by Vanessa Vale
Tears slipped and I brushed them away. How did Shane pull it off? He’d have to turn the camera on, or at least start the recording without the woman knowing. Remote? I opened one icon, then the next, not lingering on the images, just confirming what I saw. Different women all having sex with Shane.
I didn’t see myself in any of them. I shook my head. Paused. Took a deep breath. Focus. Using the track pad, I changed the folder to list view. The date for each file was there. Nothing from today or yesterday that I could see. The last was a few weeks ago. I clicked that one.
More sex.
I went back further. Opened another.
I gasped, stared wide-eyed at the laptop screen. Erin Mills.
I’d never met the woman, but I’d seen enough images of her to recognize her instantly. Blonde. Early twenties. Really pretty. I could add now that she also had a really nice figure.
She was smiling as she rolled her hips, fucking Shane beneath her. Her breasts were small and pert, the nipples large. I realized her lips were moving. She was talking. I hadn’t even thought about the sound. Pressing the button on my keyboard, I upped the volume, cringing as I heard dirty talk. “You love it when I fuck you like this. Your dick is so big. Every time, it’s like the first. God, I remember when you popped my cherry.” Her voice was soft and breathy.
I licked my lips, tried to remain calm. Analyzed the words. She’d implied it wasn’t the first time they had sex and one of the times Shane had taken her virginity. From what we knew of Erin, she’d had sex before her death with Mark Bastion, the ski coach. Kit Lancaster had mentioned a guy named Kurt who’d spent the night with Erin. We’d questioned him, Kurt Vaughn, and he’d confirmed they had a casual relationship. Fuck buddies, he’d said. She’d also slept with Mark Knowles. Three men that we knew of. Plus Shane.
I closed the video, checked the date. Three days before her murder. Fuck.
I had to assume she’d been sexually active for a while, which meant Shane had not only been with her right before she died, but for… years. I took out the memory card, swapped it for one of the others. Opened it. About twenty files. The dates were all from last year. I took it out, switched it for another. This one had about the same amount of files, but the dates stretched over the previous three years. I checked the last card and found it had the oldest dates. Seven years ago.
I clicked a file. Same bedroom, but the walls in the background were a different color. The foot of the bed was blurry but visible, and the comforter and sheet colors were not the same as the most recent.
This woman was just like the others, on top. She was young. Really young.
Leaning forward, I looked closely at the screen. There on the bed behind her was some clothing. It was a cheerleader top from Cutthroat High School. I recognized it, the blue and gold, the letters CHS on the front.
Seven years ago Shane would have been twenty or twenty-one, and he was fucking a high school girl. With the flexibility only someone so young had, she lifted up—without Shane coming out of her—and turned around to face away from the camera into reverse cowgirl. Her dark hair hung long down her back as she picked up her rhythm once again. A man’s hand came into view, and it spanked her right ass cheek, then rested there so his thumb could… fuck. He slipped his thumb into her ass as she kept riding him.
With the sound on, I couldn’t miss her squeal of surprise at the spank, then a moan as he worked his thumb all the way into her.
I shut the lid on the laptop. Stared. Remembered how Shane had done the same thing to me the night before. I hadn’t been in reverse cowgirl, but straddling and fucking Finch as he finger fucked my ass.
I burst into tears. Let them fall for a few minutes, then pulled myself together.
This wasn’t about me right now. It was about the Erin Mills murder investigation. We had no leads—until now. Shane had been with Erin three days before her death. I had to keep digging. I lifted the lid, let the screen come back on. I went through the older files one by one until I found it.
There was Erin Mills again. Standing at the foot of the empty bed. Fully clothed, thank God. This time she was younger. Based on the file date, she was sixteen.
Sixteen.
“You really think I can be in an Eddie Nickel movie?” She looked to the left of the camera as she spoke.
“Definitely. There are sex scenes in movies. It might be acting, but this isn’t something you can fake.” The voice was low, and I had to rewind it to hear the words. “Gotta show me your talents.”
“I’ve… I’ve never done this before.”
There was a pause, and the shot dipped and moved as if the camera was picked up.
“You’re filming this?” She smiled. “It’s a screen test, so of course you are. Okay.”
She tugged her top up and over her head, and I turned it off. I couldn’t watch it, completely disgusted at what I guessed was going to happen next, especially since she’d been tricked. She’d consented, but she was sixteen, which meant it wasn’t consent at all. It was rape.
Shane had made it clear to me how much he hated his dad, so he’d had no intention of helping Erin get into a movie. He’d lied. He’d raped. Took her virginity all for fun. And the cheerleader in the other file? I had to wonder if she’d been eighteen.
I closed the file, switched memory cards to the first one and opened the file from right before Erin’s murder. I found the spot where I’d stopped and watched it. Listened.
“When I was sixteen, you said I’d be in an Eddie Nickel movie.”
Her smile slipped, and instantly she looked different. Gone was the aroused, well-fucked look. She stopped moving, looked down at Shane. “You still filming your fucks?”
She looked up at the camera. Dead-on. She knew she was being filmed. Didn’t care.
“I wonder if everyone will want to know you like underage girls.”
