“That’s not denying it,” Anna said. She got up from her chair. “Answer this question, Toby Georgiou. Did you or did you not kill Byron Stratford?”
“Don’t act like that in my house!” Toby leapt to his feet and lunged toward Anna.
Fran was quick to her feet, but Matt was quicker. He pushed Anna out of harm’s way, then ushered her outside onto the balcony and closed the door behind them. He leaned against it, and Toby banged on the pane. “Don’t come in here and accuse me!” he hollered. Then he skulked back to the couch to light up another cigarette.
Fran saw Matt beckoning her to come outside to safety, but she didn’t move. In fact, she sat back down, ready to be courageous for Emily’s sake. “You should just give it up,” she said quietly to Toby. “You’ll feel so much better.”
He looked up, caught off guard.
She could still see Matt in her peripheral vision, beckoning her and waving. She felt bad, but angled her seat so she couldn’t see him anymore. She wanted to get to the heart of this with Toby.
“I…” His face clouded, but when he looked back up at her again, he looked relieved. “How did you know?”
Fran sighed. “You wanted out of the contract with Byron, didn’t you? But you couldn’t, because he was going to tell your ‘little secret’.”
Toby looked to be on the brink of tears. “I am relieved he is dead. That sounds bad, but I don’t care. He was an evil man.”
Fran felt shivers up her spine. “Maybe he was, but that didn’t give you reason to…” She watched as a tear fell from Toby’s eye and he wiped it away furiously. “It’s time to come clean,” she said, feeling a bit sorry for him in spite of herself.
“But…” He looked up at her, as lost and vulnerable as a little boy. “But what will my fans think? My agency might drop me. I’ll lose everything.”
“Face the music, Toby,” Fran urged. “You know it’s the right thing to do.”
Just then, a terrified yell came from outside.
Chapter 19
Fran and Toby both snapped their heads toward the source of the noise. It was coming from the balcony, but both Anna and Matt were out of sight.
Fran leapt to her feet, rushed to the door, and threw it open.
Anna was standing on the edge of the penthouse balcony, screaming. “Oh my gosh!” she yelled. “Matt fell!”
It felt like the world was closing in. Fran rushed to the edge to see Matt clinging a little lower down. He’d managed to wedge himself between a thick drainpipe and the wall, but his position was extremely precarious. One wrong move and he’d go plummeting the thirty something floors to the sidewalk outside, and would die instantly.
“Matt!” Fran screamed, her head whirling at the height. She felt dizzy and had to take a step back.
He reached out his hand to a ledge, but only his fingertips grazed the top. He tried to push himself away from the pipe with his foot, but it wobbled, and both Anna and Fran screamed in unison.
“Are you crazy?!” Anna hollered at Toby. “Why doesn’t the railing enclose the whole thing, huh? He got through that gap there,” she said, pointing at a gap a few feet back.
But Toby wasn’t listening. He was standing there, staring right through her.
Fran was getting too dizzy to stand near the edge, so she lay down, only her head over the edge. “Come on, Matt,” she said. “You can do this.” She was so locked onto him that she had no idea what was going on behind her.
She heard footsteps running away, but paid no attention to them.
Then the next thing she felt was a hard kick. “Ow!” she said, in shock. Then another came before she could turn around. “What the…?” She turned around to see Anna, putting her full force into another kick. It connected with Fran’s hip. “What?” she wheezed, grabbing her hip in pain.
Anna was lining up for another kick, but Fran was faster. She grabbed Anna’s foot and held it tight. She managed to maneuver on her own feet as Anna screamed, then she jerked Anna’s foot away from the edge of the skyscraper, making her fall onto the hard patio. Fran jumped on her and sat on her back. “Anna,” she panted. “What’s going on? Tell me. Now!”
Anna began to cry. “I don’t know.”
“What?” Then she watched as Toby rushed back to the side of the building with a rope.
“Matt, just hold on!” Toby hollered, tying the rope to the sturdiest balcony railing. Then he moved slowly toward the edge and let the rope down. “Grab onto this. Climb up. Come on!”
