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A farm was within earshot and she could hear the tractor, approximately the same sound she had heard while being held prisoner.
The dilapidated house was down a curvy, dirt road. It was clearly abandoned, which made sense. Rochelle had always been stingy, even with the proceeds from a diamond haul in the bank. She wouldn’t be shelling out money to rent a safe house to keep Mommy hostage when she could do that for free.
Francine knelt next to a bank of trees and surveyed the place.
She didn’t see a car, but it probably was parked in back, just in case anyone came down this far.
She wondered if there was electricity even turned on in the place. If not, there was no way they had an oxygenator in there. They were probably providing her mother’s oxygen needs purely from tanks. She wondered how they had managed that. That cost money, and the place you got it from delivered the tanks. She doubted they would haul oxygen canisters to a place like this.
Had they ripped off the supply from the assisted living center they had taken her from? Rochelle had intimated something like that when she had spoken to a trussed-up Clarisse. That was more in Rochelle’s line. Why pay if you could steal?
But that’s sort of my mantra, too.
She stiffened when he came out of the house.
And she felt her heart grow both soft and sad.
Her tall, handsome brother had not aged well. He looked too thin and bowed, and…just worn out.
Shit. What the hell have you two been doing? But then look at me. I know what I’ve been doing. Leading a life I had to manufacture to forget the other one.
Her brother had always been sensitive and aloof. Her father had called him stupid, inept, useless. And those were the kinder terms the monster had used. That just ground you down, year after year. And now all these years later, here, perhaps, was the result.
He smoked a cigarette, idly flicking the ash away. His hair was thinning and he’d grown a mustache that looked wispy and far too small for his broad face. His clothes were cheap and hung baggy on him. She remembered them together as kids, before their father had revealed his abominable ways. They had loved each other, had fun together, supported each other, eventually forming a little two-person army to keep all the shit at bay.
Too bad the shit won.
She had hoped that he would have found happiness and good health and something altogether better than had been available to him as a member of the Langhorne family.
He didn’t seem to have achieved any of that.
Part of her instinctively wanted to call out to him.
But her brother clearly was not the same person he had been all those years ago.
His life could have turned out so differently, but for Harry Langhorne.
I wouldn’t blame you, Dougie, if you’d killed him.
Now if I could only get you away from Rochelle.
There was a noise from inside the house. Then the door opened and Rochelle joined him. She took a puff off his offered smoke and gazed around. She had on jeans and a hoodie, and was barefoot. Her substantial hip butted up next to Doug’s slim one. She smiled and kissed him.
And he smiled back, and in that smile Francine had to admit that her brother looked like a little boy again. The one she remembered. He looked…happy.
She put a hand in her pocket and felt for the gun there. This could turn out fabulously. Or this could be the worst day of her life, and that would be saying something. She drew a deep breath and transformed herself into what she knew she could be when the need arose: commanding, confident, and courageous. Like she had been with Nathan Trask, conning him and his people just enough to allow her to survive.To allow her to win.
She stepped out into the open. “Lovely spring day, isn’t it? And how is Mommy doing? Spry and spirited?”
Rochelle took a step forward, putting herself between brother and sister.
“Oh, like I would ever hurt mybrother? But you shouldn’t give me such a tempting target, Rochelle.”
Francine looked past Rochelle, and her tough facade faded for a moment. “I would never hurt you, Dougie. Never. For so long we were all each other had.”
Francine wasn’t sure if he reacted to this, though he did drop and grind out his smoke.
He nodded at her, she supposed, in hello. Her brother had never been loquacious.
