Page 41 of By Sin To Atone

“Sit anyway.”

“Look, just tell me what you want from me, what arrangement. I’ll do what you want and then I’ll go. I’ll get out of your life forever.”

“That’s not how blackmail works, sweetheart. Sit.”

“I’ll get rid of everything I have on you while you watch. Erase all the files?—”

“Ah, but someone told me recently that not all things that get erased stay erased so that’s not going to work for me.” She opens her mouth maybe to protest, maybe to make some other promise, but I stop her. “I won’t ask again, Blue.”

She takes a deep breath in, exhales, then sits.

I pour myself a whiskey and take the seat on the armchair. I sip. “I assume you’ll pass on the whiskey?”

She nods.

I set my drink down, pick up the laptop and turn it on. “Password?”

“FuckthePatriarchy. All one word. Capital F, capital P.”

I glance at her and snort, then type it in and voila. I’m in. I don’t even have to search to find a folder titled Z on the desktop. I glance at her, open it, and inside I see several photos and video files of myself at the hotel in Austria. The copies of the newspaper articles. I watch a video of my brother having a conversation with that asshole Mitch Spencer and after my brother leaves, I watch Spencer glance up at the camera as he takes a remote out of his desk, points it at the camera and stops the recording.

There’s still nothing here that could put me in prison. But the duffel could be problematic.

There are two more files and I open each one to find the compromising photos Blue would have used to blackmail the other two before me. Unless there are files hidden within folders, and there may well be, I don’t find anything else.

I close the laptop and set it aside. I’ll give it to Robbie tomorrow. I turn my attention to her. Fire crackles in the grate behind her as I sip my whiskey. Well, Carlton’s whiskey, but he doesn’t need it where he is.

“You and I find ourselves in a predicament, don’t we? A conundrum. I rarely get to use that word.”

She shifts in her seat.

“See, I don’t believe you’re being wholly truthful with me.”

“I answered all your questions.”

“Not to mention my duffel bag allegedly stashed away in some locker in some bus terminal.”

“I don’t know what you want from me.”

“I’m getting to that. You’re not very patient. Tell me something. What was your plan if I paid you anyway?”

She shrugs a shoulder. “Get Wren. Go to Canada maybe.”

“Did you call in the tip that got your father arrested?”

“How did you know about that?”

“I’ll take that as a yes. You were going to take your sister to Canada so he wouldn’t find either of you?”

She nods.

“That postcard, you went white when you saw it.”

She clams up at that.

“Is it from him?”

Nothing.

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