It felt like the best moment of Fran’s life when Matt emerged, climbing up the rope. Once he had his feet on the skyscraper, he stumbled into Toby, who held him up with strong arms.
Fran felt her heart might explode with joy. She watched him intently, and after a moment or two, he looked back at her. There was something so deep in his gray eyes. Too deep for words, for sure. All she could do was look back, feeling intense and life-or-death.
Toby broke that moment by wrapping Matt up in a huge bear hug. “Oh, man, I’m sorry about the railings, man. That’s the design, but I’ll get it fixed. I just couldn’t…if something happened to you…” Then he squeezed him again.
Matt hugged him right back, but when he came out of the hug, he frowned.
“The thing is,” he said, “I didn’t fall off. I was pushed. Isn’t that right, Anna?”
She’d gone limp under Fran, crying her eyes out. She made a horrible wailing sound.
“You pushed him?” Fran asked, breathless. “No, Anna. Tell me you didn’t. Why would you do that?”
Anna didn’t deny it. The river of tears kept flowing, and she was hiccupping in between. “Because he was going to find out,” she cried.
“Find out what?”
“Nothing! Please get off me, I can’t…I can’t breathe.”
Fran sighed deeply, wondering what on earth was going on. She let up a little, kneeling instead of putting all her weight on Anna’s back.
Anna, quick as lightning, wiggled away and jumped to her feet. Fran got up, ready to catch her, but Anna was already running. She stopped at the glass doorway, and did something no one expected. She reached under her ruffled sundress and pulled out a gun. The silver silencer attached to the barrel gleamed in the hot sun.
“Oh my gosh!” Fran said, stopping still. Anna was pointing the gun right at her, and Fran threw her hands in the air.
“Don’t move!” Anna screamed at them.
Fran felt like bursting into tears. “Anna, why are you doing this? Was it you who killed Byron?”
“You’ll get nothing out of me,” Anna said bitterly. Her voice sounded confident, but her hands were shaking.
“But why?” Matt said. “What did you stand to gain from killing him?”
Anna said nothing, just kept pointing the gun between each of them. “Shut up, Matthew Stratford.”
Fran was staring at Anna, deeply confused. But then, click, it all fell into place. She gasped. “You’re… You’re…” Fran’s mind flashed back to being at Delilah Forthstrup’s house, what she had said about Anna. She remembered the bitterness in Anna’s tone whenever Waverly was talked about. She remembered Byron’s reputation. “You’re…one of Byron’s children?!”
“Yes!” Anna yelled. “Though he was no father!”
“So you killed him to inherit your five million dollars?” Fran said. “But…”
“But how did you know that was in his will?” Matt said. “No one had seen it.”
“I have my ways,” Anna gloated. Her eyes were wide and manic.
“Oh!” Fran remembered. “Emily said Byron had been making a fuss, because someone rang his solicitor, pretending to be his office, getting a copy of his will sent over.” She shook her head. “But why, Anna? Why did you have to kill him? Couldn’t you just have asked him for money?”
“You don’t think my mom’s been trying to do that my whole life?” Anna spat. “Asking Byron for tiny crumbs from his mega real estate pie? He gave us nothing. Nothing. And now m
om’s ill. She has no way to pay for the operation. She asked him, and he wouldn’t give up a single cent. I hate him. I hate him! I’m glad that horrible man is dead!”
Fran felt so sad. “But what about Waverly? You’ve taken away her father.” All of a sudden her sadness turned to anger. “And you tried to take away Emily from her. It was you who planted the cash and note, wasn’t it? When we found you on the landing, you pretended you were trying to find Emily’s room, but you’d already been in there, hadn’t you? You were willing to let Emily take all the blame. She thought you were her friend.”
Anna laughed. “Too bad. You think I care about making friends? I care about seeing my mom get better. That’s all I care about. And Byron paying for his mistakes. Which he did.”
“And Waverly?” Fran said, getting more and more incensed by the minute.
“Why should she get to be the special princess of the mansion, who has everything, and I get nothing? When did I ever get to be a princess, huh?”
