Chapter 26
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
HIM
“Did you just fucking piss yourself?” I grunted, using the tip of the kitchen knife to guide the fucker’s legs farther apart and get a better look at the area around his crotch.
I didn’t remember his jeans being so dark. I didn’t remember him smelling like an outhouse neither. A boys’ locker room maybe, but not an outhouse. There wasn’t enough cologne in the world to cover up the stench of insecurity. And this guy was bleeding that shit from his pants.
“You did, didn’t you?” I laughed as he mumbled something incoherent from beneath the tape I’d had no choice but to slap over his mouth as soon as I dragged him into the living room and he’d started screaming like a little bitch.
I was being a good houseguest, keeping Jules from getting a noise complaint against her. Unlike some people, I was fucking considerate.
“You gonna stop with the screaming?” I quirked a brow at him.
His head moved up and down a few times in response, and I tugged the duct tape off with a quick flick of my wrist. Shit stuck to my fingers.
I shook out my hand, closing my fist over the rolled-up ball it made and tossed it aside, before returning my glare to the prick with a wet prick sitting in front of me.
“Sure hope you’re a man of your word or this ain’t gonna go well for you, Robbie.” I aimed the knife at him for emphasis.
“Ow, fuck,” he hissed under his breath, making faces as he loosened up his jaw muscles. When he was finally done fucking around, he peered up at me. “Where’s Juliet?”
“Already told ya… She ain’t here, pal.” I tapped my index finger against his temple. “You slow or something?”
He watched me move around the back of the chair he was tied to out of the corner of his eye. I placed a hand on each of his shoulders, never letting go of the knife, and squeezed. Harder than was friendly or necessary.
What can I say? The guy irked me. I didn’t like being asked the same dumb-ass questions over and over again. Probably had something to do with my upbringing. Quacks loved asking the same dumb-ass questions a million different ways. Come to think of it, cops did too.
“What did you do to her?” Robbie asked. Though it didn’t seem like he really wanted to know the answer.
“Nothing she didn’t like,” I replied. “Wasn’t lying when I said I fucked her. A lot.”
“I don’t believe you.”
I circled back around, tugging a second chair forward so we were sitting knee to knee. Or more like knee to shin. Mine were much higher than his. Fucker was bite-sized. Must have run in the family. Because Jules was bite-sized too.
I had no intention of putting this particular Keller anywhere near my mouth, though.
“Yeah, and why’s that? Don’t think I’m pretty enough?
” I rubbed a hand over my chin, over the stubble that was growing along a very-square jawline—Hollywood worthy if ya asked me—and leaned back in my seat.
One arm draped along the top rail, the other resting on my lap with the sharpest part of the knife jetting out between us.
If looks could kill, my brains would be splattered all over the far wall as this fucker laser-focused his glare on the center of my forehead. Like he could already picture the bullseye there.
“My sister’s not like that,” he said.
“Like what?” I laughed. “A dirty little whore who likes to suck cum off my fingers? ?Cause I can assure you she is. Don’t think you know ?er as well as you think you do, Robert.”
He tilted his head to look at me for a moment. “I know her a hell of a lot better than you do, asshole.”
“That so?” I leaned forward again, elbows digging into my knees. My face so close to his I could smell the nicotine gum on his breath. Quitter. “Why because your old man made ya diddle each other when you were kids? Hate to break it to you, but that don’t make you an expert on the woman.”
Now this fucker was the one grinning. “That what she told you happened?”
I didn’t like being caught off guard. Didn’t like the way it made me feel. Didn’t like to believe she’d lied to me. And not just about this fucker being dead but about what happened between ?em.
I could look past a little white lie. One little white lie, but two was un-fucking-forgivable. Two changed it from a mistake to a pattern of behavior. Two made it easier to do it again. That was how I ended up the way I did. With so much blood on my hands.
“She did, didn’t she?” He was laughing in my face, throwing his head back as far as it could go and laughing. His Adam’s apple bobbing up and down like a fucking worm on a hook. Except my teeth were sharper than any fish I knew. And so was the fucking butcher knife I was clutching in my hand.