Page 189 of Homeport

Using a small probe, he popped the elegant little oval out. She’d had it inscribed under her photo, not her husband’s. He’d thought she would.

And his blood was cool and steady as he read it: Miranda, on the occasion of your sixteenth birthday. Never forget where you come from or where you wish to go. Gran

“We’ve got you,” he said quietly, and slipped the locket into his pocket. He was already pulling his phone out as he hurried back out to the corridor.

“Elise.” Miranda forced herself to speak calmly, to keep her eyes on Elise’s face and not on the gun that was pointed dead-center at her chest. “He’s badly hurt. I need to call an ambulance.”

“He’ll keep for a while.” With her free hand, she tapped the neat bandage on the back of her own head. “I did. It’s amazing how quickly you can bounce back from a good bash on the head. You thought he was drunk, didn’t you?” Her eyes glittered with delight at the thought. “That’s really perfect. If I’d thought of it and had time, I’d have gotten a bottle and poured it over him. Just to set the scene. Don’t worry, I only hit him twice—not nearly as often, or as hard, as I hit Giovanni. But then Andrew didn’t see me. Giovanni did.”

Terrified Andrew would bleed to death while she did nothing, Miranda snatched up a T-shirt from the littered floor, balled it, and pressed it to the wound.

“Giovanni was your friend. How could you have killed him?”

“I wouldn’t have had to if you’d left him out of it. His blood’s on your hands, just like Andrew’s is right now.”

Miranda curled her fingers into her palm. “And Richard.”

“Oh, Richard. He killed himself.” A faint line of irritation dug between her eyebrows. “He started falling apart right after Giovanni. Falling apart, piece by piece. Cried like a baby, told me it had to stop. No one was supposed to die, he said. Well.” She moved her shoulders. “Plans changed. The minute he sent you that ridiculous e-mail, he was dead.”

“But you sent the others, the faxes.”

“Oh yes.” With her free hand, Elise twisted the delicate gold chain draped around her neck. “Did they frighten you, Miranda? Confuse you? Make you wonder?”

“Yes.” Keeping her movements slow, she tugged a blanket from the foot of the bed and settled it over her brother. “You killed Rinaldi too.”

“That man was a constant annoyance. He kept insisting the bronze was real—as if a plumber would know anything about it. He even stormed into Elizabeth’s office, babbling, rambling. But it made her start thinking. I could tell.”

“You have the bronze, but you’ll never be able to sell it.”

“Sell it? Why should I want to sell it? Do you think this is about money?” She pressed a hand to her stomach as she laughed. “It’s never been about money. It’s you. It’s you and me, Miranda, like it’s always been.”

Lightning shimmered against the glass of the window behind Elise, ragged forks of it digging into the sky. “I’ve never done anything to you.”

“You were born! You were born with everything right at your fingertips. The prized daughter of the house. The eminent Dr. Jones of the Maine Joneses, with your highly respected parents, your fucking bloodline, your servants, your snooty grandmother in her big house on the hill.”

She gestured wildly, turning Miranda’s stomach to a greasy wave as the gun swung in every direction. “You know where I was born? In a charity ward, and I lived in a lousy two-room apartment because my father wouldn’t acknowledge me, wouldn’t accept the responsibility. I deserved everything you had, and I got it. But I had to work for it, to beg for scholarships. I made sure I went to the same colleges as you did. I watched you, Miranda. You never even knew I was there.”

“No.” Miranda removed the cloth from Andrew’s head. She thought the flow of blood was slowing. She prayed it wasn’t wishful thinking.

“Then again, you didn’t do much socializing, did you? Amazing how all this money made you so boring. And I had to scrimp and save while all the time you were living in a nice house, being waited on, reaping in glory.”

“Let me call an ambulance for Andrew.”

“Shut up! Shut the hell up. I’m not finished.” She stepped forward, jabbing with the gun. “You shut the hell up and listen to me or I’ll shoot the sorry son of a bitch here and now.”

“Don’t!” Instinctively, Miranda shifted her body between the gun and Andrew. “Don’t hurt him, Elise. I’ll listen.”

“And keep your mouth shut. Jesus, I hate that mouth of yours. You talk and everybody listens. Like you spit gold coins.” She kicked a discarded shoe across the floor until it rapped solidly into the wall. “It should have been me, it should always have been me, and it would have been if the son of a bitch who got my mother pregnant, who promised her everything hadn’t been married to your grandmother.”

“My grandmother?” Miranda shook her head even as her fingers slid slowly down to check Andrew’s pulse. “You’re trying to tell me my grandfather was your father?”

“The old bastard just couldn’t keep his zipper up, even into his sixties. My mother was young and stupid and she thought he’d ditch his ice bitch of a wife and marry her. Stupid, stupid, stupid.”

To punctuate her feelings, she snatched up an agate paperweight from the occasional table and winged it over Miranda’s head. It boomed against the wall like a cannonball.

“She let herself be used. Let him get away without paying, never did one goddamn thing to make him pay, so we lived hand to mouth.” Her eyes glittered with fury as she shoved the table over.

Another Jones, Miranda thought frantically, another careless liaison and inconvenient pregnancy. She shifted to the balls of her feet, braced. But the gun swung back, its barrel aimed toward the center of her body. And Elise smiled beautifully.

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