Unceremoniously, Kelly dumped her on the floor. The second thump to her head brought back the swimming feeling, and she closed her eyes, breathing deeply through her nose. She desperately wanted to call out, to make sure Kendall was safe, but she held her tongue. If Kendall hadn’t escaped, she didn’t want to alert Kelly to her presence. If she had, she didn’t want Kelly to know help was likely on the way.
“Think about your choices, Helia. I’ll be right back.”
She opened her eyes wide enough to see Kelly’s Chuck Taylors disappear out her door. “You didn’t need to tie me up!” she called, wanting to alert Kendall in case she stayed in the house.
No reply came, and her stomach revolted again as the echo of Kelly’s steps treading down the stairs brought her closer to Kendall. Potentially. Helia closed her eyes again and forced herself to picture Kendall running back to the main building, safe and able to tell Collin he was needed at the water tower.
She listened as Kelly paced the rooms below, opening cabinet doors and the half bath, her heart skipping several beats with each sound.
She didn’t exactly feel a wave of relief when Kelly’s footsteps climbed back to the second floor, but she did breathe easier knowing Kendall was safe.
“I’m sorry your boyfriend’s overbearing,” she said, walking back into the room. Helia eyed her as she grabbed a chair, spun it around, and straddled it, the gun hanging loosely in her hand now. “That’s a red flag, don’t you think?”
Helia blinked at the absurdity of the comment. “I think it’s safe to say I suck at spotting red flags. After all, I didn’t realize you were a murderous bitch. Sure, I thought you were cringingly crass when it came to men, but that’s a far cry from a drug-dealing murderer.”
To her surprise, Kelly smiled. “You figured it out? I thought so. That’s why we’re here. Or rather, why I’m here. When you got mistaken for me and that bitch Trish shot you with the dart, I knew your man wouldn’t let it go. Same as I knew that dart was meant for me and that it was time I hightailed it out of town.”
“Doesn’t explain why you’re here,” Helia muttered.
“Sure it does. Trish wasn’t the first person to mistake you for me. When Kurt was killed, I knew the shit was hitting the fan, and I came looking for your passport. I decided to hide out hereafter Trish tagged you with the dart, thinking it was me. Haven’t found your passport yet.”
Helia took a deep breath, then inched her way into a sitting position. A lopsided one with her back against the foot of her bed, but a sitting position, nonetheless.
“You’re going to pretend to be me and what? You won’t get away with it for long. People will notice I’m gone.”
“Not if you’re dead. And I don’t need it to last long. Just long enough to make it to Mexico.”
“Dead?” The thought of being one of Kelly’s victims had a way of holding all her attention and the word came out little more than a croak.
Kelly shrugged. “You’ll die in a fire here. No one will think to cancel your Social Security or passport or any of those other things, and I’ll have plenty of time to drive south and cross the border.”
Helia drew in a deep breath. It seemed the only thing she was capable of at the moment. At least she knew Kelly’s plan. What the hell she’d do with that information, she didn’t know.
“Why Roger?” she asked, mostly to kill time. She needed to calm her brain and give Kendall a chance to reach Collin, assuming she managed to slip out. Helia refused to think otherwise.
Kelly shrugged. “Tell me where your passport is.”
“I’ll tell you when you tell me.” Even to her own ears, she sounded like a petulant eight-year-old, but she didn’t have much to lose. She tested her restraints, too. She didn’t hold out much hope of slipping free, and if she did, she didn’t stand much of a chance against a gun, but she had to try. If only for her own dignity. Unfortunately, knot tying was one more skill Kelly had, and her hands barely moved.
“Or you could tell me,” Kelly replied, pointing the gun at her.
Helia swallowed, her vision focused on the tiny black hole staring at her. “If I’m dead, you’ll never find my passport.”
Helia counted to six, then Kelly sighed and lowered the gun. “He was getting reckless. Saying things to people he shouldn’t say. Putting the whole operation at risk. He had early-stage dementia, did you know that?” Helia shook her head. “We just hurried it along.”
Helia had never heard of hurrying dementia along. “How the hell did you do that?”
Kelly smiled, not hiding her vicious glee. “Bovine spongiform encephalopathy.”
“Huh?” She couldn’t muster more than that. Then her memory clicked in. “Mad cow disease?”
Kelly nodded. “Nasty thing that. Humans don’t actually get it, but if they ingest infected meat, it causes another disorder. One with a long name that isn’t relevant. It’s a protein, prion, disorder, so doesn’t show up in a standard tox screen.”
“You infected him with mad cow disease?”
“Seemed fitting. It causes a lot of the same symptoms as dementia before the body finally succumbs to it. To the world, he was just an older man experiencing a very common older-person disease.”
Helia would never admit it, but it was clever. It likely wouldn’t work on a younger person, but someone like Roger? No one would question a dementia diagnosis or a rapid progression of the disease. “How?” she asked.
