Page 52 of Immortal by Morning (Argeneau #37)

“Why was I outside when the men came back in?” Abril asked finally. “What happened that ended up with me standing witless

on the edge of Gina’s property barefoot and without a coat?”

“You kept coming out of the kitchen,” Diane complained. “I wiped your memory and sent you back the first two times, but the

men came in before I could do it the last time. I had to take control of you and cart you out of the house to the woods at

the back of the property to get the couple of minutes I needed to do it again.”

Crispin swallowed the rage he was feeling toward the woman, speared his uncle with a look and said, “Someone else will have to take over from here, because—What the hell happened?” he snapped with sudden frustration.

“I can see from her mind that Diane saw you all take off in the van leaving Abril and me here alone. She decided there would be no better time for it, and approached the house. She stopped outside the sliding glass doors of Abril’s office, which was the only room in the house where there was a light on.

When she heard the movie playing...” Abril bit her lip at this news, worrying that Diane might have heard more than the movie playing, and wouldn’t that be embarrassing if it was true?

But before she could get too distressed at the thought, Crispin continued, “So, she decided it would be safe to get in, get the skeletons out of the indoor garden, and get out.”

He paused briefly, raising his eyebrows at first Cassius and then Lucian and asked, “Where did you go? And why the hell would

you not tell me you were leaving us here alone so that I could be on alert?”

“We only drove around to the end of the crescent, and we did not warn you because it was a last-minute plan type of thing,” Cassius said soothingly, and explained, “Lucian had sent me to Gina’s office to watch the side yard, but when I got there, I noticed that the lock on her sliding glass door had been tampered with and would no longer engage.

I reported that to Lucian. He suspected that was due to the intruder of course, and she probably planned to enter that way.

But he also worried that with so many of us here, she might hesitate.

He thought that our leaving would embolden her.

So, we all piled into the van, making a lot of racket in the driveway as we did in the hopes that she would notice, then we drove around the curve to the end of the crescent, parked on the grassy verge, and came back on foot through the woods behind the houses.

“She was entering Gina’s office through the sliding glass door when we reached the tree line at the back of the yard. Lucian

wanted to let her get to the indoor garden before we tackled her. It is a wide-open area that we could surround her in, and

he thought that would make it harder for her to escape. He sent me and Decker to follow her through Gina’s door so she could

not flee back that way if she sensed anything was afoot, while he and Roberts, Bricker, and Anders were to enter through various

doors around the house, so that we were coming from all directions and she would have no avenue of escape.”

“That might have worked,” Crispin acknowledged reluctantly.

“Yes, except it did not,” Cassius pointed out. “Decker and I had just entered Gina’s office when we heard Abril scream and

the slam of a door closing. We rushed out into the hall. Diane saw us and turned to run toward the kitchen to escape us, but

Bricker was coming that way, and then you opened Abril’s door. She lunged toward you, and we jumped her, and...” He shrugged.

“Here we are.”

Silence fell over the room and Abril turned to look at Diane Foley again. The woman had been pretty much expressionless throughout

the telling of her life and misdeeds, although anger had flashed out once or twice. There had not been even a hint of guilt

or regret shown.

Some part of Abril felt bad for the woman.

Diane had suffered a terrible tragedy in the loss of her son, and on top of that had been paralyzed herself.

Then she had lost her husband too in a plan he’d instigated and that they’d hoped would give them back at least part of the life they’d enjoyed before that accident. That was worthy of pity.

But the feeling was immediately erased in the face of everything that had followed. The woman had killed twelve mortals in

the first week after she’d been turned. No. Actually, she’d killed thirteen that first week if you included the husband. And

while she hadn’t killed the unknown immortal, she’d been a party to it. Diane certainly would have known from the start that

the “vampire” would have to be killed. While it had probably been self-defense in the end, Abril suspected the plan all along

had been to murder the woman once they’d used her to change Diane. Surely, they hadn’t thought they’d be able to let the vampire

live after using her like that? They must have known that the immortal wouldn’t have taken that lying down, and that the vampire

would have killed them both for it if they didn’t kill her first.

No, Abril thought. She had to have realized it would end in the immortal’s death. On top of that there were all the deaths

that had happened since at the hands of this woman; she couldn’t even guess how many the woman had killed over the last twenty

years. Not kind, merciful deaths either. Diane was a monster. She probably would have killed Abril too during that first break-in if the men hadn’t come running. Abril supposed

she should be grateful that Diane had only knocked her out during that encounter, and taken control of her afterward when

she had interrupted her digging in the garden.

She did find it odd though that Diane had no problem killing people, yet had merely drugged Lilith. She could have easily snapped the Labrador’s neck or something.

Letting her breath out on a small puff of air, she glanced to Lucian and asked, “What happens now?”

Lucian opened his mouth, and then paused as the driveway alarm sounded. Standing, he walked over and peered out the window,

a satisfied smile flashing briefly across his face before he said, “Our backup has arrived.”