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“Me?” My voice rose to a squeak. “After what you did to me?”
“Oh, come on. Once you’ve cooled down, you’ll see the advantages. Have you even considered what it means to be my heir? To run a corporation like Halliwell Enterprises, and manage a fortune of this size, which is sure to double in five years? You will be the richest human being on the planet, Cassandra. By a very large margin.”
“Heir?” I laughed. “Really. With a bomb in one of my back teeth that explodes when you die? Is that the legacy that you’re talking about?”
“Not at all,” he scoffed. “I would never give you the tooth. Those are only for the duds that need to be kept in line for my own safety, not for a shining star like yourself, who delivered the moon and stars to me on a silver platter. You’re a true Halliwell, Cassandra. The only true Halliwell of this generation.”
The guy looked almost sentimental. It made my stomach lurch.
“Did you kill Jana?” I asked baldly.
He waved an impatient hand. “You are so annoying sometimes. Be grateful that I snatched you away from the hospital when I did. That was the very moment that they discovered that your worm had taken over their system. The Red Queen logo is cycling on Ethan Masters’ computer screen as we speak. They’re cursing your name, but who cares? You’ll soon be floating up high in the sky, in the safety of my helicopter.” He beamed. “You’re going home, where I will use SmokeScreen to execute all my big plans for the world. Great improvements are in store. And you are going to help me.”
“How do you intend to make me?” It came out of my mouth before I could stop myself, even though I already knew the answer to that question.
“Same way as before,” he said lightly. “Until you come to your senses and realize that ruling with me could be a rewarding challenge. That will happen eventually. I’m quite sure of it. This is the scope you always needed for your talents and skills.”
“And you actually expect me to do this after you poisoned my sister?”
“Oh, for God’s sake, stop harping on that,” he snapped. “I’ll have her brought here, if you insist! As soon as they take the guards off her at the hospital. No more public gun battles. It’s inconvenient, and off-brand.”
“They won’t take the guards off her,” I said.
“No? After you disappeared, along with Shane Masters’ heart and their precious algorithm? Why should they guard her? From what? They’ll lose interest in her quickly. I suppose the state would step in eventually, to deal with an abandoned ten-year-old, all alone in her hospital bed. No one to wipe her brow or pay her bills. So sad.”
“You are such a dick,” I told him.
The SUV stopped at the airfield. The locks disengaged. We got out of the car, and he put his heavy arm around me again, herding me toward the helicopter, its rotors already spinning.
“Come along, Cassandra,” he said. “It’s time to go home.”
CHAPTER23
Shane
Iwas transfixed by the video on the screen. The hospital security camera showed Cass, embraced by Halliwell, their heads almost touching. He was smiling as he squeezed her close. Her lips were moving. Then came that part I hated. When they both stared up at the camera with the same tight, fake smile that said,fuck you all. Chumps.
“No,” Kat said. “It’s impossible. I saw the way she was with Reggie. I had a little sister myself. I can’t be fooled. There’s no way Cass would ever hurt that girl. Or abandon her. That’s what you’re implying, right? That Cass would deliberately poison Reggie to manipulate us, and dump her as soon as she got what she wanted? No way! Her love for that girl is genuine. I felt it on my skin. She was for real!”
“So’s the worm that ate SmokeScreen,” Ethan said grimly. “Maybe we all just saw and felt what we wanted to see and feel.” He shook his head. “Shane has an excuse for being tricked, after what he went through?—”
“Do not treat me like a goddamn invalid,” I snarled.
“The woman was pretty fucking convincing,” Remy said. “The backstory was as tight as a drum. The mom really did die of Varen’s. We checked, and found death records for Laurel Clark, deceased two years and four months ago, survived by two daughters, Cassandra and Regina, yada yada. That’s all real, or else an unbelievably well-constructed scam. It’s too many random details that check out in perfect order for it not to be real. All of them put in place long before our story even began.”
“But why work for that prick at all?” Amos said. “She was doing fine on her own with Red Queen. Landing multimillion dollar contracts left and right. There were fifteen people on her payroll, all of whom loved her. At least until she laid off the whole staff three months ago to put Reggie into that clinic and go work for Halliwell.”
“You think that Reggie and the clinic was a fabrication? That she knowingly let him make Reggie sick, just to make us sympathetic to her? That makes no sense.” Kat shuddered. “Halliwell is a gaslighting prick. Don’t fall for his bullshit!”
“Too late,” Ethan said quietly. “We already did. The game has already been played, and he won, babe. By a lot.”
But Kat kept stubbornly shaking her head. “No. Not in a million years.”
“I want to talk to that doctor who interrupted our phone call,” I said.
“I overheard him talking to Cass,” Amos said. “He knew about us finding the file before Demiguel did. No one had even called Demiguel when that guy came to collect Cass. He knew about the formula Rose was looking into, and all the details, but Demiguel had never seen this guy. No one has. He isn’t employed here.”
“Which means that one of Halliwell’s men got within inches of Holly and Kat,” Ethan said. “While everyone was celebrating and kissing and high-fiving.”
