“What? No, of course not. I don’t hurt people, you know that.”
“But your brother does.” She said the words and clenched her teeth.
/> I frowned at the look of fear in her eyes. “Why would you say that?”
“I’ve heard him talk about hurting people,” she said. “He brags about it.”
I tried to muster a reassuring smile for her. “Nobody gets hurt when I’m in charge,” I said. “You have my promise.”
She stared at the bag. “What do you want me to do with this?”
“Stow it in the trunk of your car. Pack one of your own. I will call you Friday after the job and have you meet me. We’ll take your car and get out of town, then figure out where we want to go and fly away.”
She held out her hand and I wrapped my fingers around it.
“This is so sudden,” she said. “Can I think about it?”
“Yes,” I said, squeezing her hand. “You have until Friday.”
SANDY
I was sitting at my kitchen table staring into a cup of lukewarm coffee, replaying in my head the conversation I’d had with Rick the night before when the doorbell rang.
He was going to make a big score on Friday, he said, one that would set him up for life. He wanted to leave the city and never return. He wanted to start a new life. And he wanted me to go with him.
I took a sip of the coffee and wondered how things had happened so fast. And gotten so far out of hand.
A week ago, I was Sandy Duval, an innocent girl who was grieving over her dead fiancé and plotting revenge on the men who had killed him.
Now, I was a criminal’s girlfriend who was thinking about running away with him after he committed his next crime. Funny, how things can change so quickly, how morals can loosen and logic can wane; all because Eddie Wright put a bullet in Brent’s head and Rick Wright put his cock in me.
The doorbell rang again. I ignored it long enough to finish my coffee and set the cup in the sink. It was just after eight in the morning. I knew it wasn’t Rick at the door because he was out of town on business (god, that almost sounds legit) and wouldn’t be back until Friday. I wondered if Eddie was with him…
The doorbell rang again, this time making me jump. I was wearing a bathrobe with nothing on underneath, just as Rick had left me an hour before. I tightened the sash around my waist and pulled the lapels over my breasts as I went to answer the door.
I checked the peephole. It wasn’t Rick or Eddie. It was a tall, thin woman whose distorted features through the peephole looked vaguely familiar. I took a deep breath and opened the door.
“Yes?”
“Miss Duval?” The woman at the door looked me up and down as if she didn’t recognize me. I didn’t recognize her either until she held up a detective’s badge.
“I’m Detective Cochran,” she said, tucking the badge inside her gray jacket. “I was the detective that spoke with you after your fiancé’s murder.”
I lifted my chin and tried to swallow the piece of my heart that had wedged in my throat. Having a cop show up at my door wouldn’t have unnerved me a week ago. Now, I had to fight the urge to slam the door and run out the back. I wasn’t guilty of anything other than plotting revenge, but it sure felt like it.
“Yes. I remember. Please. Come in.” I put my hands in the robe’s pockets to keep them from shaking, then stepped aside to let her pass.
She followed me to the kitchen and took a seat at the table. She refused my offer of coffee. She took out a small notepad and pen as she waited for me to sit down.
“What can I do for you, Detective?” I asked.
Her eyes went around my face again. She glanced at my hair and the diamond stud in my nose. I had never felt more self-conscious. Thank God, the robe covered my tattoos.
She tapped the tip of the pen to the paper and stared at me as she spoke. “Well, ma’am, for starters, you can tell me what you’re doing hanging around the people that we think killed your fiancé.”
I suddenly felt like a criminal myself, as if I’d just been caught committing a major crime. I said, “I’m not sure what you mean.”
She reached into her jacket pocket and brought out five Polaroid mugshots and lay them out on the table one by one as if she were dealing cards. The five mugshots were of Rick’s crew. The first one was Rick and the last one was Eddie. Chunk, Ronnie, and Pete were the middle three.