Keep Me In Sight

by Rachel Blackledge

  "To be completely honest, when we ran into her that night, I wasn’t surprised. I should have told her to beat it, but you guys were fast friends by then, and it made me wonder if I was just being paranoid. Nobody wants to be a Debbie Downer . . . or a Dan Downer." I smile a little at my bad joke, wanting nothing else but to see Brynn smile at me.

  "Dan, you couldn’t have known. I mean, look at how she played me. I was just a pawn in her game. She glommed onto me so that you wouldn’t tell her to leave. It was all a part of her sick game. You can’t blame yourself."

  "But I do," I say. "I blame myself entirely. I just hope you can forgive me someday."

  "That’s what I was going to say. . ." I look into her gold-flecked eyes. The softness is still there, even though I’ve told her absolutely everything.

  "What do you mean?"

  "Dan, I saw you shaking Erin that night. I saw that part, but now I see it was completely out of context. But I . . . well, I gave my statement to the police. I told them what I saw. And now it’s my turn to apologize for not believing you." She looks down and bites her lower lip. "I hope you can forgive me."

  The shadows have fled the room, banished forever. "Why don’t we start over?" I ask. "Try again? I would really love that . . ."

  Then she smiles that smile that I’m so desperate to see, leans over, kisses me softly on the lips, and says, "I would too."

  54

  GIA

  TWO MONTHS LATER

  You know the wedding singer? Well, I have a similarly entertaining job now. I’m the ‘happy event’ tarot card reader. It’s a strange gig. Getting booked out like a face painter for a kid’s party. Okay, great! So I’ll see you on Saturday at 4pm. But I had to think of something since I got fired from the pet boutique.

  I’m on my way back down to San Diego, driving on a stretch of freeway that never wanted to see again, while my thoughts travel back to the last time I had driven down this road.

  Nikki and James are still together, better than ever actually. "So can you read my mind?" James had asked me at a beach party celebrating the opening of Psychical Wonders, the business that Mom and I set up. Nikki, James, and I sat on a mandala beach blanket, while I gave them a tarot card reading. "If you’re blocked, we can always try to catch another lightning storm," he added, with a wry smile.

  James had finally opened up to Nikki about the loss of his baby, and they managed to move forward together. Nikki is mad in love, a bit crazy in fact, and slightly annoying about it. And all signs point to the feeling being mutual. And yes . . . there in the center of my mind, I saw it. A gleaming diamond stone, already bought but not set yet, floating in a soft hue of green—the color of the heart chakra.

  "Yes," I said to James, his blue eyes sparkling with mischief.

  "Yes, you can read my mind?" he asked, his smile bright. "Or yes you’d like to go hunting for bad weather?"

  I swallowed hard, emotion forming a little knot in my throat. Nikki is going to be beyond thrilled. I looked up at him, catching his gaze. "She’s going to say yes."

  James’s eyes grew huge. He was shocked out of his knickers, trying to wipe the wide grin off his face and keep his future proposal secret.

  "What?" Nikki asked. "Who’s going to say yes?"

  "Never mind, babe," James said to Nikki, taking her by the hand, and pulling her up to standing. "Do you want to go for a swim?"

  "Sure," she mumbled, glancing at me.

  "See?" I said. "I told you she’d say yes!"

  And Nikki laughed, crisis averted.

  I also have plans to meet up with Brynn and Dan after my meeting with Detective Robbins for a celebratory barbecue at Dan’s house.

  Yes, that Detective Robbins, the same one that investigated my car accident. I’d been working with her to resolve the ‘slight’ (read: astronomical) increase in my car insurance premium.

  While I was busy talking on the phone, I went ahead and shared the conclusion of the Erin’s story. Erin tried to take Brynn’s life, but she fell, instead, in front of a train.

  And Robbins suddenly found herself back in her element, handling the meaty case file of Erin’s murderous misdeeds.

  I’d met with Brynn and Dan for lunch after he had been discharged from the hospital. We’d met for lunch at a cliffside restaurant in Laguna Beach, overlooking the smooth sparkling ocean.

  "Should I call you my guardian angel?" Dan had asked, leaning back in his chair.

  "Crazy psychic will do," I’d said, laughing. "Otherwise known as Gia Eastland." I’d pulled in a big breath. "So it’s all over? Erin is ah . . . vanquished?"

  By the resounding silence, it had been that clear nobody wanted to talk about her horrible ending.

  "So crazy psychic, huh?" Dan had asked instead.

  "Well, Brynn knows the whole story. But I guess I’m not very good because I always thought I was seeing your death. Or Brynn’s. Definitely not Erin’s."

  Brynn’s voice had gone soft and quivery as she reached over the table and squeezed my hand. "I can’t thank you enough for what you did. I know you risked your life. I feel like—I feel like we can never repay you." She’d paused. "And I’m sorry, I’m so sorry I called you a liar, when you were telling me the truth."

