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A hand settled on her upper thigh, gripped it, then dropped away.
“Yeah, just what I thought. I’m on set all the time running your events instead of being a star. Get me on-screen or I out you to the media.”
All of a sudden, the screen had black shapes, and I realized it was fingers, then it went black. Shane had reached up and turned the camera off.
I stared at the black screen, the file at the end.
I had no doubt I was one of the clips. I had to be, even though I was confident I didn’t see any with today’s date. I wasn’t a tech expert, but it was there. I knew it. Sexual predators didn’t change. Never. Even prisoners knew rapists were a class all to themselves. Shane had had opportunity. I’d gone to brush my teeth. He could have turned it on while I was in the bathroom and I’d never know. I’d been on top, just like every other woman.
I was just one in his collection.
This fact made it easier for me to think clearly and objectively.
Shane had a long-standing relationship with Erin Mills. One that lasted years. One where Shane held the power. I was familiar with this concept. Chad had been that way, wielding control over me and making me think I was less. That fucking him and trying to please him would somehow make him love me.
It hadn’t. Shane hadn’t been interested in any of the women he’d filmed except to get his dick wet. To know he could fuck them and film them without them knowing. That was powerful.
As for Erin Mills, Shane had offered her something he’d never give. Not with how much he hated his dad. He might have even strung her along for years. Perhaps she wasn’t confident in her sexuality and instead used sex with lots of men to validate herself. Maybe it was brought about by Shane himself, that very first time. She’d used men to make herself feel better, hoping that someday Shane would come through.
What had made her change her mind this fall? Had she finally had a moment like I had where I realized I’d been wrong, that I’d been used?
In the film clip she’d been powerful. Finally. Had that strength and threat been what pushed Shane to end her? It would ruin him, so he’d killed her
to keep her quiet.
But someone like him wouldn’t be able to stop. He’d kept his filming a secret for years. He had no expectation of being caught. He knew from me that the case against Erin had gone cold.
“God, he must be laughing his head off, not only fucking the dead woman, murdering her and getting away with it, but fucking the investigator too,” I said aloud.
I stood, paced.
Shane needed to go to jail. Now.
I grabbed my cell, called Nix.
“I know who killed Erin.”
11
SHANE
My balls should have been drained, my dick worn out after all the sex we’d had with Eve the past few days. I was hard just thinking about her, and I was standing on the porch of a cabin in the woods. The sun was out, but it was fucking freezing.
Usually I loved the quiet of the woods. No people, no noise. Today it annoyed me. I didn’t want to be here. I wanted to be in town, with Eve. I hadn’t stayed in my house since last summer, but I was ready to move back there so it would be easy to be with her since the police department was just down the street.
I wanted people. I wanted Eve. And she was twenty miles away in Cutthroat. I couldn’t smell her soft scent, only the pine trees. I couldn’t taste her pussy on my tongue, only the coffee I’d just finished.
I craved her. After going years with just casual, this… thing we shared was incredible. We’d just gotten her to open up, to see that we would never hurt her, that we’d have her back, that we’d prop her up and stand beside her. All the cliché terms.
I wanted it all with her. I knew Shane did too. Being a rancher, a forest ranger and a detective made for complicated schedules, but we’d make it work. I didn’t have to stay here in the cabin. I’d isolated myself from people just as much as Eve had. Remaining here was an easy way to keep people at a distance. We may have gotten past Eve’s tough walls, but I realized she’d gotten past mine.
The sound of a car approached, and I stepped off the porch to see who it was. This time of year there were few visitors. Especially now with all the snow. The trail was buried, and snowshoes were needed to get anywhere. Snowmobilers would stick to the service road, but that was two miles south.
It was a police SUV. We did interdepartmental rescues all the time, but no one had called anything in on the radio.
Nix Knight stepped out, and I went to shake his hand. We’d gone to high school together, were friendly, but I wouldn’t say friends. I saw him mostly through work these days.
“What brings you all the way out here?”
