Into the Fire - Anne Stuart [98]
She just looked at him. “You’re insane,” she said finally, and then realized it probably wasn’t the smartest thing for her to say.
It didn’t matter. He just laughed. “By some people’s standards, I suppose. By your pathetically bourgeois standards. I like to think of myself as a visionary. Someone who does what needs to be done.” He gestured with the shotgun. “Come along, precious. We have a date with destiny.”
She wasn’t sure she could stand, much less walk, but she didn’t have any choice. She moved ahead of him, feeling the occasional prod of the gun barrel, and made her way around her mother’s body to the narrow stairs. At any moment she expected him to shoot her, but he seemed content with using the gun as a cattle prod.
The moon had risen on the frosty landscape. Isobel’s aging Mercedes was parked by the garage, the motor still running. She must have found another route in.
“She still has that old car,” Nate mused. “Which car did you come in? Not the Volvo, I assume. You’d be too squeamish to drive a hearse. I know—he would have sent you off in the Cadillac. What poetic justice! He did, didn’t he?”
“Go to hell.”
“I wonder which one I’ll take with me when I leave,” he said in that dreamy voice. “The Cadillac has fond memories, but I’ve always liked Mercedes almost as much as Audis. I suppose it’ll depend on what Dillon shows up in.”
“He’s not coming.”
He shoved the gun barrel harder into her back, and she groaned in pain. “Of course he will. He’ll come for you, and he’ll come for me. It just depends who he’s going to end with.”
He caught her arm and dragged her over to the Mercedes. He opened the door to turn off the engine, and the air was filled with the familiar scent of Isobel’s perfume, Chanel No. 5.
“How could you have killed her?” Jamie demanded brokenly.
“I don’t see why you care. She would have sacrificed you for me any day of the week. You were always second choice, your entire life. She didn’t care about you.”
She turned to look at him, at the shotgun now pointed at her own chest. “But I still cared about her,” she said simply.
“More fool you, then,” he said. “Come on.” He grabbed her arm and started dragging her across the ground, toward the rubble of the old mansion, the broken towers stark against the night sky.
Someone had boarded up the entrance, but he smashed through the flimsy wooden barricade, dragging her over the shattered wood, up the sharply angled staircase. She was still dizzy, and something had caught her jeans, tearing them. She could feel the warmth of blood on her shin, but she didn’t have time to think about it, she could only follow Nate’s scarecrow figure, his birdlike hand a manacle on her wrist.
Their sudden reemergence into the night air caught her by surprise. The last bit of tower was gone, leaving the area exposed to the wind and the weather, and snow had drifted against one of the partial walls.
“Now, isn’t this nice? We’ll be able to see Dillon’s headlights from far away, and there’s nice fresh air. We needed to get away from Aunt Isobel, you know. Dead bodies start to smell after a while.”
She didn’t bother arguing, or asking him how he knew that. She didn’t need to.
“It’s cold,” she said instead.
“It is, isn’t it?” he agreed, his voice rich with satisfaction. “Get on your knees, Jamie.”
She’d been leaning against the broken wall, but at his words she straightened.
“Come on, Jamie. You did it for Killer, you can do it for me,” he said, reaching for his zipper.
“You can shoot me right here,” she said flatly. “Because I’m not touching you.”
He laughed, unoffended. “You’re awfully picky. I thought you might have developed a taste for it. Never mind, though. You’re not my type. Hold out your arms.”
She still didn’t move. He put the shotgun down, and she wondered