  "It’s okay," I’d said, trying to diffuse the ticking emotional bomb. I’ve been called worse." Then I’d heard a voice—Is that Dan Womanbeater?—and the corner of my mouth lifted into a smile. "And I think you have too, Dan."

  We’d both laughed. After lunch, Dan and Brynn invited me down to their house for a barbecue. Brynn said she’d leave the door open for me, so I wouldn’t have to wrestle with her front bush again. And I left that day, feeling like maybe Nonna knew what she was talking about after all.

  Finally, I arrive at the police precinct where Detective Robbins said to meet. Inside her small office space, sitting across from her desk, I listen with sharp curiosity. What does she have to show me?

  "So I had a better look into Erin slash Denise. The defense attorney from her murder trial passed over some of the case file. It was . . ." Robbins pulls in a breath, trying to find the right word. "Surprising."

  I have to agree with that. "I’m sure it was very surprising. What a way to make a living, huh? Setting people up and extorting money from them? I can’t believe she literally got away with murder. I thought something was off when she called her dad ‘Daddy’."

  Robbins narrows her blue eyes that remind me of glacial waters and shakes her head a little. "Erin never knew her father . . ."

  "That’s weird." I think back to that day at Nail Palace, when Erin painted my nails and told me about her father’s philosophy on finances. A penny saved is a penny earned. That’s what Daddy always said. "She definitely did. She said he passed away."

  Detective Robbins looks down, straightens a few pens on her desk, and then meets my gaze. "Denise had a very . . . turbulent upbringing. She was shunted around the foster care system from a very young age. Her birth mom was a drug addict. Denise’s biological father, from what we can tell, was nothing more than a John. Her birth mother needed the money, you see . . . And when she was one year old, she became a ward of the State. She grew quite close to her foster ‘father,’"—she brackets the word with two fingers—"but he stepped in front of train when she eight. Unfortunately, she witnessed the event, which I believe had a significant impact on her mental state."

  I’m floored. So that’s what I saw that day in her nail salon. Snippets of past, reaching forward to the future. "So her Dad . . ."

  "I think that was the one thing she really wanted. A real father. She developed . . . well, we speculate that she formed a very loose grip on reality. And that’s why I called you in today. Denise was motivated by money, that part is quite obvious. But it appears she was also motivated by something else."

  Suddenly, I’m not feeling very well.

  "We found a journal in her house. In it, we found a list of names. People she decided to target. I think this is something that you shoul
d see."

  A shiver traipses over my skin.

  Robbins slides over a purple journal with faded unicorns and clouds of glitter on the cover. I open it up and find pages of journal entries, written in childish handwriting, but as the years passed, her handwriting became smoother and more controlled, all written in block lettering.

  There a list of four names, two names scratched out violently: Arthur Williams and Chris Mabray. So she did kill before. What happened to Arthur? Dan Evans is the third name on the list, thankfully untouched. Followed by someone named Trevor Whitmore and another name I don’t recognize.

  I stare at the last name on the list, but my vision seems a little blurry, my mouth very dry. The letters don’t quite register. As I try to pull together the meaning, my mind races back to the night of my car accident. The night Erin tried to drive me up a tree. I wanted to quit and leave Erin to her nefarious devices. I wanted to walk away.

  I’m struck thinking about what could have been if I hadn’t tried one last time, if Mom hadn’t insisted that I talk to Detective Robbins, if had hadn’t decided to saddle up my Palomino and get back on.

  The letters fall into place. And written in bubble block lettering, I find the next person on her list:

  GIA, THE PET SHOP BITCH.

  Author's Note

  Thank you for taking the time to read Keep Me In Sight. This book was a long time coming, but it’s always a thrill to see a project finally come to fruition. The original premise was an ex-girlfriend with a penchant for killing her exes, but as the book progressed, I realized this was really Dan’s story, hands tied in the face of a false accusation.

  I want to first and foremost thank all the readers who take the time to read my books. A book is a just a seed. Readers are the soil and water that give a book life so it can grow and mature and find its place in the world. I do appreciate you all.

  Many thanks to Patricia Sainte, a very gifted and scarily accurate psychic, who helped advise me about the psychic process, sensations, and methods used to intuit.

  And a huge thank you to my editors Daphne James and Lisa Wong, who attention to detail is always superhuman, and to my wonderful beta readers, whose early comments helped shape this manuscript into what it is today.

  Reviews have huge impact on a book’s survivability. If you enjoyed this book, it would mean so much if you left a review on Amazon so other readers like you can find my books.

  Until next time,

  Rachel

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  Clear your schedule because this taut and chilling thriller will keep you turning the pages well past your bedtime.

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