She glared at me, her brows screwed high up her forehead.
“Okay, I’ll take that as a yes.” I gave a few more kicks, then slid off the bunk to the floorboards and fumbled with the bolt behind my back, jiggling and wiggling.
One of the screws was slightly wonky. If this were a prison break movie, I could probably dig it out of the wood with my fingernails. But it wasn’t, and bloodied fingernails did not appeal. I had a serious allergy to pain.
I looked around for something I could use. The only thing within reach was my pair of Uggs lined up neatly beside me. Unfortunately I hadn’t thought to hide a nail file in the lining when I’d set off this morning.
Suddenly, the floorboards beneath me stopped vibrated. I couldn’t hear the motor chugging anymore either.
My breath caught.
We’d stopped.
I quickly crab-walked back up the bunk, just in case. It wasn’t completely deluded to hope we’d been hailed by the river squad, was it? My gaze went to the hatch at the top of the short flight of steep steps. Or perhaps (less likely, but I wasn’t ruling it out) a SWAT team was parachuting down from a search helicopter.
The hatch opened.
And can I just say? Hope is a fickle demon.
Isla descended with feline elegance, pulling the hatch door shut behind her.
“You’re awake.” She swept a smile over me to Jenna, back to me. “I might have been over-zealous with the dose, you slept straight through lunch. It’ll be a while before supper, I’m afraid. Would you like a snack to tide you over?”
She stepped over the gas heater to reach the kitchenette built into the cabin wall. A small counter with a single-ring gas cooker on top and a mini-fridge tucked underneath.
I wasn’t hungry, but maybe she’d untie my hands so I could eat. “I’m starving.”
“Wonderful.” She grabbed a loaf of sliced bread from the overhead cabinet. “We can chat while I fix you a sandwich.”
I grabbed that opening line. “You don’t have to do this, Isla.”
“I’m well aware of that.”
“Let us go.”
“You’ve caused me a great deal of trouble, but I think you may just be worth it.” She turned to look at me, really look at me, as if I were a rare stamp under consideration. “You’ll be an interesting addition to my collection.”
I squirmed inside my skin.
What was she collecting?
Bodies?
Body parts?
Someone clearly had to speak some sense into this raving maniac. “I’m not a Ming Vase or a first edition pamphlet.”
“Of course not.” She slid me a sly smile. “You are far more valuable. In my circles, people like to throw around the word ‘priceless’, but I alone have truly discovered the single, most valuable, genuinely priceless objet de fascination.”
She turned back to the counter and ducked into the fridge beneath, bringing out a pack of cold cuts. “That’s not to say I’m opposed to occasionally putting a price on it. We all have bills to pay, after all, and I enjoy my lavish lifestyle.”
“What exactly are you selling?”
“Don’t be vulgar.” She gave a delicate shudder. “The deals I broker are a lucrative exchange of ownership.”
And, again. “So what exactly are you selling?”
Isla gave a long, weary sigh. “The Final Hour.”
Huh? “Is that a book?”
“Your final hour of life,” she said patiently. “Jenna Adam’s final hour.” She glanced at me, pursed her lips. “The Final Hour. I’ve amassed quite the collection, recorded and transcribed for prosperity. Oh, and as I’ve mentioned, for the occasional connoisseur.”
“You kill just to record your victim’s last hour.” I gagged. Swallowed the sickly taste. “And people actually pay you for that?”
“You’d be surprised how many people in this world are desperate to own that one thing no one else possesses.” She paused in the process of slapping ham between two slices to look at me. “No matter how many final hours I collect or put up for auction, each one is truly unique.”
Oh. My. God. “How many of these final hours have you collected?”
She tut-tutted. “You wouldn’t sound so derisive if you knew the precious gems I’ve come across. Take Mark Dellointe, for instance. A retired professor from MIT. Once he finally accepted he had one hour left on this earth to use or squander as he pleased, do you know what he did?”
I couldn’t care less.
