The door creaks open.
Chapter 9
ALICE
Joseph lies crumpled on the floor between Kodiak’s legs. His face purple, lips parted in a frozen gasp. Kodiak lies behind him, sweat pouring down his face, his chest rising and falling with ragged breaths. The chain in his hand is taut, looped once around Joseph’s neck like a collar.
I stagger back, frozen in the frame of the doorway. My whole body goes weightless, as if gravity itself has released me into space.
Kodiak unwraps the chain and lets it drop. It hits the floor with a final, metallic clatter.
I can’t breathe.
Joseph—gone.
This is my doing. I tricked him.
What had I thought would happen?
God forgive me.
“Alice.”
The voice snaps my focus to him.
“You hear me?”
I manage a faint nod.
“Good.” He jerks his chin toward Joseph’s body. “Where’s the key?”
My stomach lurches. “I?—”
“No time for panic,” he says, voice calm but firm. “They’ll be missin’ him soon enough. You want me out of these chains; where’s the key?”
The key.Joseph had the key. The man who ruled my life, reduced now to nothing but weight and flesh.
My fingers curl in my skirts.
How could I?
I lied. Led my husband to his death.
Surely there was another way. A path to freedom that would have spared my mortal soul.
“Alice,” Kodiak says again, softer this time, but no less urgent. “Where is the key?”
My breath comes shallow, ragged. Joseph had the key. Now he’s murdered, his waistcoat twisted askew.
My husband.
My stomach heaves. I press a hand to my mouth, swaying where I stand. I hadn’t been ready for this, hadn’t imagined it would be like this. Not tonight. Not so soon.
“I-I can’t,” I stammer. My pulse thunders in my ears.
Kodiak’s voice cuts through the rising whirl of my panic. “Yes, you can.” Easy. Solid. Grounded as a fencepost.
“You don’t understand.”
