Page 10 of He Had It Coming

For years he deliberately skipped me. Made a big show of saying I had nothing to offer and moved onto Maeve. She loved it. They all did. My mother would shake her head and play along. She always went along. Whatever Dad wanted . . . even when what he wanted was to trade her in for a younger version. And he would have, but Mom died in the car accident first.

Dad drove the car on the trip that ended her life. He had a full-time driver but he had something to prove that night after too much bourbon and the fight about the mental decline he insisted didn’t exist. Even as he forgot conversations he’d just had and lost the ability to perform easy tasks without mistakes. Then the car went into the lake and only he came out again.

Sabrina’s punishing grip on the knife handle bleached the color out of her fingers. “Are you ready to play?”

She’d been overindulged by the true crime community. They cheered on her delusions. Tried to shift the narrative, reopen the closed case, and prop her up as their grieving leader. The poster child for pain.

No one seemed to care that the amount of attention, the energy expended, would have been better served on a new case that needed a solution. One that actually was an open question with ready-made martyrs, waiting to be saved.

The chorus of “get him” chants against me had died down. I’d enjoyed almost a year of quiet and limited finger-pointing in my direction. Sabrina’s unrelenting focus appeared to find another target for eleven months and seventy-three days until she changed tactics and Anonymous appeared. Then the downward spiral started all over again.

I attempted to drag her back to reality. “We’ve been over this. The police told you. The prosecutor told you. It was an accident.”

Sabrina’s arm hung at her side. She tapped the dull edge of the knife against the outside of her leg. “It?”

Fine. I hated saying her name, conjuring up the details. “Ruby. Ruby’s death was an accident.”

“You’re saying you didn’t mean to do it.”

I sensed the trap but the comment wasn’t wrong. I didn’t head out that night intending for Ruby to die. “Of course not.”

Sabrina didn’t move for a few seconds. She stared me down. Tilted her head to one side as if assessing me. I knew the debate over this topic wouldn’t be that fast or that easy, but I hoped she could see the person in front of her was a man, not a monster.

She took a step toward me. Then another. Her fingers slid over the binding on my wrist. She lifted the knife. Slipped the tip right under the confining rope.

I froze, not wanting to startle her before she could cut the tie and free me. If she was drifting back to sanity, I’d talk her through it. Help her get there. Then knock her pathetic ass out while I rummaged around for my lost cell phone so I could call the police.

Mercy, decency, forgiveness. None of those coursed through my veins right now, but I could be generous. Make her despicable actions public. Make her a spectacle like she’d tried to do to me so many times over the years. But I could be the bigger person and forgive.

Dad and the rest of the board would love that shit. It would be great PR for the company.

Sabrina hesitated.

I aimed for an encouraging tone. “We can end this right now and forget it happened.”

She frowned but still sounded lost in a spell. “Forget it?”

No, not really. “Sure.”

She barked out a laugh. “Why would I do that?”

She slashed the knife across my forearm. Then she did it again. Shallow strokes that stung.

A thundering roar launched from my stomach. I yelled as I strained against the bindings. Pulled and tugged. The reaction came more from surprise than actual pain.

“Would you call what I just did an accident?” She sounded amused. Defiant.

I lunged but being still strapped in I couldn’t move very far.

She stepped back and held up the knife. Blood dripped down the edge.

My blood. One glance at the thin red lines running along my forearms to my wrist, the blood pooling under my watchband, and what little sympathy I had left for the Forde family evaporated. Gone forever.

“I’m going to kill you.” I didn’t soften my fury. I wanted her to hear the gruff, rumbling sound and know she’d gone too far.

She smiled. “Please try. Because if you do, then I won’t feel obligated to give you a fighting chance.”

Chapter Twelve