I’m still very, very angry with her, but she’s such a pathetic, wretched soul, I have to pity her too.
“Damn it.” Comprehension dawns on his face. “She’s been using tons of breath freshener to cover the smell. I thought it was just because you made her feel like she smells bad, but she didn’t want me to know that she’d been puking. All right. You’re good at all that compassion crap. How do I fix this?”
I shake my head. “Not every problem has a solution, Joshua. Honestly, and I’m not just saying this to get my way, but the only thing you could do that would come close to helping her would be letting me go or killing me, which you won’t do because you’re a pig-fucking-selfish, useless asshole.” My voice rises with anger as I speak. These bursts of rage come out of nowhere these days.
Wearily, he waves away my insults with his hand. “Can we not waste time stating the obvious? I need to find a way to make her stop feeling whatever it is she’s feeling.”
Jesus. How can a genius be so stupid? “Don’t you get it? You can’t. Even if you killed me, it wouldn’t solve the underlying problem, which is that she’s a mentally damaged woman who’s obsessed with a man who can never love her. You can’t make her feelings go away. Feelings don’t work like that.”
He frowns, shaking his head, dismissing the notion that there’s something the mighty Joshua Smith can’t do. “I’ll go talk to her.” He pushes back his chair and walks away.
“Good luck with that,” I call after him, and there’s pure spite in my voice. The hell with him and her both. I reel my pity back in. They’re a sick, terrible pair; they deserve each other.
He reaches the door, then turns around and comes back. He quickly gathers up all the plastic silverware.
“Good call,” I say, looking at him with pure, unadulterated hate. I could have made that spoon into a shiv. And I would have.
He stands there, the plasticware clenched in his hand.
“Thank you for helping her,” he says to me. He sounds sincere. He’s got that look in his eyes, that tenderness that might even be real.
“I’m regretting it already.”
“No you’re not. I’ll be back in a few minutes. You can tell me what you’d like for dinner.”
I can’t hide the surprise on my face.
“You’d actually let me pick the menu from now on?”
“I didn’t say that. We can take turns.” He smiles at me. “Unless you pick really crappy food. Then it’ll be all me.” I smile back, then I catch myself.
No. Joshua’s not my boyfriend, and we’re not having a fun afternoon of light banter. I am sitting here chained to a fucking chair.
I make myself scowl and look away. He said he’d be right back, but he leaves me sitting there for a very long time, and my bladder starts sending me sharp signals of urgency. I’m pretty sure that I’ve been there at least an hour. What is he doing? There’s no way he’s spent that much time with Elizabeth. I start yelling, with increasing annoyance.
“Damn it, Joshua! I’ll pee on this chair if I have to!”
He comes storming in and unchains me, then hurries me down the hall to the bathroom. His demeanor has completely changed. Something big has happened. “Settle down,” he says impatiently. “I’m dealing with an emergency.”
After I pee, he rushes me toward the playroom. “I’m going to have to restrain you for a few hours,” he says as he hustles me through the door.
I’m curious what could have the normally unflappable Joshua Smith so rattled. His muscles are as taut as bowstrings, and his eyes have gone distant and stormy. “What’s the emergency?”
Tension radiates from his body and wrinkles his normally smooth forehead. Whatever it is, it’s got to be big.
“Someone embezzled a hundred million dollars from me, sent it to a Swiss bank account that I can’t access. It’s impossible, and yet they did it.” He bites out each word as if he’s spitting poison.
My jaw actually drops. Someone did that to Joshua? He’s a genius, he’s paranoid, he’s alert to threats all the time. How in the hell?
“Was it the same person who set off your alarms that day?” I ask him, hazarding a guess.
“I don’t know yet. What made you think that?” He looks at me narrow-eyed, as if suspecting I might somehow be behind it. I wish.
“Because those were both times when someone managed to get past your defenses. It just seems logical. I hope you don’t figure it out, you know. I hope they ruin you.” I smile serenely. Someone’s hurt him. I wish I could find that person and give them a hug.