Toby shook his head. “This chick is crazy. But why was she trying to kill you, Matt?”
“Because she was worried he would find out who she was,” Fran said. “She was counting on the solicitors doing their own genealogy. Not someone who was close to Byron, and knew she’d been around.” Fran gasped. “So that’s why you told me all those horrible stories about Matt? Because you were worried he’d find out about you, then tell me?”
“No,” Anna said hotly. “I told you those stories because he’s a perfect little daddy’s-boy, and uncle’s-boy, too, who got given everything he wanted. I wanted him to suffer.” She pointed the gun at him. “You think you’re so special, don’t you?”
Matt put his hands up, but he wasn’t scared. He looked at Anna right in the eyes. “It’s time to give it up now, Anna,” he said softly.
But that made her all the wilder. “I’m just getting started,” she said, pointing the gun at Toby, and then at Fran. “Who shall I kill first?”
“You won’t be killing anyone,” Matt said firmly. “You’re going to put the gun down and hand yourself in to the police.”
“No!” she screamed.
Fran edged toward Anna, talking softly. “Anna, you’re not well. You need help.”
“Stay away from me,” Anna said, panicking, backing along the glass wall. “Stay away!”
But Fran had an instinct that she should keep going. Anna was out of control. Fran thought as long as she acted like she was in control, it might make Anna calm down. “It’s all right,” Fran said. “Everything’s going to be okay. All you have to do is put the gun down, okay? That’s not too hard, is it?”
“Get away from me!” Anna said, her voice quivering and quavering up and down. “I’ll shoot! Get back right now or I’m going to shoot you. I mean it! I do!”
“Anna, come on,” Fran said calmly. Inside her raged with fear, but she kept up a placid appearance.
“You’ve forced me!” Anna said, and pulled the trigger.
Click.
Reality stopped. Time stood still. Fran could hear nothing but the blood pumping through her temples. Anna had been aiming at Fran’s head. Fran felt nothing. She ran her hands over her face and hair. Nothing. No blood. No injury.
Reality flooded back as Fran realized the gun had jammed. Anna pulled and pulled on the trigger, over and over, frustrated tears running down her face. “Come on!” she hollered at her gun. “Come on!”
Fran was frozen to the spot, but in the few seconds it took Anna to scream at her gun, Matt and Toby had run over. Matt knocked the gun out of her hand, and they each grabbed one of her arms.
Fran expected Anna to thrash and wail and scream and fight, but as soon as they touched her, she went limp. So limp, in fact, that they had to pull her back to her feet. She looked exhausted. Like she was almost glad it was all over.
Fran was certainly relieved the whole thing was finished. “I’m calling the cops,” Fran said, walking away with her iPhone. She went in the apartment to check on Percy. Quite miraculously, he was cuddled up next to Toby’s hairless Parisian-diva-looking feline. He was purring up a storm, and she kept flicking him sleepily with her tail. Fran couldn’t help but smile, despite the mess going on outside.
Fran watched sadly as Anna was led to her cell. What a waste of life. She felt sorry for her, what with her mom being ill and Byron abandoning them for so many years and refusing to help. But she felt worse for Vanessa, who had lost her husband. And much worse for Waverly, who had lost her father.
But her frown turned into the widest smile when Emily was led out from a back corridor. Emily waved her hands in the air, bursting into happy laughter. “Look at that, Fran, no cuffs!”
Fran ran to her and pulled her into a tight hug. “Oh, I’m so sorry you had to go through that, Em.”
“Sorry?” Emily gave her a squeeze, then pulled out of the hug and gave her a playful slap around the head. “From what I heard from Greg,” she said, nodding at the tentative young cop, “you were quite the hero.”
“Hanscott!” Pascal barked, furious. “You’re not supposed to talk about crimes with prisoners!”
Greg swallowed, then lifted his head up, trying to be brave. “But she’s not a prisoner, sir.”
Pascal’s eyes were like the fires of hell. “She isn’t a prisoner now. She was about twenty seconds ago.”
Emily groaned. “Please, Officer, will you leave the poor kid alone? And to be honest, I’m quite bored of how you treat everyone around here. All you do is yell. It might be better for morale around here if you talked to people nicely once in a while.”
