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Her heart beat with every second of silence.
He was gone.
She wanted to cry with relief—even when Dex pulled out his gun and pointed it at her. She wondered if it would hurt. It didn’t matter.
Trevor would be safe.
“I’ll kill you for this.” Dex raised the barrel toward her.
“I’m here!” Trevor stood at the top of the stairs. He glared at Dex. “You want to shoot someone? Go ahead. The neighbors will hear. They’ll call for help. Try it.”
“Shut up and get down here,” Dex ordered. “Help your mother with the groceries.”
Allegra’s knees started shaking. She grabbed a chair at the table, leaning against it. The tears came, not because Dex would’ve killed her but because Trevor never left. How could he do this to her? Why?
Why wouldn’t he listen?
Her son started down the stairs, his expression one of pure anger, and she wondered for a moment if it was directed at her. But when he passed Dex, his back to the man, he looked right at her and mouthed, “I’m sorry.”
She reached out, grasped his hand, trying to smile at him. He put his arm around her. Once out of sight of both men, he whispered, “I am not leaving you. Ever.”
Her heart broke a little that night. After dinner, she and Trevor remained at the table while Frank and Dex watched TV, the two men drinking, unfortunately not near enough to inebriate them beyond loose conversation. At one point, Frank lifted his beer, asking, “Whatever this thing is, it can’t be hidden in that car.”
“Probably not,” Dex said. “Or someone would’ve found it by now, right?”
“Exactly what I was thinking. Bigger question is, how do we find it?”
“It’s got to be in that diary.”
“The one you don’t have?”
“Like I said, we don’t need it. My kid’s got one of those memories like a computer. I swear, he remembers everything. Trev,” he shouted. “Get out here.”
Trevor looked at her, worried. “I don’t know anything about where it’s hidden,” he called out.
As much as she’d wished that Trevor had left that afternoon, she realized that he’d grown up, taken responsibility for something he believed in. Her. She smiled, trying to will what little strength she had to him so that he could also fight this battle. “Tell them what you read. It keeps them happy.”
He reluctantly rose and walked into the front room. “Where do you want me to start?”
“Where’d we leave off?” Dex asked.
Frank drained the last of his beer, then set the empty bottle on the table. “I think that Payton fellow was captured. He was trying to use that hidden dagger to get away, but someone took it from him.”
64
JOURNAL OF JONATHON PAYTON, 5TH VISCOUNT WELLSWICK
1906
All hope seemed lost as I waited to feel the dagger thrust into my back. Imagining death had never been this frightening. It was mere seconds, but so many thoughts flitted through my head. The atrocities my cousin had committed and that he was behind the robbery . . . I thought of the poor engineers, as well as the hired detective, who’d lost their lives at my cousin’s hand. I thought of Miss Atwater and prayed she would somehow escape to safety.
All this while I braced myself for the dagger to come down toward me. But instead of pain, I felt it sawing the rope.
* * *
—
“DON’T MOVE,” someone whispered in my ear, though I barely heard it over the pounding of my heart. Whoever it was draped the rope over my wrists, then disappeared into the shadows.