Page 134 of Almost Dead (The Cahills 2)

She fired. Point-blank.

With a startled cry, he stumbled backward. His handsome face was a mask of shock. “Diedre, no…” he whispered, disbelieving, starting to fall.

Blood ran from the wound in his chest, staining his jacket as he dropped first to one knee, then the other.

“You should have loved me,” she said as he tried vainly to catch himself, smearing blood on the floor.

She blinked.

Realized what she’d done.

Dear God, no. This was all wrong. She loved him.

And yet he’d attacked her!

Her mouth went dry as she remembered how she’d met him, how he’d sought her out, how she’d envisioned a perfect life with him, even thinking she would become his wife. That, of course, had been a pipe dream, the kind of childish fantasy her adoptive mother had always teased her about.

Now she looked down at him, the man she’d loved with all her heart, watching as he bled out. Had he ever really cared about her? He’d said so, but words were cheap.

It had been his idea to not just shake down the Cahills, who were in control of the money, but the Amhursts as well. He’d offered it up and she’d thought it brilliant; he’d told her he loved her, and she, fool that she was, had believed him.

Liar! Prick! She sacrificed everything for him. For them. For his plan. She took all the risks, and now…now she realized that he loved his damned grandson more than he ever loved her!

“What have you done?” he said, staring up at her, trying to lever up on one arm and then falling back, his head cracking against the floor.

“What I should have done from the beginning.”

Diedre fired again, and his body convulsed, blood showing at his nostrils and one corner of his mouth as well as spreading in a dark red stain across his chest. He was already dead. She knew it. But she shot him one more time.

The son of a bitch. He deserved it.

Cissy drove like a maniac through the streets, her gaze scanning the rain-washed sidewalks, her eyes searching for anything that might give her a clue. She tried to call Rachelle again, but still no one answered. Think, Cissy, think, she told herself as she pulled up to a light near a low-slung car with rap music blaring from its speakers, the throb of the bass a counterpoint to her own beating heart. Of course. The coffee shop was probably closed at this hour. The police were probably now at Diedre’s apartment, but she wouldn’t be that stupid, that obvious. The house in Berkeley was cordoned off, so that wouldn’t be where she’d run with Beej.

“Come on, come on,” she told herself. Where would she go? Where? She wanted to be you. She thought you lived a charmed, pampered life. So where would Diedre go. Cissy thought hard. If Diedre had always wanted a life of privilege, like the Cahills, she would run to the estate on Mt. Sutro, though that was too risky. No. There must be someplace else…someplace she would feel safe…someplace connected to the life she wanted.

“Oh God,” Cissy whispered, her pulse jumping as the wipers slapped at the rain and the light changed. The low-slung car beat her from the stop and roared around her, but Cissy barely noticed. Her mind was spinning wildly. Diedre didn’t think of herself as a Cahill, but an Amhurst; therefore, she would take B.J. to—

Her cell phone rang, and she snatched it from her pocket, saw that it was Jack and flipped it open.

“Tell me you have Beej!” she cried.

“No.”

Her heart dropped.

“Can you get away from the police and pick me up?”

“I’m already out,” she admitted.

“Oh…good. Then pick me up at my father’s place.”

“What’s going on?” she asked, desperate for answers.

“I’ll tell you when you get here.”

“I’m on my way.” She did a quick U-turn at the next corner and stepped on it, making her way to Jack’s father’s condo in record time. Traffic was light, but the streets were wet, the wind gusting as she pulled into the short drive.

Jack was waiting and dripping wet.

---