She nods slightly.
“Don’t leave Kat’s room until I call for you,” I murmur to Belinda.
Belinda nods, pale and wide-eyed, and leads the child away. I take to the stairs.
When I reach Martin, his beautiful eyes are open and his breathing shallow. Blood has bloomed at his nose and mouth. I crouch to look at him.
Martin is moving his lips slightly, but no words come. I think perhaps his jaw is broken. Half of me hopes he is dying; the other half knows our situation will be that much more difficult if he is. And yet the question on my mind as I bend to look at him isn’t what I shall do if he dies.
“Why in God’s name did you marry me?” I whisper to him. “I have no money. I wasn’t like Annabeth or Candace or Belinda. Why did you marry me?”
The moving lips produce no answer.
“Why did you take Kat from her mother? Why did you tell her Candace was dead? Why didn’t you just leave the child when you left Los Angeles? You don’t love her! You don’t love anyone.”
But he just stares back at me as though surely now that I know everything else, I know the answers to these questions. But I don’t.
I glance over at our travel cases. The documents. The gold. I need a different plan. And I need to get Kat out of this house without her seeing Martin lying here like this.
I grab Martin under his arms and drag him across the foyer and into the kitchen to get him out of sight. He moans, but hecan hardly open his mouth. I stop at the far end of the kitchen, and I deposit Martin in the corner by the butler’s table. He groans softly. Dawn is just beginning to peel back the night. A pale moon peeks at me through the window glass above the table, its pearly light already fading. I stand with my hands on my hips to catch my breath and look down on Martin, who is gazing up at me in surprise. He can hardly believe he is not the one in charge of this moment, that I am. I can see the amazement in his eyes.
“This is not the way I had planned it,” I say. “You weren’t supposed to be here right now.”
He says nothing.
“I need to take Kat to her mother,” I continue. “And I need to get Belinda home. ’Tis pretty simple, the way I see it. If luck is on your side, you’ll find a way out of this house after we leave. If it’s on my side, you’ll still be here when I get back. And if you should die before I return I will have kept my promise to Kat. I will have sent you on your way. Straight to hell.”
“Don’t,” he whispers.
“What? Don’t leave you? After all that you’ve done, you think you deserve my help? You killed Annabeth Bigelow, didn’t you? I’m not afraid to leave you here like this, Martin. I’m not. Not after what you’ve done.”
I kneel down to close the distance between us so that I can whisper something I didn’t think I would ever say to him, not even in the beginning when I thought a time would come when Martin and I might at least be friends. “You don’t even know why I’m not afraid to leave you like this, do you?”
“I... know... ,” he murmurs.
Only the slimmest sliver of doubt pierces me. “No, you don’t.”
He tries to spit. Red foam forms at of the corner of his mouth. “I... know,” he says in a gasping whisper. “You’re running.”
I stare down at him.
He returns the stare, daring me to prove he’s mistaken. But I do not speak of my secrets. To anyone. Not even to myself.
Besides. I owe Martin nothing. Nothing. What I owe is an easy exit out of this house for Kat.
“You should have left when you had the chance.” I stand and turn to the sink. I wet a cloth to wipe up the bloodstain at the bottom of the stairs, my mind spinning. I don’t know what I will do with his body if he’s dead when I get back. And if Martin is still alive when I return? I look down at him. He is staring up at me and struggling feebly to rise. If he’s alive when I come back, perhaps he and I can strike a deal in exchange for my summoning a doctor.
But, no. I don’t think Martin is the kind to strike a deal.
It is all too much to consider at once, and I whisper aloud what I told Belinda last night when she was asking too many questions. I’ve whispered it to myself before. I only need to get through this day. Just this one.
As I wring out the cloth I must push away the image of finding Martin’s corpse when I return. A shudder runs through me as I attempt to shake off that repulsive thought. The trembling strangely intensifies, and it’s as if the very house is quivering at what might await me when I come back to this house.
But then the floor beneath me begins to tremble, and then heave, and then a deafening roar like a gale over the ocean fills my ears. For one lone second I think the earth is going to open up beneath me and swallow Martin whole to save me the troubleof having to do it later, but in the next second I know it is not just for me the world is shaking.
It’s an earthquake, and not just a gentle rocking akin to what I’ve experienced a few times before. This is like a beast, huge and loud and monstrous, awakening enraged from slumber. The house rumbles angrily and I suddenly remember Kat is on the second floor.
I pitch forward on unsteady feet and run sideways, careering into walls as I stagger away from Martin and out of the kitchen.
