Page 45 of Brian and Mina's Holiday Hits
I allow my gaze to drag slowly over her. She’s far more attractive up close than brief glimpses during my surveillance allowed me to catalog. She’d fetch a good price at the house. But I shake that thought out of my head.
I would have to keep Eliza’s identity a secret, and the one normal functional relationship quality I have with Mina is honesty. And if I did tell her, she’d never forgive me for ripping a non-kinky woman out of her normal life and into the darkness of the house. She’s got a soft spot for the women.
Shame, because it’s a great financial opportunity—not that I give much of a fuck about finances, but it seems like a somewhat normal thing to think about. And lately I’ve been trying to think more about what seems normal. I live in fear that one day Mina will wake up and think:“Well. He really is an irredeemable sociopath.”and pull away from me for good.
But I mainly look at Eliza this way to get her to drop her guard. I’m not unaware of my charms and that air of danger so many women are so attracted to. If she thinks I want to fuck her instead of murder her, it might get me in the door. After all, I’ve been watching this house for a while and despite her beauty, she doesn’t have a lot of gentleman callers. I also happen to know—courtesy of the listening devices—that she goes through a lot of batteries.
“I hate to trouble you, but my phone died, and I was wondering if I could use yours.” I put a bit of Gabe’sAww Shucks Ma’amdrawl into my voice.
She hesitates. “Where’s your car?”
I point up at the house across the way. She recognizes it. Or thinks she does.
“Oh! You must be my neighbor.”
How oblivious can she be to only know her neighbors by their cars?
“Guilty,” I say, plastering a sheepish grin onto my face. “I went off and locked my keys in the house. Donna is always saying I need to put my house key on the same ring as my car key,” I say, shifting my cover from hapless sexy stranger to non-intimidating neighbor.
She looks a bit disappointed at the mention of a wife, but the guy in that house does have a wife named Donna, and surely Eliza has noticed her out gardening before. But the fact that I’m now her neighbor and have a wife bitching at me about how I organize my keys, drops her guard even further. And I don’t need to seduce her, I just need inside the house.
She opens the door, “Please, come in.”
I don’t think I could be happier at those words if I were a vampire. I smile and cross the threshold into the foyer. The golden retriever growls at me and starts barking.
“Shut up, Baxter!” she snaps.
He whimpers and gets that sad dog face where you see too much of the whites of their eyes.
She turns around to dig through her purse, and I take the opportunity to grab her and slam her against the wall.
“You should have listened to your dog. He’s got far better instincts than you do.”
The dog barks again and leaps on me. I didnotexpect that from a golden retriever. I shake him off and grab the gun from the back of my pants. I shoot a nearby lamp, and the shattering glass sends the dog running out the still open front door. It would have been easier to shoot him, but Aidan loves that dog.
By this point, Eliza is running up the stairs—just like the dumb horror movie victim. I pull the gloves from my jacket pocket and slip them on.
All this dumb bitch had to do was not hurt the kid. All she had to do was give him a safe place to live and maybe just maybe he could grow up semi-normal, but the evil rot in her is the same as my stepmother’s. There is no saving her, and only one way to get Aidan out of her care.
“I’m calling the police!” she says from behind the locked bedroom door when I bang on it.
“With what? A tin can and string?” She never got her phone out of her bag.
“I have a landline, you piece of shit!”
“No you don’t.”
She’s dead quiet.
“H-how do you know that?”
“What difference does it make at this point?” I kick in the door.
“You’re not my neighbor.”
I laugh. “Wow, that’s probably the most clearly obvious thing I’ve ever heard a person say out loud. Congratulations.”
She grabs a lamp and swings it at me. She gets me in the shoulder, but I’ve already grabbed her and pushed her against the wall.
