The Bad Daughter(107)
Robin collapsed in Blake’s arms. The last thing she heard before she gave in to unconsciousness was Cassidy screaming her name.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
In her dream, Robin was lying in a narrow bed in an all-white room when a doctor with red hair and an upturned nose covered in bright orange freckles approached, her stethoscope pointed toward Robin’s chest, like a gun. “How are we doing?”
What’s wrong with this picture?
“You’re looking pretty good for a woman who almost got herself killed,” the doctor continued, morphing into Brenda, the woman she’d met in the waiting room at the Tehama jail. “Good thing that boy’s aim wasn’t better. Turns out it’s not as easy to hit your target as it looks on TV.”
What am I missing?
In the next second, she was in the lobby of the Tremont Hotel, crouching next to Tara behind a large potted plant.
“Here comes your father,” Tara said. “That shit’s been cheating on me with his office manager.”
Robin rose to confront him. “Cassidy,” he said as Robin approached.
“No, Dad. It’s me, Robin.”
“Cassidy,” her father insisted as Kenny Stapleton burst onto the scene, a broken beer bottle in his hand, blood dripping from his closed fist.
Robin groaned.
“I think she’s waking up,” Blake said from somewhere above her head.
“Robin?” Cassidy said. “Robin, can you hear us?”
Robin opened her eyes to find her sister, the sheriff, Blake, and Cassidy gathered around her bed, staring down at her expectantly.
“You’re in Emergency,” Blake told her before she could say anything.
“What happened?”
“You’ve been stabbed. But you’re going to be fine. Luckily, the wound was more horizontal than vertical. No vital organs were pierced. The doctors stitched you up. Twenty-six stitches. They’ve given you some pretty powerful painkillers, so you might be a bit woozy for a while.”
“You’ve been drifting in and out for the past hour,” Melanie said.
The afternoon’s events flashed through Robin’s consciousness like a strobe light, creating a series of frozen, hyper-bright images. She gasped as Kenny broke free from one such image and lunged toward her.
“What is it?” Blake asked.
“Kenny Stapleton,” Robin said. “Did he get away?”
“We have every available officer out looking for him,” Sheriff Prescott said. “And we’ll have deputies guarding the house until he’s caught.”
“This is all my fault,” Cassidy cried. “I should have told you about Kenny.”
“Yes, you should have,” Melanie said. “Landon and Alec are in jail because of you. Donny Warren was almost in there with them. You caused a lot of people a lot of grief.”
“I’m sorry. I was just so scared.”
“The important thing is that we know everything now,” the sheriff said.
“Everything?” Robin asked, Kenny’s more outlandish accusations echoing in her ears.
“I told the sheriff all the horrible things Kenny said,” Cassidy explained.
“Just when you think you’ve heard it all.” Prescott shook his head. “I’ll stop by the house later to take formal statements from both of you.”
“What about my brother and my nephew?” Robin asked.
“Once we have your statements, we can work on getting them released.”
“Thank God.”
“Thank Cassidy,” Prescott said.
Except it had been Cassidy’s statements that had implicated Alec and Landon in the first place, Robin thought. Her words were what had linked the two men together. She’d deliberately steered suspicion away from Kenny, describing the shooters as big and muscular. Did she do so out of fear, as she claimed, or was there something more sinister at play?
What am I missing?
Robin pushed the troubling questions aside. Cassidy was twelve years old, for God’s sake. A child.
A child who could discuss her mother’s murder in one breath and her revulsion for red licorice in the next. A child who’d more than held her own against an accomplished criminal like Dylan Campbell, a child who’d delighted in cruelly dismissing her hapless grandmother, a child who’d had even more opportunity than Kenny Stapleton to plant incriminating evidence in Landon’s room.
Was that why Landon had defaced his sketches of her? Had he figured out what had happened that night?
Robin pictured the snow globe with its twirling little ballerina. Cassidy could have come across the snow globe when she was planting the balaclava. She could have transferred it to her room. And she’d been inside Alec’s San Francisco apartment. She could have spotted the ski mask in his closet and used it when formulating her plan to murder her mother and stepfather.
Except she’d been shot as well, Robin reminded herself. It was a miracle she hadn’t died.
What kind of monster shoots a twelve-year-old girl?
Then, an even more troubling question: what if the monster is a twelve-year-old girl?
“When can I go home?” Robin asked, once again shutting down such conjecture. The painkillers in her system were affecting her judgment, making her delusional.