Reese shivered at his words. Her mom had been nothing short of an angel. She taught third grade for over twenty years, and raised Reese all by herself until Russell and his dad came along. “You’re just trying to get a rise out of me. I won’t fall for it. My mom was amazing.”
Russell smirked. “If only she’d kept her mouth shut, maybe we wouldn’t be here right now.”
“What are you talking about? None of this has anything to do with her, and you know it. This is all because you decided to takethe law into your own hands and kill a woman in cold blood.” At the rise of his eyebrows, Reese continued. “Yeah, don’t think I don’t know all about that. How could you, Russell? What did that poor woman ever do to you?”
To Reese’s surprise, Russell pulled up a chair and sat in front of her, crossing one leg over his other thigh, like he was getting comfortable for a friendly chat. “That poor woman? Is that how you think of all women, Reese? Victims? Blameless? Let me guess, you only like men who see themselves as heroes and protectors, don’t you?”
Reese swallowed, prepared to do battle with this man in any way she could. “Not that you’ve ever been a hero or a protector.” She barely noticed when his hand came up and backhanded her across the face. The sting was enough to make her eyes water, but she pressed on. “Why don’t you tell me how you really feel?” She didn’t care that she was egging him on. He wouldn’t kill her. Not yet, at least. Not until Garrett arrived, and she needed to figure out a plan of her own. Maybe if she riled him up enough, Russell would make a mistake. It was her only hope of saving Garrett.
Russell ran a hand through his slicked back hair. “I’m not a heart-to-heart kind of guy.”
“No, you’d actually need to have a heart for that, but that’s not what I meant. Why did you send me to Desert Cove? Why did you have some goons try to kidnap me?” Reese had a strong feeling she knew the answers, but she still wanted to hear it from him - the man that up until just over a year ago, she’d considered to be her brother.
“We both know why I did what I did, so let’s not play games.” His tone grew darker, but Reese wasn’t about to let up. She needed to get him angry and out of his head before Garrett got here.
“I’m not playing games, Russell. This is me, Reese, your stepsister, and I want to hear it from you. Why did you do all those things to me? Even when we were kids, you hated me. You played along in front of our parents, but you never missed an opportunity to get me in trouble. So, this is me asking, why?”
Russell let out a breath and stood, bracing his hands on the back of his head. “Why? Why! Are you really that dumb?” His hands dropped to her shoulders in a painful hold, but Reese didn’t flinch. He was unraveling, and she wasn’t about to throw him the slightest bit of a lifeline. “You want to know why. I’ll tell you why. Because you had a mother that actually gave a damn about you. You had a mother that would stay up half the night worrying about you. You had a mother who set rules for you and actually expected you to follow them. But you were just a brat. A lazy, spoiled, self-centered, brat who took everything for granted. So, yeah, I enjoyed knocking you down a peg or two whenever I could. Oddly enough, it gave me a strange sense of satisfaction.”
“Your dad loved you.” Reese said the words before thinking them through. She hadn’t wanted to comfort or coddle Russell, but there was something about him in that moment of confession that reminded her of the scared and lost teenage boy who’d moved into the room next door to her when their parents got married.
Russell laughed, the sound menacing and slightly broken. “My dad didn’t have a choice. He got stuck with me. And he did the best he could, I’ll give him that. But he didn’t want me anymore than I wanted him. Or you. Or your perfect little mother who thought she could mother me into being a model son and brother. He got what he deserved though. I made sure of that. And so did she.”
There was so much hate and anger in his words, but Reese didn’t miss the slight hint of pain. The pain of a boy whosemother had left him to pursue a career as an actress and never looked back. But then his last words caught up to her. She knew he’d stopped all communication with his father, but what did her mother have to do with that? “So did she? What do you mean by that?”
Russell smirked again, his dark eyes dancing with a sinister delight that made her skin crawl right up until the moment she connected with him and saw his death. She let the horrific scene that unfolded before her play out without reacting to it because she was determined to keep him talking. “What did you do?” Reese demanded.
He shook his head and sat back in the chair, pulling hers closer to him until their knees were touching. “Did you know that your mother had a gift similar to yours?”
Reese had suspected it, but they’d never actually talked about it. After her mom died, Reese made peace with the fact that she’d never know.
“Hmm,” Russell mused. “Did I just surprise you? Anyway, apparently what you two had was genetic or something. Strange, right? I know she never told you. I think it was because she didn’t want you to feel overwhelmed or burdened by it. Or maybe she was ashamed of it. Who knows. I came home for dinner one evening and she greeted me at the door. I thought it was rather sweet, but then she made a fatal error.”
At his use of the word ‘fatal,’ she drew in a ragged breath, terrified of where this conversation was going. “What did you do?” She asked, her voice low, as she barely held on to the last thread of control she had.
“It’s not what I did,” he assured her. “It’s what she did. See, she hugged me and then told me about her gift. I had no idea about it until that night. When I asked her why she’d decided to tell me, I thought she was going to say how worried she was about me since I’d just gotten my badge and was working longhours. I was prepared to console her and promise her that I wasn’t going to die. But then she brought up your friend, Greta Munster. Do you remember Greta?”
Reese bit her lip and nodded. She and Greta had been friends since middle school. One night, Greta mysteriously disappeared during Reese’s first year in college. Her body was never found and when Reese’s mom died in an awful car accident a few weeks later, Reese was too lost in her grief to care about much of anything. It wasn’t long before Greta was labeled a runaway, and the news stopped covering her story. “You killed her,” Reese said, not even questioning it.
“Who?” Russell asked. “Greta?”
Reese nodded, unable to speak. If her mother’s gift worked the same way hers did, and she’d seen Greta’s death, she’d probably been trying to talk Russell out of committing murder.
Russell shrugged. “I mean it’s what your mother claimed I was going to do. But that’s not what I wanted to tell you today.”
Reese found it hard to breathe, waiting for him to drop the other proverbial shoe. He’d all but admitted to killing Greta, or else why bring her up at all. But then, something dawned on her. After her mother’s car crash, Russell had insisted on being on her case. It had been ruled an accident and he’d assured Reese that nothing could’ve prevented it. She’d believed him and had her body cremated so she could spread her ashes over Red Rock Canyon, her mother’s favorite place in the whole world. She’d sold the car for scraps, needing the money for school and art supplies. There was literally nothing left of her mother, no way to prove what he’d just insinuated, and the bastard knew it.
Her vision blurred with tears and a rage so hot, her blood boiled with it. “What did you do to her?!” Reese screamed, losing the tenuous grip she’d had on her anger. “What did you do to my mom?!”
But before Russell could answer, the sound of a vehicle approaching in the distance had him standing and looking out the window that faced the front of the cabin. Then he looked back at her with a wide grin. “Showtime.”
