He answered and gave her the thumbs-up. “Carson, good work. You did it.”
She checked for her knife; it was still safe at her belt. She reached for her shoulder holster and laboriously strapped it on. Because Mara was still here. This wasn’t over yet. All she needed now was her pistol.
She looked around, didn’t see it, leaned back and took a few laborious breaths.
Across the room, Nils sluggishly lifted his head. Blood from the wound on the back of his head had trickled onto his face. He seemed to be having trouble focusing, but eventually he zeroed in on her. “Kellen…” he whispered. “You shouldn’t have come.”
Kellen had to get herself on her feet. She had to. She couldn’t sit here and gasp like a beached fish or soon she’d be flat on her back, Max would be at her bedside and she’d be…she’d be panicked. She had to give herself a chance to remember…everything. She had to think about how she wanted to proceed in this situation with Max.
Things were complicated.
Understatement.
She crawled to the coffee table, and using it as a support, she got to her knees, then more slowly to her feet.
Max watched, poised on the balls of his feet, ready to catch her if she fell.
She smiled toothily at him. “There. That wasn’t so bad.” She lied. Her hand hurt. The bones in her chest felt as if they were moving, grinding.
“Here.” He presented her with her Glock 21 SF. “You dropped this.”
Using her left hand, she took it by the grip and found it fit not awkwardly, but like an old friend. She holstered it, looked up at him, and the magnitude of the recent events overwhelmed her. “Thank you. Thank you for saving my life.”
He reached for her, gripped her arms, and his hands had a fine tremor. “I prayed to God for a second chance, and for speed, and for you.”
He was so intense she wanted to look away. She couldn’t. In his amber eyes, she could see a man stripped to the bone by emotions she could only imagine.
Then Nils called, “Kellen, I need you.”
41
Nils’s voice caught her by surprise. Kellen looked toward the entry, then back at Max. “I, um, need to talk to him.”
“It’s not so easy,” Max said and released her.
She told herself she didn’t know what he meant. But she did. As she made her unsteady way to Nils’s side, Max took out his phone and made another call, and another, to emergency services and to the staff left in the resort, and all the while he watched Kellen.
Kellen meant to kneel beside Nils’s prostrate form; she got halfway down, collapsed onto her knees. That hurt; she’d have bruises tomorrow. But what were a few more bruises? She leaned close to Nils’s bloody head. “After I got to Temo’s and saw what was happening with him and his sister—I thought you were the Librarian.”
“I know.”
“How did you know about Temo?”
“I investigated everyone, especially the people close to you. He was acting suspicious, so I kept an eye on him and, sure enough, realized he had his kid sister living with him.”
“Why did you lie to me? Why did you send me on a wild-goose chase?”
“I read the report from the Army. I know why they discharged you.”
Kellen sat up straight. She’d been afraid of that, that if he’d hacked into her military records to discover her fighting skills, he would also have read all the details of her hospital stay.
“I didn’t want you to be hurt even more,” he said. “I believed I could handle it.”
“Of course you believed you could handle it. Now you know better.” At least in the Army, her men knew she could fight, and would fight to the death. “I’m conscious. That’s good enough for now.” She looked at Mara, bruised and unconscious. Or maybe just bruised; Kellen thought she could see the glint of her eyes beneath those lids. “How dangerous is she?”
Nils slid his hand up until it reached his chin, then propped his chin up under his hand. “Judged against Hitler? Or simply judged against greedy, ruthless female serial killers who happen to be narcissist psychopaths?”
He chilled her with his detached evaluation. She gestured Max over. “Did you call Sheriff Kwinault?”
“She’s on her way.” Max loomed, unmoving.
Nils ignored him. “A local sheriff will probably be outmatched. Mara will attempt to escape without a care to who or what she hurts.” He didn’t sound ominous. He sounded matter-of-fact, and that made it all the more chilling. “She is the Librarian.”
“She’s illiterate,” Max added.
Both Nils and Kellen started and stared.
Nils grunted. “That could explain a lot.”
Max radiated a solid satisfaction.
But all this information sent chills up Kellen’s neck. Annie had left her in charge of the resort, and Kellen had visions of explosions and flames. Urgently, she said, “We’ve got to get Mara out of here. You said it yourself. She’s a serial killer. That makes her the responsibility of the FBI. Get her out of here.” Kellen sounded excessively pleasant, and she put her hand on her knife. “Get her out of here or I’ll neutralize her myself.”
Mara was definitely conscious, for at Kellen’s threat she flinched a little.
Good. She was smart enough to fear Kellen.
“Get me a phone,” Nils said. “I’ll make some calls.”
Someone rang the suite’s doorbell.
“I called for a first aid kit,” Max told them and looked through the peephole. “I thought Nils would like to stop bleeding on the carpet.”
Kellen felt foolish for thinking Max needed to be defended, for reacting like a Victorian maiden to Max’s embrace and, most of all, for caring whether Nils noticed she had a thing for Max. Nils had kissed her a couple of times. He’d gone out and gotten into a fight because he was horny. So what? What happened between her and Max was nobody’s business but theirs, and furthermore, what had happened in the past was…
She slid down the wall. Everything in her future hinged on the past. Maybe that was always true, but at least now she knew. Didn’t she?
Max answered the door. Frances stood there, wide-eyed. She looked at the guns, looked at the knife, looked at the blood, handed Max the first aid kit, and in a slow, graceful slither, she fainted. Max caught her in one arm, handed Nils the kit and lowered her to the floor.
Kellen got up—rising was easier this time—and walked over to Mara.
MARA PHILIPPI:
FEMALE, WHITE, TANNED. HEALTHY, 5’6”, 130 LBS. EMPLOYED 8 YRS. SPA MANAGER. AGGRESSIVELY PHYSICALLY FIT. EAST COAST STREAKED-BLONDE PREPPIE. BLUE EYES. DORIAN GRAY PERFECTION OF SKIN TONE. BATTERED, BRUISED. UNCLEAR ON DIFFERENCE BETWEEN WAR ZONE AND GYMNASIUM. SMUGGLER. SERIAL KILLER. LIAR. ACTRESS. MASSIVE EGO. DO NOT LIKE. NO GOOD REASON. EVERY REASON.
Kellen should have trusted her instincts.
She knelt beside her, close enough to speak quietly, close enough to get in Mara’s face. “Your nose is broken.”
Mara pretended to be unconscious.
“That’s going to ruin your chances for the International Ninja Challenge.”
As Kellen had known she would, Mara opened her eyes. They snapped and sparked with fury. “You think I’m done? I’ll never be done.”
“You gave Lloyd Magnuson that heroin.”
Mara’s lips curled in a smile, and her lashes fluttered. “The poor dear man simply needed a bit of seduction and a push in the right direction. He was an addict through and through.”
Kellen had never seen the truth behind the mask Mara wore, because Mara believed she was justified in every cruelty, in every murder. “How did you find Priscilla’s body? Where did you take it?”
Mara’s smile disappeared. “We didn’t find it. I’m not so sloppy. I put a tracker on Lloyd. Mitch followed the signal and retrieved Priscilla’s body. I didn’t need any surprises popping out of her other shoe.” Mara’s eyes narrowed. “Who knew that bitch could be so devious?”
“You just confessed to killing her.” Mara wasn’t stupid; did she consider herself above the law? Or, more likely, that she would never go to trial?
“There’s no corpse to be found,” Mara said. “Not this time.”