A hand settled on her upper thigh, gripped it, then dropped away.
“Yeah, just what I thought. I’m on set all the time running your events instead of being a star. Get me on-screen or I out you to the media.”
All of a sudden, the screen had black shapes, and I realized it was fingers, then it went black. Shane had reached up and turned the camera off.
I stared at the black screen, the file at the end.
I had no doubt I was one of the clips. I had to be, even though I was confident I didn’t see any with today’s date. I wasn’t a tech expert, but it was there. I knew it. Sexual predators didn’t change. Never. Even prisoners knew rapists were a class all to themselves. Shane had had opportunity. I’d gone to brush my teeth. He could have turned it on while I was in the bathroom and I’d never know. I’d been on top, just like every other woman.
I was just one in his collection.
This fact made it easier for me to think clearly and objectively.
Shane had a long-standing relationship with Erin Mills. One that lasted years. One where Shane held the power. I was familiar with this concept. Chad had been that way, wielding control over me and making me think I was less. That fucking him and trying to please him would somehow make him love me.
It hadn’t. Shane hadn’t been interested in any of the women he’d filmed except to get his dick wet. To know he could fuck them and film them without them knowing. That was powerful.
As for Erin Mills, Shane had offered her something he’d never give. Not with how much he hated his dad. He might have even strung her along for years. Perhaps she wasn’t confident in her sexuality and instead used sex with lots of men to validate herself. Maybe it was brought about by Shane himself, that very first time. She’d used men to make herself feel better, hoping that someday Shane would come through.
What had made her change her mind this fall? Had she finally had a moment like I had where I realized I’d been wrong, that I’d been used?
In the film clip she’d been powerful. Finally. Had that strength and threat been what pushed Shane to end her? It would ruin him, so he’d killed her
to keep her quiet.
But someone like him wouldn’t be able to stop. He’d kept his filming a secret for years. He had no expectation of being caught. He knew from me that the case against Erin had gone cold.
“God, he must be laughing his head off, not only fucking the dead woman, murdering her and getting away with it, but fucking the investigator too,” I said aloud.
I stood, paced.
Shane needed to go to jail. Now.
I grabbed my cell, called Nix.
“I know who killed Erin.”
11
SHANE
My balls should have been drained, my dick worn out after all the sex we’d had with Eve the past few days. I was hard just thinking about her, and I was standing on the porch of a cabin in the woods. The sun was out, but it was fucking freezing.
Usually I loved the quiet of the woods. No people, no noise. Today it annoyed me. I didn’t want to be here. I wanted to be in town, with Eve. I hadn’t stayed in my house since last summer, but I was ready to move back there so it would be easy to be with her since the police department was just down the street.
I wanted people. I wanted Eve. And she was twenty miles away in Cutthroat. I couldn’t smell her soft scent, only the pine trees. I couldn’t taste her pussy on my tongue, only the coffee I’d just finished.
I craved her. After going years with just casual, this… thing we shared was incredible. We’d just gotten her to open up, to see that we would never hurt her, that we’d have her back, that we’d prop her up and stand beside her. All the cliché terms.
I wanted it all with her. I knew Shane did too. Being a rancher, a forest ranger and a detective made for complicated schedules, but we’d make it work. I didn’t have to stay here in the cabin. I’d isolated myself from people just as much as Eve had. Remaining here was an easy way to keep people at a distance. We may have gotten past Eve’s tough walls, but I realized she’d gotten past mine.
The sound of a car approached, and I stepped off the porch to see who it was. This time of year there were few visitors. Especially now with all the snow. The trail was buried, and snowshoes were needed to get anywhere. Snowmobilers would stick to the service road, but that was two miles south.
It was a police SUV. We did interdepartmental rescues all the time, but no one had called anything in on the radio.
Nix Knight stepped out, and I went to shake his hand. We’d gone to high school together, were friendly, but I wouldn’t say friends. I saw him mostly through work these days.
“What brings you all the way out here?”
“I need to bring you in for questioning about the Mills murder.”
I frowned, tucked my hands into my coat pockets. “Okay. Want to come in for some coffee first? Just made a pot.”
He shook his head. “I’ll get you some at the station.”
I stilled. “What’s going on? You can ask me now, save me a trip in.”
Nix sighed. “How well did you know Erin?”
I frowned. “As much as you. Lucas’s little sister.”
“That’s all?”
I huffed. “Are you asking if I fucked her?”
He scratched the back of his neck. “Actually, yes.”
“Really?”
He didn’t say anything, just watched me. He was using his cop eyes. Something was up.
“No, I never fucked her. I don’t think I’d even been by myself with her, let alone got in her pants.”
“We have video that proves otherwise.”
My eyes widened, and I took a step back. “You have video of me fucking Erin Mills? It has to be the photographers. They put something together, used some fancy program to put my face or her face on some porn. They hound me. You know that.”
“This is definitely homemade.”
“Where’s Eve? I thought this was her case.”
“She’s with the videos.”
I held up my hand. “Wait. You said videos. There’s more than one?”
“Of you and Erin? Yes.”
“No way.” I turned in a circle, my boots crunching on the snow-packed path.
