Fatal Strike (McClouds & Friends #10)(22)

He turned to her. “Lara. So glad to meet you. I’ve been following your progress. Please, sit. Coffee? Some scones?”

Progress? Scones? She gaped at his angelic smile, his beckoning hand. “Your timing’s off,” she said. “After all this time sitting in a hole, your good cop/bad cop routine is not going to work with me.”

“I would be disappointed if it did,” he said serenely.

She stared at the open window, the canyon beyond. That attractive expanse of beautiful, empty air.

“Ah, ah, ah.” The man shook his head. “Don’t even let the thought form in your head. You would not get a single step.”

Right. Probably not. She breathed down the crazy urge.

“Sit. Lara. Really,” he urged.

She simply could not play party games with this *, whoever he was. Fuck his coffee and his scones. “So you’re the big boss?” she asked. “I have you to thank for my quality of life these past few months?”

“Not exactly,” he replied. “I inherited you, you might say. Your abduction was a choice I would not personally have made, but it was made, and there it is. We have to live with the consequences. Harold Rudd, the man who abducted you, did so to control your mother.”

“So I was told,” she said. “They said her death three years ago was faked. That she died just a few months ago.” Her gaze flashed to Anabel and Hu, and back to the white-haired guy. “I don’t believe it. My mother would never have let me think she was dead for three years.”

“Not if she had any choice.” The man’s tongue clucked. “So sad.”

Her ears were starting to roar. “So you did to her what you’re doing to me?”

“No. Not me,” he said, his voice soothing. “Calm down, Lara.”

“Hah.” She was breathing fast, face hot, hands clammy. “How stupid is that, to drive me out of my mind, and then tell me to be calm. So it’s true, what they said? That my father was murdered, too?”

His face was impassive. “Yes, Lara,” he said. “I am sorry. It is true. He died the day after your mother.”

She believed him, for some reason, though she had no idea who this self-important bozo was. She had no reason to doubt Anabel and Hu, either, but she’d still been hoping on some level that their jibes were just psychological torture. That Dad was alive and safe, smelling of pencil dust and Scotch. Still loving her. The last one around who did.

That hope withered and died when this man spoke. She hated him for it. Tears flooded her eyes. She forced them back. “If you’re not the monster, then why didn’t you let me go?”

“It’s complicated, but it will all be made clear. Sit down.”

“Complicated, my ass! I want answers! Who the hell are you?”

He let out a sharp, frustrated sigh. “My name is Thaddeus Greaves. I am your host. And I want. You. To. Sit. Down.”

Lara gasped, muscles seizing up as her body moved. Not of her own volition, but as if she were a doll. She clamped down on the rising panic, fighting to keep her legs beneath her. When she was near the table, the chair he’d indicated floated up, did a quarter turn, and settled, feather light, behind her. A shove at her waist, another behind the crook of her knees, and flop, down she sat. Hard and graceless.

“Sorry about the bump.” Greaves stirred a small lump of sugar into his coffee. “Gravity’s a bitch. Sometimes she just can’t be reasoned with. Hope I didn’t scare you.”

She fought for control of her voice for a few moments. “Not at all,” she finally managed. “I prefer it when the thumbscrews are out there for me to see. I like to know where I stand.”

Greaves pushed the plate toward her. She stared at the heap of hot, golden pastries, the pats of butter in a dish, the little silver knife.

They looked amazing. She hadn’t put anything that tasted good into her mouth since they had captured her. After months of stale, gummy food that she had to muscle past her gag reflex, her salivary glands were going nuts. Her hands shook.

But anything this attractive had to be a trap. She shook her head.

“Lara,” Greaves chided. “They’re delicious. Why not?”

She kept her voice carefully even. “I will not voluntarily ingest anything you offer me.”

He looked affronted. “If I wanted to poison or drug you, I would have Anabel shove a needle into your throat. Please, relax.”

She stared at the plate, at him. He smiled.

It was his smile that did it. It sparked flesh-creeping dread, just like the sting of the psi-max needle, and she caught her breath as the pit yawned suddenly, the double vision. This world and the swirling visions, somehow coexisting. Then the sickening dip in blood pressure, the deep, hard suck . . . a vortex, dragging her.

She fought it, jaw locked. Resisted that sucking pull . . . rooted to the ground . . . fighting with everything she had.

She wasn’t strong enough. It launched her into the dream world.

Foggy, overgrown forest. Park benches were choked with vines, shrubs, weeds. A dry fountain was visible in the distance, beside it the lifelike bronze statue that she’d seen many times before, eternally poised in the act of snapping a picture with a cell phone. Eerie in the drifting fog.

She spun at the silent summons that prickled at her nape. Her little friend, the ghostly blond boy, dressed in ragged, filthy child’s pajamas. He seemed younger than the other times she’d seen him.