Keep Me In Sight

  Copyright © 2020 Rachel Blackledge

  All rights reserved.

  Thank you for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of this book in any form without permission. Publisher’s Note. This is a work of fiction.

  Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

  ISBN 978-0-9907804-5-8

  Keep Me In Sight / Rachel Blackledge - 1st ed.

  Cover design by: Rena Hoberman

  Printed in the United States of America

  For more information about the author, please visit: www.rachelsquared.com

  Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  47

  48

  49

  50

  51

  52

  53

  54

  Author's Note

  Exclusive Reader's Club

  More From Rachel

  This book is dedicated to Les Brown.

  The most dangerous liars are the ones who think they are telling the truth.

  - JIM ROSE

  1

  INMATE 6881

  Initials mar the bench of the holding cell; a sea of letters scratched into the paint by the forgotten ones, marking their existence.

  So and so was here. There’s a lot of gang insignia, too. I see a skull done up quite nicely. That person had some talent. Wasted, clearly.

  Keys clank against the metal gate. Wanda stands there, sliding a key into the slot and twisting. She’s one of the nicer guards, which is why she works in the out-processing unit.

  Wanda’s uniform strains against her bulk. The heavy-duty leather belt cinched up tight sections her belly into top and bottom folds. She’s an older woman, approaching retirement, I hope. What an awful place to spend her golden years.

  "Case dismissed." She pushes the gate open, looking me up and down. "Let me take a picture. It’s not often I see a murderer walk free."

  "Murderess," I say, rising to my feet and straightening my prison issue garb. I smooth back my hair and walk freely out of the holding cell.

  "‘Scuse me," she says, following me down the barren hallway. "They all come in here howling about how they’re innocent little lambs. And the justice system has done them wrong and they deserve to be set free. Except none of those smart lawyers on the outside can never seem to find a single reason why."

  I’m thinking about all the unfortunates who lack the ability to plan the perfect crime. Poor them.

  Behind me, Wanda labors for breath, a wheezing sound that keeps time with her footsteps. Then we reach the last gate before freedom, the last time I’ll be referred to as an inmate number.

  "What’s your secret?" she demands in a low voice, hand grasping the bars of the sally port door in front of us. "I saw your case file. You killed that guy deader than a doornail."

  My gaze passes from the pockmarked metal bars to her fleshy hand, wrapped around the bar, knuckles rising up in soft mounds.

  I recall Chris’s hands wrapped around my neck, his nostrils flaring, his lips stretched across the tidy white line of his teeth. Then I remember the gleam of my knife before I sank it in his belly.

  "Foresight," I say with a wry smile. She smiles too, an involuntary reaction, but I can tell from her quick sideways glance that she’s confused, trying to work out the meaning. While her wheels are turning, I nod toward the gate. "Shall we?"

  I retrieve my articles, stored the night they processed me into general. No probation or bail for me. No way. A female killer? The authorities didn’t want to take their chances, rare as we are. Women are supposed to be peaceable, not violent. What had driven me to kill?

  Until they knew, nobody wanted the responsibility of authorizing my release. And who can blame them? Nobody wanted to face the possibility that it could happen again.

  But it just might.

  In fact, I wouldn’t rule it out.

  2

  BRYNN

  ONE YEAR LATER

  Sunlight pours through our bedroom curtains, stupid gauzy things that I thought looked stylish when I bought them. But now, lying in bed with my arm slung over my eyes, hung over, I realize I should have splurged on blackout curtains instead.

  My boyfriend Dan lies next to me as still as a corpse, his dark hair mussed, stubble emerging on along his square jawline, eyelids jumping as if he’s reliving a terrible nightmare. Maybe he is reliving a terrible nightmare. We just survived an encounter with his ex-girlfriend, Erin.

  Last night we walked into Delmonico, a bar in a trendy neighborhood close to downtown San Diego, the meeting point for Dan’s D-Day party, his departure day party, the last hurrah before deployment, and Dan spotted her sitting at a pub table.

  I didn’t know anything about her except that she had moved away after The Break. Her name had come up exactly once at a backyard barbecue, putting the festive mood on ice. Dan had clammed up, of course. A whistle escaped his friend’s lips, followed by another, who turned his back, pretending to be busy.

  Dan’s big blowout could have derailed right from the very beginning. But you know what? I liked her. We had a lot of fun. Okay, too much fun. As the night descended into hazy oblivion, somehow we became bosom buddies. Isn’t that strange?

  Lying there on the bed, head pounding, I open my eyes experimentally and wait for my pupils to adjust to the bright light, but the blaze feels like stabs to the back of my head. So I roll over instead and try to piece the night together.

  There was singing. Mine. ‘Every party needs a pooper,’ followed by Erin’s rousing rendition that Dan didn’t particularly enjoy. And there was drinking. Lots of drinking. I drank, at first, to quash my insecurities.

