A Rush to Violence (31 page)

But she didn’t.

Keep arguing
, Beth thought.

She turned on the phone, saw that she had four bars and quickly dialed her father’s number at home. No answer. She tried his cell. Nothing. Was he carrying his satellite? It made sense, but she couldn’t remember the number.

“Mom,” she whispered.

Silence.

“Mom.”

Footsteps started across the floor. They moved toward her with hesitation. Then, in the dark, her mother’s concerned face bloomed in the gloaming.

“What are you doing over here?” she whispered. “Why didn’t you listen to me.”

Beth held up the man’s cell and turned it on, which illuminated a portion of the room and shined against her mother’s face. “He had a cell. We never patted him down. I’ve called Dad at home and on his cell, but he’s not answering.”

A fly buzzed between them, soaring toward its meal.

“Satellite,” Gloria said. She gave her the number as the voices above them escalated. Now, they could hear pieces of the conversation. The woman was angry. “Why did you choose here?” she said. “You know there were other options. A dozen of them. Why bring them here? Why
my
home? You’ve set me up and you know it.”

“Call,” Gloria said.

Beth called. Her father answered on the second ring. Just hearing his voice was enough to make her well up. His voice offered everything she felt they no longer had—hope.

“Spellman,” he said.

“Dad, it’s Beth.”

“Beth?” The surprise in his voice was as clear as his concern. “Where are you?”

Her words tumbled out in a rush. “I don’t know. We’re in trouble. Uncle Brian’s been shot. We’ve killed two of their men. They’re arguing upstairs. We’re in a basement. I don’t—”

“Do you think you’re anywhere near Ninety-Third Street?”

“I don’t know. None of us knows where we are.”

“Who has you?”

“An older man is leading it, but there are other men. Younger men. Five or six of them. Maybe more. And a woman arrived a few minutes ago. They’re upstairs arguing right now. She just said they set her up. She’s really angry.”

“Have you heard names?”

“Just hers,” Beth said. “He called her ‘Pamela’.”

“Beth, I need you to listen to me.”

But before he could say anything more, the basement door swung open and the woman’s voice called down the stairs. “We’re moving you,” she said. “We know you have guns, but we have a hell of a lot more and I guarantee you that we’re more skilled than you are. You might get lucky and shoot one or two of us, but if you do, we will kill all of you, starting with the children. I promise you that. I suggest you throw your guns at the bottom of the staircase now, surrender yourselves and come with us.”

Silence.

“I’m not hearing anything,” the woman said. “Do you want tear gas? Because we’ll use it. Toss your guns into a pile now. You’ve got five minutes to figure out your fate or we use the gas.”

She heard the woman step away from the door and shout for someone to bring her her phone.

“Dad,” Beth said.

“I heard her. She said you have guns. How many?”

“Three guns, a knife and a rifle. But they have tear gas and they’re threatening to use it. If they do, we’ll have no chance. We both know that.”

“You have to hold them off. I think we know where you are. We’re on our way, but it’s going to take more than five minutes to get there.”

“What do we do?”

“Think of something.”

“I’ve already made a mess of things, Dad. I went too far.”

“Then fix it,” he said.

Her voice became thick. “You don’t know what I’ve done.”

“Right now, it doesn’t matter what you’ve done.”

“You’re wrong. It does matter. I’ve killed someone. I might have killed Uncle Brian. I’ve put everyone at risk.”

He didn’t skip a beat and she loved him for it. “You’ve always been smart,” he said. “Find some way to distract them. Stall them. If anyone can do this, it’s you. I believe in you, Beth. Just find some way to put them off. We’re almost there. I need ten minutes.”

And with that said, Beth Spellman took a breath, severed the connection and knew exactly what she had to do.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

With her gun aimed at her four aunts and uncles, who were standing across from her in a tight line that bristled with anger and hate, Emma Miller settled her gaze on Grace, who was standing at her left.

“Grace, when did Michael say he was coming?”

“He didn’t. But you heard me when I spoke to him. I told him it was urgent. I told him to come now.”