“Come into town. We have to do this formally.”
“You’re charging me with murder?”
“I’m not charging you with anything. Only asking you questions.”
“About a video… videos of me having sex with Erin Mills.”
“Yes.”
I sighed. “Fine. Let me lock up.” I pointed toward the cabin. “I’d like to get to the bottom of this as much as you. I’d rather skip seeing this at the checkout counter.”
EVE
I had my laptop in my arms, the camera and memory card case in my bag. I had to take them to the station to meet Nix and Shane. I’d told Nix about what I had found, what I’d seen on the memory cards. I hadn’t realized they were evidence in a murder investigation until I got home and viewed them. Had I known what I was going to discover, I’d have used gloves, gotten an evidence bag to put them in.
But I was glad I’d seen it first. God, I hadn’t found the file of me and Shane from earlier, and I’d gone through them all more than once. I didn’t feel relieved, because I was still panicked I’d missed it somehow and someone at the station would find it. As soon as I turned these things over, it would be evidence. And my fun morning sex would be available to all.
Nix had volunteered to pick up Shane and bring him to the station for questioning. I couldn’t do it. Not only because it was now a conflict of interest, but because I wasn’t sure if I’d shoot him on sight. Or cry. I had powerful evidence that implicated Shane in the murder of Erin Mills.
Means. He’d had sex with her on several occasions with no one ever knowing. He’d think it easy to do so again.
Motive. She threatened on film to out him. The film put him with Erin three days before her death. She’d mentioned the time he’d taken her virginity—underage—and I had that film too. It showed a yearslong trend of behavior against women. Erin was the only one who’d been murdered though.
I clicked the fob on my key chain to unlock my car. Something wasn’t right about it all. Not the obvious, Shane filming all those women. I couldn’t deny what I’d found myself. What I’d seen with my own eyes on those memory cards. All the women he’d slept with, including me. That didn’t even include what he’d done so ruthlessly to Erin. God, that was awful, what he’d done. I wasn’t used to dealing with a man like this, so I wasn’t looking at it all correctly.
I was seeing it from the eyes of a victim. I was his latest since I’d just had sex with him in that same bed in the same way as the video. God, he hadn’t even touched me, just let me use him. I’d thought it hot at the time. He’d kept his hands behind his head. It had seemed as if he had to tuck them there to control himself. Now it was clear he’d done so to keep them out of the camera’s way.
Out of the camera’s way.
I stopped just in front of my car. Stood on the sidewalk. Thought hard. Shane hadn’t been seen in the films. Not one of them, or at least in the ones I’d gone through, and that had been a lot. Only a hint of leg, groin. Like this morning, Shane had kept himself from being part of the shot because he’d wanted the camera to pick up me and only me.
Shane had wanted every one of the clips to be of the woman and the woman only because it was like a trophy to him. To see his conquest in all her naked glory. To know he could fuck her, expose her and get away with it.
But maybe that wasn’t it. Or that wasn’t only it. Maybe it was because he didn’t want to be filmed. Maybe because he didn’t want anyone to know it was him in the films.
Blackmail? Shane had money. Millions if I took a guess, from his dad. But he’d said he didn’t touch any of it. He could have blackmailed the women and added it to his account, and it wouldn’t stand out. But why would a man who had access to all that money want to extort more?
Maybe because it wasn’t Shane in the films. I turned around and raced back inside.
I dropped my laptop on my desk, pul
led out the memory cards. I grabbed one, set it in the little adapter and then put it in the slot. No, not that one. I switched it. Clicked through the files until I found the one I was looking for. The one where the woman had turned around to reverse cowgirl, to when Shane had spanked her. I slid the bar across the bottom of the file to move quickly through the video, passed the spank and went back to it.
There.
His thumb slipped into her ass, and I didn’t pay attention to what was happening, only the ring on the right ring finger. Gold. A few diamonds. Nothing I’d seen Shane wear.
I closed the file, switched memory cards to the most recent one. I found the file by date, the one of Shane and Erin right before her death. I slid the bar forward until she started talking. She threatened. “I wonder if everyone will want to know you like underage girls.”
A hand settled on her thigh for less than two seconds. Again, the ring.
“Oh my God,” I said, trying to use the laptop’s track pad with shaking hands. I went to a browser, typed in the name of the person I now knew had killed Erin.
Eddie Nickel.
Loads of pictures of the famous movie star filled the page. I scrolled through until I found one of him standing at a movie premiere, clicked on it.
There, on his right hand, was the ring.
Shane hadn’t fucked any of those women. Shane hadn’t killed Erin Mills. His father had.
12
SHANE
“Okay, I’m here.”
I dropped into the chair in one of the interrogation rooms of the police department.
Crossing my arms over my chest, I slouched.
The drive into town had been silent. What could I say? What should I say? He hadn’t mentioned the need for a lawyer, but if they had video proof I had sex with Erin Mills, then I wasn’t sure what legal counsel could do.
I may have had sex with a number of women in Cutthroat, but not Erin Mills. She was Lucas’s little sister. I’d grown up with her, remembered when she was a kid. Not only was there some kind of guy code about fucking a friend’s sister, but I’d never been interested.
