Page 39 of Almost Dead (The Cahills 2)

Marla had promised to bide her time, change her appearance, then leave once some of the fervor of the hunt had died down. But now Elyse sensed she wanted to speed things up, that she was getting impatient.

“I can’t stand it here,” Marla complained.

“I know, I know, but now we don’t have a choice. Remember, we talked this over.”

“But I didn’t know it would be so dark, so…alone.”

“I told you that you can go upstairs. Just keep the curtains drawn. You should move around more, get your blood pumping.”

“As if I could!” Marla said with a sneer. “Don’t you get it? Someone might see me. I may as well be back in prison!”

“No way,” Elyse argued. She couldn’t have Marla thinking that! Not after all the risks she’d taken.

Marla seemed somewhat mollified. “Fine. You were telling me about how you killed the dried-up old prune.”

“Your mother-in-law,” Elyse reminded her gently.

“Eugenia.” Marla made a moue of distaste at the memories of her mother-in-law. “So go on, tell me, did she recognize you?”

“Oh, yeah. It was great,” Elyse admitted, rubbing in her victory a bit, still feeling the thrill running through her veins. “She didn’t even see it coming.” Smiling down at Marla, Elyse said, “I wish you could have been there to see it, the way she flew over the railing, sailing and screaming and landing on the floor with such an incredible crack. It was so loud, it was like I could feel it in my body. Then it was silent, and she was staring up at me vacantly. I don’t even know if she was dead yet, but I picked up that stupid little dog so that the last image she had was of me stroking it.”

“Did you kill it too?”

“The dog?” Elyse recoiled as if she’d just encountered a horrid smell. “Of course not. I left it there, locked in a cupboard so it wouldn’t follow me, but the police or someone would find it.”

“I hate that dog,” Marla said.

“You hate everything.”

“I liked being a Cahill,” she said with sudden longing. “It was even better than being an Amhurst, let me tell you.”

“If you say so.” Elyse checked her watch. “Look, I can’t stay. I’ve got to keep up appearances, you know. But I’ll be back soon, when it’s safe.”

“It’ll never be safe,” Marla said.

“You don’t know that.”

“Sure I do.” She was nasty again. Angry. Pouting.

More trouble than she’s worth…. But that wasn’t true. Marla was worth a bundle…a damned fortune. If they played their cards right. And Elyse intended to. Along with a stacked deck, she had an ace up her sleeve. One Marla wasn’t privy to.

“Good-bye, Marla,” she said, but the other woman wouldn’t so much as look at her. In the blink of an eye, Marla had gone back into her morose pouting. God, her act was already getting old.

Too bad.

Elyse knew what she had to do.

She pushed the fake wall back into place and wound her way through the dank basement, then up the old stairs. She had to return to their original plan. It was the only way to keep Marla satisfied.

Well, so be it, she thought, locking the house with her key and hurrying to the Taurus.

Marla wanted her brother Rory dead.

So Elyse would take care of it.

The retard was history.

Cissy’s concentration was shot. She couldn’t outline the article she’d planned to write—the same article that had sat on her computer for weeks was still a bunch of jumbled notes. Four weeks earlier she’d interviewed a new, young candidate for mayor, but it was the same week Cissy had found out about Larissa and kicked Jack out. Not long after that, when she’d tried to pull her notes together, her psycho mother had escaped from prison. Now her grandmother had fallen to her death—or been murdered—and she was dealing with grief and guilt. Maybe the article wasn’t meant to be written.

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