The Girls in the Snow (Nikki Hunt #1) - Stacy Green Page 0,111
pictures, thinking you’d wake up.”
“Then you decided to invite your buddies for some fun.”
“Just to see if you’d wake up. I swear I wouldn’t have let—”
“Oh my God, shut up, you pathetic excuse for a man. Why didn’t you just stay at the party after I left?”
He looked away, a tear streaming down his cheek. “I snorted a line after you left, and I was so fucking mad at you. The guys were making fun of me.”
Poor John and his fragile ego. “You planned to wait for me. Were you going to rape me like you were going to let your buddies do?”
“I just wanted to talk to you.”
“Bull,” Nikki said. “You were big John Banks. You had a reputation to protect. No girl was going to get away with embarrassing you in front of your friends. So you crawled through the window and planned to jump me when I came home.”
John angrily swatted the tear off his cheek. “Your dad heard me. He was going to call the police.”
“And you couldn’t have that,” Nikki said. “Because then people would have found out what you’d done to me, and that I wasn’t the first. Mr. Perfect couldn’t deal with jail.”
“I’m not perfect. And I told you, I was high. And mad as hell. I just lost it.”
She wanted to hit him. “You could have let my mother live.”
“She knew it was me,” he said.
“Why did you assault her?”
“Because she was a cold bitch who never gave me a chance,” John snapped. “She went off about how I wasn’t good enough for you, and now I’d just proven it. Next thing I know, I was…”
“Assaulting her. The DNA we lifted from your house is going to match the biological evidence taken from Mom. And then we’re going to find all the women who starred in your photo shoots.”
“Amy destroyed them.” His jaw tightened. “So good luck.”
“She lied. And I know where they are.”
John hung his head, shoulders slumped in defeat. “Bailey’s okay, though. I knew you’d find him.”
“You traumatized him,” Nikki said. “He saw what you did to his mother. But he’s going to be fine.”
“Nikki, I swear to God, if I’d known how unstable Bobby was, I wouldn’t have let Maddie near him.”
“That’s not why this happened. You know that. His father kept your secret, and it destroyed his family. Just like you destroyed mine and the Todds’. Madison and Kaylee’s deaths are on your hands as much as anyone.”
“You’re right.” John stood, and Nikki drew her gun.
“Turning yourself in?”
“We both know I deserve worse than jail,” he said.
“That’s up for the courts to decide.”
“You can do it for them.” John took a step closer. “Say it was self-defense. No one will know the difference.”
“I will.”
John smacked his chest. “It’s what I deserve, Nik. And it’s what you really want, isn’t it? I killed your parents. Your mom pleaded with me and I laughed at her. I told her I’d turned you into a slut—”
Nikki raised the gun, aiming it at his face.
“Yes,” John said. “Do it. Then it will be over, for both of us.”
Her hand trembled. No one would question self-defense. Her parents would finally receive justice, and by Nikki’s hand. Wouldn’t that be poetic?
But Mark Todd wouldn’t get to see John in prison. All the woman he’d raped wouldn’t get to file charges and look him in the eye at trial.
Bailey’s worried face, the fear in his voice.
You were going to shoot my dad.
“Do it,” John said. “Please.”
“No,” Nikki said. “I made a promise to your son. And I intend to keep it.”
“Goddamn you, Nikki.” John’s hands balled into fists. “I’m not going to jail.”
“I’m not shooting you.” He was a still a coward who didn’t want to face the consequences for his actions.
“You will.” He stalked toward her, eyes as wild as an angry cat’s, and pulled a fillet knife out of his coat. “Or I’ll fucking cut you. And then I’ll go after your daughter.”
Nikki pulled the trigger.
The bullet tore through the fleshy part of John’s thigh, but she’d missed the femoral artery. Miller wasn’t the only good shot.
He collapsed, writhing and screaming in pain.
“Stop crying,” she said. “It missed everything vital. You’re going to live to become some burly dude’s prison bitch.”
“You fucking bitch.”
Nikki ignored him and waved to the deputy who’d burst out of the station, gun drawn. She held up her badge. “John Banks just tried to attack me with a knife. You have cuffs?”