“He asked for a pen and notebook.” Isla transferred the sandwich to a plate as she spoke. “There’d been some formula or theorem he’d spent most of his academic career trying to solve and, in that final hour, he did it. He thanked me, said I’d given him clarity in that final hour, a sense of uncluttered purpose that had eluded him all his life. Isn’t that amazing?”
“Freaking ace,” I muttered.
“He fetched quite a ransom at the private auction,” she said. “I was loath to give him up, even for the three million dollars, but he’s in good hands.”
“You are totally warped in the head.”
She chuckled to herself. “I wouldn’t expect you to grasp the finer qualities of abstract art.”
“What about Lacey Markson?” I said, my throat tight with emotion for a girl I’d never met.
“Ah, yes, she was a remarkable one. Quite the temper, too, she spent most of her hour ranting and screaming, vowing to bring the full wrath of her father’s stately power down on me.” Isla stared past my head, momentarily lost in thought.
“But then she surprised me.” Her eyes slowly blinked to me, her smile revoltingly friendly and intimate. “Those are my favorites, the ones with the unexpected layers that are stripped away right there in front of me, like the first exclusive showing of a rare masterpiece that has been uncovered.”
Abstract art.
Masterpiece.
This woman was plain nuts, through and through.
“A repentance list,” Isla went on, her voice lowered in reverence. “Lacey Markson made a list of her sins for my keeping, a beautiful scroll of post-death apologies that were a magnificent revelation. The girl’s poor father would have popped an artery if any one of those sins had been revealed.”
I snuck a look at Jenna to see how she was coping with the insanity. Not well, if the vein bulging at her temple was any indication. She was glaring at Isla with serious intent, something that probably involved grievous bodily harm.
“Each final hour has an irreverent charm,” Isla said quietly. “I look forward to discovering what your friend has to offer.”
“Could you at least remove her gag?” I ground out, teeth gritted, anger coiling inside my veins.
Isla ignored that and came over with my lunch, chin tilted as she gazed down on me.
“You’ll have to untie my hands so I can eat,” I said.
“That won’t be necessary.” Using one hand, she broke off a piece of sandwich and brought it to my lips. “Open wide.”
Plan B.
I kicked out, chains and all, connected with shin and swiped Isla off her feet. She toppled backward and landed with an, ‘Oomph.’ The plate went flying, bounced off the wall near Jenna and cracked on the bunk.
Isla gathered herself together with more dignity I could usually muster on my finest day. “This is disappointing, Maddox.”
It certainly was.
I’d hoped to crack her skull, and all I’d gotten was cracked china.
“You know, I was warming to the idea of your company,” she said as she cleared up splattered bits of ham, bread and white enameled plate. “But perhaps it would be easier to keep you sedated until I’m done with Jenna and ready to give you my undivided attention.”
Stupid plan B. “Don’t, please.”
Her conversational tone darkened, “Should I expect any more stunts like this?”
“No,” I promised. “I’ll do anything you say.”
“Excellent.” She tossed the ruins of lunch
into a makeshift trash bag hanging from a hook, then leant a hip against the counter. “You know, I was expecting Joseph McMurphy to figure it out and show up. Maybe not so soon, but certainly around the third or fourth murder. I was counting on it, in fact.”
She pushed away from the counter, her gaze lingering thoughtfully on me as she moved a little closer. “You, on the other hand, are quite the surprise. I didn’t see you at Duke’s Saloon and it never crossed my mind that you’d have come to Brackenport with your ex-husband and—” she waved a hand in Jenna’s direction “—his new girlfriend.”
Girlfriend? I clipped my tongue on the automatic snark. If this was the kind of attention to detail Isla paid when evaluating her more traditional (inanimate) objects prior to acquisition, she must have an awful lot of duds amongst her rare collections.
I must have worn my snark on my face, because she gave me a curious look. “What?”
“Nothing,” I mumbled. “I just don’t recall you ever being this chatty.”
She smirked. “The topics I’m most passionate about aren’t suitable for public consumption.”
