She turned on the television. Children, screaming, bloodied and terrified were running into the arms of police. Teenage corpses, some not even covered, lay where they fell, brutally murdered as they tried to flee.
No! No no no!
She felt the bile rise up in her throat.
This wasn’t supposed to happen. This wasn’t what Daniel would have wanted. No sane person would want this.
She ran into the bathroom and vomited. For a full minute she knelt on the tiled floor, pressing her forehead against the cool porcelain, trying to calm herself down, to think clearly.
Perhaps it wasn’t us.
Perhaps it was someone else? Another group, trying to blacken our name?
One of the attackers had been shot dead. Within hours, details would come out about who it was. In her heart, she already knew the dead man would be one of them.
A sadist like Apollo? Or just another angry, misguided boy, poisoned by the Greek’s rhetoric, firing off his gun as if it weren’t real, as if he were in some violent computer game?
How had it come to this? How had it all unraveled?
And her money, her support had helped make it happen.
She clutched her head. A violent throbbing had replaced the nausea. Dark spots swam before her eyes.
Was Tracy Whitney watching this too?
Tracy would blame her. The whole world would blame her. And yet she was the one who’d been wronged! All she’d ever tried to do was win justice, justice for Daniel.
Staggering to her bedroom she pulled the curtains tight and curled up in the darkness.
SOMEHOW SHE SLEPT. WHEN she woke, hours had passed. Almost a whole night. Yet she still felt utterly exhausted.
No rest for the wicked.
Drawing back the curtains, she watched the first faint rays of sun bleed dark red into the city skyline.
She was in the shower when the phone rang, trying to wash herself clean. It wasn’t working. The images from Neuilly would never leave her.
Turning off the water, she grabbed a towel then she picked up.
“Kate?”
The towel slipped to the floor. She gripped the back of the couch for support. No one called her Kate. Not anymore.
She was Althea now. Kate was dead.
“Who is this?”
“Oh, I think you know who it is. We need to talk, Kate. Don’t you think?”
She stifled a sob. “Yes.”
It had been more than ten years since she’d heard it.
But Hunter Drexel’s voice hadn’t changed.
PART THREE
CHAPTER 18