Fran laughed. Emily had always been the outspoken one.
Pascal was speechless. Fran guessed no one ever dared to speak to him like that.
“So can I go now?” Emily asked. “I need to do some living.”
Pascal nodded. “Yes, you are free to go,” he said grudgingly, like he wished he could lock her up for being so blunt with him.
“Ah, thank goodness.” Emily linked her arm in Fran’s. “Come on, let’s go.”
The moment when they got out of the police station, Emily spread her arms out wide, tilting her face up to the sun. “The sky…” she said in wonder. “Ahh.”
And the look of pure bliss on Emily’s face was something that would stick in Fran’s mind for all time.
Chapter 20
“I’m Spiderman! I’m Spiderman! I’m Spiderman!”
It was not, in fact, Oliver who made that pronouncement as he whizzed around the living room, arms spread wide. It was actually Oliver’s father, who had swapped out his suit and really gone the whole hog. His costume was perfect, and he and Oliver played shooting imaginary webs all morning long, waiting for their guests to arrive.
Fran smiled to herself as she prepped the Batman cupcakes—blackberry and chocolate sponge, with blackcurrant and blackberry frosting. She’d made her own web-shooting contraption for them to play with, but she wouldn’t unleash it until later, so all the kids could have a turn.
Emily was whipping up a batch of last minute frosting for the Superman cupcakes, this time with strawberry and cherry frosting, while Waverly—dressed as Hello Kitty, at her insistence—sat at the kitchen table. She’d wanted to open all the ‘The Hulk’ party favor bags and drop extra bags of sweets in there, and they’d narrowly avoided a tantrum when Emily had said no. But Fran had suggested that Waverly write each guest a special superhero note, and they’d put them in the favors later. Waverly had taken up the task enthusiastically, penning notes like: You’re a true superhero and Remember you have special powers. The way she concentrated so hard, poking out the tip of her tongue as she laboriously scribed in glitter gel pen, actually brought tears to Fran’s eyes for a moment. Despite her flaws, she really was a special girl. Emily was helping her get through the grieving process. Sandrine had allowed Waverly to move back into the mansion, because she didn’t want Emily living in her house. Admittedly, it wasn’t the most charitable reason, but it worked out well for
everyone.
The sound of the doorbell could be heard as the first few guests trickled in. Fran could hear Delilah’s friendly tones in the hall as she invited them inside, and she felt so relaxed and happy. Delilah was a great woman to work for. They’d never had any real disagreements, and everything was so carefree and friendly.
“So,” Emily said. “When are you leaving us, huh?”
“Oh, not until next month.” Fran grinned. “So you’ll have to put up with me until then. I’m sorry.”
“Oh darn,” Emily said, giving the air a punch. Then she was serious—a rarity for Emily. “But it’s been so good having you here. So good. Especially since my only other friend turned out to be a murdering psycho framing me for her craziness.”
“Yeah,” Fran said with a casual shrug. “Not so much of a good friend.”
Emily laughed. “You can say that again.”
Waverly grinned, the gaps in her teeth showing. “Not so much—”
“Don’t say it again,” Emily fussed, pretending to be annoyed. Then she hurried over and squeezed Waverly in a side hug. “You’re doing an awesome job, girl.” She was looking over the glitter gel pen notes. “Aha, I love this one, Waverly. It’s like a poem. You might not have a cape or fly in the sky, but you can reach your dreams if you try.”
“Waverly, that’s beautiful,” Fran said. “Really it is.”
In the days since Anna had been arrested, Fran had felt surprisingly emotional. It had made her realize just how much everyone meant to her. First, she had apologized to Mrs. McCabe and Leon, and they had actually apologized back. Then, tucked up in her room one evening, she’d called her mom and brothers and talked to each of them in turn, something she hadn’t done in a long time. She asked each of them about what they were up to, what they were aiming for next in their lives, what was bothering them, and did nothing but listen. It was so satisfying, so enriching, that she couldn’t believe she’d never done it before.
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