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Maybe it was because I was thinking too much about Gareth before I fell asleep, but I found myself dreaming of him once again. His deep, menacing voice, the hateful but greedy words he could speak. How his hands could hold me down and how other parts of his body could make me feel alive.
But then, sometime during the night, the dreams shifted, changed. Instead of Gareth on top of me, I dreamed of Rick, of how handsome he looked in his uniform in spite of it all—the lies, the secrets, the forbidden fruit.
When I woke up the next morning, I found my sheets were covered in sweat again, certain parts of my body warm, like they’d gotten a workout during the night.
Shit. This house was making me go crazy.
Chapter Nine – Brianna
All Saturday, I was waiting for Gareth to come to me—but he didn’t. It was so out of the ordinary for him, to let me be after having a date with someone else. He locked himself in the pool house, to paint, I assumed… or to plan his next murder. Whatever the hell that asshole did in there.
Saturday night was a repeat of previous nights. It would seem I couldn’t stop dreaming of Gareth, although every so often, the dreams shifted to one of the other two men that had somehow wormed their way into my brain. Mostly, though, it was Gareth. Just Gareth. And when Sunday morning rolled around, my inner thighs were slick with my arousal.
Around eleven on Sunday morning, Alistair and my mom got all fancy to go to some country club in a neighboring city, which left Gareth and me alone. You’d never know it, of course, because Gareth was still in the pool house—I didn’t think he’d even come out last night to sleep in his bedroom.
I could be wrong, though. I wasn’t his keeper. I didn’t pay attention to him twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.
While my mom and Alistair were gone was my best chance at searching the house, or at least starting the search. As long as Rick looked into Erin and tried to help me find her and her parents, I’d make good on my end of the bargain.
It still blew my mind that Rick was Gareth’s uncle, but I guess, now that I was thinking about it, they both had the same green eyes. Eyes like that must run through Rick’s family, because Alistair’s eyes were a cold, bright blue. Like ice when the winter sun hit it on a clear, bone-chilling day.
I wondered what color eyes Gareth’s mom had, if she had the same blue eyes Alistair did. It occurred to me then that there were no pictures of her hanging anywhere in the house. I’d never seen a photograph of Gareth’s mom. It was like she’d died and had ceased to exist, her memory forgotten, and that was probably because Gareth had killed her like the psychopath he was.
But, anyway, back to snooping.
I didn’t know where to look, really. The house was ginormous. And, of course, I had to be careful Gareth didn’t catch me looking around for anything out of the ordinary, so I moved the opposite of fast. Slow and steady won races and all that shit. Any time I heard a noise in the house, I stopped what I was doing and found a place to hide.
Stupid, really, because each and every time, it turned out to be just the house making noises. Big houses made random noises a lot. You’d be surprised at how often.
Alistair had quite a few rooms in the house that I’d never really gone in before. He had a study, which was not to be confused with his office—and that wasn’t to be confused with his library. And then, of course, there was his and my mom’s bedroom, though I doubted he’d leave anything fishy in there, where my mom could potentially find it.
Still, I had to look. Had to look in all of the rooms from top to bottom.
The library was my first stop, and it took the longest. There were so many old books in there, so many bookcases jam-packed with books you’d never heard of in your life. Not even the fun kind. They were all non-fiction and totally pretentious, if you asked me. I didn’t think I’d seen Alistair crack open one of them.
It’d take me hours to open every single book and check them for possible evidence. If I didn’t find anything in his study or his office, I supposed I could come back to the library and go through the books one by one.
I didn’t even know what I was looking for. Rick wasn’t too clear on what I should be searching for in this house of a bazillion rooms. Hopefully, with any luck, I’d know it when I found it.
After a while, I left the library, heading to his office next. I’d changed into all black, and I wore socks on my feet—as much as I hated socks, they made me feel better, quieter, like I could tiptoe silently and blend into the shadows.
I tiptoed into his office, heading for his desk. He had a few filing cabinets that looked like wooden bookcases with doors, but they were locked. Maybe the key would be in his desk. I sat down in his high-backed leather chair and pulled open the thin drawer just above my knees. It was an old-fashioned wood desk, the kind that had three drawers of varying depths on both sides, and a single thin drawer connecting them just above the space where you put your legs.
The drawer held a tablet, a small cord for it, a few pens and pencils, and a manila folder that wasn’t labeled. The tablet might have something on it, but after picking it up and trying to turn it on, I found it was passcode protected, and I didn’t know enough about Alistair to try to waste a bunch of time guessing what his password was.
My fingers picked up the manila folder, and I gingerly closed the drawer and set the folder on top of the desk. I stared at its blank front for a few seconds, wondering if it would really be this easy, if the evidence Rick hoped I’d find would be here, in this inconspicuous folder. Somehow, though, I doubted it.
There was only one way to find out.
I flipped open the folder, staring down at its contents. A full-page photo sat atop everything else, and the moment I laid eyes on it, my throat constricted. Eyebrows coming together, I hesitantly reached for the photo, picking up, as if holding onto it would change the image in the photograph.
Newsflash: it didn’t. It was the same photograph it had been before, only now it was closer to my face, and therefore every detail on it was that much clearer.
I swallowed hard, set the photo down, and flipped through the rest of the papers in the manila folder. My fingertips got clammy. I wasn’t shaking as I went through them, but my hands moved almost clumsily, like they’d gotten a mind of their own when I wasn’t looking.
Me. It was me. This whole folder was a file onme.
What in the hell…
