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Seconds seemed to stretch on for hours, and she held her breath, praying for a sign and bargaining with whomever in the universe might be listening.Please, let the real Karol emerge.
Suddenly, the man in front of her seemed to age ten years, his posture slumping. The vicious, triumphant glint in his eyes dissipated, replaced by weary defeat. Definitely not Jackal, but not quite Karol either.
“Where is she?” a feeble voice asked.
“Karol?” she whispered.
The man shook his head. “No. My name’s Harold. Harold Kraft.”
CHAPTER33
Montgomery had always prided himself on his ability to think fast and act even faster. But when he saw Hartley, bound, with cuts crisscrossing her face and the start of a black eye, the sight pierced him like a knife, holding him frozen in place.
She rolled abruptly away, and he heard her voice, wavering but full of purpose. As he scanned his surroundings, looking for anything that could be a weapon, he heard her shout that he was gone but she still loved him. His resolved tripled.
Karol looked like a ghost of himself, his face lined and his shoulders hunched. His mouth moved, but he couldn’t hear what he was saying. The man gathered himself, then dragged Hartley toward the trunk of the tree, closer to the spiral stairs. Whatever she was telling him, it was working.
Montgomery rounded the clearing, smothering his grunts of pain, until he reached a stack of two-by-fours close to the Treehouse. But the stack was tied down with strips of metal, the wood too long for him to pull one out with his single working arm. He crouch-shuffled around behind it and spotted a toolbox, but it was locked. He moved as silently as possible, scanning for something, anything that he could wield.
Ahead of him he heard a thumping sound and looked up to see Karol slowly descending the spiral staircase. Montgomery’s hands clenched, every ounce of his being screaming at him to get to her, to tear the man apart.
He crouched and shuffled back behind the stack of wood until his toe hit something hard. Looking down, he found scattered pieces of scaffolding pipe, half hidden by a tangle of vines and ground cover. He lifted the end of one with his good arm, the heavy metal about four feet long. Easing it silently away from the others, he crept along the tall hedge, hoping his movements would go unnoticed.
Karol continued his slow, deliberate steps down the staircase, a bound Hartley thumping behind him one stair at a time. At least she wasn’t hog-tied like he’d been. If he could cut her ankle ties, she could run.
But something in Karol’s demeanor gave Montgomery pause. The man didn’t exude any kind of menace now; instead, there was an air of confusion about him. A hesitancy. And he seemed old, as if he’d aged twenty years since Montgomery had last seen him.
He heard Hartley’s voice, her tone softer, pleading. “Harold, can’t you untie my feet so I can walk? It’ll be faster for both of us.”
Harold?Montgomery thought. Who the hell was Harold? He remembered what Porter had told him about his and Becca’s suspicions about their prime suspect—that he was a past Cavendish client. If that was the case, this might be his only chance to free Hartley before the lunatic personality inside the man blew up the rest of the place.
He crept closer to where they would step off the stairs as Hartley, ever the diplomat, tried to appeal to this new personality. “There are stairs in the office where the computer is,” she explained patiently. “It will be easier to get in there if I can walk. You don’t have to untie my hands until I get to the computer. You want Anya’s phone number, don’t you?”
“Harold” didn’t reply, but he did pause for a moment, thinking. Hartley took advantage.
“Or you can leave me here and I’ll tell you the password to access the original files,” she continued. “They’re all still there. Anya is still in town, maybe wondering why you…you never called,” Hartley said, a tremor in her voice, as if she wasn’t sure whether her words would soothe or inflame.
Harold went back to his sluggish movements, dragging Hartley down the last steps before releasing her. As she fell to her side facing Montgomery, their eyes met.
The determination in her gaze wavered, replaced by sheer terror. He tried to broadcast reassurance to her, nodding until he saw some of the fear abate.
Her eyes darted to Harold, or more specifically, to the tablet clutched in his hand. Montgomery understood immediately. That tablet controlled the detonations. His heart raced as he focused. Harold had stopped, facing the Savannah House, most of which was gone.
Harold’s face twisted and stretched, as though there were something alive beneath the skin, fighting to break free. He seemed to grow a few inches, his muscles bulging like something inside him was expanding.
In an instant, Harold was gone, replaced by a sinister animal presence. This wasn’t even Karol. It was Jackal.
“You lied!” Jackal roared, staring at the remains of the house.
Every fiber of Montgomery’s being screamed at him to act. Filled with a steely rage, he sprinted at Jackal. He ignored the screaming pain in his arm as he gripped the length of pipe in both hands. He breathed deep into his diaphragm, holding his breath to make the force of his impact as crushing as possible.
As he ran, time seemed to slow. He saw Jackal’s eyes shift to meet his, disbelief replacing the malevolence. In a distorted howl, he heard Hartley’s scream fill the air.
As Jackal raised the tablet, Montgomery pumped his legs harder, praying he would reach the man in time. As evil flowed back into Jackal’s expression, he saw the man’s finger drop onto the tablet.
Montgomery made a split-second change, thrusting the pipe at the man’s face and crouching as he veered toward Hartley. If these were their last moments together, he wanted to feel her against him one more time.
CHAPTER34