“Urgent just ended. Use the phone beside you, call his cell and ask him where he is.”

“It’s not going to get him here any faster, Emma. You know Michael as well as you know the rest of us, which means you don’t know him at all. He does things on his own time. He hurries for no one.”

Over the years, she’d heard that more than once from her mother and grandfather. Michael Miller was the playboy of the set. He could be anywhere at this time of night. If he was drinking or with a woman, he wouldn’t beat tracks to get here because he knew the rest of them would do what he didn’t want to do—deal with his brother’s death. Worse, Emma knew Michael had never been close to Scott. His death wouldn’t carry the same weight as it did with the others. He was just arrogant enough to let them deal with it themselves and make excuses for his absence in the morning.

Still, she needed to at least try to get him here.

“I need you to make that call, Grace.”

“Fine.” She made it, but there was no answer. Grace held out the receiver as the phone rang and then cocked her head at Emma as it clicked into voice-mail. “This is Michael. Leave a message.”

She put down the receiver.

“He might not come,” Grace said. “Have you considered that? Because that’s who Michael is.”

“I’ve considered killing you for killing Papa, Grace.”

Exasperated, Grace held out her hands. “What evidence do you have?”

“Logic.”

“What do you know about logic?” Sophia said. “What are you? Fifteen?”

“Sixteen.”

“Exactly.”

“Sixteen, and I know when I’m being lied to. So, let me ask you directly, Sophia. Did you kill Papa? Did you do it to get your share of his money? You didn’t know how his will was structured. I think you probably thought by killing me and my mother, you had a shot at sharing it with everyone, which is a hell of a lot better than what you got, which is nothing.”

“You’re being ridiculous.”

“And you’re not answering the question, Sophia. Did you kill Papa?”

“We’re not the murderers, Emma. Your mother was. She murdered people for years. She took money for it.”

“I know all about it. She told me so herself.”

“I doubt she told you everything. Do you know what she did to those children in Rotterdam? How she burned them alive?”

“She doesn’t have a clue,” Laura said.

“Actually, she does,” Grace said. “I told her about it earlier, when she was making me mop up Scott’s blood. I watched her look it up on the Internet. She knows about it, but she doesn’t believe it because she didn’t know her mother when she was a monster.”

“Then she’s deluded,” Laura said. She turned to Emma. “If anyone in this family is a murderer, it’s you and your mother, not us, girl.”

“My mother did nothing in Rotterdam,” Emma said.

“That’s where you’re wrong,” Tyler said. “She killed those orphans. The family knew about it. For whatever reason, our father accepted it, which still mystifies me. But that’s our father for you—right behind his beloved Camille to the horrifying end. As for our mother, she was repelled by it. Sickened by it, as were the rest of us. Regardless of how much that man deserved to die—and we all believe he deserved to die given what he did to those children—tell me why they had to suffer the same fate? Tell me why they were burned alive and not given a chance?” He pointed a finger at her. “Come on. Tell me.”

She wouldn’t let them in. For them, this was a game. Her mother left her old life behind the moment she knew she had new life growing within her. Willem Lassooy fit the profile of someone her mother would have targeted, but she never would have put those children’s lives at risk. To her bone, Emma knew that was true. To her bone, she knew that’s what her grandfather knew.

Let them believe what they want to believe.

“You still haven’t answered my question, Sophia. Did you kill Papa?”

“Of course not, you stupid fool.” But her eyes flicked up and to the right when she said the word “not.”

“And you, Tyler? Did you have a hand in Papa’s death?”

“I didn’t,” he said.

It was a simple statement. He held her gaze for a moment, then glanced down and back up at her again. She felt he was telling her the truth. She turned to Laura and was about to ask her about her involvement when someone’s cell phone started to ring. Startled, Sophia looked down at her purse. It was hers.

“Take it out,” Emma said, turning the gun on her. “Slowly. It could be Michael. Or somebody else. I want to see who’s calling you.”

Sophia snapped open her small purse. She dipped her hand inside and removed the ringing phone. She glanced down at the screen and saw who was calling. Her mouth became a tight line.

