Page 49 of The Executioners Three

“Freddie, Freddie, Freddie.” Dr. Born shook his head with disappointment. As if Freddie were a student he’d been so sure would ace his test but now was failing it. “You did read the poem, right? I know you were in Mrs. Ferris’s attic earlier.”

Freddie swallowed.

“So that was you in the attic?” Freddie asked, pushing once more at Divya. They were both creeping ever so slowly backward.

“Of course it was me. Because anything the descendants know, I know too.” He motioned to Bowman, still hovering nearby with flames beginning to curl off her.

“That includes Theo and Laina here. They can’t help it.

Not once the bell and the curse take control of them.

And poor old Mrs. Ferris—she was trying so hard to understand what was happening to her children.

She got close, but she didn’t quite figure it out. ”

“So you were the one who attacked her?” Freddie asked. Step, nudge, step, nudge. Freddie and Divya were almost to Theo now, meaning almost halfway across the stage. And although Dr. Born was also tracing this way too, he moved with a languid, unsuspecting ease.

He was enjoying this teachable moment. He was enjoying getting to talk about all the secrets he’d kept for so long.

“I didn’t attack Mrs. Ferris,” he said. “I didn’t need to. By then, I had control of her daughter. And just as I know whatever the descendants know… well, they’ll also do whatever I tell them to do.”

Dr. Born snapped his wrist.

And in a movement too quick to see, too strong to resist, Theo grabbed onto Divya.

She screamed as his arms latched around her upper body. Freddie screamed too. “Theo, no ! Don’t do this!”

“Let me go!” Divya wrestled and kicked. “Let me go !”

He didn’t let her go. He didn’t seem to see or feel Divya fighting him at all—and he didn’t see or feel Freddie grasping at his arms and begging him: “Please, Theo. Stop this! Please! ”

No matter how hard Divya writhed or how much Freddie pushed against him, he was as impossibly strong as Laina had been.

So Freddie whirled around to face Born head-on. The man was chuckling, a raspy sound as chilling as the wind—and not because it was a diabolical laugh, but rather because it wasn’t. This was just a regular old laugh from a regular old guy who’d heard a regular old joke with a solid punch line.

“Stop this, Dr. Born. Edgar. Whoever you are. Stop it, please.”

“Or what, Freddie?” He grinned. “What exactly do you think you can do here?”

“This,” she said, and she leaped at him. Her hands were claws reaching for his face. Her teeth were bared, and she roared an echoing battle cry.

It was a valiant effort. Truly. But it was guided less by her brilliant gut and more by sheer desperation. So her attack, of course, did not succeed.

All she did was get the gun’s barrel thrust directly into her face.

Behind her, Divya shrieked. Freddie heard her friend kicking harder at Theo. But she could do nothing except go very still and raise both her hands.

She’d never been this close to a gun before.

She’d never realized how a cold barrel would feel on her cheek or how death so close would make everything inside her slow down.

Each and every one of her muscles felt turned to stone.

Even her throat as she said: “I know you plan to disembowel me, but I won’t do it.

” She swallowed. “I… I won’t walk myself and my own intestine around that pole. ”

“Freddie.” Dr. Born was so close Freddie could see every line caked with the emergency foam. Every swollen, throbbing vessel in his dark eyes. “My fight isn’t with you, don’t you see that? You’re just another victim—we all are—of the Allard Fortin curse.”

“Then let Divya go. Let me and Theo and Laina and the sheriff all go. You don’t need us.”

“Oh, but I do, Freddie.” He pressed the gun harder into her cheek. His hands had the same blisters as his face, pocking across his knuckles.

He pushed, giving Freddie no choice but to stumble backward. Three steps. Four. She was almost to the fake tree. She was certainly within reach of Theo again.

Meanwhile Dr. Born was sliding his empty hand into his jacket. Then with aching slowness, he withdrew a long knife. The sort Steve would use to cut a roast.

Or that a disemboweler would use to cut an abdomen.

Stabby, Freddie thought uselessly. I am going to die by Stabby, and the dreams about this moment were all wrong.

She shuffled backward another three steps. She was right next to Divya now.

“Please,” Freddie said, afraid to blink.

Afraid to look away from Dr. Born’s fingers.

“Please, Dr. Born—I mean, Edgar. I’ll tell the whole world that your dad was right.

That’s what you want, isn’t it? You want them to know there really was a curse and the Allard Fortins didn’t deserve any of their riches.

Well, I believe you now! So we can… we can republish the book and finally get some justice!

Please, just don’t kill me, okay? Just let me go. Let all of us go.”

Dr. Born sighed, head shaking with true disappointment now. “You really missed everything, Freddie. This isn’t just for my father. This isn’t just for redemption of my family or our ancestor from three centuries ago. This is about the Allard Fortins.

“None of this madness would have happened if not for our beloved local founder. He was a stingy, violent monster—and his descendants were no better.”

“They knew of the curse?”

“They didn’t have to. They already had all the wealth and power they needed—and that alone does more than enough damage.”

Okay, sure, Freddie supposed she could tip her head at just the right angle and follow this argument. Wealth and power could be used to control just as much as a curse could, and maybe the Allard Fortins weren’t worth all the adoration they’d always received.

But that sure as hell didn’t justify any of the monstrosities Born had committed.

“The Allard Fortins didn’t care about my father,” Dr. Born went on, upper lip twitching. “They didn’t care about me or my mother or how they’d ruined our lives just to protect their name and legacy. We had no friends, no money, and the stress of it—the shame—it killed my father.”

Again, Freddie found herself understanding, a twist of sympathy that spiked through her for the lonely, hurt boy Dr. Born might have been.

Except no! Don’t let him get in your head, Freddie! Keep stalling, keep thinking. You can get out of this!

“I’m sorry it was so hard for you.” Freddie was careful to keep her eyes locked on Dr. Born’s face.

Careful to keep her hands up and not look at how close the knife was to her abdomen.

“But you did have one friend, right? Theo’s dad.

I saw the picture of you two, and he was devastated when he thought you’d died. ”

It was the wrong thing to say. Freddie saw that as soon as the words left her tongue. But it was also too late to suck them back in. To hit CTRL+Z and undo them.

“You think Teddy Porter was my friend?” Dr. Born slowly, slowly pulled his knife away from Freddie.

“The man who fell in love with an Allard Fortin, even when he knew what their family had done to mine? Oh, Freddie, Theodore Porter was not my friend, and the day that he abandoned me for Justine was the day I knew what I had to do.”

Oh crap. Freddie felt as her whole world flipped. As her organs and her brain and her eyeballs did a great heave-ho with this fresh monsoon of knowledge. Justine was Theo’s mother. Justine was an Allard Fortin, not a Charretière.

“I can see you’ve sorted it out now.” Dr. Born smiled, and his knife changed directions like a compass swerving north. “Theo here is the last of the Allard Fortin bloodline. And so Theo here is the one who must pay for all their crimes.”