Page 137 of Almost Dead (The Cahills 2)

“This is what you do to people you love?”

“He didn’t care about me,” she said and slid a glance at the corpse. “He tried to tell me my mother was dead.”

“She is. You killed her,” Cissy said and through an open doorway heard the rush of the sea, smelled the salt in the air.

“No…that’s a lie. She’s not dead, not yet…. She’s got to look like she did all the killings.” Diedre said, but her face changed as if she weren’t certain of what she was saying. In that moment, Cissy rushed toward the playpen to reach for her son, to hold him. She picked him up and let out an agonized scream. It wasn’t her son at all! It was a lifesized doll propped against the side of the pen, hiding a baby monitor which was emitting her son’s terrified cries.

“You bitch!” She whirled on Diedre. “Where’s my B.J.? Where is he!”

“The only Amhurst heir, beside you and that half-brother of yours in Oregon? Don’t worry about B.J.”

“Tell me where he is!”

“Ciss…” Jack warned.

But Cissy was livid and didn’t care that Diedre had aimed the gun straight at her heart. She wanted her kid, damn it.

“Step back!” Jack yelled, just as they heard the wail of sirens, faintly crying over the lash of the wind and the pound of the rain.

“You called the police?” Diedre demanded, stunned and furious, her voice rising over the wind and the crying of the baby.

“Yes! Yes, we called them!” Cissy suddenly threw the doll at Diedre. Oh God where was he?

Diedre caught the rag doll handily.

Jack rushed her.

With a wicked smile, Diedre turned, aimed, and fired straight at Jack, the muzzle of the .38 spitting fire.

“No!” Cissy screamed. “Oh God, don’t! No, nooo!”

Too late.

Jack stumbled backward. His face drained of color as he looked at her.

In a gasp of pain, he crumpled onto the floorboards.

“Jack!” Cissy dropped to the floor beside him and grabbed his head, forcing him to stare up at her. “Oh no, no, no…” She couldn’t lose him! She couldn’t! Quicksilver images of their life together flashed behind her eyes—their meeting at the boring party, his quick wit, the way he stared into her eyes when he made love to her, his joy at the birth of B.J., his pain when she’d insisted on divorcing him.

Now he was bleeding. Vainly, she tried to staunch the flow, to keep him alive, but it was impossible. Blood oozed upward between her fingers. There was just so much, so damned much. “I love you, Jack. Oh, God, how I love you. You can’t die. You can’t.”

“Oh, how pathetic,” Diedre said from her position in the doorway. Looming over them, gun in hand, she clucked her tongue. “I guess you’ve forgotten. A month ago you were going to divorce him.”

Ignoring the taunt, Cissy felt for Jack’s pulse, her sticky fingers touching his throat as she willed him to look at her, to hang on. The police were on their way. She’d heard the sirens. Fighting panic, her own choking fear, she willed her husband to focus on her. “Jack, don’t you die on me, do you hear me? Don’t you die! Look at me. Jack! Damn it, you look at me!”

“Don’t die,” Diedre mocked in a little-girl voice that irritated the hell out of Cissy. “Look at me, Jack! Jesus, Cissy, do you hear yourself?”

Blood was spreading over the floor, and still the baby was crying, calling for her. Her whole life was crumbling, all because of this hideous woman she’d

thought was her friend. “Shut up!” Cissy turned to her husband. “Hang in there, you can do it.”

“Too late,” Diedre said.

Cissy ignored her, desperately trying to halt the flow as Jack lost consciousness.

“He’s gone.”

“I said, SHUT UP!” Cissy snapped. She had no time for this.

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