Allison Brennan - See No Evil

“Go, Robbie.”

He didn’t want to leave. He wanted to watch his father die. He still felt the lashes across his back from the last “lesson.” The old bastard deserved to suffer.

“But if I run, they’ll know I’m guilty.”

Cami sighed, pulled out another folder. “I planted a copy of this in your father’s office and am sending this one to the police. See how well I copied your handwriting?”

Robbie frowned and, shaking, took the folder and opened it. Inside was a photograph of him beaten black and blue. He looked small, weak, and stupid in the picture. But it was really him and it was unaltered. The negatives were also in the folder.

The letter did look like it was in his handwriting.

Dad:

You almost killed me last week. I was coughing up blood. Some day I think you will kill me. That’s always what you wanted to do, right? Because you blamed me for Mom dying.

FUCK YOU! I’m sending these pictures to the police and to the newspapers. Ha! Ha. Deal with it. And if you think you can talk your way out of it, take a close look at the last picture. The negatives are going to the police. When you’re in prison for raping your own son, I’ll come for a visit.

I’m so outta here, asshole.

Robbie

Hands shaking, he flipped through the pictures. Sure enough, there was one of his father standing over a young boy.

“That’s not me,” Robbie said, voice shaking.

“Doesn’t matter. No one can see the face.”

“He did that to someone?”

“I have the negatives.”

“Why say it’s me? I can destroy him with this alone.” Robbie’s stomach churned at the realization that his father was a pedophile as well as a child abuser.

“We will destroy him, Robbie. But it has to be you, to give you a reason to leave. Embarrassment, fear, whatever. Doesn’t matter. You come back when everything dies down and no one will be looking at you for anything we did. I’ll take care of the truck. Just leave the ticket in the glove compartment, okay?”

A niggling doubt tickled Robbie. Something didn’t sound right. He wished he hadn’t smoked that pot earlier. “I don’t know about this.”

“It’s already done. The folder is on your father’s desk. I mailed a copy to the police. They’ll have it tomorrow, or Tuesday at the latest. Go, Robbie. This was my solution, instead of letting him kill you. Please, Robbie, for me.”

She leaned over and kissed him. She’d never kissed him before. He didn’t think she’d ever even touched him.

Tears stung his eyes. He took the envelope, heavy with cash. “I’m going to miss you, Cami. And everyone.”

“We’ll miss you, too.”

She took the folder from him and kissed him again. “I know where you are, Robbie. I might come down and see you if things get too hot here.”

He smiled, kissed her back. Grabbed her breast. “I wish we had more time. Maybe-”

“We don’t have time, Robbie. Please. For me, go.”

He sighed and got out of Cami’s car, walked over to his truck. He climbed into the driver’s seat.

Cami watched Robbie from the safety of her own car. She had no remorse, feeling nothing but irritation that he had proved so unworthy and stupid. She flashed her lights once.

Everything had been set up earlier that afternoon. The woman in the quarry’s control room pulled the switch. From above, three tons of rock fell on Robbie’s truck. Whether he was crushed to death or suffocated, Cami didn’t know.

He was now really stoned, she chuckled to herself.

She looked at the photos he’d taken for her, her anger raging. Someone would pay for this betrayal.

No one made a fool of her.

Skip had trusted Faye. And she’d killed him.

The light reflected off the blade. She watched herself stab him. He fought back.

“Faye, no!”

He held his arms up and she brought the knife down. Felt it cut flesh. Hit bone. Over and over. Up and down. He hit her once, then she got him in the eye.

She cut him even when he was dead. She couldn’t stop. Didn’t want to stop. She almost turned the knife on herself. Almost. Almost. Almost…

But in the end she couldn’t take her own life, and she hated herself even more. She was weak. It would be so easy to slit her wrists and watch her life flow away to the nothingness she’d felt her entire life…

Faye stared at the bloody knife.

Skip had been her friend, and while she killed him she almost felt as if she’d been outside her own body. She watched herself stab him over and over.

It got easier when his eyes stopped accusing her.

But what about the knife? And her own blood? The kill hadn’t been easy. Skip hadn’t gone willingly.

Cami was off taking care of the other loose end. Faye wondered if she herself was a loose end. If she went to him, would he kill her?

Maybe that would be for the best.

And she’d already put her life in his hands. He could decide whether she lived or died. Faye didn’t much care either way.

Trembling, she approached his door, replaying the last forty minutes over and over. The knife. Skip’s eyes. The way the blade had sliced his skin and muscle. The blood. Hitting bone, a hiss of air from a pierced lung. The kill seemed to have taken forever, but Skip was dead ten minutes after the blade first pierced his skin.

“What are you doing here?” His voice was angry.

She started crying. He ushered her inside. “Faye!” He shook her brutally, then slapped her. Blood got on his hands. She stared at it. Skip’s blood or hers? “Dammit, you should never have come here like this. What’s gotten into you? Do you want all of us to go to prison?”

She shook her head, but she didn’t know what she was agreeing with. Or not agreeing with. She didn’t know anything anymore.

“You were supposed to shoot Skip!”

“I don’t like guns.” Faye hadn’t been able to shoot Paul Judson, so Skip had done it for her. He’d protected her, kept that secret from Cami and Robbie, told everyone she had used the gun as she had been ordered to do.

The knife was more real.

And Skip had been a friend. The knife made it personal.

He hustled Faye into his bathroom, putting her in the shower with her clothes on, mumbling. She only made out some of his words: “bleach” and “burn” and “bitch.” She really didn’t deserve him, she’d known it all along. She was an ugly and scarred freak, unworthy of love. She would be better off dead. She should have killed herself after stabbing Skip to death, something like Romeo and Juliet, except hate united them instead of love.

Skip’s blood was washed from her body, down the drain, a whirlpool. Around, around, and down, down, down. It was pink now, and getting lighter. She slid down to the shower floor, closing her eyes.

Someone stepped into the shower with her. She shook her head and tried to wake herself up. How much time had passed?

He was naked. He’d been so good to her. He had trusted her with his life. And with his knife.

“Faye!”

She looked up at her beautiful, naked lover. Had he slapped her? She touched her cheek. She couldn’t feel anything.

“You cut yourself, Faye.”

He was very angry, but he also sounded a bit worried. Maybe he did care about her. Could anyone care for her? No one had in her short life. They’d shared blood, they’d shared life and living and exquisite sin. They were soul mates.

She looked at her own body as he stripped her. She saw her blood this time. He turned off the shower.

She didn’t remember cutting herself down her arms. Had she done that? Skip hadn’t had a knife.

Lifting her bloody, wet form from the shower, he laid her on the tiled floor. She shivered.