  Dan had steadfastly refused to talk about his ex. But there I was, sitting across from the real life specimen, and I couldn’t help but draw comparisons.

  She’s a platinum blonde with wavy layers that framed her face, parting around her prominent forehead. There was a hint of sadness in her wide set eyes. She wore minimal makeup, except for a lashing of red on her enhanced lips. And she has big breasts. Wasn’t Dan more of a ‘bum man’? That’s what he’d told me.

  That’s exactly what I was thinking when she offered to buy me a drink, brown eyes glistening a little. She was so sweet about it. I could tell she was hurting. I felt sorry for her. I’d be hurting too if I happened upon Dan and his new girlfriend.

  She returned with a bottle of wine in an ice bucket—just for us—and placed her hand on my forearm. We clinked glasses and a warm friendly feeling washed away my apprehension. She was so nice. Non-threatenin
g. Funny, even. Why did they break up again?

  Desperate thirst brings me back to present. I grope around for my water flask on the bedside table and knock it over. So I lie there, face down on my pillow, listening to water drip onto the carpeted floor. Then I pull in a big breath and heave myself up to sitting.

  The bedroom swirls around me; it’s the biggest room in Dan’s beach cottage with narrow-plank wood floors popular in the 1950s and a tiny overstuffed closet. When the four walls return to their original position, I swallow the last few drops in my water flask and half-heartedly wipe the puddle off the top of my nightstand, while my mind runs over the grooves from last night like a broken record player, trying to fix the glitch because something is missing.

  We journeyed to the club, I remember. A group of us. Laughing. Confused. Led by the Pied Piper, a short guy who talked way too fast. I remember a VIP section. Red velvet ropes. Friendly strangers. Erin was there, of course. Then she wasn’t. There’s that black hole that Dan fell into, followed by his re-emergence and an after-party at someone’s house.

  The fragments dovetail, almost coming together, but then they disappear again into the foggy landscape of my mind. How did I get home? And when did I change into Dan’s Navy t-shirt?

  My body aches. My mind feels like fodder in a Jack LaLanne juicer. I can barely think straight, but I’m fighting a growing sense of dread. I think something happened last night. Something bad.

  From the mist rises one specter. It’s blurry and not well formed, this ghost, but I’m ninety-seven percent certain that I saw Erin leave.

  And Dan follow her out.

  3

  BRYNN

  A few days have passed, but the mystery of Dan’s whereabouts the night of his farewell party still haunts me. He says he’s too busy to talk about it. And he is busy, getting ready to deploy. He’s packing and preparing and sorting through his tactical and field medical equipment, carefully checking off items from his list. He’s up early and home late with combat medic briefings and prep meetings. And he’s definitely not interested in talking about that night.

  But my mind is stuck on repeat, going back over the holes in my memory, trying to find something that makes sense because right now nothing is making any sense. Why would he leave and go somewhere with Erin?

  I should let it go, I know. But this is like a splinter in my heel, inching toward infection. The only thing that will cure my condition is answers. So I’m back to analyzing the mystery.

  There has to be an obvious and innocent reason why Dan went somewhere with Erin. Maybe the timing was awkward, and he never actually went anywhere with her. But his stonewalling only makes me more suspicious.

  It’s Monday evening. I’m still a little groggy from our Saturday night blowout, but I manage to warm up dinner (leftover take-out) while Dan searches the cab of his truck for his compass. I’m washing the dishes and mulling things over in my mind, when I hear his phone vibrating against the countertop.

  With both hands plunged into the sink full of soapy water, I lean over to see who’s calling, as significant others have done from time immortal, I suppose, and glimpse the name of the other woman. Erin.

  My heart beats fast, fighting imminent implosion.

  Why is she calling Dan? Maybe she butt-dialed him. Then something occurs to me. Why is her number programmed into his phone? Perhaps he forgot to delete her contact from the good ole days.

  Maybe I’m reading this whole situation wrong. So, once again, I find myself wondering about the nature of their relationship. Was it one of those love hate addictions? And the hate magically transformed to love the night of his going away party?

  I know for a fact that he didn’t drive up to Newport Beach and back. That alone would take four hours. Shagging would take some time, depending on the quality of the pillow talk. Besides, he’s flat out, getting ready for deployment.

  My heart sinks. Did she drive down here? Careening down the highway like a dog in heat, beckoning him over to her hotel room? That seems so seedy and gross. Something Dan would definitely not do. Right?

  Okay. Okay. Calm down. I need to think about the facts. So I think about Erin’s enhanced bosom of all things. At least I can reach down and touch my toes.

  See what venom lurks in my heart?

  I hate that her missed call punted me back to my high school years, back when I was ‘one of the guys.’ I never was a show pony. I never sat in class, brushing my long sleek mane. I neither giggled nor jiggled.

