See No Evil

PROLOGUE

The teenaged girl had the gun in her hand. Paul Judson was supposed to be her first kill.

Robbie was the driver. He was parked two houses up where it was dark. He’d removed the plates from his new black truck. Cami was the lookout. If anyone approached, she’d take care of it. What that meant, Faye didn’t know. She trusted Cami knew what she was doing. Supposedly it had all been Cami’s idea in the first place.

But Faye suspected Cami wasn’t the brains behind the plan. She felt as if they were all puppets, just pieces in someone else’s game. If they managed to get away with this, Faye would find out exactly who was pulling their strings.

“It’ll be easy,” Cami had told her earlier. “Shoot him between the eyes.”

Faye hated guns.

Now Skip walked Faye to the door, stood right there next to her on the porch when she knocked.

“I can’t,” she said.

“What?”

Skip had a panicked look on his face. He nervously shifted his weight, looking about the neighborhood. Worried. He’d been the most confident of the plan, arrogant, sure of himself, like so many guys in her school. “You can’t back out now, Faye.”

“I don’t like guns.”

“What’s that got to do with it?”

She handed the gun to Skip and pulled her knife from her pocket. Its shiny stainless-steel blade winked under the porch light as she turned it over and over in her palm. “I’ll use this.”

“Don’t be stupid,” said Skip.

The door opened.

Faye tightened her grip around the handle and stared into the eyes of the man they had been sent to kill.

“Who are you?” Judson squinted. “I don’t recognize you. You’re not from the school.”

He didn’t move.

Faye raised the knife.

They knew from their research that Judson was severely nearsighted. He didn’t see the knife right away, but followed the movement of her arm.

Realization hit his eyes just before Skip pumped two bullets, one after another, into his brain.

“Move it, Faye!” Skip pocketed the gun. “Now.”

She pocketed her knife as she ran back to the car, into the backseat, to safety. But her heart didn’t stop racing as Robbie drove away. Casually, so as not to attract attention.

The kill had been too fast, too easy. Bang, bang, a man was dead. A bullet in each eye, his brains splattered into the room behind.

She had wanted to feel his blood. Touch it. Taste it.

She hated guns.

Someday Faye would use her knife on someone other than herself.