tell me what you did to her.’ I pointed the gun at him again, held it inches from his face in both hands, ready for the recoil when I took my shot.

  ‘What d’you think?’ he asked. ‘Go on, seems you got all the answers – you tell me how I killed her? That is, if you still so sure it was me?’

  I screamed in fury and tore away from him. I saw the whiskey bottle on the side, snatched it up and smashed it against the wall. It splintered, leaving me a brutal edge.

  ‘She betrayed me, your big sister,’ he mocked. ‘She took everything I gave her an’ ran off with Paris, that li’l whore!’

  I turned and stabbed the glass shard into his thigh with a howl of rage.

  ‘You fuckin’ bitch!’ he screamed, ‘Oh, Jesus, you fucking … shit!’ He twisted against the chair and forced his scream into a laugh, going on and on until the sound was hot and red and hammering in my head. ‘Oh baby!’ He leered at me. ‘I love the way you kiss! Tell me, it get you wet does it, you hurtin’ me?

  ‘Shut up!’

  ‘Go on, I’m hotter than a match head; I never had so much fun when I was with old Lisa!’ He laughed, his body shaking with the effort. ‘I’m hard as a rock baby.’