***
“Will!” Clay called out.
Will sat at his desk in his office. The radio quieted enough for him to hear Clay’s footsteps.
“There you are. Wondered if you left.” Clay leaned into the room, hand on the doorframe.
Will tore his stare from the little box and faced him.
Clay hesitated. “Uh, Randy took me to pick up a car. I’ll run the scan check on it in the morning. I put it in the first bay. I’m going to head home, alright?”
Will returned his attention to the little box.
Rot in hell? She never would have said it. Like he never would have imagined she would deny loving him. Why would she have said that? He couldn’t shake the hunch she was afraid. He’d seen her hand shaking. But what had she been so scared of?
Clay left, but returned a moment later. He leaned over to pull Will to his chest and clapped a hand on his back. The straight man’s hug. He left again.
***
Rain deluged as a car pulled up to the garage. Kelly hadn’t caught any movement through the tiny windows since Will had gone in his office. When Randy pulled up thirty minutes ago, Clay seemed to have left for the night.
Who the hell is this?
Squinting, she strained to see who had opened the garage door. Someone who had disobeyed Will’s order to stay out of his garage. It was damned hard to spy inside the garage with the limit of narrow rectangular windows.
“Goddammit.” It was raining too hard to see anything. The car was in the garage, and she had no idea whose it was.
***
Emily waited in silence, checking she was alone in the garage with Will. She pushed the trunk open and stepped out. Will wasn’t in the bay, but she spotted the shine of illumination from his office.
She smiled. Tiptoeing, she spun in a circle, surveying her surroundings, calculating what could be a threat, what could be evidence. She had noted before there were no cameras. No mirrors. No alarms. Nothing.
She stepped toward the office. He came out into the bay at the same time she tripped on an oil pan on the floor. He turned at the screech of metal on cement.
“What are you doing here?” Those had been the exact same words Forty had said. Her blood boiled.
The annoyance and irritation of her clumsiness countered the excitement of seeing him, the real Forty-One. Kelly’s new man. Forty had been a steal for revenge. Revenge for Kelly screwing up Thirty-Nine. But Forty hadn’t worked. She smiled at Will. Finally, she’d reap her revenge on Kelly. “I had to see you, Will.”
He looked around, but kept her in his view. “How the fuck did you get in here?”
“I love you, Will. It doesn’t matter if she doesn’t. I do. I love you and I’ll make you happy. Choose me, Will.” She stepped forward, her heart ticking in controlled excitement.
It didn’t matter anymore. Kelly would never win if she was dead. If Will was dead. It didn’t matter if Will succumbed, if he faltered and said yes. Yes, I choose you.
It didn’t matter if Will really did become Emily’s Forty-First steal. If she couldn’t steal Will from Kelly, she’d kill him so Kelly couldn’t have him.
But she couldn’t resist the temptation to try. She couldn’t say no to the all-consuming need to be reconfirmed.
I will always win.
He will want me. He will choose me. Not Kelly. I am better than Kelly.
The manipulation she had managed over so many men, so many steals, had been an ongoing play of that game. The challenge in her life to ensure they would always choose her. She had given them exactly what they wanted. Attention, loving words, kinky sex, sentimental bullshit, praise and ego-boosting. Whatever her intended victims needed, she provided. And they always chose her.
Thirty-eight individuals had chosen her. Thirty-eight people, she had won over. Seduced, tricked, manipulated. Emily reigned in her ability to steal people. Until she met Kelly.
***
Will recalled how the women had taken stabs at Kelly earlier. They had all been so damn wrapped up in Kelly ditching him. Churchston needed a hobby, but the girls seemed so curious, overly excited.
What business was it of theirs? Why did they care about Kelly or what she did?
What he had thought were female scrimmages seemed like much more as he studied the neurotic expression on this woman’s face.
Obsession.
“Get out of here.” He reached one hand back to his waist, hoping his phone was in its holster.
“Do you love her, Will?” Her voice pitched in an eerie note.
“Get the hell out of here.”
“Do you love her?” she screamed.
