Minute by Minute (Games & Diversions #3)

by Natalie E. Wrye

  A second?

  An hour?

  Maybe two.

  All I know is that my heart has crawled its beating way into my throat, and I hear my pulse in my own ears—humming and thrumming like the ticks of an oversized clock, each strum counting down the closing moments until my death.

  But there is no shot—only laughter.

  The sounds I hear next are inhuman, and I start to believe I am hallucinating until I actually make out some of the words in English.

  It is coming from someone’s voice, and though the voice is soft and somewhat melodic, what the voice has to say isn’t fucking pretty at all.

  “Do you have a death wish?” it says.

  Pure fear keeps my eyes clinched, but I am too curious. I open them slowly and stare into the face of savagery itself.

  Jesus Christ.

  It’s Linda…

  Like I’ve never seen her before.

  Not when she was laughing hysterically beside me on my living room floor. Not when we cried together at sappy movies. Not even when she chastised me at our local diner for not dating more often.

  That was a smiling Linda—a fresh-faced, outwardly vibrant Linda.

  The Linda right here in front of me?—is a sick and fully demented Linda—a confusingly angry woman, full of fire and passion and rage.

  Her face is the color of a beet, and her spirited brown eyes sparkle, filling up with an intensity that seems to have no filter.

  It is surreal… and almost stunning to see.

  The moment I lay eyes on her, I am utterly incapable of looking away.

  She steps in front of Lukas and me in less than a flash.

  I feel the touch of Lukas’s hand, and he pushes me behind him, backtracking away from Linda as she brandishes a black handgun—a small .38 revolver that she levels at his chest, pressing it between his strong pecs as she slowly backs us into one of the studio’s darkened corners.

  We are trapped.

  And where, once, the thought of an unknown predator hunting us was the scariest thought in my mind, I now realize that there are things so much worse—so much more frightening—than the notion of some anonymous assailant.

  In an ironic twist, it’s Linda—my confidant, my closest “friend”… who seemingly wants to kill me.

  “What’s wrong, Elena?” she says, stepping further into the light. “Aren’t you happy to see an old friend?”

  She smiles but the gesture is hollow; the heated look in her eyes cancels out any fake expression of happiness that is plastered on her face, and she peers over Lukas’s shoulder, her face full of an inexplicable humor that I can’t understand.

  She shrugs casually.

  “Or should I say ‘new friend’?”

  She looks skyward as if pondering.

  “I mean, we’ve only really been friends for a little over a year now, right?

  “Odd…” she mutters, “how we seemed to get so close in such a short amount of time—how we seemed to be attached at the hip just six months in.”

  She laughs.

  “Welp… now, I guess you know why…”

  Lukas raises his hands in front of his chest in surrender, and I clutch the back of his arms for dear life, my back squirming against the corner’s adjacent wall—hoping that my next move won’t be my last.

  But I can’t resist asking…

  I always knew my big mouth would get me fucking killed one of these days…

  “Why are you doing this to me, Linda? What the hell did I ever do to you?”

  If I thought Linda was laughing hard before, it was an understatement.

  This question makes her roar, and she doubles over for a brief and unsteady moment, her loud mouth taking in air as if she’s heard the purest of comedy.

  “Ohhh,” she moans out loud, shocking me.

  “Oh, God, that was so funny. See, you still think this is about you?”

  Her face hardens.

  “You stupid little bitch, this was never about you.

  “This was about your stupid fucking family—all of you little pawns surrounding that little queen of yours—Kat.

  “Prissy bitch,” she spits.

  “I played the game to a fucking T,” she states, starting to pace.

  She condescends to us as if we are children in a classroom.

  I expect it’s because she believes we are—nothing but simple minions in her complex round of Cat and Mouse: her sick, twisted little game of Chess gone rogue.

  “You see…” she lectures. “You never go straight for the Queen, no.

  “That’s the easiest way to lose.