His eyes spark with malice. “You’re a very smart girl, Toy. And I enjoy your company, but I’ve let it distract me when there were threats that needed to be addressed. I’ve been off my game. I’m back on it now, believe me. I will find out who did this to me, and I will make their punishment last for weeks.” Then his expression turns thoughtful. “I don’t think it’s Mark. I wish it were—that would make it so much easier.”
My blood turns to ice. “What did you say?”
He glances at me impatiently as he moves me toward a chain on the floor. “Mark, your homeless friend. Mark is the one who sent those emails to the police and the newspapers, telling them that you went on a date with me right before you disappeared. Mark didn’t cover up his email trail all that well, which is one of the reasons I don’t think he’s the person who stole my money, or even the person who set off my alarms. That person is way more sophisticated, so apparently, I have two enemies, not one.” A contemplative look crosses his face. “Not surprising, considering the kind of life I lead.”
No, no, no… “You’re wrong,” I say frantically. “Mark’s not that sophisticated. He’s just a washed-up drunk—he doesn’t even remember my name from one day to the next.”
Joshua looks at me in annoyance. “You’re a crap liar when you’re stressed out, Toy, which is too bad for you, because that’s the most important time to be good at it. And my private investigator traced the emails back to him. Mark used several different internet cafes. He used a fake name and paid in cash to try to hide his tracks, but my PI hacked into their security cameras and saw him at the terminals sending the emails. I just got the report back this morning. The thing is, Mark’s been in rehab for the past few days, and the money just vanished a few hours ago, so I don’t think there’s any way it could have been him.”
All the strength leaves my body. Mark noticed I’d disappeared and tried to help me. Mark finally went to rehab. “Did you kill him?” My voice quavers with unshed tears.
“Not yet.” His casual words stab me in the gut. “Put your foot in that ankle cuff.”
“Joshua, please!” There’s still hope. “I’ll do anything you want. I’ll…I’ll go back to being Toy. Please. Don’t hurt him.”
He shoves me closer to the ankle cuff. “I hated Toy, remember?”
“What do you want?” I scream, desperate.
He shakes his head. “He declared himself my enemy when he sent those emails. I am not capable of letting him live after that. He’s not prey, Toy. You don’t have to worry that I’d torture him. I’m going to make it quick and painless. I’ll kill him in his sleep, I promise.”
He grabs my leg, and I struggle and kick at him, but he overpowers me, pulling me down to the ground. I’m chained up and helpless, raging.
“Nooooo!” I wail, sorrow overwhelming me. “I will end you, Joshua! God, I wish I’d never met you. I wish I’d never gone to Heaven that night!”
He looks at me, uncomprehending. “You wish you’d never…gone to Heaven? Are you having some kind of breakdown?”
“Heaven! The nightclub where we met!”
He shakes his head. “I have never been to a nightclub called Heaven. The first time I met you was after you started working for me.”
“Do you ever get sick of lying?” I rage. “Why would you even bother lying about this? You think my memory is that bad? You were wearing a pinstriped suit with a lavender tie and drinking two-hund
red-dollar shots of Macallan whiskey, and you tried to get me to leave with you.”
His eyes bore into mine. “I don’t own a lavender tie, but more to the point, I never drink hard liquor. Only wine. Have you ever seen me drink hard liquor? And I never pick up women at nightclubs. I already told you—before I met you, I used to hire escorts and bring them back here, blindfolded. Can you seriously imagine me trolling a nightclub for dates?”
And then it hits me. “Oh my God. It wasn’t you. Of course it wasn’t you. He was much too charming. You’re never charming.”
“Excuse me?” He actually sounds offended.
My eyes fly to his face as I examine him with horrified fascination. “He was seductive and charming. He was like Casanova, with all the smooth-talking bullshit. You never do that. You’re a ‘let the woman come to me’ kind of guy. You would consider it beneath you to try to charm a woman into bed with you. To you, it would be like begging. I can’t believe I didn’t see it before. That’s why you never acknowledged me when I started working for you. You’d never met me before. But he looked exactly like you, Joshua. I mean, so much like you that physically, I wouldn’t be able to tell you apart. Who could it have been?”
