Page 10

Chapter Ten

Grey

G uilt eats me from the inside the next morning as I sit across from Briar at the kitchen table. Each bite of pancake tastes horribly sour. Not even the diabetes-inducing syrup can help. Even so, I shovel each bite into my mouth. The sooner we finish eating, the sooner I can tap into that dead bitch’s camera system.

“Is something bugging you?” Briar asks as she tidies up the dishes. “You’ve hardly spoken since...last night.”

“Something about leg shackles doesn’t exactly make me eager to converse in the mornings.” I shift my feet around and rattle the chains. “Any chance we could try a trust exercise and let me walk around freely?”

Briar tightens her high ponytail and looks at my feet. “I guess we could try, but if you take off, I’ll call the county sheriff.”

If anyone should be contacting the county, it’s me. I’m the one who’s being held hostage in this really strange situation with this really strange woman who is starting to grow on me.

That’s part of the problem. I liked what happened between us last night. It was dirty and wrong to play the killer in the bedroom, and I’m not playing. I am a killer. And she let me fill and fuck her until she was cross-eyed.

But what would my wife think? That’s the question that keeps running through my mind, waving a banner. I run my finger over the place where my wedding band once rested. Now, that gold band rests with her and our unborn child in the casket.

“Do you still have your wedding ring?” Briar asks as she pulls the shackles from my ankles. “I only ask because I haven’t seen it on your finger, but I sometimes notice you turning the place where it should be. My dad used to do that with his ring.”

I shake my head and look out the window as the second shackle releases. “No, I don’t have the ring anymore. Some habits die hard, I guess.”

Briar sits back on her heels and looks up at me. “Would you ever remarry?”

“Never say never, but it’s unlikely.”

“I never want to get married. Sid did, but I wouldn’t do it. I sure dodged one hell of a bullet there.”

“Sid. Was that your ex with all the crazy fetishes?”

She nods. “Yeah, one and the same. I would have stayed loyal to that sorry piece of shit, with or without marriage, but he couldn’t keep his dick in his pants. One night, I caught him with a couple of eighteen-year-olds. He thought I was off at a conference for medical billing specialists.”

“Is that what you do for a living? You harass people about their medical bills?”

“Ouch, shots fired.” She stands and stretches her lower back. “Let’s go to the living room. I want to see how high your reward is now.”

I stand and follow her out of the kitchen. “We have an agreement, don’t forget. I made you come, so you can’t turn me in.”

“Yeah, yeah.” She flops on the couch and grabs the remote.

Light fills the screen, and she flips through the local channels until one of the stations finally airs their midday news segment. We sit through a story about a nursing home catching fire, another about a failing school system, and then some sports commentary. Finally, my face pops up in a small rectangle to the right of the news anchor’s head.

“Police are still searching for the man who shot and killed bank CEO Gloria Rogers two days ago.” Video taken outside the bank pops onto the television as the news anchor continues. She details the murder, then gives my description before finally saying, “If anyone has any information, you’re urged to contact the number on the screen. A reward has been offered for any tips that lead to an arrest and conviction.”

A number flashes on the screen, and Briar’s jaw drops. “You’re up to twenty grand, Grey! In two days, you’ve quadrupled the price on your head. How does it feel?”

It feels pretty shitty, if I’m being honest. I don’t regret what I did, and if I had it to do over again, I’d make the same decisions. Every time I think about what I’ve done, I don’t feel remorse. I feel pride.

What does that say about me?

“Now that the power’s back, you can show me whatever it is you wanted me to see on the laptop.” Briar rises from the couch and leaves the room. When she returns, she has a laptop in her hands. She places it on the coffee table, then connects the power cord. “It’s old as dirt and won’t turn on if it’s not directly connected to a power source. The battery is shot.”

She’ll get no judgment from me. I haven’t owned a laptop since the bank took everything but the car.

I pull the laptop in front of me and frown. “Do you have a VPN?”

She shakes her head. “What’s that?”

“It stands for virtual private network. It basically encrypts your data, making it harder to track your digital footprint. Instead of entering websites head on and announcing your IP address at the front door, a VPN scoots you in through the back. I’d set you up, but I don’t exactly have a method of payment.”

She nibbles her lip and looks at a stack of envelopes on the table beside the door. “You think something in this footage will be the answer to both of our problems, right?”

I nod.

With a sigh, she goes to her bedroom and returns with a card in her hand. She holds it toward me. “Fucking charge it.”

I pluck the card from her fingers and set to work. Within a few minutes, I’ve set up a secure connection and logged in to my secure accounts. I start by pulling the saved videos from the vault. If I want Briar on board with my plan, she needs to be made aware of a few things.

“There’s something I want you to see.” I turn the laptop so that the screen fully faces her. “When you’re ready, hit play, but make sure you’re ready. This isn’t easy to watch.”

Briar’s eyebrows pull together, but she leans forward and hits play. I turn my head. The video was difficult to watch the first time, and the second time was torture, but I had to make sure I hadn’t imagined what the camera captured. I don’t need to see it a third time.

The sounds are enough to turn my stomach. A door creaks open in the video, and footsteps thump on expensive flooring. “ Is that fucking crayon on my wall, Doris? What did you do, you sorry little shit ?” a female voice slurs.

It’s Gloria, and she’s drunk. Doris is her adopted four-year-old daughter, and what Gloria thinks is crayon is actually a scuff from the movers mounting a picture in the hall. It took me all of three minutes to figure that out by going back just a few hours in the footage, but Mommy Dearest doesn’t care where the mark came from. She’s angry, and a four-year-old is a very easy target.

Briar slams the laptop shut after the first crack of the belt, and I don’t blame her. This wasn’t just a spanking. This was a full-on physical assault on a small child.

“I’m going to be sick,” she says before rushing out of the room.

The reaction doesn’t surprise me. I felt the same each time I watched that clip. The worst part? That video isn’t the only proof of her depravity, and the little girl wasn’t the only recipient of her unbridled rage.

The younger child, a mere infant, regularly screamed in his crib for hours. She probably wised up once the doctors started asking questions about the incessant rashes the baby developed from sitting in his own excrement for hours on end.

The dog she adopted from the shelter—an act which garnered a ton of publicity for the bank—met the most horrific fate of all. I won’t go into the details, but let’s just say that no living being can survive without food and water.

My original plan wasn’t murder. When I cracked into her cameras, I had every intention of finding the skeletons in her closet and taking her down. I sent the videos of the abuse to news outlets, police departments, and anyone else with a listed address. No one responded, and it was swept under the rug.

That’s what finally pushed me over the edge.

She took my wife and child from me. She took my home. There is no telling how many other lives she ruined. But when I outed her for the abuse of her children and the dog, nothing was done, so I had to do the right thing. When no one else cares, someone has to.

So I did.

Briar comes back into the room with a glass of water. She takes a sip, then sits beside me on the couch. “Sorry. That was more than I anticipated.”

“It’s understandable. I’d be more concerned if it didn’t make you sick.”

“No worries there.” She holds the glass to her forehead and looks at the laptop. “I don’t have to watch any more videos, do I? I can’t handle seeing kids like that.”

“We have more to see, but no more videos like that. Have a seat, and I’ll lay out my plan.”