Chapter 25
Shane
“She went away with him? Cass? With Halliwell?” Reggie’s voice rose in a horrified squeak.
She sat straight up in bed, eyes wide. Still pale, but much better than she’d been even just an hour before.
“Then why are you here? Aren’t you going to go after her?
Save her? Why are you wasting time here talking to me? ”
I rubbed my face, trying and discarding several different ways of saying it, then realizing that there was no good way.
“It didn’t look like she was abducted,” I said reluctantly.
“It happened right after the worm took over our computer system. Seconds after that, she walked out of the hospital with him, apparently unforced, making not a peep to anybody she saw or walked past. She got in a car with him and drove away. No one hit her over the head or stuffed her into a trunk.”
“Of course not! He forced her! Because he told her that if she didn’t, he’d make me sick again!” Reggie said sharply. “It’s so obvious! Can’t you see it?”
“But how could he do that?” I asked. “There isn’t anything in your body that can explain your symptoms. No one has touched you since we got you from the clinic.”
“If we knew how it worked, none of this would be happening!” Reggie wailed.
I shook my head. “Honey, I’m so sorry. I don’t know what to think—”
“I know exactly what you should think, and what you should do! Right now! You should save her! She saved you, right? She was really brave! She put herself way out there for you! It’s only fair! So go do it, quick!”
“I’m not sure it’s that simple anymore,” I said.
The energy faded from Reggie’s face. It went stiff and deathly pale. “Ah. I see. So you think that Cass was playing a horrible trick on you guys,” she said. “And me getting sick is all part of this trick? So she played it on me, too? That’s actually what you think about her?”
Holy shit, the kid was as sharp as a new razor blade. “Reggie, I don’t know—”
“She didn’t.” Reggie’s voice was haughty.
“I know you won’t believe me, because I’m her sister, and because I’m just a kid, but it’s true.
I know her. You don’t, not really. You think she’s doing this for money.
But Cass doesn’t care about money. She has plenty, because she’s so good at what she does, but she doesn’t care about it.
She doesn’t care about fancy clothes or cars or yachts, or any of that stuff. ”
“I know that,” I tried again. “But I—”
“You actually think that she let him make me sick, and then dumped me.”
“Reggie, I didn’t mean—”
“So I guess I’m, what, like, homeless, now? Once the hospital discharges me, I’ll be out on the street, sleeping under a bridge, right?”
I recoiled at that. “Hell, no!” I said. “You will not be homeless!”
“But I’ll probably go into the system, then, right? I saw this TV show about foster kids. They carried their stuff around from foster home to foster home in a garbage bag. I guess that’ll be me. Except I don’t have anything to put into my garbage bag.”
Holly burst in. “No, you will not!” she announced. “You’ll stay with us!”
Reggie gave her a sad smile. “You’re just a kid, Holly. You keep forgetting. It’s not up to you. I’m not his responsibility. Definitely not if he thinks that Cass is bad.”
“I didn’t say that,” I objected.
“Well, I know that she’s not,” Holly said forcefully. “I know it, and you know it.” She turned to me. “So? Is she going to be a foster kid? It’s up to you, right?”
Fuck. I was not up to a parenting challenge this emotionally fraught right now.
“Holly, now is not the time to discuss this,” I said. “Reggie is staying right where she is until she is better. And we are not having this conversation.”
“That’s no kind of answer,” she told me.
“It’s the only one you’ll get right now. Unless you want to be driven home.”
Holly’s tightly pressed mouth quivered. Her eyes were filled with angry tears. “You turned mean while you were gone,” she said. “You didn’t used to be mean.”
“Home it is,” I said, pulling out my phone. “Remy will drive you back to the—”
And the phone rang, right in my hand. It startled me so much it leaped up off my hand like a wild thing. I grabbed it out of mid-air, fumbling, almost dropping it. Holly was right next to me, close enough to see what was on the display.
Red. We exchanged shocked glances. Holly turned to Reggie, before I could stop her, or signal her, or muzzle her. “It’s Cass.” Holly’s voice was hushed.
The ringing stopped. A text message notice appeared. I clicked on it. No text, just an attachment. A video attachment.
This could not be good. In fact, this was almost certainly very, very bad.
“Well?” Holly said. “Aren’t you going to look at it?”
We stared each other down. “Not with you breathing down my neck,” I said.
Reggie made a shooing gesture. “Go look at it. Then come back and show us.”
Like hell I would, I thought as I strode out of the room.
It occurred to me that I kept on expecting Holly and also Reggie to be the ten-year-olds that they would have been if their lives had not exploded. Both girls had suffered traumatic loss, terror, violence. They were enmeshed in this whole terrible business, all the way up to their necks.
They weren’t normal ten-year-olds anymore. The rules about what was appropriate for children didn’t apply to them. I would have protected them if I could, but it was too late for that. I couldn’t be anything but brutally real with those two.
They’d see right through anything less.
I went into the corridor, staring at the phone in my hand as if it might blow up in my face. Ethan, Frey and Jed saw my face. They were on me in a hot second.
That was the downside of having a family who cared about your business. They were all up in your face and all over your shit. All of the fucking time.
“What’s going on?” Ethan said. “What’s with the phone?”
“Text message,” I said. “From Cass. A video.”
Freya gripped my shoulder. “Well?” she said. “Halliwell has already done his worst. He just wants to taunt us now. Let’s see it.”
I nodded. My voice wasn’t working, but who cared. There was nothing more to be said. I pulled up the video and set it to play.
There he was, that smirking son of a bitch.
He was perched on the edge of a huge desk in a luxury office.
Floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the Pacific.
Next to him was Red. She wore a tight, high-necked, clinging black sweater dress with flouncy lace sleeves, and her hair flowed down around her, smooth and glossy and perfect.
She, too, was smiling. That same cold, empty smile that I’d seen on the security camera.
“Hello, Shane.” Halliwell nudged Red. “Go on, my dear. Aren’t you going to greet your former flame? Where are your manners, Cassandra?”
She waved, flirtatiously. “Hello,” she said archly. “It’s been real.”
“So by now, you’ve figured out my plan, right?” His voice was jovial. “Let me introduce you to the woman of many faces… my beautiful and gifted daughter, who is now my sole heir, Cassandra Halliwell. The new CEO of Halliwell Enterprises.”
“Fuck me,” Jed muttered.
“Holy shit,” Ethan said.
Frey’s fingers tightened on my shoulders as she shushed them.
“… sorry to have inconvenienced poor little Regina in the process, very stressful for poor Cassandra. But it was a necessary evil, to inflame all your tender sentiments. Since you have such a pretty little one of your own. You really were primed to be manipulated. All of you.”
“Fuck you,” I burst out. “Asshole.”
“Shhh.” Frey’s nails now dug into my shoulder hard enough to break the skin.
“… see the family resemblance now, right? I bet you’re kicking yourself that you didn’t see it sooner, hmm?
But one sees what one expects to see. I just wanted to thank you formally for your spectacular collaboration, both in the past, and going forward.
” He lifted a bottle of champagne. Red held up two cups, which he filled.
He took one, they lifted the glasses, clinked them as the video ended.
I stared at the still video image of the champagne glasses touching, as the ground fell away beneath my feet into a yawning black maw.