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And when I did, I had him thrown into a very secure mental institution. Not secure enough, obviously.
How long has Charlemagne been out? How did he make Dr. Barnard lie to me and keep those fake videos online so I’d think he was still locked up? I keep tabs on Dr. Barnard’s family too – he hasn’t sent them anywhere to try to hide them from me. I know he loves them. And he knows I’ll kill them. How did my brother pull this off?
No time to worry about it right now. The first thing I have to do is get Toy and myself to safety.
Charlemagne is a genius who’s even more talented at computer hacking than I am, and he looks exactly like me and thinks like me. And he is very, very pissed, because he’s been in that mental institution for the last six years.
I had to do it, because he was killing people—not that I’d have a problem with that, except he was doing it in a very sloppy, public manner.
He tracked down and killed every social worker who’d come to our house and failed to remove us from that hellscape. Went right into their homes and butchered them, and then killed the head of the department of social services for good measure. He barely bothered to cover his tracks. That’s what happens when you let rage and revenge choose your kills for you.
When I saw the cluster of murders, I knew who was behind it right away—which meant there was an excellent chance that law enforcement would figure it out too.
With his self-indulgent killing spree, he risked getting caught by the police. That meant he risked exposing our entire twisted family life, and my murder of our father, and my assumption of a fake identity and fake social security number.
It wasn’t even that hard for me to track my brother down and capture him. I could have, should have, had Charlemagne killed instead of keeping him locked away. I spared his life when I didn’t have to. I’ve spent a fortune over the last six years, bribing Dr. Barnard to keep Joshua hidden from the world. It doesn’t matter to my brother that I spared him. He’ll want revenge.
Looking like me, and with his computer abilities, he will have been able to infiltrate my company at the highest levels. He’ll have penetrated every last system of mine. He may even have been in my house. He will have completely wormed his way into my security system.
He’s been fucking with me for months, drawing it out. He stole a hundred million dollars from me—a twentieth of my net worth. He ruined my Morton Media business deal. He fed the police just enough information that they’d start sniffing around, but not enough to convict me. Not yet, anyway. He could have ended my life at any time, but that wouldn’t be enough for him. He has bigger plans than that.
And somehow, he sent Toy into my path. I imagine he had the same reaction to her that I did—an instant, overwhelming attraction—and he sent her to me knowing that, as similar as we are, I would probably react the same way. All part of his long game, whatever that is.
Elizabeth is waiting by the front door, punching the keys over and over again, but the door’s not opening. I push her aside and punch in the code to the keypad, but it doesn’t work.
My lungs burn. Toy’s cheeks are puffed out and her face is turning red. Thank God for her breath-control practice.
I punch in a second code, an emergency backup code, and the door opens.
We rush into the airlock room. The door behind me stays open, although it’s not supposed to. That means the gas will pour in here too, from the hallway, even though there are no air vents in here.
Elizabeth’s eyes roll back in her head, and she falls to the ground.
I’m still holding my breath. I punch in the backup code. The front door opens.
The cold air hits me like a refreshing slap in the face.
I suck in gulps of oxygen as I bend down, grab Elizabeth by the wrist and drag her outside. I maintain a death grip on Toy’s wrist at the same time.
It’s mid-October, bracingly cold, and a chill breeze whips through the air. The minute we’re outside the front door, Toy goes mad. She lashes out and kicks me in the back of my leg, bringing me to my knees. Then she bites me on the hand so hard that my flesh tears and blood flows.
I have to let go of Elizabeth for a moment to control her. I’m forced to punch Toy in the head, hard enough to leave her half stunned, and then I start giving Elizabeth mouth-to-mouth.
Toy starts crawling away.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.She’s either going to find the cops and give up all my secrets, or get lost in the woods and freeze to death. But I can’t stop CPR; Elizabeth’s not breathing.
The icy survivalist in my brain howls for me to just leave Elizabeth to die and go after Toy.
Before I met Toy, I would have done so in a heartbeat and never suffered a twinge of conscience over it. Fucking Toy, she’ll be the death of me yet.
Elizabeth coughs and splutters and her eyes flutter open. She stares at me, searching my face for something. I’m not sure what. Then she reaches up and touches her mouth with trembling fingers, as if to savor the feel of my lips on hers.
I turn my attention back to Toy, who’s up on her feet and running like a gazelle.
My vision becomes laser focused. I leap up and run after her, and she’s surprisingly fast, but I catch up with her quickly and wrap my arms around her, pinning her arms to her sides and lifting her off the ground. Again she does the thing where she wraps her legs behind my knees and makes me fall, and as we do, she rears her head back, and there’s a crunch and an explosion of pain as she breaks my nose.
My fierce, magnificent Toy.
