Beg Me (11 page)

At first, he couldn’t make his brain accept
what his eyes were seeing. His mind just didn’t want to process it.
On stiff, uncooperative legs, he took a step closer, staring at
Tania’s face. There was no mistaking her face, even though he could
only see her profile. She was giving somebody a blowjob, and Drake
had to assume it was Kyle, although he couldn’t see much of the
guy—the picture had been zoomed in to focus on her face and upper
body. Her shoulders were arched back in a pose he recognized—she
was probably restrained.

Gail clicked the mouse again and a video
started to play.

It was a punch in his gut to realize
it was Tania and
him
—that
first night at Tania’s place. Gail used the mouse to fast-forward
it until she got to the place where Tania had gone down on
him.

He stood there, staring, with blood roaring
in his ears and fury tearing through him.

A private moment—and this bitch had
watched.

Slowly, he turned his head and stared at
her.

The minute their gazes connected, Gail
stopped the video.

“
She’s a slut,” Gail
snarled.

Drake narrowed his eyes. “Because she has a
sex life?”

Gail hissed. “You call that a sex
life?” She shook her head and looked around. “
Look!
She’s a whore—a
slut
. Kyle never would have engaged in anything
so…so…
wicked
until he met
her.
Look!
”

She pointed at the walls and that was when
Drake realized the picture serving as the computer’s background had
only been the beginning. There were more. Hundreds more.

Some of them were mundane—Tania at the
store, shopping. Getting out of her car, although the camera lens
zoomed in on things like her breasts or her crotch.

But there were others—shit, that freak had
somehow gotten photographs of her in the shower. Using the
restroom. Changing her clothes. Cooking dinner. Sleeping.

And having sex with Kyle. It
was
Kyle—Kyle had gotten a tattoo
the same time Drake had gotten his. Kyle’s was a grinning, macabre
skull, though, situated just below his left shoulder blade. In a
number of the pictures, that tattoo was visible.

“
Kent stalked her, took private
pictures of a man and wife, and you’ve got nerve to call
her
out,” Drake growled.

“
She seduced him. Sent him wicked
pictures while he was gone,” Gail said, her voice rising, throbbing
with self-righteous fury. “She drove him past the point of sanity
and he couldn’t control himself. Then he comes home and she flaunts
herself in front of him when she should have been in
mourning.”

“
What wicked pictures? You want me to
believe she sent him
these
pictures?” Drake demanded.

“
Of course not.” Gail reached into a
drawer and pulled out a faded, worn letter, turning it over to
him.

He skimmed it. It was Kyle, sent to
Kent while he was on vacation with Tania a few years earlier.
They’d gone to Cancun. There were a few pictures—one with Tania in
a bikini, Kyle hugging her from behind while they smiled at the
camera. On the back of it, written in Tania’s bold, feminine
script, it read,
Hey, Kent… Wish you could
have gone with us! Maybe next time
.

“
Is this the wicked picture?” he
asked, looking up at her.

“
Yes. The little
whore
.”

Drake stared at her, reaching for words but
unable to find anything. Finally, he said, “Well, at least I know
where Kent got his crazy from.”

Gail lifted a hand, but before she could
slap him, he caught her wrist. “Don’t,” he warned. “I’ll make
allowances for a woman who’s lost her sons, and I’ll make even more
for a woman who obviously needs help. But if you think I’ll let you
strike me…think again.”

His gut rolled on him as he flung her hand
down. He barely resisted the urge to wipe it on his jeans, as
though she might contaminate him. He saw a small trash can on the
floor and he bent over, grabbed it. Then, without looking at her
for even a second, he stood and started to tear the pictures from
the walls. Every last one—an invasion on Tania’s privacy, a stain
on her life, on Kyle’s life. He didn’t know how Kent had gotten
these, although he had a suspicion—in a second, he’d look to see if
he was right. But first he had to get rid of these.

“
What are you doing?” Gail demanded,
gasping.

“
What does it look like?” He crumpled
them in his fist, one right after the other. He wanted to do
more—wanted to shred them. Rip them apart—no. Burn them. Yeah, that
was what he wanted and he just might do that, too. But first, get
them off the way so he didn’t have to see.

“
Getting rid of the evil won’t keep it
from infecting you,” she said staunchly. “You
feel
it, don’t you? Her evil infecting
you?”

The only thing he felt was a grim,
heavy disgust, something that clung to his skin, something that
wouldn’t come clean no matter what he did. That and guilt, because
for a few seconds, before his brain kicked in and he realized
just
what
he was staring at,
his body had responded as it always did when Tania was
involved.

Any arousal had died a fast, ugly death,
though, once he figured out just what was going on here.

Kent hadn’t just woken up one morning and
decided to go rape his sister-in-law.

Judging by these pictures, so many of
them involving Kyle, changes of hairstyles, seasons—the man had
been watching her for
years
.
Stalking her…for
years
. Hell,
that trip to Cancun had been close to eight years ago. Kent had
come home on leave that year, a few months later, if Drake
remembered right.

He turned to the next wall, ready to rip
down those pictures, and Gail shoved in front of him. “You can’t
just tear up my things this way.” She glared at him and went to
snatch the garbage can from him.

“
Want to bet?” He reached past her,
ignoring it as she tried to slap at his arms, tearing down as many
of the pictures as he could.

“
These are
mine
—when Kent died, everything that was his
became mine.”

“
And you call it filth. I’d think
you’d be happy to have the filth out of your house,” Drake said,
shooting her a look and then focusing back on the job at hand. Just
looking at her made him angry—and edgy. That glint in her eyes—she
wasn’t thinking clearly. Was she even
sane
?