Why is she obsessed with Kelly?
She pulled a gun from the waistband under her shirt.
His throat went dry. Fuck.
“Do you love her?” she shrieked like a feral animal, distempered and wild-eyed. “Do you want her like she wants you? You think she’s pretty? You think she’s sexy? You think she can fuck you like I can?”
Will backed up, retreating through his garage as she approached him, screaming every step until she had him cornered.
***
Who’s in the damn garage?
Kelly slid the latch for the shutter and jumped over the counter of the kayak hut. It was more like jumping into a whirlpool as the rain soaked her to the skin. She ran for the garage across the street, her shoes squishing as they suctioned into the sand.
She stopped, ran back to the hut and searched for some kind of defense. The cracked canoe oar had to do.
No one was in sight as she sprinted across Main. Businesses had closed for the night. Rain had chased people into their homes, distant from the commercial hub of the public beach area.
Alone.
Standing in front of the garage, under the hazy glow from a streetlamp, she hated how no one would have her back. Exposed, endangered and hunted, she stretched on her toes to press her face to the rectangle window and peered at the car.
Buick!
Mr. Nikki had seen a Buick at the end of the townhouse drive.
“Fuck.” She stepped back from the door and spun, looking for someone, anyone, to help.
She pulled her phone from her pocket. Frozen. Shielding her eyes from the rain, she headed for the front door to the garage.
Never before had she missed payphones.
Burns? Eric? Gannon? She didn’t know who she could call, even if she had a phone.
She tried the doorknob and it didn’t give.
“Nooo.”
Chapter 50
“She can’t win.” Emily held the gun at him as he backed into the far wall. She calmed as she took control.
I’ve got Kelly’s man in the corner.
“You should have chosen me. I’m better.”
It was her life. Her agenda. Her game. Years of floating through people, stealing men, manipulating them to choose her. As a mistress, a girlfriend, a substitute for their spouse. She’d say what they wanted to hear, tease them with the right fantasies, goad them with false praise, and lavish them with attention. Any relationship, she could break it.
They always choose me. They have to.
All the waiting. All those mistakes. Emily clenched her teeth.
“What do you want?” Will asked. Emily twisted her lips in a smile. She hadn’t missed how he surveyed the room, likely hunting for a weapon. She tightened her fingers on the gun.
She recalled how Forty had cried when he said he missed his wife. John had sobbed about how great she was. How he had to have her back. The soulful love-lost sadness.
It sickened her. Emily had sought John as her fortieth steal to seek revenge on Kelly for screwing up Thirty-Nine. But no. When Emily had gotten John to choose Emily over his wife, he had wanted Kelly back. Now Will had chosen Kelly too.
They must always choose me. That’s how it’s supposed to work.
But they hadn’t. John hadn’t. Will hadn’t.
Kelly couldn’t be allowed to have such power.<
br />
“I want Kelly to learn a lesson.” Emily reached in her pocket for her Taser. She wanted Kelly to squirm, to cry, to plead. To apologize for screwing up Thirty-Nine, for making Forty want her back. To beg for forgiveness for stealing John out from under her.
Emily was going to make sure Kelly watched as she slaughtered her lover, her man. This fool who wanted her.
Emily would have to kill her afterward. She couldn’t let her live. Kelly had stolen what Emily had stolen. Emily had taken John, and Kelly had made him want her back.
She shook with the anticipation of finally killing Kelly, frustrated from her failures. She should have killed her when she ran her over with the boat. She should have killed her when she had stranded her at the kayak dock.
It failed because he had come. Emily glared at Will. He had taken Kelly to his home.
How had I not seen that?
Trembling with rage, the gun quivered in her hand.
I’ll take Will and use him as bait. Maybe Kelly will try to sacrifice herself to save Will.
She smiled. No. No.
Emily had to kill Will to show Kelly, to teach her she would take any man Kelly could ever want. It would be Kelly’s last lesson on Earth.
“Don’t hurt her. Kill me. I don’t care,” Will said.