“Who is it?” Emma said.

“A friend of mine.”

The laser’s red beam slashed the distance between them and stopped in the middle of Sophia’s forehead. “Turn the phone around. Hurry before it stops ringing.”

Sophia turned it around.

Emma moved forward and read the name. It was familiar to her. Why did she know that name?

“Who is Pamela Decker?” she said. “I know that name. Why?”

The phone stopped ringing. Sophia said nothing. But Tyler turned to her in surprise. “Why would she be calling you?”

The phone bleeped, which signaled that a message was left.

“Pamela and I have been friends for a while.”

“You’re friends with our father’s mistress? Since when?”

Emma watched the group, felt the chemistry shift. Grace and Laura turned to Sophia, but Emma couldn’t tell by their expressions if they were unnerved by the phone call or simply surprised by who had called. Either way, they were on edge.

“She reached out to me once. We met. I liked her. It’s not an issue.”

And then Emma remembered. “Pamela Decker was listed as one of the beneficiaries in Papa’s will. She’s the one who was there that day for the reading. The one in the red dress who my mother said looked like a whore. She was the last person Papa listed in his will. I remember wondering who she was, but my mother said she didn’t know.”

“So, she lied to you again?” Sophia said. “Because she did know. I can promise you that, Emma.”

“Play the message,” Emma said.

“I also want to hear it,” Tyler said.

Sophia turned to him. “You think you’re clever, but you’re not going to hang me,” she said. “I see what you’re doing, Tyler, and you’re not doing it well. So drop the act.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You know what I’m talking about.”

“Play the message,” Emma said. “Now.”

Sophia turned the phone around and found the message.

“Put it on speaker,” Emma said. The gun didn’t waiver in her hand. She felt confident and held it firm, even though the laser’s beam, trapped within the area of Sophia’s petite forehead, looked like a zigzagging dot bouncing against invisible walls.

Sophia did what she was told and the message started to play.

“Sophia, it’s Pamela. I understand you instructed Philip to have Spellman’s family kept at my house. If that’s the case, you were trying to set me up and I’m here to tell you that you failed. If it’s not the case, then Philip tried and he failed. In any case, I’ll find out if it was you, if it was him, if it was both of you or if it was somebody else. I won’t be anyone’s scapegoat. We all made a deal to do this together—”

The Lalique apple, red as Laura’s lipstick, as hard as her heart and as heavy as a baseball, flew out of Grace Miller’s hand too late for Emma to register what was shooting her way. She must have reached for it on the table beside when she wasn’t watching. It came so fast and struck her so hard in the chest, she heard her bones breaking in spite of the sound of the gun going off. Before she blacked out, she caught a glimpse of crimson burst through the back of Sophia Miller’s head, heard screams of horror as she and Sophia collapsed to the floor, and then there was nothing but silence as she tumbled into the murky tunnel of her own unconsciousness.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

In the basement, Beth turned to the window and looked up at it. It was slightly out of reach. Meanwhile, above her, there was more movement than ever. She could hear the woman telling everyone to “get their shit together and get the hell out.”

“What are you doing?” Gloria whispered behind her.

“Following her orders. Getting us out of here.”

“I think you’ve done enough.”

“I told Dad the same thing. But he said he had faith in me. I hope that in spite of everything, you also do. He told me to create a diversion that will stall them because he and Jennifer are on the way.”

“They know where we are?”

“They think they do.”

“They only
think
they know?”

“It’s something, Mom. Now, help me. The window is too high. I need a boost so I can see outside. When you lift me, I need you to hold me as steady as you can. I haven’t heard one gun or rifle hit the bottom of those stairs, which means that Jack isn’t giving up his or Brian’s. That means we’ve got about three minutes before they throw a can of tear gas down here, which I’m sure they will. It’s what will force us out. We’ll have no choice but to leave. That woman didn’t sound as if she came to screw around. She will gas us and it will be awful. We’ll be lucky to find the stairs just to get to the first floor. Now, bend down, put your arms around my legs, lift with your legs and boost me up so I can see out the window.”