Total pages in book: 75
Estimated words: 71616 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 358(@200wpm)___ 286(@250wpm)___ 239(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 71616 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 358(@200wpm)___ 286(@250wpm)___ 239(@300wpm)
“Careful. I might think you care,” she says, shoveling food into her mouth.
I grab the salad out of the refrigerator and carry over a bottle of wine Cynthia must have brought from the main house. I open it, pour two glasses. I set one in front of Blue and serve myself some of the gnocchi.
“No thank you,” Blue says, pushing it away. “I learned my lesson.”
“You saw me open it. It’s not drugged.”
“Nope.”
I take her glass, sip from it and raise my eyebrows.
“I’m fine.”
“Suit yourself. When was the last time you ate?”
“Before my shift at The Cat House.”
“How did you know about The Cat House anyway?”
“Same way I knew about you.”
“The Austrian guy?”
She nods, scratches her nose.
I smile, knowing this is her tell. She scratches the tip of her nose when she lies. She’s completely unaware that she does it. “I doubt that. Was your father always abusive?”
Her fork stops half-way to her mouth, and she turns to me. “Why do you want to know?”
“I told you I want to know your past as well as your present. It’s how I’ll decide your future.”
“I don’t see why it matters but not to me, until that last night. He never hurt me before that. He mostly hurt Wren and mom. What arrangement do you want in exchange for protection?”
“Where is your mother?” I ask, ignoring her question.
She shrugs a shoulder and keeps her eyes focused on her plate.
“What caused your father to hurt you if he hadn’t until then?”
“You’d have to ask him. All I know is not all fathers protect their daughters.”
“I know that.”
She looks up at me, studying me for a long moment. She sets her knife and fork down.
“Finished?” She nods and I get up. “Follow me.” I lead the way to what must have been Carlton Bishop’s study once. The fire is lit in the grate. It’s a comfortable space with a desk against one wall and a sitting area that contains a sofa and well-worn leather chairs. I’ve placed a small, three-legged wooden stool that looks about a hundred years old in front of the fire.
“Is anyone else here?” she asks.
“Would it make you feel safer if there were?”
“Not really, no.”
“No, it’s just you and me.”
“Is this your house?”
“No.” She looks confused but I’m not here to answer her questions. “Sit.” I point to the stool.
She looks at it, then at me, and rubs her arms like she’s cold. “I’m fine.”
“Sit anyway.”
“Look, just tell me what you want from me, what arrangement. I’ll do what you want and then I’ll go. I’ll get out of your life forever.”
“That’s not how blackmail works, sweetheart. Sit.”
“I’ll get rid of everything I have on you while you watch. Erase all the files—”
“Ah, but someone told me recently that not all things that get erased stay erased so that’s not going to work for me.” She opens her mouth maybe to protest, maybe to make some other promise, but I stop her. “I won’t ask again, Blue.”
She takes a deep breath in, exhales, then sits.
I pour myself a whiskey and take the seat on the armchair. I sip. “I assume you’ll pass on the whiskey?”
She nods.
I set my drink down, pick up the laptop and turn it on. “Password?”
“FuckthePatriarchy. All one word. Capital F, capital P.”
I glance at her and snort, then type it in and voila. I’m in. I don’t even have to search to find a folder titled Z on the desktop. I glance at her, open it, and inside I see several photos and video files of myself at the hotel in Austria. The copies of the newspaper articles. I watch a video of my brother having a conversation with that asshole Mitch Spencer and after my brother leaves, I watch Spencer glance up at the camera as he takes a remote out of his desk, points it at the camera and stops the recording.
There’s still nothing here that could put me in prison. But the duffel could be problematic.
There are two more files and I open each one to find the compromising photos Blue would have used to blackmail the other two before me. Unless there are files hidden within folders, and there may well be, I don’t find anything else.
I close the laptop and set it aside. I’ll give it to Robbie tomorrow. I turn my attention to her. Fire crackles in the grate behind her as I sip my whiskey. Well, Carlton’s whiskey, but he doesn’t need it where he is.
“You and I find ourselves in a predicament, don’t we? A conundrum. I rarely get to use that word.”
She shifts in her seat.
“See, I don’t believe you’re being wholly truthful with me.”
“I answered all your questions.”
“Not to mention my duffel bag allegedly stashed away in some locker in some bus terminal.”
“I don’t know what you want from me.”