No kidding. “Why did you return to Brackenport this morning?”
“Keeping up appearances.” She shrugged. “My schedule underwent an abrupt change, as you’re probably aware, and I was booked into my hotel until this morning. It would have raised unwanted interest if I didn’t check out as normal. May I ask,” she added after a small pause, “where you latched on to me?”
I thought about clamming up. But it wouldn’t hurt to let her know the cops were only one step behind us and about to catch up to her wicked ways. “I was parked outside the police station when I saw you climb into your car.”
“How ironic.” Her mouth twitched. “It’s a quirk of mine, staying at hotels right under the cops’ noses. If only they knew…”
“And now they do.”
“Yes, well.” Another shrug. “It was always a risk, that’s what makes it so appealing. I didn’t find a cell phone on you, but I assume you made contact with someone before chasing after me, right?” She didn’t wait for my response. “It was time for a makeover, anyway.” She ran a hand through her short hair. “Something with more warmth, don’t you think? Maybe a deep auburn, with pale blue contact lenses. That would be rather striking.”
I cringed at my own naivety. “Isla’s not your real name.”
“My dear girl,” she drawled, “it’s been so long since I lived inside my true identity, I barely remember the name on my birth certificate.”
Which meant the address she’d given at Hollow House was fake. Whatever Jack and Sam uncovered was worthless.
And where the hell was Nate?
Isla glanced out the porthole. “I have a few errands to run in preparation for tomorrow.” She unraveled a silk scarf from the pocket of her trench coat as she approached me. “There’s no one for miles to hear you scream, but it’s always advisable to err on the side of caution in my profession.”
“You don’t have a profession!” I snapped my head aside, bucked and kicked to avoid her reach, but my efforts were a mere irritant. “You have a perverted sense of morality. You’re nothing but a murderer, a black-hearted—” hmmmp “—killer and you won’t—” hmmp, bmmpp “—get away with—”
The rest of my tirade got swallowed with the scarf she finished stuffing into my mouth. For good measure, she wound and tied a second around my head to keep the gag in place. I screamed, and some noise filtered out, but I quickly realized why Jenna had given into absolute silence. Every scream seemed to fill another nook of my mouth with scarf, my jaw quickly ached, and I wasn’t really achieving anything.
Isla turned the lantern half of the combo heater off before she left, swamping the cabin in darkness except for the faint red glow of the heater bars.
Minutes stretched into hours, me staring at Jenna’s ghostly silhouette, unable to see properly, unable to communicate, not knowing when (or if) Nate would find us. My mind inevitably drifted to those errands Isla had gone to perform.
What happened between now and tomorrow night? What did Max Wilder do with his victims during those hours? I should never have stopped reading. Maybe Isla wouldn’t follow the script too closely, but maybe she would.
Nate, where are you?
I’d practically led him straight to Isla.
He should have found us by now.
I had no idea how much time had passed before Isla returned, but I did know she returned by car. The purr of the engine reached me through the creaks and groans made by the river swelling against the boat. There was the two-minute high of extreme hope, of course, dashed when she came through the hatch.
So, about that car… Either she’d hotwired it, or we hadn’t gone very far from where she’d left her Range Rover.
She moved around the cabin for a while, then turned the lantern on and ungagged me. And she cut the zip ties binding my hands. “Don’t try anything brave, Maddox, just hold your hands out so I can re-tie them in front of you.”
I glanced around, paranoid and confused, until I saw the takeout cartons of burgers and fries on the counter that she must have brought back with her.
Supper time, and apparently I would be allowed to feed myself. I did as she said, took a moment to rub feeling into my wrists while I contemplated my temporary freedom. But the chain still bound my ankles and I couldn’t afford another failed attempt with her threat of sedating me. “Where did you get the car?”
“It’s a rental,” Isla said as she put the fresh set of zip ties on and pulled them tight. “I had it stashed nearby. That was always part of the plan, although we were only supposed to spend one night on the boat.”