The look on his face makes me gasp. It’s a mixture of shock and alarm.
“Charlemagne.”
His dead twin? The twin who was supposedly buried alive by their father? Is there something Joshua hasn’t told me?
He quickly undoes the key on my ankle cuff. Then he hauls me over to the intercom and slaps the button. “Elizabeth, get out of the house, now!” he bellows.
I hear something strange. “Joshua,” I say. “What’s that hissing noise? What’s that smell?”
Chapter Twenty-nine
Joshua
I smell it too. Gas. Poison gas, hissing out of the vents.
“Hold your breath!” I shout.
I suck in my own breath and grab her by the arm, and we run through the house, heading for the front door.
I never told her the end of Charlemagne’s story – which was that my father failed to kill him, after all. I was dazed with shock at killing my father, and I didn’t do a very good job checking my brother’s vital signs. After I staggered off, he crawled out of his grave and made his way out into to the world, same as I did.
I didn’t find out that he was still alive for years, though.
And when I did, I had him thrown into a very secure mental institution. Not secure enough, obviously.
How long has Charlemagne been out? How did he make Dr. Barnard lie to me and keep those fake videos online so I’d think he was still locked up? I keep tabs on Dr. Barnard’s family too – he hasn’t sent them anywhere to try to hide them from me. I know he loves them. And he knows I’ll kill them. How did my brother pull this off?
No time to worry about it right now. The first thing I have to do is get Toy and myself to safety.
Charlemagne is a genius who’s even more talented at computer hacking than I am, and he looks exactly like me and thinks like me. And he is very, very pissed, because he’s been in that mental institution for the last six years.
I had to do it, because he was killing people—not that I’d have a problem with that, except he was doing it in a very sloppy, public manner.
He tracked down and killed every social worker who’d come to our house and failed to remove us from that hellscape. Went right into their homes and butchered them, and then killed the head of the department of social services for good measure. He barely bothered to cover his tracks. That’s what happens when you let rage and revenge choose your kills for you.
When I saw the cluster of murders, I knew who was behind it right away—which meant there was an excellent chance that law enforcement would figure it out too.
With his self-indulgent killing spree, he risked getting caught by the police. That meant he risked exposing our entire twisted family life, and my murder of our father, and my assumption of a fake identity and fake social security number.
It wasn’t even that hard for me to track my brother down and capture him. I could have, should have, had Charlemagne killed instead of keeping him locked away. I spared his life when I didn’t have to. I’ve spent a fortune over the last six years, bribing Dr. Barnard to keep Joshua hidden from the world. It doesn’t matter to my brother that I spared him. He’ll want revenge.
Looking like me, and with his computer abilities, he will have been able to infiltrate my company at the highest levels. He’ll have penetrated every last system of mine. He may even have been in my house. He will have completely wormed his way into my security system.
He’s been fucking with me for months, drawing it out. He stole a hundred million dollars from me—a twentieth of my net worth. He ruined my Morton Media business deal. He fed the police just enough information that they’d start sniffing around, but not enough to convict me. Not yet, anyway. He could have ended my life at any time, but that wouldn’t be enough for him. He has bigger plans than that.
And somehow, he sent Toy into my path. I imagine he had the same reaction to her that I did—an instant, overwhelming attraction—and he sent her to me knowing that, as similar as we are, I would probably react the same way. All part of his long game, whatever that is.
Elizabeth is waiting by the front door, punching the keys over and over again, but the door’s not opening. I push her aside and punch in the code to the keypad, but it doesn’t work.
My lungs burn. Toy’s cheeks are puffed out and her face is turning red. Thank God for her breath-control practice.
I punch in a second code, an emergency backup code, and the door opens.
We rush into the airlock room. The door behind me stays open, although it’s not supposed to. That means the gas will pour in here too, from the hallway, even though there are no air vents in here.
