When Stars Collide (Chicago Stars #9) - Susan Elizabeth Phillips Page 0,106
from him, Mrs. Swift,” Thad said, in a voice accustomed to commanding obedience.
Kathryn ignored him and continued searching through her son’s clothes.
“I said get back!” Thad barked out the order.
Kathryn straightened. In one hand, she held Olivia’s Egyptian cuff. In the other, a purse-sized pistol.
“R-really?” The word, barely audible, crept through Olivia’s chattering teeth. Why did Kathryn have a gun and Olivia’s bracelet?
“Quiet, Liv,” Thad said softly, undoubtedly remembering how she’d lost her temper with their mysterious limo driver—a man he now suspected was Norman Gillis.
Norman staggered to his feet, whimpering in pain, but instead of standing by his mother, he hobbled toward the loading dock area. Kathryn ignored his desertion, as if he were no more than an irritant. Instead, she kept the gun trained on Thad. “This was a gift to myself when I turned seventy. I had Swarovski crystals embedded in the grip.”
“You’re a real trendsetter,” Thad said.
If Olivia’s tongue had been working, she’d have suggested a nice pair of diamond earrings instead. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Norman staggering into a car he must have stashed there ahead of time.
Thad, with his wet clothes and the frigid breeze, had to be just as cold as she was, but he stood steady. “Your son is going to survive.”
“Probably,” Kathryn said bitterly. Behind her, Norman’s car peeled from the building. “He’s always been a disappointment to me.”
Thad moved ever so slightly to the left, working to put his body between Kathryn and Olivia, but no way would Olivia let him take a bullet for her. Willing her legs to support her, she came to her feet. With her sandals gone, it was like standing on blocks of ice, and her skin prickled with gooseflesh under her drenched white gown.
She’d drawn Kathryn’s attention, just as she’d intended. “Men make messes,” Kathryn said to her, “and I have to clean them up. First Eugene and his carelessness. And now Norman.”
“What kind of messes, Mrs. Swift?” Thad deliberately drew her focus back to himself.
“This bracelet!” She gripped it tightly in one hand and turned the gun on Olivia. “He was so ridiculously infatuated with you.”
“What’s so special about the bracelet?” Thad said quickly.
“Enough questions!” She made a sharp gesture toward Olivia with her gun. “Into the river with you both.”
“Stay right where you are, Liv,” Thad ordered. “Mrs. Swift, neither of us is going into the river. Now drop that gun.”
She gave a harsh bark of laughter. “You think because I’m old, I don’t know how to use this? My daddy took me hunting before I was six years old.”
“A tender memory, I’m sure, but let me point out that putting bullet holes in the bodies of two of the city’s more famous people—because that’s the only way we’re going in—is a very bad idea. The police will be relentless.”
“Chicago can be a dangerous city.”
“The police aren’t stupid.”
“No one would ever suspect me. Now move!”
Olivia could read Thad’s mind. As surely as she knew anything, she knew he intended to go after Kathryn and take the bullet himself.
The riverbank was deserted. No one inside the Muni would hear if she screamed, and her strength was sapped. She could sense Thad getting ready to spring, and Kathryn could, too, because she pointed the gun directly at his chest, right at his beautiful heart. If Olivia could make Kathryn drop her guard for a few seconds, he might have a chance of disarming her. But Olivia had nothing to distract her with. No pebbles of glass from a broken limousine partition. No shoe to throw. All she had was her voice.
The idea was ludicrous.
But it was the only idea she had.
Thad tensed his muscles, waiting for his moment. Garnering her strength, Olivia pulled in every molecule of air she could collect—opened her chest, her throat, her soul—and sent Brünnhilde’s Valkyrie battle cry out into the wild night.
“Ho-jo-to-ho!”
A punch of furious, ear-shattering sound. The roar of the earth cracking open. The scream of the universe exploding.
“Ho-jo-to-ho!”
The high was strident, the middle broke. She was a mezzo. She didn’t have the voice for Brünnhilde, but the Valkyrie’s battle cry did its job, startling Kathryn Swift into jerking her head around and lowering her pistol just for a moment.
Just long enough for Olivia to rush at her with every bit of strength she had left.
Thad, of course, got to her first. He grabbed the old lady’s arm, forcing her to drop the pistol.
“Everybody freeze!”
Brittany stood thirty feet away, her service revolver at