Chloe was good; she might well be pretending, or...
Only halfway paralyzed?
One way or the other, he needed to let her know that he was there, that others were behind him. First, however, he had to inch forward; he needed to see.
Who was creating this horror.
And who was a victim.
Still... Chloe had to know. Had to know that he was there.
And that someone might well die that day, but it sure as hell wasn’t going to be her!
“As you wish!” he whispered softly. “As you wish!”
Seventeen
Chloe could see everything that was happening.
She could hear every little bit of noise around her.
She could smell day-old food, the chemicals in the air-conditioning and almost taste every little nuance of the air.
She could even feel the floor beneath her.
Her senses were vibrantly alive.
What she couldn’t do wasmove. Every step of the way, she had felt more and more as if she was turning to stone. She hadn’t thought that she’d been hit hard enough for much of anything to get into her system!
And yet, she had come along. She had come along because of the blade of the knife that was positioned right between Edward Thompson’s ribs by his heart. And she had come along because...
While there was breath, there was hope.
Of course, they had long suspected that more than one person had to be involved for the deaths to occur in more thanone place, and in the end, to more than one or two people at a time.
But all the while they’d investigated, she hadn’t seen this combo clearly. Perhaps she should have. She’d imagined things the other way, perhaps. Daniel McClintock and Jeff Henderson working together, the two men who were lower on their individual totem poles, resentful, determined to take control.
But no...
There they had been playing bocce ball when she had suddenly seen Daniel and Broderick get into an argument, then the two walk away and Daniel sink down into one of the lounges, looking away from his brother.
Meantime, she’d heard Gina let out an “Ouch!” The woman thought that she’d been bitten by a flying bug.
And as Daniel sank into the chair and Gina gasped, Chloe had heard Edward let out a strangled sound as well and she looked over to see that Sally was white as a sheet. Broderick was next to Edward, standing as if he just had an arm around the man, but...
His other hand was on the man’s chest, the knife all but hidden by the fall of Edward’s casual jacket.
She’d seen Jeff’s look of stunned horror as he stared at his wife and heard her warning to him that he could die if he didn’t shut the hell up as she jabbed something into his arm.
Her 3D-printed gun was in her bag, on one of the chairs. With the right manipulation, she might have gotten to it. And she had. Of course, Broderick had stared at her and warned that she’d be the one to kill Edward if she didn’t go along with what they were doing. She’d felt Celia Henderson behind her and she thought that she’d twisted enough to avoid the full thrust of the needle into her arm.
She’d heard Broderick whispering to Celia, letting herknow that Amelia was ahead of them; she’d called. She’d taken care of the doctor and George and even the guard who had come in to help when she’d called out in distress.
Doctor Kilbride had been left behind, but she’d coerced George and the security guard down with her.
They were flat out on the ground, just as Gina, Sally, Edward and Jeff were—right along with her, right in the place where they separated waste before either recycling it or sending it out into the sea.
But Wes would know! He had gone to the hospital, she knew. He had gone to check on George and Amelia.
