Page 73 of Until the End

The derelict house looms like a monster waiting to snatch its next victim. The white siding looks like it hasn’t been touched in decades, while the roof sags dangerously on the left side. Nobody has lived in this house in a very long time.

“Come on. Out.” Calvin waves the gun at me. I open my door, leaving the keys in the ignition. If I can overtake this guy, I want to make sure we have a quick way to get out.

I hold out my hand to help Ginny from the car. She’s got a look in her eye that says she’s over this already. I am, too.

“Inside. Now.”

“I’m really tired of him barking at us,” Ginny whispers. Again, I struggle to keep from laughing out loud. It must be the shock, otherwise I have no idea why I’m able to laugh in a situation like this.

I keep a careful eye on Calvin as he herds us into thehouse. The screen door squeals as we open it, and unsurprisingly, the inside of the house matches the outside. What little furniture there is looks as if it’ll break the second someone sits on it.

Ginny and I stand in the middle of the living room, waiting for what’s going to come next. I use the time to take in Calvin. He’s not acting how I’d expect a stalker to act. He’s been angry, sure, but it hasn’t been directed at me or Ginny. You’d think he’d be salivating over having Ginny within arm’s reach. Instead, he seems like he wants to be anywhere but here.

The gun is still pointed at us, albeit halfheartedly. He keeps checking over his shoulder as if he’s waiting for someone to arrive. This entire situation continues to perplex me.

A noise has Calvin turning his body toward the front door. I jump into action, grabbing the hand holding his gun and twisting it to force him to drop the weapon. It clatters to the ground, and we both move toward it, our bodies jostling against each other for the upper hand. The hard metal slips against my fingertips until I finally get it under my control.

I have it pointed at Calvin in a second. He freezes with his hands out to the side. His gaze keeps darting toward the door, and my stomach drops when footsteps echo down the hallway.

“Ginny, get behind me. Now.”

Her body is flush against mine in a second, and I wrap my free arm around her to keep her against me. I will not have her become collateral damage in whatever showdown is about to happen. Whoever’s coming is the mastermind behind everything. Calvin must’ve been a piece on the gameboard, just like we have been.

Ginny’s gasp can barely be heard over my curse.

Cecelia pauses in the doorway, her shrewd eyes taking in the scene. The look she sends Calvin could melt the skin off his bones. “Imbecile.”

In seconds, she yanks a gun from the back of her business skirt and pulls the trigger. Ginny screams as the blast seems to fill the entire room. Calvin drops to the floor, a red rose blooming across his chest. My mouth opens and closes as my brain tries to process what I’ve witnessed.

My sides are squeezed tight, Ginny’s hands roaming over my body as if she’s reassuring herself that I’m okay. I squeeze her back in response.

“Good help is seriously hard to come by these days. Why I thought a compulsive liar and gambler would be an asset, I’ll never know. I’ll just chalk it up to inexperience.” Cecelia sighs, her expression impassive, as if killing a man in cold blood is nothing. “Now that the trash has been taken out, we can talk, just us three.”

I still have Calvin’s gun in my hand, and as much as I want to shoot her, I can’t bring myself to do it. I keep it pointed at her, though. She’s more than proven we’re in danger in her presence.

“Ginny, be a dear and come out from behind Carson.”

“No,” I growl. “She’s not going anywhere.”

Cecelia has the gun on me in half a second.

My insides are rioting, but I do my best to keep my composure. “If you shoot me, you’ll run the risk of it going through me and into Ginny. Is that what you want? After all the work you’ve put into getting us here? Not to mention the fact that I’ll return fire, and then you’ll be as dead as I am.”

Ginny’s whimper just about undoes my carefully crafted facade.

Cecelia grinds her teeth, her chest expanding with a deep breath. She doesn’t lower her weapon, but her arm relaxes a fraction.

“Now, what do you want from us?” I demand.

“Everything. I want all of it back. Because of you and yourinfluence on Ginny, I lost everything. And she’s my ticket to getting exactly what I want.”

“How?”

“She’ll come back under my management, and everything will be right again. Everyone will believe her when she tells the world the things being said about me are lies. But first, I need you out of the way. You’re the reason we’re in this mess to start with. If you hadn’t helped her run from Wesley, we’d have all gotten what we wanted. I spent years putting everything I had into my business. I was so close to becoming the top agent in the music industry, and then this bitch went and screwed it up in an hour. But I’m going to fix it. I’ll have everything right as rain in no time.

“You know, making you think you had a stalker was easy. Wesley actually was stalking you there for a minute, so I used that to my advantage. Then the moron got himself locked up, and I lost that leverage. I had to use the trash over there as a substitute, and it just wasn’t the same. My plan was flawless until Wesley ruined it.”

The crazy look in Cecelia’s eyes tells me that pointing out how asinine this whole charade is would only lead to being shot, so I decide to try to placate her instead. “I’m sure there’s something we can work out. We don’t need to sink to violence to do that, though.”

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