Elizabeth’s eyes roll back in her head, and she falls to the ground.
I’m still holding my breath. I punch in the backup code. The front door opens.
The cold air hits me like a refreshing slap in the face.
I suck in gulps of oxygen as I bend down, grab Elizabeth by the wrist and drag her outside. I maintain a death grip on Toy’s wrist at the same time.
It’s mid-October, bracingly cold, and a chill breeze whips through the air. The minute we’re outside the front door, Toy goes mad. She lashes out and kicks me in the back of my leg, bringing me to my knees. Then she bites me on the hand so hard that my flesh tears and blood flows.
I have to let go of Elizabeth for a moment to control her. I’m forced to punch Toy in the head, hard enough to leave her half stunned, and then I start giving Elizabeth mouth-to-mouth.
Toy starts crawling away.
Fuck, fuck, fuck. She’s either going to find the cops and give up all my secrets, or get lost in the woods and freeze to death. But I can’t stop CPR; Elizabeth’s not breathing.
The icy survivalist in my brain howls for me to just leave Elizabeth to die and go after Toy.
Before I met Toy, I would have done so in a heartbeat and never suffered a twinge of conscience over it. Fucking Toy, she’ll be the death of me yet.
Elizabeth coughs and splutters and her eyes flutter open. She stares at me, searching my face for something. I’m not sure what. Then she reaches up and touches her mouth with trembling fingers, as if to savor the feel of my lips on hers.
I turn my attention back to Toy, who’s up on her feet and running like a gazelle.
My vision becomes laser focused. I leap up and run after her, and she’s surprisingly fast, but I catch up with her quickly and wrap my arms around her, pinning her arms to her sides and lifting her off the ground. Again she does the thing where she wraps her legs behind my knees and makes me fall, and as we do, she rears her head back, and there’s a crunch and an explosion of pain as she breaks my nose.
My fierce, magnificent Toy.
She’s screaming and howling. “No, no, no! Never again!”
“Cut the shit!”
I snap at her. “Who knows what the fuck my brother has done to the house? He could blow it to pieces! He could be out there waiting with a sniper rifle! We have to get the hell out of here, now!”
I climb to my feet and throw her over my shoulder, hurrying toward the Mercedes that I keep parked in the traffic circle in front of my house and praying that Charlemagne hasn’t sabotaged it. She’s writhing and kicking so hard I almost drop her.
As I reach the car, I don’t see Elizabeth there waiting for me. What the hell? I don’t have time for this! I glance back at the house and see that she’s running for the front door. She’s going back in.
“Elizabeth!” I yell at her. “Get back here! What are you doing?”
I run back to the house, still holding a wildly struggling Toy. Elizabeth runs right through the airlock room and into the house.
She turns around to look at me. She points at Toy, then gives me the middle finger. Then she opens her mouth wide and sucks in huge gulps of air.
And falls over backward.
I drop Toy on the ground with a thud, suck in my breath, and make it partway into the room, but whatever the gas is, it makes my eyes sting and I can’t go any further. I turn away and run back outside, leaving Elizabeth behind to die.
I feel a tsunami of a horrible emotion that I don’t recognize rolling over me. Oh God, I think it’s grief. I will never see Elizabeth again. Never.
What has Toy done to me?
How can I have these disgusting feelings?
I shake my head, blinking hard against the burning of my eyes, and look for Toy. Of course, she has run off again.
I run over to the car and fetch the Glock that I keep in the center console and tuck it into my waistband. Then I chase after her as she runs toward the woods, her bare feet slapping on the cold ground.
“Toy! Get the hell back here or I will cut your fucking tits off!”
Do I hear sirens far, far away? Has Charlemagne called the cops on me?
I need to get out of here, immediately. Toy is slowing me down.
The ice-hearted reptilian part of my brain knows what to do. I must kill her to save myself. This isn’t a game of cat and mouse anymore. This is the very real possibility of me going to prison or dying in a police shootout.
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