He’d managed to get most of the
pictures down and then he turned, stared at the computer. There was
only one damn way Kent could have gotten some of those
pictures—only one. When he went to sit in the computer chair, Gail
flung herself at him. “
No!
”

Hands curled into claws, she swiped at his
face.

He caught one wrist, held it. “Don’t,” he
said softly.

“
You will
leave
now. And leave everything
behind.”

“
No.”

“
If you don’t, I…I…” Her eyes narrowed
and she jerked her chin up. Her eyes, the same green eyes the
Sinclair twins had shared, narrowed, and she gave him a malicious
smile. “I’ll show some of the things I’ve got on that computer to
the police. They’ll wonder if they shouldn’t investigate
harder.”

“
No.” Drake shook his head. “You
won’t. Because there’s one thing I know about Kent that you really
wish I didn’t know—I know a name.”

Her lashes flickered. She swallowed.

“
They think she was
raped
. But she
likes
being hurt—you even hurt her and I have
proof of it,” Gail babbled, shaking her head, eyes
glassy.

She already knew, though.

Drake saw it on her face.

“
Elaina Watson,” he said quietly.
“Aged thirteen. Kent, Kyle and I were fifteen—two years ahead of
her. I knew her brother, knew her folks. I know you paid them not
to talk about what he did to her. I know you put him in counseling.
And now we know it didn’t do any good.”

Gail talked louder, as though she keep
herself from hearing anything he said. “They’ll look back at
Kent’s
murder
now. And since
they didn’t charge her then, they can do it
now
.”

“
If you so much as breathe a word to
anybody, I’ll track Elaina down,” he continued to speak as well,
not raising his voice, because he knew she heard him. He could see
the terror in her eyes, on her face. “I’ll ask her if she wants to
speak about what he did to her. And all it will take is
one
person, Gail. One person—and you
know there is one.”

Her lids flickered again, and her voice
cracked and finally, she went silent.

Drake studied her closely and then he
swore. “There’s more than one, isn’t there? You
vicious
bitch.”

Turning around, he jerked the chair
out and sat down. “I’m wiping this computer clean, I’m shutting
down whatever feeds you’ve got, and Gail, I’m warning you—do
not
fuck with me. If you do a thing
against Tania, you’ll be sorry, because I’ll drag Kent’s name
through the mud. And
yours
.”

“
You can’t do a thing to me, bastard,”
she growled.

There was a heavy, ugly weight in his
gut as he glanced back at her. “How long have you known he had a
thing for his brother’s wife, Gail? Did you discover this
room
before
he attacked her?
Or after?”

She said nothing. But he saw the answer.

“
If you’d warned her—hell, if you had
said a damn thing to me on any of the times I came by to check on
you after Kyle died? I could have done something, and you know
what? Kent would still be alive, because I damn well would have
kept him from touching her.”

Behind him, Gail started to sob.

He tuned it out as he started to dig
around.

He’d been wrong, he realized about five
minutes into the job.

Kent wouldn’t be alive, even if Gail had
warned him.

Because Drake would have killed him.

From what he could tell, the bastard
had cameras in just about every room of Tania’s house—it looked
like
three
in her bedroom and
at least two in her bathroom.

He thought he could kill it remotely
temporarily, but if Gail had any computer know-how—and it was
possible she might have some basic skills at least—the only way to
completely stop it was to find the cameras. He thought he had a
good idea of where they were, judging by the angle and
everything—

Tania walked across the screen.

His heart turned over.

He glanced at the clock in the corner—almost
nine. He hadn’t called her. He had to get over there, tell her.
Then get rid of the damn cameras—no. The cameras first.

He took care of the feeds first, then
started checking the folders. They were neatly organized by month,
by year. Going back so many years. The past year had been scarce,
up until the past month. He opened the folder and saw the stills of
himself and Tania and he wanted to scream. Wanted to smash the
monitor to bits—that evil bitch had been watching them. Calling
Tania evil, calling her a whore, and she’d been
spying
on them.

With his jaw clenched, he deleted those.

“
You can delete them—it won’t matter.
I have them saved. I have the proof that she’s a whore, a
murderess,” Gail said, her voice wavering.

Yeah. He imagined she did—at least
proof in
her
mind.

The next labeled folder made his hand clench
into a fist.

January 5.

She’d saved it—her son’s rape of her
daughter-in-law and the bastard’s death.

“
Delete it if it makes you feel
better. But it won’t do any good.”

“
Oh, I’m deleting it,” he muttered.
And he did. That one, all of them. All the videos, the pictures,
emptied the recycling bin. And then, just because he could—both of
the twins had been computer freaks and Kyle had once shown him how
to force a crash—he crashed the hard drive.

Pushing back from the desk, he glanced
around. There was a stack of CDs and DVDs. Again, neatly labeled,
corresponding to the folders. “Are these the so-called
evidence?”

She shrieked when he scooped them up.

“
You
bastard
.” She glared at him, like
he
was the one responsible for all
of this.

“
I’ve spent the past two years feeling
bad for you,” he said softly. “You lost both of your boys. I know
they were all you had after their dad walked out. I hurt for you.
But no more. You
let
that
happen to her—you knew what Kent was capable of and you did nothing
to stop it. Something you need to think about, and think hard—Tania
just might be able to hold you liable. A court might be able to.
You knew he had an unhealthy obsession. You did nothing, said
nothing, and a woman was raped.”