  But none of that matters now. I got the hot guy. Baywatch Babe can pound sand, as Dan would say. Trouble is, she doesn’t want to pound sand. It appears she wants Dan.

  The back door opens. Glancing over my shoulder, I see Dan walk in. He’s wearing a ball cap with the bill pulled low on his brow, casting a shadow over his eyes and a hint of a sunburn on the bridge of his nose from his morning surf session.

  "Can’t find that compass," he says, going to his phone. "Maybe Riggs has it."

  I turn back and look past the frilly half-curtains framing our kitchen window to the neighbor’s stucco house beyond, focusing on his reflection in the windowpane, trying to look very casual. I’m watching for his reaction as he checks his phone and sees that Erin called. But he casually slips his phone in the front pocket of his jeans and opens the fridge door. Business as usual.

  "Do you want a beer?" he asks.

  I don’t reply. I can’t. My heart is splintering around the edges. His calm reaction confirms my very worst fear. I knew something happened that night. Now I know what. They rekindled, and I sat there drunk, oblivious, while it all unfolded right under my nose.

  What am I supposed to do now? Pretend I know nothing? Confront him as soon as possible? Remove the door handles on his truck? So many options.

  The fridge door shuts. "Brynn? You okay?"

  Anger props me up, but under the hot fiery current, runs a river of hurt. Well, now isn’t the time to feel sorry for myself. Now is the time to get answers.

  "No," I say, turning around and drying my hands on a dishtowel. "You have a missed phone call from Erin."

  He scowls.

  "Do you want to tell me something?" I ask, arms folded. "Because now is as good of a time as any."

  "I don’t know why she called me."

  "Well, I have a few theories. Why don’t we discuss the most obvious one first?"

  His face freezes over. He knows the procedure. He’s buckling up for a wild ride into Woman Territory, where he’ll face any number of trials and tribulations, collectively known as communication.

  "Did something happen that night we all went out?" I ask him. "I know you went somewhere with Erin. I saw you leave."

  This is a shot in the dark because I think I saw them leave together. But his ribcage stills. And now I know it’s true.

  I suck in a quick breath. I can’t stand the thought of Dan in anyone else’s arms let alone Erin’s. She’s so different from me. It seems almost impossible that he could love her and me at the same time. The only explanation is that he never really loved her . . . or maybe he doesn’t really love me. Maybe with me, he found someone easy, someone on whom he can wipe his feet.

  "Did you get together or something? Is that why she’s following up?"

  Dan looks horrified. At least that’s something. He clenches his jaw, twisting the beer cap off with ferocity, and walks out to the front room. I follow.

  Bear, his Golden Retriever, sits on the couch, one fluffy ear cocked back as if he can’t believe what he’s hearing. Well, that makes two of us.

  "I want to know if something happened that night, Dan. I want to know the truth," I say, bracing myself.

  He takes off his cap, tosses it on the coffee table, and rakes his hand through his dark hair. Then he sinks down on the gray couch next to Bear. I feel sick with anticipation. I’m not sure if I want to know the truth. Maybe I’m like Sheryl Crow. Maybe I want him to lie to me.

  My heart twists thinking about Dan with Baywatch Babe, a
fluffy Pomeranian poking its head out of her purse, her arm looped around Dan’s waist in a proud and proprietary manner.

  I sit down next to him. "Is this it? Is she back in your life now?"

  Dan takes my hand. I sniff, trying to hold back my tears. I don’t want him to see me weak and crying. I don’t want him to know how bad he could hurt me. But the warmness of his touch is the salve that I desperately need.

  "Nothing happened," he says, locking his hazel eyes with mine, and I find myself falling into his golden prisms, bright against a field of dark blue. He pulls his mouth into a wan smile, causing the faint dimple on his cheek to emerge, the dimple that I love to see. He leans over and nuzzles his nose against mine. "I could never do that to you."

  I sit there for a few seconds, drinking in his words—nothing happened, he could never do that to me—as the pain in my chest slowly fades.

  "Come here," he says, taking me by the hands and pulling me up to standing.

  He hooks his fingers into my belt loops and pulls me close. I step forward reluctantly, closing the gap between us, my arms encircling his wide muscled shoulders.

  "You insult my honor." One corner of his mouth lifts.

  "You insult my intelligence," I say, trying not to smile. "What did she want?"

  His body stiffens. I should have let this go, I know. I should have basked under the warm glow in his eyes, but I don’t want any unanswered questions left to rot.

  He rests his chin on the top of my head and sighs. "She wanted to talk," he says, his voice tired and bored. "I’m sure you can imagine how well that went over."

  I can’t help but laugh, picturing Erin trying to yammer at Dan. "Sounds painful."

  "Pretty much," he says, glimpsing down at me. The light is back in his eyes. His mouth turns down, gauging my mood.

  "So what in particular did she want to discuss?" I ask.

  "Old times, I guess. I honestly can’t remember."