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No, no, no…“You’re wrong,” I say frantically. “Mark’s not that sophisticated. He’s just a washed-up drunk—he doesn’t even remember my name from one day to the next.”
Joshua looks at me in annoyance. “You’re a crap liar when you’re stressed out, Toy, which is too bad for you, because that’s the most important time to be good at it. And my private investigator traced the emails back to him. Mark used several different internet cafes. He used a fake name and paid in cash to try to hide his tracks, but my PI hacked into their security cameras and saw him at the terminals sending the emails. I just got the report back this morning. The thing is, Mark’s been in rehab for the past few days, and the money just vanished a few hours ago, so I don’t think there’s any way it could have been him.”
All the strength leaves my body. Mark noticed I’d disappeared and tried to help me. Mark finally went to rehab. “Did you kill him?” My voice quavers with unshed tears.
“Not yet.” His casual words stab me in the gut. “Put your foot in that ankle cuff.”
“Joshua, please!” There’s still hope. “I’ll do anything you want. I’ll…I’ll go back to being Toy. Please. Don’t hurt him.”
He shoves me closer to the ankle cuff. “I hated Toy, remember?”
“What do you want?” I scream, desperate.
He shakes his head. “He declared himself my enemy when he sent those emails. I am not capable of letting him live after that. He’s not prey, Toy. You don’t have to worry that I’d torture him. I’m going to make it quick and painless. I’ll kill him in his sleep, I promise.”
He grabs my leg, and I struggle and kick at him, but he overpowers me, pulling me down to the ground. I’m chained up and helpless, raging.
“Nooooo!” I wail, sorrow overwhelming me. “I will end you, Joshua! God, I wish I’d never met you. I wish I’d never gone to Heaven that night!”
He looks at me, uncomprehending. “You wish you’d never…gone to Heaven? Are you having some kind of breakdown?”
“Heaven! The nightclub where we met!”
He shakes his head. “I have never been to a nightclub called Heaven. The first time I met you was after you started working for me.”
“Do you ever get sick of lying?” I rage. “Why would you even bother lying about this? You think my memory is that bad? You were wearing a pinstriped suit with a lavender tie and drinking two-hundred-dollar shots of Macallan whiskey, and you tried to get me to leave with you.”
His eyes bore into mine. “I don’t own a lavender tie, but more to the point, I never drink hard liquor. Only wine. Have you ever seen me drink hard liquor? And I never pick up women at nightclubs. I already told you—before I met you, I used to hire escorts and bring them back here, blindfolded. Can you seriously imagine me trolling a nightclub for dates?”
And then it hits me. “Oh my God. It wasn’t you. Of course it wasn’t you. He was much too charming. You’re never charming.”
“Excuse me?” He actually sounds offended.
My eyes fly to his face as I examine him with horrified fascination. “He was seductive and charming. He was like Casanova, with all the smooth-talking bullshit. You never do that. You’re a ‘let the woman come to me’ kind of guy. You would consider it beneath you to try to charm a woman into bed with you. To you, it would be like begging. I can’t believe I didn’t see it before. That’s why you never acknowledged me when I started working for you. You’d never met me before. But he looked exactly like you, Joshua. I mean, so much like you that physically, I wouldn’t be able to tell you apart. Who could it have been?”
The look on his face makes me gasp. It’s a mixture of shock and alarm.
“Charlemagne.”
His dead twin? The twin who was supposedly buried alive by their father? Is there something Joshua hasn’t told me?
He quickly undoes the key on my ankle cuff. Then he hauls me over to the intercom and slaps the button. “Elizabeth, get out of the house, now!” he bellows.
I hear something strange. “Joshua,” I say. “What’s that hissing noise? What’s that smell?”
CHAPTERTHIRTY
JOSHUA
I smell it too. Gas. Poison gas, hissing out of the vents.
“Hold your breath!” I shout.
I suck in my own breath and grab her by the arm, and we run through the house, heading for the front door.
I never told her the end of Charlemagne’s story – which was that my father failed to kill him, after all. I was dazed with shock at killing my father, and I didn’t do a very good job checking my brother’s vital signs. After I staggered off, he crawled out of his grave and made his way out into to the world, same as I did.
I didn’t find out that he was still alive for years, though.
