Galen's Gemma - Dale Mayer Page 0,51

hadn’t yet risen.

“I wouldn’t go out there too far by yourself,” he said.

“Why not?” she said. “It’s not like I’ll run away without my daughter.”

“You really think these guys came here alone?”

“What? You think there was somebody else?” She stared at him, her eyes huge. “I don’t know anybody else who would come.”

“Well, James for one.”

“No, he’s back in America,” she protested. “Why do you keep bringing him up?”

“But is he? You’re standing there in the middle of the front door to this cabin, as if somebody could shoot you. Or maybe as a signal that you need help. I don’t trust you one bit,” he said.

“You shouldn’t,” the conscious man on the couch said. “And you’re right. It’s all making sense now. I thought it was all pretty shitty myself, but I’m just another idiot who fell for her lies.”

“What were you getting out of the deal?” Galen asked him.

“Not enough,” he said. “I was supposed to get fifty thousand, if this came off without a hitch—or five thousand if there was trouble, and I just needed running money. But I’d also been having sex with her for six months, entertaining the thought in the back of my mind that maybe there was a life here for me with her too.”

She snorted at that. “You were never part of the equation.”

“No,” he said. “Like everybody else, I was just a means to an end. Took me a while to figure it out, but I got there eventually.”

“No, not even that,” she said. “I needed you to take out my husband. But you were too gutless to even do that.”

Galen listened with interest as she very clearly said it wasn’t him who had killed her husband. Had she then? And possibly doesn’t want to leave any witnesses behind? He looked over at the gunman, who nodded.

“See? Listen to her. I didn’t kill him.”

But the only way she’d be talking like that was if she has a surefire way of getting out of here. And immediately he got even more suspicious. Pulling out his phone, he slipped back to the side, where he was a little bit out of the way and sent a message to Zack. When there was no answer, he swore. Immediately he walked down the hallway to where Becky and Gemma were, and both were missing.

From the front step of the cabin, Rebecca laughed and laughed. “You’re such an idiot,” she said. “You haven’t understood how this has come down right from the beginning.”

“So, what will you do?” he asked. “Kill your sister and your daughter?”

“My sister, yes, and that’s just for being such a bitch over this whole scenario. If she had just left me at home, none of this would have happened. But not my daughter.”

“At least not today. I mean, if you’ve already killed your husband, plan to kill your only sister, who knows who else you might have to kill in the meantime or will have to kill later.”

“Won’t matter,” she said, “because you won’t be around to fix anything. Doesn’t matter what you’ve heard or what you think you’ve heard,” she said, “because you’re done here.”

“And if I’m not?”

“Oh, you are,” she said, “and so are these two.” Just then the window shattered behind him. He hit the ground running, and, by the time he got up on the other side of the cabin in the darkness, just out of the range of the window, he could see that the backs of the two thugs’ heads had been blown off. And, of Rebecca, there was no sign.

Chapter 16

Gemma stared, fury in her gaze as she cuddled her niece tightly in her arms. Becky was out cold. They’d knocked out the little girl, probably to still her crying or screaming. She looked at the bruising on the little girl’s head, worried they may have hit her too hard. Gemma had also been hit and knocked out but woke a few minutes ago. She was tied up, whereas Becky was not.

She gently stroked Becky’s hair, as that was almost the limit of her hand movement with her wrists tied up, while whispering in her ear, “Wake up, sweetheart. Wake up.”

They were in the back of a station wagon, driving down what was probably the same road heading back to town that they’d been on earlier. But it was still dark out. She’d been unconscious, but it had only been for a brief time. At least she thought so. She saw no sign of morning