Dead Girl Running (Cape Charade #1)(94)

Max didn’t care if the FBI took her away or Sheriff Kwinault handled the arrest. His only concern was that it happened sooner rather than later. Without a doubt, this was a dangerous woman.

Nils didn’t relax until Temo and Adrian appeared. Those two he apparently trusted, and as they took up their positions around Mara, she finally seemed to accept she could not escape.

As soon as the arrest was made, he would have to send Nils to the hospital.

He called Annie and Leo and gave them the update, and while he was on the phone with them, Carson Lennex rang in.

Max hurriedly finished briefing Annie and Leo and answered, “Carson, what’s your report?”

“It’s good, I guess. Birdie’s not good. Sheri Jean stabilized her condition. Somehow, we got her down the spiral staircase and waited for the car, but—” Carson sounded frankly peeved “—nothing.”

Max frowned. “The car didn’t show up?”

“No, so we loaded Birdie into my car and right now we’re headed toward the airstrip. We’d damned well better get Birdie on the same helicopter that’s taking Kellen to the hospital.”

“I don’t know how the driver got it wrong,” Max said. “I’m sorry, Carson. Keep me up-to-date.”

At the time Max put Kellen into the car, he had thought nothing of the driver’s attitude. He had had more important things on his mind. But now, the memory of her tone grated at him. Annie and Leo would never put up with an insolent driver.

Before his unease blossomed, Carson called in again. “Max, why are people loading Kellen onto an airplane?”

“What are you talking about?”

“They’re carrying her up the steps into a corporate jet.”

Max found himself on his feet. “Who is? What kind of corporate jet?”

“This woman. This guy in a pilot’s uniform. Big jet. She’s unconscious.”

“Stop them!”

“They carried her inside. They shut the door. The logo on the plane says Lykke Industries. Does that mean anything to you?”

“Yes.” Max’s heart stopped. This wasn’t possible. Not after he’d just found her again. Not when they’d come so close. “It means Kellen is about to die.”





45

Kellen woke to the drone of an airplane in flight.

She knew where she was before she opened her eyes. Under her nose, she smelled expensive carpet, so she was sprawled facedown in the airplane aisle. But something close at hand emitted another odor, the reek of something burned and rotting. The stench made her want to vomit.

Her fear made her want to cry.

The truth made her want to hide.

She remembered everything. Every damned Cecilia thing.

She wished she didn’t. She wished she could forget she had ever been Cecilia, weak, broken and guilty. For years now, she had pretended to be Kellen, to be strong, fearless. But here, on the floor of the Lykke Industries jet, the only thing that seemed real was—she was an impostor.

She pulled her hands to her chest, used them to lever herself up.

Everything hurt. Her shattered sternum robbed her of breath. Her broken hand throbbed. The chemical used to drug her gave her a relentless headache.

At her first movement, Erin cackled.

Of course. This night had shone a light on Kellen’s past and in the process stripped away her future. She didn’t glance around, but she said, “Erin, you need a better air freshener to hang on the rearview mirror of your fancy corporate jet.”

Erin stopped laughing. “How could you? Make a joke? When he is sitting here like this…” She choked on tears.

Kellen froze. The hairs rose on the back of her head. Something not quite human was watching her. Slowly, inch by inch, she turned her head and looked, past Erin, who was crouched in the aisle, to the back row where a blackened hulk of a decaying human sat propped against the window. “Is that…?” she whispered.

“My brother.” Erin’s voice throbbed with devotion. “My darling.”

His teeth shone in a face devoid of flesh, smiling death’s smile at Kellen.

He had come for her at last.

Erin petted his hand.

Kellen gagged at the thought of touching that burned, flaking flesh. “How did you locate—” she nodded toward Gregory “—the corpse?”

“He wasn’t dead!”

Kellen remembered the force of the blast, the heat of the fire. “I can hardly believe that.”

“When the police didn’t find his body, I searched. I searched and I found him on the boulders by the sea. He’d been blown out of the house by the explosion and he rested there, burned, broken, the salty waves battering his rocky bed. He was alive.” Erin stood and stepped closer. “Do you hear me? Alive. I brought him home. We cared for him, Mother and I. We loved him.”

Kellen faintly heard the rhetoric, the melodrama, over the ringing in her ears. “How did you get him on the plane?”

“I carried him myself. He weighs so little now…” Tears trickled down Erin’s cheeks. “Do you not even recognize your own husband?”

Kellen muttered, “He was less crispy last time I saw him.”

Erin kicked her in the chin.

Kellen blacked out again.

When she came to, she was facedown in the aisle, her ear against the floor. The plane droned on. She heard no other movement. Yet she knew, she knew, Erin was somewhere behind her, waiting to hurt her, maim her. Her partner was a man, dead and rotting for seven years.