AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He could see no one as he pointed the boat toward the first channel marker. Getting the boat had almost seemed too easy. So why hadn’t Henri tried to stop him? His fear spiked at the obvious answer.
Because Henri had her sights set on someone else.
The person who had the disk. Willa.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The floor overhead groaned. Willa could hear someone moving around on the floor above her. She stared upward, her heart pounding.
Something was different. When Alma had been up there moving around, the floor hadn’t groaned like this.
Willa stumbled over to the table where she’d put down the gun. She picked it up, holding it in front of her as she stared at the ceiling.
Someone was up there. Not the old woman. Someone heavier. The floor groaned. She could hear the footfalls reverse their path across the floor and then there was silence.
Willa jumped as something crashed into the door behind her. She heard a cry then the faint words, “Help me.”
Her heart leapt to her throat as she moved to the door. “Who’s there?”
“Help me.”
She reached for the doorknob, remembering Landry’s admonition not to open the door no matter what.
Hurrying to the window, she looked out. Blossom lay at her door. She was soaked to the skin, wearing nothing but a black bra and black jeans, barefoot, holding her hand to her side, bleeding. The gun bumped against the window.
Blossom looked up at her, pleading in her gaze as she mouthed, “Help me.”
Willa looked past Blossom at the storm-whipped courtyard, the rain sheeting down, and made the only decision she could. She put down the gun and hurriedly opened the door.
Blossom hadn’t moved, her eyes closed and for one horrible moment, Willa thought the girl was dead.
“Blossom!” She knelt at the girl’s side, glancing at the balcony, afraid Henri would appear out of the rain.
Blossom’s eyes fluttered. Willa grabbed Blossom by the feet and pulled her into the apartment, slamming the door and locking it behind them.
“Henri,” Blossom said, her voice faint.
Willa knelt again beside the girl. “How badly are you hurt?”
“Stabbed,” she whispered, and Willa saw that Blossom had both of her hands clutching her side.
“I’ll get the first-aid kit.” Willa ran into the bathroom and found the kit where Landry had used it. It was a small metal six-inch square can her mother had sent with her when she’d left home. Her mother had personally stocked it with items she feared her daughter might someday need.
As she turned, she heard a sound as if Blossom had bumped into the kitchen table. The table where Willa had left the gun.
On impulse, she slipped the disk from her pocket and hid it in the bathroom in a small hole behind the toilet.
Then she turned and stepped out of the bathroom, the first-aid kit in her hands.
Blossom stood at the table, the gun in her hands. A red stain ran down her bare skin where the stab wound should have been.
Willa looked from the woman’s white unmarked skin to the gun pointing at her and finally met Blossom’s gaze.
It was the first time she’d seen those eyes without the black coils of hair covering most of her face.
She was older than she had appeared before and the hand holding the gun was strong and sure.
“Where is Henri?” Willa asked, fear making her throat tight and dry. She was still holding the first-aid kit.