She detected no anger, fear or worry from his tone. Calm and brave, so matter-of-fact. It snagged at her nerves.
Such love. Such dying fucking great admiring love.
Kelly had a power to make this man choose her and love her at the face of his own death?
Gritting her teeth, Emily aimed the Taser at him, satisfied when he fell against the rack of parts.
***
Kelly ran up and down the sidewalk, her eyes barely open from the river of rain. Jumping up to peek through the windows, she tried to see him, to see who had come in the Buick, but she saw no one.
A crash sounded in the garage, followed by metallic clangs on the cement floor.
Will?
Heart in her throat, she froze as she listened past the thunder in her ears. She glanced at the oar in her hand, then at the double-paned Plexiglas window on the entrance door. It snapped in half as she tried to break the window.
She ran to the hardware store three shops down the sidewalk.
Sledgehammer.
Stripping her shirt off, she wrapped it around her fist like Finn had taught her when they were kids. She punched the single layer display window. Glass shattered and she grimaced at the pain in her wrist. She knocked down shards of glass and crawled in, not giving a damn about the red flashing lights in the corner of the room.
Kelly went to crawl back out the window and saw a screwdriver in the aisle display. She doubled back and grabbed it. Weaponry.
The more, the better, right?
Will’s window broke with the sledgehammer’s force and Kelly reached inside to undo the lock on the handle. Stepping in, she held the screwdriver next to her head in a stance that reminded her of the first Nintendo’s Mortal Kombat figures. She gripped the sledgehammer in her other hand, hanging it ready at her knee.
For all the classes she had taken, she couldn’t recall a single move. Tae kwon do? Nothing doing. Never before had she needed to ambush. She had only learned how to protect herself when attacked.
She stepped slowly through the garage, cautious to keep her back to a wall. Her chest heaved in rapid bursts as she scanned the rooms.
Hail Mary, Mother of God…
She passed the Buick’s open trunk. Sweet stagnant decay fumed from the lining.
…just so you know, I’m going to kill this fucking bastard…
Her feet sounded with soft wet squeaks, doused from the rainfall. She inched past the car, straining her ears.
Pray for us sinners…
A grunt sounded from the rear bay by the storeroom.
…even this sick demented person who’s going to regret messing with me…
A scuffle of footsteps came from the other room.
Now until the hour of our death…
Her arms shook from nervousness. She squeezed her fingers on the handles of the screwdriver and sledgehammer as she came closer.
…because this creep is going to hurt Will over my DEAD BODY!
Will lay on the ground, eyes closed, as a woman wrapped rope around his ankles. A gun lay at the woman’s side. Crouching over, the brunette’s shirt had lifted to show a large black tattoo. Kelly focused on the black sun, not quite at the center of her back. She had seen that tattoo before. She had seen it on her old bed. It had been a flower then. A rose.
She raised the sledgehammer as though it was a bat, readying to take a swing as though the woman’s head was on the tee. She dropped the screwdriver to bring both hands on the hammer.
As the tool clattered to the floor, the woman jumped to her feet, the gun ready in her hands.
Kelly narrowed her eyes. “Hello, Sasha. Or is it Kendra?” She checked Will’s still form. No blood.
Her grin reminded Kelly of the little girl in The Exorcist. Possessed. Eerie.
The woman trained her eyes on the sledgehammer before her face. “Kelly. How nice of you to come. Saves me the trouble of bringing him to you.”
“What are you doing?” Kelly pressed her lips together, not wanting to show how terrified she was.
Chapter 51
Kendra was Sasha. They were the same woman. She’d dyed her hair. Some surgery? Fatter. Boob job. Tattoo over the older one. But it was the same woman. The same gloating smile.
And some freaking fucked-up déjà vu.
“Teaching you a lesson.” She turned the gun to Will’s head and with her other hand, she targeted a Taser at Kelly. “Drop it or I shoot him.”
Kelly glanced at Will again. No blood, but he was so still. The sledgehammer thudded to the floor without a bounce, the handle smacking down next to her foot.
