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Leo cameto feeling like a fish in a seafood counter display.
Ice surrounded him.
No, not ice, snow.
He turned his head slightly and saw the thick lower branches of a spruce tree putting his face in deep shadow. The movement sent waves of pain ricocheting around in his skull. He couldn’t help the groan that rose from his chest.
“Glad to see that you’re still alive… for the time being.”
Helena.
No longer in such a rush to get him out of the house, she knelt beside him, her hands on her knees.
“My father said it would be harder to get you outside. He didn’t think I could manage it. But,” she lifted her hands up and shrugged with a big bright grin on her face, “I did it! All it took was pushing the right buttons. You thought you were going to find a way to save her.”
Her smile darkened almost immediately and while her focus seemed to turn inward, he tried to lift his arms and grab her.
He found that he couldn’t move them.
“Figured it out? You think I’d be sitting here just waiting for you to throttle me?” She snorted with laughter. “I know better! Besides, I’ve been beaten by better men than you, Leo Chandler.”
He stilled in the snow and the chill set in further.
“That’s right. I know who you are. And I know who she is too. “
“Then you know why we’re here and who we have backing us up.”
She leaned closer, her tone taunting him as her eyes gloated over his predicament. “What I know is that you’re cold. And you’re only going to get colder.”
He struggled to move, putting everything into what amounted to feeble attempts at moving his arms and legs, or sitting up. “What the hell-”
“You probably don’t feel it, but you might remember that first step out into the courtyard. I told you to watch that first step.” She sounded so damn cheerful he would have thrown up in his mouth if he’d had control over his muscles. “One of our men cracked you on the back of your head and you went down like a rock. Injecting you wasn’t hard when you were already unconscious.”
He couldn’t help it. He tried to lift his hand to reach around to the back of his head, but he couldn’t.
“You’d be surprised what a little benzodiazepine can do.”
“W-why?” Leo hated the stutter created by the cold.
“Why?” She sighed, seemingly bored with the situation. “Because I can. Because letting you freeze to death is going to hurt her. It might just break her heart and I want to be the one who does it. I want to be the one who puts a bullet between her eyes too.”
Fear clutched at his heart.
What this woman was saying wasn’t just about stolen art or even ridiculous amounts of money. Helena had a personal vendetta against Cygny. He just didn’t know why.
“I’ve always been the good girl,” she explained, “I’ve always done what he asked.”
“Your… your father?”
Helena almost rolled her eyes. “Yes, my father.” She shook her head. “You are pretty, but you’re not all that bright.” Her teeth ground together in a snarl. “He doesn’t know how good he had it with me. All I’ve ever wanted to do was make him proud of me.”
She got up onto her feet and dusted off the chunks of snow that stuck to her skirt.
“That was until he met her.” Her voice hissed from between her clenched teeth. “The instant he saw her, he knew that she was Mary’s daughter.”
Mary?
Leo’s head was hurting and his brain wasn’t quite working at full speed.
“My father fell in love with Mary,” the way she said the woman’s name was filled with distaste, “with the way she painted, with the way she laughed, he even didn’t mind when she’d tried to steal from him. He let her have the money and even one of his cars, but he’d never known that Mary was pregnant. If he had, he’d never have let her go.” She sounded almost prideful of the fact. “When he met her, he knew that Mary had taken his child. And my father wasn’t going to let that happen.”
“But,” he swallowed and tried to form the words he laid out in his head, “you’re planning to kill her.”
“Of course.” She reached into her pocket and drew out a brass key and inserted it into the lock. “There’s no room for daddy to have two of us. I’m more than enough.”
She was definitely off her rocker.
Helena stepped up into the doorway and waved her fingers at him. “Now, be a good boy and die, hmm?”
The door closed behind her, and Leo tried to scream.
It didn’t work.
