Page 175 of Cold, Cold Bones

“I never—”

Consumed with rage, she’d stopped listening. “—and I knew that just capping you would never even the score. I vowed to be patient and take you for the full ride. To rip from you the two things you love most in life, starting with your precious career.”

Henry cocked her left arm high, the one holding the Glock. Unable to defend myself, I twisted sideways as far as possible and braced for the blow. None came.

Moments passed.

When I turned back, the gun was gone and Henry was scrolling through options on her phone. The cast-off glow sparked an irregular band on her left hand.

Dots connected. The sapphire and diamond ring. The flashing object on Walter’s surveillance video.

Henry’s eyes rolled up, dark with murderous intent.

With insanity.

“You get why I’m angry? Really, Doc? No! You! Do! Not! But you will.” Henry thrust the device close to my face. “Numero dos.”

A fuzzy video was playing on Henry’s screen, the lens panning across a woman chained to a pipe leading down to a tangle of blankets. The woman appeared to be sleeping.

Dead?

The camera reversed, slowed, then stopped. Zoomed in.

The woman’s features morphed into a recognizable pattern.

Panic ripped through me.

The scene mimicked my nightmare cinema of death.

The woman was Katy!

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“Please!” I begged with hopeless desperation. “Don’t hurt my daughter!”

“But the young lady is my pièce de résistance.” Henry’s voice was thick with hatred. “I’ve been working up to her all these years. And this time the great doctor gets to observe.”

“Katy has done nothing to you.”

“Like Asa did nothing to you. Or to that poor kid carved with Satanic symbols, then gutted and dumped into Lake Wylie. Asa was a kind and gentle soul. A healer.”

Henry was right. Asa Finney was an innocent misjudged for being different. Investigators had taken far too long to recognize that, and it had cost Asa his life.

“Asa would disapprove of such vengeance,” I said.

Something complicated skittered through Henry’s eyes. Then she stepped forward and backhanded me hard across the face. As my head snapped sideways, my optic nerves registered a terrifying tableau. A night-darkened window, high on a wall. Below the window, two gaping holes in the floor, a mound of dirt beside each. Pre-made graves?

My left parietal cracked concrete. Dizziness overtook me, and black clouds threatened in the corners of both eyes.

No!

Awash in pain and fear-induced adrenaline, I bucked my torso and wrenched my wrists wildly. The cuffs wouldn’t break. I thrashed harder. The cuffs wouldn’t break.

Did the chair move ever so slightly?

Henry kept smiling her deranged smile.

I continued struggling with my bindings, frenzied as a wild beast caught in a trap. Pale grooves appeared on my wrists, oozed red as the metal bracelets cut deeper and deeper into my flesh.