  “You must be strategic, take down all of her allies.

  “One. By. One.

  “And when she is vulnerable, you go in for the final strike.”

  Linda stops pacing, facing us.

  “And after everything… after all of my most strategic moves, I still couldn’t get that simple whore to myself.”

  Her expression drops into a frown, but then she smiles.

  “So I settled for second best.”

  Changing directions quickly, Linda walks in a semi-circle, treading near the opposite corner of the room, which is hidden in shadow.

  She motions towards a pile of clothes in the corner. It is only when she touches the pile—when she brushes her fingers along the top of it—that I realize that it is a person—a limp and crumpled figure on the floor, folded into a pathetic heap.

  Linda leans over the mangled figure, and I nearly swallow my tongue.

  “Say hello, Princess,” she clucks.

  And I realize that the haggard form is none other than my baby sister—the ever-constant “babe in my lap”, as Nana Natalya would call her.

  Ana.

  Winner Takes All

  Everything's a gamble, love most of all.

  ― Tess Gerritsen

  DAY 7—9:07PM

  363 Weeks Street

  LUKAS

  Fury fuses with fear up into my neck, and the feeling flames from the pit of my stomach to my face, heating half of my body—feeding a fire behind my narrowed eyes.

  The moment I see Linda’s gun, a protectiveness I didn’t know I had surges within me, and all I can think about is Elena’s body… and putting as much distance between it and Linda’s weapon.

  So, I use my body to make it happen.

  And when Elena talks—for the first time ever—I don’t speak.

  I instead choose to let her talk down the psychotic Linda—while I surreptitiously back the crazed brunette into another corner, slowly maneuvering Elena and I in a circle so that when I decide to attack, Linda will have nowhere to run.

  I watch the plan slowly take shape.

  Until another wild card is thrown into the game.

  Anastasia.

  And upon seeing her little body unconscious in the corner, I reach a level of rage I didn’t know I could touch—my protectiveness emerging in the face of not only the threat to Elena’s safety, but Ana’s as well.

  This psycho bitch is fucking with the only woman I’ve ever made love to and the little sister I never had.

  And I don’t take too fucking kindly to people threatening the women in my life.

  I give Elena two more seconds to talk before I step in.

  As soon as I unclench my rigid teeth, a frantic Chris pops suddenly into the studio space, and all of a sudden, the severely unbalanced odds are tipped ever so slightly out of Linda’s considerable favor.

  “Shit!” she cries out.

  “Shit, shit…”

  Total control is slipping steadily from her grasp, and to regain it, Linda repositions her hands on the gun, clutching the dark handle with two hands that are now shaking like they’ve never been before.

  Her anxiety should excite me, but it doesn’t.

  Panicky people do panicky things… and I know it is only a matter of time before Linda’s nerves get the best of her…

  And I don’t want the people I care about most to be in fro
nt of her pistol when they do.

  Linda’s eyes go wild again.

  “Step away from the door,” she grits.

  Chris slowly follows Linda’s instructions, and before I can catch his eye, I watch realization dawn on his furrowed face.

  An epiphany morphs out of his confusion as Chris processes what is happening, and like me, his expression shifts from bewilderment to comprehension to fury.

  I find some strange sort of comfort in his anger.

  And a heightened awareness moves steadily from within my impatient limbs.

  My fingers itch, my toes tingle, and I am holding my shoulders so taut that they almost ache.

  Every part of my body is a trigger unpulled.

  All it will take is one snap—and I know that I will explode in a furious and fiery fashion.

  And honestly?

  I can’t wait for someone to set my spark.

  I don’t move a muscle—or even flinch—as Linda swings the gun at us, rotating the weapon in a circle to encompass us all.

  “I hate that it had to come to this…” she mutters, her fingers tightening on the gun.

  “At some point, I had hoped that you guys would continue pointing fingers at each other—self-destruct, but…” she says, growing louder and bolder.

