What Doesn't Kill Her (Cape Charade #2)(102)

Kellen held herself carefully still and released her grip on the window. The wood was rough; it snagged her hose.

“I didn’t hear anything.” Rae’s voice was blasé, then rose with excitement. “Wait, I did, too. That rustling noise?”

The sound of Kellen’s skirts.

“Yes.”

“That’s a mouse.”

“A what?” He sounded horrified.

Big tough man, killer of women and children, scared of a mouse.

Rae sensed his weakness. “Maybe a lot of mice. Or a rat!”

“You little brat.” Loathing filled his voice. His familiar, almost recognizable voice...

Kellen took the pruning shears in one hand, slid to her knees and crawled, first hand, one knee, then the other hand, other knee, to the front edge of the cask. Her voluminous skirt made every movement an ordeal. The silk rustled and whispered.

In extravagant Di Luca–voice volume, Rae said, “I like mice. And rats. My science teacher says rodents carry fleas and disease, like the Black Plague. All these people dying of pimples exploding all over their skin. Gross! Don’t you think it’s gross?”

Rae was making life difficult for the man, working on his nerves, and doing a good job of it, too, while she waited for her mommy to arrive and rescue her. She had learned so much on their trek through the mountains...or perhaps she had a knack for annoyance.

Kellen grinned. That was her kid.

When Kellen got to the front of the cask, she found herself at the middle aisle that cut through the blending shed, high over the long table where she and Max had talked and made love. Directly below was the tap and the wooden bucket placed to impress the tourists. Facing the door were two figures, a balding brown-haired man dressed in a white suit and white shoes with no socks—okay, that was weird—and her daughter in her too-ruffly gown with the purple accents, holding her plastic princess doll case. Pink, of course.

The Triple Goddess sat on the table, her eyes facing forward, facing backward...and facing up, watching Kellen, demanding action.

“I’m not afraid of mice. Are you?” Rae’s voice was now innocent.

“No!” The man tightened his grip on Rae’s arm.

“I bet you are,” Rae said. “I bet if I dropped one in your lap, you’d run and scream like Martin.”

Kellen loved her daughter so much.

“There are no mice!” But he turned to look behind him.

He had no goatee, no mustache, no pointy eyebrows. His dark glasses had disappeared.

But it didn’t matter how much he had changed his appearance, Kellen should have recognized this man; she was staring into the face of her first husband, Gregory Lykke.

Gregory. He had cut her, humiliated her, broken her bones, taken the child he had conceived with her and killed it.

Poor baby. Never a moment of life, of breath, all chance taken from her from the man who should have loved her most.

Then the man on the floor turned back toward the door, and the illusion vanished.

Not Gregory. Similar in bone structure, eyes, lips, brows, sure. But with thinning hair and eyelids that sagged over cool brown eyes.

Not Gregory—then who? A Lykke relative, obviously. She’d never met any of the male relatives; Gregory had been too jealous to introduce her to another man, but she did remember the family talking about Daniel, a cousin they scorned as a parasite, a musician and...an actor.

An actor.

Kellen took her mental identification card labeled Dan Matyasovitch, tore it up and threw it away.

He held Rae’s upper arm tightly, so tightly that Rae squirmed and tugged and said, “My mommy’s coming!”

“I hope so. That’s the plan. That’s why I let you scatter your stars.” Rae must have stared at him in horror, for he laughed. “Did you think I didn’t know what you were doing? Stupid kid.”

“I’m not stupid!”

“Yeah? Think about this. Your stars will bring your mommy, and then I’ll shoot her.” He showed Rae the Glock he held in his free hand. “I’ll kill her.”

“You’re mean. You’re weird. Why would you want to kill my mommy?”

Yes, why?

“Because I’m a Lykke.”

That Kellen had figured out. She placed the pruning shears carefully, where they would not topple to the floor.

“A like?” Rae was truly confused. “Like on social media?”

“No. A Lykke. Part of your mommy’s first husband’s family.”

Using the balance she’d developed from years of yoga, Kellen stood on the sloped oak surface of the giant cask, lifted one stockinged foot and slid the blue garter off her thigh.

“Gregory was my cousin. The Lykke family is a noble, wealthy family from New England, and everybody’s dead except me...and her.”

There it was. Kellen’s mind clicked all the pieces into place.

With everybody dead, the Lykke family fortune hung out there, waiting to be claimed. Kellen was really Cecilia. Cecilia had been Gregory’s wife...and was of course next in line for the inheritance.

Money. Of course. Dear cousin Daniel wanted to kill her to secure the fortune.



56


Kellen hadn’t thought of the Lykke fortune and her claim on it. Why should she? In the nine years since she’d escaped Gregory, her life had been in turns despairing, terrifying, adventurous and laced with the kind of surprises that would shatter most people.