Page 90 of Strangers She Knows

Mara smiled with patently false modesty. “Did you imagine I was going to stay there? In that cell? When all I needed was to persuade a few people I should be elsewhere?”

Kellen lifted her right hand to gesture and—

“Look at that. Look at your hand. You were getting better. Now you’re not.” Mara was irritated. “What’swrongwith you?”

Kellen lifted her atrophied hand before her eyes and like an infant, stared as if seeing it for the first time. The Taser blast had fried her nerves. She tried to straighten her fingers, but they were white and cold, without feeling, curled into the tight, terribleCshape they had been after surgery.

Why did Mara know Kellen’s hand had been getting better? Why did she know anything about Kellen’s hand at all?

Because she’d been stalking them. Watching them. Worse—Kellen had lost the advantage of pretending to be disabled. Shewasdisabled.

Mara holstered the pistol—yes, she had lifted the holster off Kellen’s body and strapped it on her own—wandered to the desk, opened Ruby’s diary and fluttered through the pages.

Kellen measured the distance between them, took stock of her own uncertain strength and saw the way Mara kept her hand close to the black-and-yellow Taser.

Kellen wasn’t helpless. She used her words to give herself time to recover. She used her words to dig at Mara, undermine her, make her snap. “Why me? Why out of all the people in this world have you gone to such dramatic lengths to hunt me down?”

“You know.”

“I know? Why would I know?”

“When we were at Yearning Sands Resort together, we were one mind. One heart. We ate together. We trained together. You pushed me hard so I could participate in the International Ninja contest. I could have won!” Mara held up one hand, as if grasping the trophy, and gave her best beauty pageant smile. Then the smile faded. “You stole the opportunity from me.”

“How did I do that?”

“By trying to kill me.”

“To stop you! You killed people. A lot of people.” Kellen found herself wildly waving her hands. As if that was going to help. “You almost killed me!”

“We were like sisters.” Mara crossed her fingers to show how entwined they had been. “We understood each other.”

“I didn’t understand you.” How could Kellen find the words to explain madness to a madwoman? “You were pretending to be someone you weren’t.”

“How could you say that? I was the Yearning Sands spa manager.”

“And you were running an international antiquities smuggling operation!”

Mara burbled on. “I finally figured outwhyyou were so jealous. I was always the leader. What I said, we did. You resented that.”

Four years ago, when Kellen had taken the job at Yearning Sands as assistant manager, she had been newly discharged from the Army. She had been a captain, in charge of transportation in a war zone, a leader who brought the friends she trusted to Yearning Sands to give them jobs. She was the kind of leader who never worried about looking back to see if people were following her. They just always were. There was no explaining that to Mara, though. For all that Mara comprehended, Kellen might as well be speaking Klingon. “You’re…delusional.”

Mara didn’t react.

Kellen realized Mara was trying to read her mind. No—she thought shewasreading Kellen’s mind.Thatwas the delusional part. But in a way, Mara was right. They had been friends…of a sort. Four years ago, at Yearning Sands, Kellen had had no suspicion of Mara’s criminal activity, and never had she suspected Mara happily murdered to maintain power.

How had Kellen been so wrong about her? How had she failed to see the thin coil of insanity that wound through Mara’s character and strangled all the good in it? Enunciating every word, Kellen said, “I do not understand you. You’re a serial killer.”

“I’m not, either!” Mara shoved the diary aside, and her eyes snapped with indignation. “I only kill people who deserve it.”

“I don’t deserve to die, and you don’t deserve to mete out justice.”

“I deserve every bit of power I can take.” Mara didn’t doubt herself.

“You tried to kill my daughter. She was delirious. Then unconscious. Fighting for her life!”

“If I had tried to kill her, she would be dead.” Mara took a breath that hitched in the middle. “I was going to finish her off. Because she is your daughter.”

Kellen’s heart missed a beat.

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