“I was wondering how long the sedative would keep you asleep.”
Sky gasped and her head turned toward the voice to find Rosemary Symes. The older woman was holding a large container, pouring its contents on the trees and bushes nearby.
“I didn’t want to give you too much,” Rosemary continued. “Because I want you to be awake for this.”
It all came back to her at once. The van. The dart in her stomach. The strange-looking gun.
“It’s you.” Her voice was breathless, but she wasn’t sure if that was the drugs still in her system or the disbelief that this seventy-year-old woman was the person who’d been tormenting her. “You’ve been trying to kill me?”
“Not very successfully, it would seem, because here you are. This, though…thisis something you can’t run from. Well, you can. You just won’t make it. And that boyfriend of yours can’t save you this time.”
A dog barked. Sky turned her head. She couldn’t see the front of the van, but the back door was wide open. Had Rosemary just rolled her out? Was Bella still in the front?
Her vision started to blur again, but she blinked, forcing herself to focus on Rosemary. “Why?”
She smelled gasoline. Was that what Rosemary was pouring from the container?
“Because, Sky, Eloise was my grandchild. But she was really like a daughter to me. I had my own daughter young and made a lot of mistakes. And because of that, she couldn’t care less about me. But Eloise…she was my whole world, and I loved her.” She turned to look at Sky, tears in her eyes. “And because ofyou, she’s dead.”
“I didn’t start that café fire, Rosemary.”
“No. But you were supposed to be there. Not her. We were together when you called her,beggedher to take your shift.”
Sky tried to push up, but her head spun and she fell back down.
“I think about her every day.” Rosemary stopped pouring the gasoline to swipe a tear from her cheek. “About how scared she must have been stuck in that room, with flames all around her. You changed your destiny that day. But I’m making things right. You’ll feel the same fear and the same pain that my poor Eloise did. The sedative still in your system will make sure you’re too slow to outrun this.”
“Don’t do this…please!”
“I have to. I’m seventy years old. I can’t do much to make up for not protecting her that day, but avenging her death…that’s something Icando.”
Jesus. Sky was living a nightmare she couldn’t wake up from. “You really think Eloise would want this? She wouldn’t. I may not have known her for long but—”
Rosemary swung around. “No! Youdidn’tknow her for long. So you were probably glad that this almost-stranger died in your place, while I lost the only person I had left worth living for! No…I’m sorry, Sky.” The older woman’s chest rose and fell, as if she was trying to pull herself together. “I really am sorry. I actually started to like you. But it has to end like this.”
Rosemary moved back to the van and set the container inside. She closed the doors and pulled something from her pocket.
Sky’s breath caught…matches.
This time when she pushed up, she refused to let her body fall again. That’s when she noticed that it wasn’t just her wrist that were bound, it was her ankles too. “Rosemary—”
“There’s nothing you can say that will change your fate, dear. What’s happening to you now is simply you meeting the destiny that was always meant to be yours.” She lit a match and threw it at a nearby tree.
Bright flames danced in front of her vision, making the air in Sky’s lungs stick so completely that she couldn’t breathe. She tried to rise to her feet, but her legs wouldn’t support her.
No…this couldn’t be happening.
Rosemary turned to look at her. “I guess, in a few years, I’ll see you on the other side.”
“Rosemary, please!”
But the old woman ignored her. There was no anger in her movements, just resigned sadness.
A door clicked open.
Suddenly, Rosemary gasped. “Bella, no, get back here!”
Half a second later, Bella was beside Sky, licking her face and whimpering.