  “Looks like I’m going to have to destroy you myself.”

  Suddenly, the door to the studio swings open.

  The smack of the metal handle against the wall is loud.

  But the sound of the bullet coming from Linda’s gun is even louder.

  The gun goes off.

  Elena screams.

  And my head swivels towards the door, praying that I won’t see something that none of us are equipped to handle.

  The two people in the doorway are crouched at the waist with their hands on their heads—knees bent, heads down.

  And I have no idea who it is and if they’ve been shot.

  I wait, my heartbeat thundering in my ears…

  When they once again stand to their full height, I am finally able to see that it’s Kat… being held by an indomitable-looking Foxx.

  Kat is shaking, but they are alive… and unharmed.

  At least for now—because when Linda looks at Kat, the scowl on her face deepens into a grimace, and she rushes towards Kat, leveling the gun directly at her heart.

  Foxx rushes to intercept and is met with the muzzle of Linda’s .38.

  “No, you don’t, Foxxy,” she says, stopping him in his tracks.

  She looks over, narrowing her gaze at a hesitant Kat.

  “Get in here, Queenie,” she snarls, and Kat obeys, her frightened eyes never leaving Foxx’s side.

  Recognition flashes in Kat’s dimmed eyes, and she squints at Linda curiously. With fear fixed in her face, Kat takes a step backwards, and I watch a look of victory wash over Linda’s deluded countenance.

  “C.C.?” Kat questions of the crazed woman.

  Linda grins widely.

  “That’s riiiiight. Never thought you’d see me again, did you?”

  “You know this psycho?” Foxx bellows.

  Linda cuts Foxx a sharp look, slanting the handgun in his direction.

  Kat sighs shakily, her voice cracking as she attempts to speak.

  “Of course I do,” she finally answers. “She’s Greg’s older sister from London, Claire.”

  ***

  ELENA

  I’d never met Gregory Sears’s older siblings before.

  Moreover… I never fucking wanted to.

  The egotistical eggheads were supposed to be running the London office for their dear old daddy, so when Linda Claire (formerly known as Claire Linda Sears) showed up in a Tennessee yoga studio, I thought nothing of it.

  Kat was already living in Tampa; Ana was attending college.

  And their overly protective big sister—seemingly the biggest failure of them all—was stuck in Memphis, living an unhappy life in an unhappy relationship in an unhappy town.

  But when Linda showed up, things started to turn around.

  From the first time I met her, she was a breath of fresh air.

  I’d never guessed in a million years that she’d turn out to be merely poison.

  “Oh, no, you don’t, Queenie,” Linda calls out.

  “You’re going to sit here, stay still and watch.

  “You’re going to witness your family fall apart right in front of your big blue eyes. You’re going to watch them fall one by one… just like I’ve had to watch mine ever since you sabotaged my brother.”

  I watch Kat’s teeth tighten.

  “I’ve never sabotaged anyone.”

  “Bull. Shit,” Linda responds.

  Her brown eyes actually fill up with tears.

  “You changed the man he was.

  “My baby brother was going to be our CEO—he was destined for greatness… And now he’s nothing but a shell of his former self.”

  Linda grins through her tears.

  “After tonight, it will all be worth it—this entire game.”

  She looks around at all of us.

  “Everyone—everyone in one of the most expensive and celebrated restaurants in the metropolitan Tampa area—watched all of you attack each other tonight.”

  She leans in.

  “So, tomorrow… when they find your lifeless bodies in here, they will all believe that you turned on each other—just as you had earlier tonight.

  “And as soon as my brother walks through that door, it’ll all be over. First, my family fell apart—now, yours will fall.”

  I exhale as Linda’s last words fall on my sensitive ears, and my formerly solid legs buckle at the knee.

  Linda’s threat hits me like a boulder falling from the sky, and suddenly, the burden I feel is like experiencing the weight of the world on my shoulders.

