Aspen Gold (52 page)

Laura.

A fresh wave of panic hit her. Laura was upstairs asleep. If she woke up, if she heard voices, noises, she'd come down. And if she did, Sondra would kill her, too; she'd have to; she couldn't leave a witness behind.

Dear God, don't let her wake up, Kit prayed silently, frightened now for Laura as well as for herself.

"Don't worry, Kit," Sondra murmured, a black leg gliding sideways as she moved into the room, placing each foot deliberately, then waiting a beat before taking the next crossing step, like a cat making a slow, circling stalk of its prey, her shoulders squared toward Kit, her cold eyes never leaving her.

"I promise it will happen very quickly. You might even like it."

Kit turned slightly to keep facing Sondra. Her mouth was dry and her palms were wet. The woman was crazy, insane. Stall, she thought. Keep her talking and watch for an opening. That's the way it worked in the movies.

"You don't really think you're going to get away with killing me, do you?" she challenged in a hoarse voice.

"Oh, but I will--the same way I got away with getting rid of Diana."

"You ... you killed your sister?" Kit barely managed to get the words out, the shock of the announcement briefly stopping her from noticing the sofa was between them.

Sondra smiled, the sight making Kit recoil. "It was so simple. A mere matter of injecting an air bubble into her I.v. tube.

It took only seconds. No one suspected I had anything to do with her death. No one even saw me slip into her room--not even Bannon.

He was standing at the window the whole time. After thirty-six hours without sleep, the poor man was nearly out on his feet. Not that it mattered.

Nothing could ever have been proved. Embolisms have been known to occur after childbirth."

Bannon. Kit wished he would call that very second. With the ringing of the phone to distract Sondra and the sofa between them, she might be able to reach the phone, she might be able to warn Bannon. The telephone was useless otherwise.

There would never be time to get to it, dial the emergency number, wait for an answer, and tell them what was happening. She'd be dead before the connection went through.

"How could you do it? She was your sister," Kit protested, albeit weakly.

"She made life miserable for Bannon. I rescued him from that." Her face lost its cold, expressionless mask, her lip curling back in a look of utter loathing. "I loved him, you see.

But he never loved me. He only used me.

He'll pay for that. Soon. Very soon."

"What do you mean?" Kit turned a little more as Sondra continued to move farther down the sofa, steadily circling to get behind her.

"I mean--Bannon will join you soon," she replied in that soft emotionless murmur again.

Kit saw the gun cabinet behind Sondra.

All those rifles lined up in a row. All of them unloaded.

"You're planning to kill Bannon, too, aren't you?" Fear licked the rest of the way to the surface. Kit swore she could feel her heart hammering in her throat.

"You're trembling, Kit," Sondra observed, an avid gleam lighting her eyes.

"You'd better put that bowl down before you drop it."

Trembling seemed an understatement. Her legs were quivering so bad they felt like jelly sticks.

Sondra gestured with the gun, indicating to Kit to set the bowl back down on the coffee table.

She wanted to throw it at her, but Sondra was too far away and the bowl was too heavy, too awkward. Reluctantly she lowered it to the table, feeling as if she'd lost her last shield.

Keep her talking, a voice in her head said. It was the only defense she had left.

"I don't blame you for wanting to get even with Bannon," she said. "He used me, too.

I've waited a long time to pay him back for that.

I agree with you--men like him don't deserve to live."

Sondra seemed unmoved by Kit's attempt to join sides with her. "Isn't it ironic that there is so much crime in cities like Denver these days?" she murmured instead. "Street gangs, drive-by shootings, muggings. Bannon will be just another victim of our violent times, shot down in some parking lot or on a dark city street.

I was raised in Denver. I know them all."

Suddenly Kit realized how thoroughly Sondra had planned everything. It scared her because she saw it could work.

"Such a tragic loss," Sondra went on, the soft croon turning Kit's stomach.

"Bannon dead, leaving his poor little girl orphaned. As her only living relative, naturally I'll take Laura into my home."

"No," Kit murmured.

"Yes." Sondra smiled. "Bannon has named me as Laura's guardian in his will.

