Page 94 of Silver Angel

She couldn’t believe she had actually said that. Mara couldn’t either, for she shook her head, snorting, “You talk too much, Englishwoman.”

Chantelle tried a different tack. “Have you ever done this before, killed someone with your own hands? It’s not like having someone else do it—”

“Shut up!” Mara shouted, making Chantelle’s heart slam even harder against her chest.

Why hadn’t she screamed already? She was a coward after all, wasn’t she? But she was afraid if she did, it would bring Mara leaping at her all the sooner. She would be dead before anyone came, if anyone heard her. If she could just talk Mara out of it instead….

The distance was down to eight feet. “I’ve never done anything to harm you, Mara. You know that. Can you live with my death on your—”

Chantelle finally shrieked as she backed into a bench and lost her balance. She had forgotten about the damn thing, which was set so near the edge of the pool. She fell back on it, and before she could rise, Mara was standing over her and it was too late to scream or do anything else. She was paralyzed with heart-stopping terror, unable to move or breathe as she watched the dagger rise up for its descent. It was a repeat of that other night, only without Jamil’s body lying between her and death. Jamil would have known what to do. He would have…

At the last instant, Chantelle remembered what Jamil had done and rolled to the side, right into Mara’s knees. And just as it happened before, knife and attacker went tumbling forward. As Chantelle hit the hard floor, she heard a thud and then a splash on the other side of the bench. But she didn’t bother to see how quickly Mara could climb out of the pool. She leaped to her feet and ran out of the room.

“Kadar!” she shouted as she ran down the hall, only to have him appear right in her path, so that she crashed into him. She pushed away the hands that came up to steady her, demanding shrilly, “Where the devilwereyou?”

“Here,lalla,” he replied in an offended tone. “Where else would I be?”

“Then she lied? God, I should have—no, it doesn’t matter now.” Chantelle gripped his arm tightly, her fear not quite diminished yet. “It was Mara all along, not Noura, and she just tried to kill me, too, or again. She admitted she had me poisoned because of what I had heard.” When he just stood there staring at her, she snapped, “Do something! She’s still in the pool room, and she has a knife!”

He set her aside then and moved toward the door she had left wide open. When he slipped inside, she should have taken off in the opposite direction, the only wise and safe thing to do. She followed Kadar instead, the silence drawing her partly, but also a need to see Mara apprehended so the last of her fear would go away.

But she went no farther than the doorway. Kadar was bent over Mara, who lay by the side of the pool. She wasn’t moving, and pink-tinged water ran down her forehead onto her face and the tile beneath her head.

Kadar glanced up and said in a quiet voice. “She is dead,lalla.”

Chantelle looked back at the pink water and finally saw it for what it was. Bile rose in her throat and she bent over, unable to stop its exit. After a moment, hands lifted her and she turned her head against Kadar’s shoulder.

“Oh, God,” she cried. “If I hadn’t been so cowardly, I would have looked to see that she didn’t surface from the water. I could have pulled her out before—”

“It would not have made any difference,lalla. She cracked her head on the side of the pool. She was already dead when she slipped into the water.”

“But that doesn’t matter. I made her fall.”

“Why?”

“Why?” She looked up, startled. “It was either that or let her stab me.”

“Then why are you searching to place blame on yourself when there is none?”

“It’s just not fair. She was a victim, Kadar, from the very start. She was abused, defiled, and then abused again by…She should have had help, care, understanding. Instead—” Chantelle fell silent a long moment before she said in a tiny voice, “I tried to justify to her the way Jamil treated her, but it can’t be justified, can it? He is sensitive, perceptive—at least I thought he was. Why couldn’t he see that she hated her weakness, and hated him for exploiting it?”

“Is that why she tried to kill him?”

Chantelle could only nod at this point. She was crying in earnest now, and barely aware when Kadar led her away.

Chapter Forty-five

“Now that the money source is gone, the informants are lining up at the gates,” Jamil told Derek. “It will not be long before we have every last man who has been involved.”

He had returned to the palace late last night, but learned in the harbor that his trip had been for nothing. It was his longing for Sheelah that had brought him back. He had intended staying just the one night, then going on to Tripoli, where an informant had suggested Selim might have gone after leaving Istanbul. He knew now how false that idea was.

But Jamil had put off everything until he had straightened things out with his beloved Sheelah, and that had taken all night. Not telling her his plans in the first place had been a mistake. He understood that now, and his only excuse was that he hadn’t been himself when he left.

He had had a long conference with Omar this morning, and then he had joined Derek in the secret room, which he had returned to last night.

“Then it really is over?” Derek said.

“Did you think it was not? Ali gave his cutthroats a paltry sum to risk their necks, with the big prize promised only for the men who succeeded. Of course, there never was a fortune waiting for the culprits to collect. I paid Mara extremely well for her services, but the whole thing went on too long, draining everything she had. There were men to be paid for their constant vigil outside the palace. There were all the men to be paid who intercepted my couriers, and that was just to throw us off the scent. It was why Mara had to resort to stealing jewels from the other women. If someonehadactually succeeded in getting to me, Ali planned to kill him when he showed up for the prize.”