  The brick wall that is Lukas’s back tenses, and I hold onto him, wishing I hadn’t been so desperate for friends—wishing it wasn’t all my fault that Linda lured us here.

  Wishing I’d had my sisters’ backs all along.

  Because if I had, we wouldn’t be in this mess.

  I’d isolated myself from Ana—given Kat my ass to kiss.

  All so that we could end up here?

  God, what would Nana say if she could see us now? If she could have seen us earlier tonight?

  We were a fucking circus.

  And I let it happen.

  Because I’d taken the bad from Nana and none of the good.

  I’d treated kindness as a weakness, spontaneity as a curse. I’d sacrificed relationships, friendships—even my own family—because tough love was what Nana taught me.

  I remembered all of the “tough” and somewhere lost the true meaning of “love.” I’d been a bodyguard more than a big sister.

  In those insufferable minutes in front of Linda’s gun with some of the people that I love most, all I can feel is shame.

  Shame at what I’d almost become.

  And now I’ll never know what my relationship with Lukas could have been—what a healthier relationship with my sisters could have been.

  More importantly… I’ll never know what I could have been.

  I wait agonizingly for it all to come to an end.

  One minute turns to two, which feels more like an eternity, as we wait in the studio for the other Sears to appear.

  And just when I think Linda’s words may be nothing but empty threats, Gregory appears.

  He walks through the studio doors as if he owns them, his head held high, his face determined. He steps cautiously into the space, taking in his surroundings with a look of incredulity on his face.

  And he proceeds to do something that surprises us all.

  He turns on his own sister.

  His first words send a shiver through me, and I don’t know if my reaction is good or if it’s bad.

  “Linda, what the fuck is this?” he screams.

  Linda turns toward her own brother and opens her mouth to respond but,
in doing so, she keeps her aim steady; she never moves the gun off of us.

  “Where the hell have you been?! I’ve been waiting for you for twenty minutes. I needed you! It was hard enough keeping everything under control by myself.”

  She turns her back on Gregory.

  “It’s all just a minor set-back,” she comments, feigning casualness. “Nothing too big to stop the show.”

  “Too big?”

  Angrily, Greg steps towards Linda.

  “This just got fucking huge, Linda. What are all these people doing here? We were supposed to settle the score with Kat, not anyone else.”

  She snaps at him.

  “Don’t give me that shit, Greg! That little bubbly, blow-up doll sister of hers should have bit the big one in that crash. I thought she was a goner… but after coming to Tampa, I’d found out that you didn’t have the guts to follow-through.

  “And, as usual, I’m the one who made this whole thing possible, dammit. I’m the one who got close to Elena—arranged the whole ‘house selling cover.’ Who fabricated the Ted alibi? Me.”

  She points her finger at her chest.

  “That was me.

  “I did what needed to be done, so just shut your fucking trap and have my back, ok? Family first.”

  Gregory glares but does nothing.

  In a weird turn of events, he stops fighting Linda completely, giving the floor to his older sister, who is clearly bent.

  I never thought I’d see the day, but out of the two… it’s Kat’s most hated ex, Gregory, that is the sanest Sears in the room.

  I decide to roll the dice.

  I gamble for his rationality.

  “Greg,” I say softly to him. “You don’t have to do this.”

  “Shut up!” Linda screeches.

  “You don’t have to hurt anybody. We’ll go home. Never bother you again. We can help you get your job back at Foxxhole.”

  Linda stands there, fuming, waving her gun back and forth at us all.

  “Don’t listen to her, Gregory. It’s a trick. They won’t help you. The only people they ever help are themselves.”

  “That’s not true,” Chris pipes up. “We’ll help you. We’ve still got pull at Foxxhole. We’ll talk to Foxx’s dad—reason with him. You guys don’t have to do this.”

  “Everybody, shut the hell up—right now,” Linda snarls. “You’ve done this to yourselves.”