Page 120 of Dead Girl Running

Erin kicked her in the chin.

Kellen blacked out again.

When she came to, she was facedown in the aisle, her ear against the floor. The plane droned on. She heard no other movement. Yet she knew, she knew, Erin was somewhere behind her, waiting to hurt her, maim her. Her partner was a man, dead and rotting for seven years.

Foolish Cecilia feared them both.

With eyes closed she considered her situation. At the front of the plane was a small galley. A door protected the crew, whoever they were. They knew Erin had brought this rotting piece of flesh aboard. So were they crazy? Zombies? Extremely well paid? They wouldn’t help her. She needed to defend herself, to bring this to a different conclusion than Erin imagined and hoped for. Yet she was badly injured and her weapons were gone; Erin had stripped them away. Erin was taller, big-boned, sturdy—and uninjured. So what to do? How to survive?

She thought about the real Kellen, about how bravely her relative had come to the rescue of her young, terrified cousin. Would she betray the woman who had sacrificed her life by giving in to fear? No. God help her, no.

She rolled onto her side, slowly gathered herself and sat up.

As she suspected, a grinning Erin again crouched in the aisle beside her brother’s decomposing body. Their smiles were eerily alike.

Kellen needed time to get herself into position. Erin wanted to talk. Kellen was glad to oblige. “Where are we going?”

“Back to Maine. Back to the Lykke mansion, where I’ll do as Gregory wished. I’ll see that you die as he did—slowly and in agony.”

Kellen shifted to sit cross-legged. She used the knuckles of her good hand to massage her thighs, get the blood flowing again. “Did he die slowly and in agony?” Kellen knew what to say now. Knew what to do. Coolly, she said, “Good!”

Erin kicked out again.

Kellen turned her shoulder.

Erin missed.

Kellen caught Erin’s leg at the top of her kick and flung herself forward, toppling Erin off her feet.

Erin crashed backward across the seats. Her head hit the airplane’s window and Kellen heard a satisfying thumping sound like a ripe watermelon on a hot Nevada summer day. That almost made up for the slashing pain in her chest and head and… Damn it, she was supposed to be on her way to the hospital, not fighting for her life with a dead man as a witness.

God bless Mara for one thing. She’d made Kellen stronger than she had ever been in her life, taught her kickboxing, and now Kellen brought a kick around from the side and slammed Erin in the ribs.

Erin struggled to turn, fell into a seat, sat there and stared into the distance as if looking into the past. “During the whole long week when Gregory struggled to die, he said only one thing. He said you were still alive.”

Kellen had suffered nightmares about witnessing her cousin’s murder—and the look Gregory gave Cecilia when he looked up and realized his mistake. “Before the explosion, he saw me.”

“Yes. He made me swear I would do what he failed to do.” Erin lifted her head. “I’m going to fulfill my brother’s final wish. I’m going to send you to join him.”

Kellen had to finish this, and she had to do it while she had the breath and the strength. “You’re as mean and crazy as your brother. You know that?”

Erin came off the seat as if she’d been stung and swung her fist at Kellen.

Kellen leaped backward down the narrow aisle and into the galley. “You’re the one who sent the snake!”

“As a warning.”

“Gregory’s face in the window—that was your doing.”

“You went to a man’s rooms to betray your husband!”

“First of all, I didn’t—” Kellen stopped herself. “I can’t betray Gregory. He’s dead. Look at him.” She gestured at that grotesque, blackened, grinning body. “He’s dead. He has no wife. He has no life. He’sdead.”

“Every time you look at another man, you betray Gregory’s memory. He loved you. He loved you so much that when he realized you were going to leave him, he wanted death at your side.”

“Do you approve of his love for me?”

Erin glanced away.