“What’d you do to him?” Kelly held her hands up in surrender, staying in motion on her feet.
We’re in a garage. There has to be some kind of a weapon.
Emily kicked his knee and he twisted in pain. “He’s alive. I had to keep him alive for you to watch.”
“Watch what?” Kelly ducked, but Sasha was faster.
Sasha smacked the gun upside her face and Kelly stumbled back. She fell to the floor, her head whirring, blood on her tongue.
Grunting, Sasha hurried over and pulled up the collar of Kelly’s wet shirt, straddling her on her knees, pinning her to the ground as she spat words at her face.
“You have to learn, Kelly. You can’t win. I win. Nothing, no one is going to make me lose ever again. They always choose me. I never lose. Every man comes to me. They choose me!” Sasha inhaled sharply as though the air would calm her furious speech.
Kelly tested her legs, but she couldn’t flip the woman off of her. No sledgehammer, no tool, no weapon. Naked without defense, she stalled as she listened.
“You’re Denner.”
Sasha laughed. “Denner? I was Mrs. Ruth Denner eight years ago. In Lauderdale.” Her lips flattened to a stiff line. “Where did you hear that name?”
“You used a credit card at a gas station in Betsy’s name. They found a print in John’s condo.” Kelly swallowed. “Someone paid a tab at Alan’s under your, her…name.”
Sasha jerked her head to the side in a stiff reaction. “Must have used the wrong card,” she muttered to herself. “I’ve been getting so impatient, wanting to end this….”
“What did you do to Betsy?”
“Betsy?” Sasha reared back with a smile. “Betsy? The fat old hag in the hospital? I was Betsy, you little bitch. I was the fucking nurse assistant.”
“You—”
“I killed her to get in and slip him the heparin. I needed a way in the hospital. I was Betsy, you bitch. The same as I’m ‘Kendra’.” She stabbed herself in the chest. “Same as I was the old fart’s fucking girlfriend for two long fucking years.”
Kelly blinked. Sasha. Kendra.
Betsy. Norbert’s girlfriend? She couldn’t keep up. Betsy had been an overweight older woman. Norbert’s girlfriend was…an overweight older woman. Wigs, makeup, baggy clothes. It was possible they were all the same woman. She scraped the floor for the screwdriver as Will stirred in her peripheral vision.
Come on, Will, get up.
“Why?”
“Why?” Sasha sneered. “Because of you, that’s why! He was worth millions. Lonely old man. Lost his wife and daughter years ago in a car accident. Sad, lonely workaholic with terminal cancer. I did my research. He was the perfect fucking steal. No family to get his money. No current girlfriend. It took months to get him to trust me. I started as his secretary. Then I started on his cock. He had months to live and he was going to leave his money to ME!”
Spittle shot to Kelly’s face.
“He finally came around. Decided to make it legal. Let’s get hitched, he said. Leave his money to me because he had no one else. But no. You had to fuck it up.” Sasha grabbed Kelly’s collar to pick her off the floor and slam her head back down.
“You. Perfectionist brilliant fucking hero Kelly. You had to feel sorry for the old bastard. You had to dig into his contacts. You had to find out he had an estranged doped-up daughter.”
Kelly fingered a washer on the cement and flicked it to Will to rouse him. “And he forgave her.”
“Thanks to you. You get Papa and daughter hugging again and there goes my money. There goes two long fucking years of getting him to choose me.”
“But why did you kill him?”
“The old bastard? Too many loose ends. I hurried, hoping he might have already changed his papers to leave his money to me. But no. The fucking kid got it all. I lost it all because you screwed it up.”
“But why did you kill—”
“John?” Sasha snorted. “Revenge. And he was such an easy steal. You needed to be punished for screwing up the old bastard. For throwing two years of my hard work down the drain. I stole him from you like I always take them. Every man decides I’m better and they choose me. They never want their wives and girlfriends because I’m better. But, no. He didn’t want me anymore.” She paused and slanted her head to the side in another stiff jerk. “He wanted you. He wanted you back. You won him back from me!”
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