A Deadly Influence (Abby Mullen Thrillers #1)(80)

The caption came easily. Instagram, Instagram, on the phone, who’s the fairest of them all? He still giggled when he read it. It would go viral for sure.

Now, he worked on pasting Gabrielle’s face instead of the queen’s. It was going badly. What was that quote? “Write drunk, edit sober”? One of those things people thought Hemingway had said, even though he’d never actually said it. Eric had his own quote for posterity. “Meme drunk, photoshop sober.” It was easy enough to cut Gabrielle’s face, but he did it sloppily; the light was all wrong, and the size didn’t fit.

He’d phoned her three more times, but she hadn’t answered.

Eric had to admit to himself he’d been in love with her for years.

It had been his idea to go on that road trip that ended up making her famous. And he was the driver; Gabrielle didn’t have a license back then. He took a lot of the photos. He worked on them to make them better. Didn’t ask for payment—she had no money back then; her family was barely scraping by. But that set a precedent, so he never asked for money after that either.

Perhaps it really had been dumb. He was a sucker.

Someone knocked on the door. Gabrielle? Of course not. Pathetic. Still feeling that hopeful yearning even now.

Then he remembered he’d asked the woman who’d answered his 911 call to tell the detective to drop by. Because he had something to show him.

Zigzagging to the door, he peered through the peephole. Oh, it was neither.

He opened the door. “Hello. What—”

A fast movement in the dark, a vicious jab. Sudden, sharp pain tore through Eric’s torso, robbing him of his breath. He gasped, taking a few steps back, trying to push the man away clumsily. The man held on, pulling Eric to him, grunting. Eric tumbled, fell forward onto his attacker, whose legs buckled under the weight. They crashed to the floor.

Eric’s chest was on fire. He rolled off the man, stumbled away, but his chest still throbbed, and something was wrong. He looked at himself.

“Wha . . .”

A knife was lodged in his body. He grasped the hilt feebly, tried to pull it out, and let out a weak scream. The knife was stuck.

But now the man was on his feet, lunging at him. He grabbed the hilt and pulled. Eric grunted in pain, trying to push the hand away. The knife wouldn’t budge, but every time the bastard yanked it, his insides were being torn to shreds.

He scratched at the man, kicked at him, managed to get away. He crawled now, toward the front door. He needed to escape.

Something struck his head, and he collapsed. The knife hit the floor first and cut into him as his weight forced the blade deeper inside. He cried, desperate for the pain to stop, desperate for help, desperate for oblivion.





CHAPTER 54


Abby sat across from Samantha in the small café. Around them, customers were chatting, eating dinner, and having a good time.

Samantha and Abby were not chatting, nor were they having a good time. In fact, Abby was having a bad time. An abysmal time.

A short temper was not one of Samantha’s faults. She rarely got angry. She got irritated, but it almost never escalated from there. Instead, Samantha had a sort of constant simmering rage that, left unchecked, could boil into a roaring inferno.

Abby estimated that when Samantha had stormed out of the house because of the snake, she had been, at most, very annoyed. But instead of fixing the problem by getting rid of the snake, Abby had let their new resident remain. And instead of talking to Samantha, trying to reason with her, coddle her with platitudes and declarations of how she missed her daughter, Abby had ignored Samantha for the entire weekend.

And the annoyance had simmered—and boiled.

Previous experience dictated that when Samantha was angry, she dredged up every memory in which she had been wronged or suffered injustice. She added those memories to her soup of fury. So by now she could be mad about that one time when Abby had forgotten to pick her up from the swimming pool, or that day Abby had embarrassed her in front of her friend, or any of the other abundant mothering fails Abby had accumulated over the years.

When Abby had shown up at Steve’s, Samantha had refused to speak with her or even look at her. So Abby had to grovel just to get a grunt at the suggestion that they go and talk it over in the nearby café. Samantha made it a point to be very sweet to her father, literally kissing him goodbye. And then she made it a point to be very nice to the waitress with multiple polite questions about the menu, finally asking what the waitress liked best. All the while completely ignoring her mother.

Abby was getting the full Samantha treatment. Which was fine—she knew she’d earned it.

She would let Samantha go first. It was important that Samantha get the feeling her mother actually listened to her. She leaned back, an apologetic expression on her face, hands to the side, her entire body signaling come at me.

Samantha gritted her jaw and folded her arms.

One minute. Two minutes. Five. People couldn’t abide silence for long; Abby knew that. Eventually they broke. And Samantha was a social creature; she loved talking. Eventually, she’d start.

Ten minutes. The waitress came over and placed a cup of coffee and a danish in front of Abby and a fried tofu sandwich in front of Samantha.

“Enjoy,” she said.

“Thank you so much.” Samantha smiled at her. “It looks delicious.”

The waitress smiled back and walked away. Samantha ate, ignoring her mother.