Watch Me (Last Stand #3)(70)
Author: Brenda Novak

Problem was, he had no idea when his stepbrother might return. Robert could be out for a late night of drinking or merely running a quick errand.

He hesitated on the front lawn, eyeing the metal dinosaur his stepfather had made not long ago, trying to decide. Then he turned back and walked around the house to the trailer.

“So…are you planning to attend Amy’s funeral?” Tiger asked.

Sheridan sat with Skye on the sofa, facing Tiger, who’d chosen the recliner.

“I am. I didn’t know her that well, but I feel terrible about what happened.” She also wanted to see who else showed up and how each mourner behaved. The fact that the person who’d shot Amy had taken the time to write “I love you” in the dirt, suggested it was someone she’d known well. Someone who’d probably be missed if he didn’t come to her funeral.

“Who do you think killed her?” he asked.

“Not Cain.”

He finished the beer he’d carried in and set it aside. “He was running around the forest alone.”

“Not really. Someone else was out there.”

“According to him. We have no other witnesses.”

“Someone else had to be there. They drugged the dogs. Those hounds went silent before Cain ever left the cabin.”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure,” she said, but she wasn’t. She hadn’t noticed when the dogs went silent; Cain had.

“He was never out of your sight?” Tiger pressed. “Couldn’t have drugged them himself while you were in bed or watching television?”

Sheridan remembered how engrossed she’d been in the conversation with her parents, how concerned that Cain might overhear. After he’d walked out of the room, there’d been no noise to indicate his whereabouts for several minutes. Still, she knew it wasn’t him. “He’s not the one who beat me up. So why would I believe he’d create such an elaborate scheme to kill Amy?”

“Because it wasn’t elaborate. It was very simple—and you gave him an alibi.”

“Stop it!”

“Ned can’t place anyone else in the area.”

“Cain saved my life, Tiger.”

“Or pretended to.”

Sheridan couldn’t keep the exasperation from her voice. “If he wanted to kill me, he could’ve done it while I was recuperating. I was out of it for days.”

Tiger shook his head. “That’d be too obvious.”

“You don’t like Cain, do you,” Skye said, entering the conversation for the first time since the initial introductions.

“Sure, I like him—for the most part,” Tiger responded. “Other times I’m stinkin’ jealous of him. But what else would you expect? The woman I planned to marry couldn’t get over him enough to commit to me. And he’s the reason Sheridan broke up with me in high school, even though she didn’t tell anyone at the time. Isn’t that right?” He turned to her with an expectant expression.

He knew it was, but apparently he wanted to hear it from her own mouth. Sheridan didn’t see the point, but maybe it had to do with some sort of closure. If that was what it was going to take him to forget about their high school involvement and move on, she was more than willing. “Yes.”

“And you’re still holding that against them both?” Skye cut in.

Tiger chuckled at the censure in her voice. “The male ego is a sensitive thing.”

“Apparently your ego is,” Sheridan said. “You refused to talk to me for months afterward, wouldn’t even say goodbye.”

“I was determined to punish you, make you sorry you’d pushed me aside.” Growing philosophical, he pursed his lips. “That plan was doomed from the start, of course. You have to care in order to be sorry.”

“I was too concerned with other problems by then,” Sheridan pointed out. “Maybe you don’t remember this amidst all your own pain, but someone had just tried to kill me—and succeeded in killing Jason.”

He didn’t react to the sarcasm in her voice. “I remember.”

“It wasn’t you, was it?” Skye inserted.

Sheridan hid a smile. Skye had asked the same question of Robert; she’d probably ask everyone she met.

“Nope. Can’t help you there. I really liked Jason.”

“And me?” Sheridan drew his attention to the obvious slight.

He grinned. “Not so much at the time.”

“So you have a sensitive ego and you hold a very long grudge,” Skye said.

His voice turned sulky. “No one likes to get dumped on.”

“Getting dumped and getting dumped on are two different things.” Skye looked directly at him. “She liked someone else, so she broke up with you. She had the right. Get over it.”

He tilted his head. “I can tell you’re the sentimental type.”

“In my line of work, I’ve seen some real suffering.”

Sheridan noticed that Skye didn’t include herself in that category, even though she’d gone through a harrowing ordeal when a man with a knife suddenly appeared in her room in the middle of the night and tried to rape her. “I don’t have patience for so much self-pity.”

“Ouch,” he said, laughing. “Your friend is brutal.”

Crossing her arms, Sheridan leaned back with a smile. “You should see her when she’s angry.”

“So, are you ever going to forgive her for breaking your boyish heart?” Skye asked.

“I don’t know.” His eyes seemed to focus on the spot below Skye’s left eye where her intruder had cut her five years ago. “Some scars are hard to get rid of.”

Skye smiled back. “Those are the ones you learn to live with.”

The only light in Robert’s trailer came from his computer monitor. It grew bright and then dim, and turned from red to blue, creating shifting patterns on the front window. Robert had such an abundance of computer equipment and spent so much time online that he no longer relegated his equipment to the spare bedroom. What he fondly called his “command center” sprawled across the entire living room. Why walk those extra few steps? Why cram a scanner, a regular printer, a color printer, two old monitors, two working CPUs and three that were torn apart, two modems, a power surge protector, shelves of software manuals, electric cords and chargers into an out-of-the-way corner? Robert didn’t need a sofa or a coffee table because he didn’t entertain, and he didn’t have a TV. He used his computer screen to see pirated movies, chat online, hack into various systems and play interactive video games. The digital world was his world.