If he was in the lane, it meant he’d already been on his way back here. But why? What had happened now?
On the roof, I sent back.
I’ll shout out when he’s contained.
Contained, not dead, I sent back.
A dead man can tell no tales, he replied. He had to be using voice command to reply, because while Mathi had many talents, running and texting wasn’t one of them.And we need him to be very verbose right now.
I can pixie him.
He’s likely protected against that. In building now, coming up.
And Eljin was now standing under the broken skylight. It opened fractionally, and I tensed. The skylight briefly lowered, then was hit again, this time with greater force. The wire slipped fractionally; it wouldn’t take too much more effort to break either it or the skylight.
He obviously knew I was up here, even though I hadn’t felt him slip into the building’s song. Although in truth, he probably didn’t need to, given how loudly it was vibrating with Mathi’s presence. If I didn’t know better, I would have said she was urging him on.
But why was Eljin so determined to open the skylight? For all Mathi knew, I’d given Eljin permission to be in my loft. Was it confirmation that Carla had won her boss over and they now wanted to be rid of me? Or had she gone against his orders, and told Eljin to come here and deal with me?
Or was he here for an entirely different reason altogether?
I’d theorized—even hoped, if only because it meant that my judgement of men had at least improved a little over the years—that he’d been working under the influence of Carla and the blade. But if he was here without her knowledge or orders, then that hope was well and truly stomped on.
A third blow hit the skylight, and it crashed open, making a godawful noise in the process. The upper half of his body appeared, his shoulder muscles straining the limitations of his shirt as he hauled himself up onto the roof. Any second now, he would turn and see me; I had no idea what he intended and no desire to find out. The urge to run was fierce, the urge to grab him with the wind and fling him far, far away was even fiercer, but I resisted both and called to a knife instead. As he turned toward me, I flipped the knife over and hit him hard. The knife’s sharp blade caused me no damage, but the hilt hit with a satisfying thud. He slumped back, and an audible grunt rose from below. Mathi had obviously caught him before he could hit the floor.
The inner bitch couldn’t help but whisper,Shame, that.
“You got anything around here to bind the bastard with?” Mathi asked.
“Only the wire attached to the skylight.”
“That’ll do.”
I slid carefully down, unwound the wire from both nails, then checked both Mathi and Eljin were clear before dropping through the skylight. After pulling it closed, I sliced the wire away from the latch and walked down to Mathi, who now stood midway down the room. Eljin lay face down at his feet.
“Thanks for the rescue.” I handed him the wire. “But how come you were already on your way back?”
“Got a message from Dawson. The woman Eljin met was not his sister.”
The anger that swept through me was so fierce, lightning rolled down the knife’s blade and struck angrily at the unconscious man. I pulled it back quickly enough that it didn’t physically touch him, but the anger remained within, a festering darkness that wanted satisfaction.
I stuck the knife back into my purse and rubbed my arms. “Then who is she? Do we think it was Carla in disguise?”
“It wasn’t Carla. Her name is Camille Allard, and she’s married to one René Allard. They have no children, and she’s definitely not a decorator.”
I stared at him for a second, not quite understanding. “Where does Eljin fit in, then? Are they having an affair?”
Amusement stirred through his expression. “Is tea or chocolate deprivation affecting your thought processes right now? Eljin here is René.”
“But—” I waved a hand. “How? Even if he did usurp the identity of the Eljin in that article, the age difference is vast. How the hell could he have gotten around that?”
“Dawson’s still digging, but it’s easy enough to alter records if you have the money and the right forgery contacts.”
“Speaking from experience, are we?”
“Not personal experience, no.”
He roughly pulled Eljin’s—I really couldn’t think of him as René right now—arms behind his back, and quickly bound his thumbs together. When that was done, he rolled him onto his side, bent him in the middle, and used the remaining length of wire to bind his thumbs to his ankles. Eljin wasn’t going anywhere without our help.
