Isadora laughed, mean and sharp edged. Chills bloomed up and down my arms. I’d never heard her sound like that. She stood not ten paces from me, her gun aimed at my head. Nausea wrapped around me and squeezed. Elvira’s sweet face flew across my mind, her wide eyes, the slackened line of her jaw when she’d died.
“Toss the rifle,” Isadora said to Whit.
He did without hesitation. Then he held out his hand and helped me to my feet. My knees shook as he brushed the pebbles from my hands.
“It will be all right,” he murmured.
“Step away from her,” Isadora demanded.
He did but only moved an arm’s length from me. If I wanted to, I could reach for him and hold on tight. But I kept my arms by my side, fear coating my tongue like acid.
“Why?” I asked, pushing the word out through my cracked lips. “Why turn against us?”
“She was never on our side, Inez,” Whit said in a cool, aloof voice.
Isadora studied me, the soft curves of her face at odds with the hatred steeped in her blue eyes. “I warned you once that you were too trusting, Inez. Too naive to see what had been in front of you all along.”
“Stop talking in riddles,” I said, my anger flaring. “And don’t be condescending to me.” My thoughts blurred as I struggled to undo the tangled knots in my mind. Isadora had set out to fool me. To make me believe we were family.
She took what I longed for the most and twisted it into something ugly.
“You’ve been helping Mamá all along. You have been trying to sabotage us from the beginning,” I said, realization dawning. “You led us straight to those men when we were in Cairo, didn’t you? You were going to let them kill me.”
Isadora remained stone-faced as the accusations piled up against her. I wanted her to defend herself, to tell me it wasn’t true. But she was coldly silent.
“You were the one who whistled in front of the bank,” Whit said bitterly.
Shame worked its way up my throat.
Whit had been trying to warn me all along. But I’d been swallowed up by the death of Elvira, and I had latched on to the one person I shouldn’t have. A venomous snake.
Foolish,foolishmistake.
“We couldn’t allow you to get too close,” Isadora said finally. “Not when we’ve worked so hard and have come so far to get Mamá away from him.”
“Away from who?” I demanded. “Basil Sterling?”
“It was her plan all along to double-cross him, to start her own black market,” Whit said. “You’ve been a part of this from the beginning.”
“Yes,” Isadora said. “She wanted a new life.”
“Why?” I demanded.
“Her old one was killing her, and she needed to be free. From the whole lot of you.”
It was as if she’d already pulled the trigger. I took a step back, hunching my shoulders, reeling from Isadora’s words. My mother had been so unhappy she had sought to destroy our life, mine and Papá’s. Actually, she had gone beyond destruction. She’d turned to murder. “Mamá hired those men in the alley to kill me,” I whispered, the horror of it making my eyes burn with hot tears.
If she had done that to me, than she would have had no compunction to do that to my father. It wasn’t until that moment that I really believed my mother had had him killed.
He was gone. Well and truly gone.
“Papa and I are herrealfamily. The one you’ve never been a part of,” she said. “Whit, if you take another step closer to her, I will pull the trigger. Do you understand me, you deplorable miscreant?”
Whit froze, scowling.
“Listen to me,” I said. “Mamá only cares about the money. Otherwise, why would she send you—”
“I sent myself!” Isadora snapped. “Mother has a weakness when it comes to you. It’s the only time I’ve seen her make stupid decisions.”