“You need the car,” I said, figuring it out for myself as I spoke, “to drive to the canning factory.”
She smiled, amused at something. “You know the story.”
“Which factory?”
That smile reached her eyes. “Burke Orchards. The biggest in the area. They have their own farms.”
“That’s bold.”
“It was,” she agreed with a dissatisfied sigh. “But it doesn’t matter, that location was compromised the moment Joseph McMurphy came on the scene. I didn’t want to stray too far from Wellington and the original canning factory location in The Twilight Kill, so I’ve decided on a micro brewery instead. The brewouse hot block has everything I need.”
“That location’s also compromised,” I shot back. “Joe’s collaborating with the FBI.”
“He is?” She regarded me for a long moment. “Interesting.”
“They know all about The Twilight Kill and they won’t leave any stone unturned.”
Isla was still on, “He actually did it; he turned himself in to the FBI.”
“He turned his story in.”
“So, he’s currently in police custody.”
“Voluntary custody,” I said firmly. “The FBI will be crawling all over the Wellington area and anything that slightly resembles a factory.”
“I’m sure they will.”
“You may as well give up this sick and twisted game you’re playing.”
Isla laughed, shaking her head as she moved over to Jenna.
I wasn’t done convincing her, but I totally lost that train of thought when I realized she was removing the gag from Jenna’s mouth.
Jenna coughed hoarsely, then looked past Isla to me. “You shouldn’t have come after me.”
“I had to.”
“I know,” she said, so softly, so sadly, I teared up.
There wasn’t much more to say, not in front of Isla anyway. I didn’t eat much. The fries tasted like cardboard and the burger tasted like sawdust. It must have been a side-effect of the tranquilizer, because there was nothing wrong with my appetite. My stomach was hollowed from hunger, I just couldn’t get past the chewing and swallowing part.
“Tea?” Isla offered when she cleared the mess away.
I wet my bitter lips. “I don’t suppose you have coffee?”
> “Sorry, only herbal tea.”
“Then I guess tea’s fine,” I grumbled, and took back what I’d said about her not being a sucky hostess.
She was an all-round sucky person.
I glared at her regal profile as she lit the stove and put the kettle on. She moved with grace, exuded style. It was sickening that such a sophisticated package housed such a blackened soul.
Crooks and murderers should look like crooks and murderers.
“Why The Twilight Kill? Why Joe?” From the way she’d spoken about her Final Hour collection, she’d obviously been at it for a while. Maybe years. “Why now?”
“Retribution.”
I frowned at her. “Punishment?”
“Reward,” she said. “I’ve been doing this for a long time, with finesse and skill, and no one will ever know. My greatest achievement, The Final Hour, is a masterpiece that only a select few will ever be privy to.”
She bumped a hip against the counter, folding her arms as she observed me. “Joseph McMurphy penned some words and got lucky with those two murders at Hollow House within as many months. Publicity hounds his work.”
The kettle hissed and she shifted to set mugs out and make the tea. “With all that fame and acclaim, it seems only fair he reap the kind of reward I’d be due if I made such a big splash with every little murder.”
“You’re jealous,” I gasped. “He’s a bestselling author and no one knows your name. Is that what this is about? You want to ruin his next book so the publisher pulls it off the shelf?”
“You’re missing the point,” she said. “I want The Twilight Kill to be his greatest hit.”
My mind spun, trying to make sense of her motivations.
Jenna beat me to it. “You’re framing Joe.”
Of course. That had been Joe’s very first fear, that he would be the number one suspect.
“I must admit, he exceeded my expectations,” Isla said. “I thought I’d have to work my way through at least half of that dreary sob tale before he turned himself in and handed over the red-hot evidence.”
“That might have worked before you nabbed Jenna,” I told her.
“Don’t you know, a good percentage of crimes are committed by loved ones.” She slid me a sly look. “Who was the last person to see Jenna?”
Words That Kill (A Maddox Storm Mystery Book 3) Page 12
