Little Girl Gone (An Afton Tangler Thriller #1)(103)
“You said the woman who brought her home was Marjorie. Marjorie who?”
“Sorenson?” Shake said in a small voice.
“And this is the same woman who creates and sells reborn dolls?”
Shake nodded. “Yeah.”
“And she has a son.”
“Ronnie,” Shake said. “My boyfriend.” She hiccupped. “My baby’s father.”
The pizza guy, Afton thought. She had to grab the Darden baby and get the hell out of here. Could she manage it? Holy shit, it felt like she was trapped in a den of rattlesnakes.
“Wait here,” Afton said to Shake.
Shake pulled up the bedspread tight to her chin. “Where would I go?”
Afton tiptoed out into the hallway and paused. The TV was still blasting away downstairs, and so far nobody seemed to have heard her. Shake hadn’t raised an alert. That was good. Maybe she could grab the Darden baby and get away without anyone being the wiser. Send help back for Shake and her baby.
That was the plan anyway.
But plans have a way of not working out. Because somewhere between peering into the Darden baby’s crib and ascertaining that this was probably the missing Elizabeth Ann, Afton heard a ruckus going on downstairs.
Damn. Somebody must have heard her moving around up here on the creaky linoleum.
Afton had a split-second decision to make. Grab the baby and try to bull her way past whoever had just started screaming their head off downstairs? Or face them by herself and hope for the best?
She left the baby and dashed out into the hallway.
Downstairs, the screaming had intensified.
“We got big trouble, Ronnie!” came a woman’s shrill voice. “Get up here and bring your knives!”
That was Marjorie. Calling for Ronnie. This is so not good.
Pounding footsteps shook the stairway. Like a bull on a rampage, Marjorie barreled up the narrow stairs, her faded housecoat billowing around her. When she got to the landing and saw Afton standing there, she stopped, a look of utter shock on her face.
Afton stared at the woman with cold, barely contained anger. This was the woman who’d caused everyone so much pain. “Hello, Molly,” she said. “We’ve been looking for you.”
“Who the hell are you?” Marjorie screeched. “Get out. Get out of my house.” Her eyes glowed hard and beady, like a rat’s.
“It’s over,” Afton said. “I know all about the baby. I know all about you.”
“You don’t know shit.”
“I know you’re going to prison.”
“That ain’t never gonna happen,” Marjorie hissed as her right arm slowly emerged from the folds of her housecoat.
That slight motion kicked Afton’s brain into overdrive. Gun. Old lady’s got a gun, her brain screamed out as she caught the gleam of cold metal.
Afton had a gun, too, of course. Only it was stuck way the hell down in her jacket pocket. Feeling her insides turn to water, she started to fumble for the Glock, and realized she was moving way too slow. Marjorie had just about raised her gun to eye level and had closed one eye, sighting to take aim at her.
“Marjorie!” Shake suddenly screamed, her voice ringing out like the whine of a bandsaw. She stood in the doorway of her bedroom, looking terrified in a faded green nightgown.
Marjorie jumped, startled by Shake’s earsplitting scream. In that split second, Afton hoisted her ice ax high above her head and brought it down hard across Marjorie’s right forearm.
Marjorie let loose a horrific, high-pitched screech as she reflexively pulled the trigger. Afton’s blow had been enough to knock her aim off and her shot went wild, crashing into the door frame, spewing shards of wood.
“You bitch,” Marjorie seethed. With bloody blue murder in her eye, she jerked her injured arm up to shoot again.
As though her life depended on it—and it probably did—Afton swung her ice ax in a tight, practiced arc. Whistling like a missile, the deadly tip, honed meat-pick sharp for biting into rock and ice, caught Marjorie in the left temple.
The impact was deep, the result instantaneous. Marjorie yodeled a high-pitched scream, like an animal caught in a trap. Her lips slicked back over her upper teeth and her pupils retreated into tiny pinpricks in a sea of ghastly white. A geyser of blood spurted from her head wound, spattering both Afton and Shake. Marjorie’s arm jerked sideways and the gun flew out of her hand, clattering down hard on the linoleum, then bouncing its way down the stairs.
Marjorie, who was still standing upright as bright red blood sprayed like a faucet, made a gurgling, underwater sound that sounded like glub bluh. Then she managed one shaky, tottering step backward. In her smooth cotton slippers, both heels slid back over the lip of the top stair and she teetered dangerously on the edge. Her arms flailed wildly as if she somehow sensed the precariousness of her situation. A split second later, her brain fully registered the trauma from the ice ax. Her arms dropped leadenly to her sides and she tipped straight over backward.
Bones cracked and splintered, blood painted a nasty Jackson Pollock as Marjorie tumbled down the narrow stairs. She made one final ass-over-teacup cartwheel and landed in an ungainly lump with one arm twisted behind her back and her leg practically cocked around her neck.
Oh my God, was Afton’s first thought. What have I done?
“What just happened here?” Shake’s frightened, ragged voice cried out as she shuffled forward to look. She gazed down at Marjorie, and then shrank back from Afton, as if fearing the same horrible fate.