Thoughtful of him, wasn't it? Of course I'll sell off part of the ranch--maybe even all of it eventually. Everyone will think it's the smart thing to do. What good is a cattle ranch to a nine-year-old girl?"

One last step took Sondra out from behind the sofa. She was directly in front of Kit now.

"Turn around," she ordered.

"Why?" Kit glanced at the gun, weighted by the silencer fastened to its barrel. Mentally she measured the distance, trying to decide whether she should make a try for the gun. The odds of success were worse than long. "Do you intend to shoot me in the back?"

"That would be too messy," Sondra declared softly. "Now turn around like I told you."

Slowly Kit turned until she faced away from Sondra. The tension, the fear was almost more than her nerves could stand.

"What are you going to do?" she asked.

"You'll find out ... in time."

Was it her imagination, or had Sondra moved closer? Kit strained, trying to catch some sound, some whisper of movement, anything that might give her a clue of Sondra's intentions. She caught a whiff of perfume, the fragrance cloyingly sweet. She turned her head a fraction of an inch, trying to see behind her. She had a glimpse of a slender black arm swinging down.

Too late Kit tried to duck and avoid the blow. She heard the thud of impact; a split second later pain exploded through her head.

Blackness swirled and thickened. She felt herself sinking into it, finding oblivion and relief from the pain.

Dimly, distantly, she felt a pair of hands tugging at her, lifting her, pulling her, dragging her out of the blackness. She didn't want to go. She didn't want to leave it. But the hands wouldn't let her stay. They insisted on saving her.

Saving her. They were trying to help. Someone had come to help. It was going to be all right. She fought to surface, struggling through the blackness and the pain.

Then she heard that crooning voice--

Sondra's voice--and knew she was wrong. She wasn't safe. She tried to open her eyes, but they felt weighted, too heavy. Through a slit in her lashes, Kit hazily made out Sondra's dark shape leaning over her. She realized she was lying down--she was lying down on the sofa, a pillow propping her head up. Why? Why had Sondra done that? It didn't make sense.

She struggled to focus on that voice.

"--makeup for you." Sondra was talking as if she knew Kit could hear her. "It's very special makeup, too. You're going to love what it will do for you."

Sondra was doing something with her hands. Kit heard a snapping sound, then saw Sondra fitting a pair of plastic gloves over her leather ones. The gun. She didn't have the gun.

This was the chance she'd been waiting for.

"It's my own special formula," Sondra explained softly. "My own lethal formula combining cocaine and heroin with DMSO. That's short for dimethyl sulfoxide, a marvelous solvent that allows the cocaine and heroin to be absorbed through the skin directly into the bloodstream. It's perfect for someone in your business who doesn't want unsightly needle marks that the camera might see." She reached for something on the coffee table. "Soon you'll be high, Kit. So very high that you'll soar straight to heaven. Another actress who died from an overdose. So senseless. So tragic."

As Sondra leaned across her, a cosmetic sponge in her fingers, Kit gathered herself in one last desperate attempt to survive. With a twisting heave of her whole body, she pushed Sondra off the edge of the sofa and sent her crashing into the coffee table.

Shaking off the dizziness and the fresh waves of pain, Kit staggered to her feet. She had to get away. She had to get out of the house before Sondra found her gun. She started for the door, but something caught her ankle. She kicked out, tipping the coffee table over. The gun landed on the floor--

beside Sondra's hand.

Kit saw her pick it up. Out of sheer desperation, Kit scooped a pillow off the sofa and threw it at her. With an upflung arm, Sondra swept it aside, knocking it into the fireplace, its bulk smothering the flames.

In that second, Kit bolted for the front door.

As she pulled it open, she heard the splat of a bullet striking the wood. Then she was outside, racing down the steps into the snow-covered yard.

The Jeep. If she could reach the Jeep, she could get away, she could get help. But the Jeep was in the shed next to the barn.

Kit skidded to a stop at the corner of the house, staring across that open expanse of yard, her head throbbing. There was no cover, no protection of any kind.

The front door was jerked open. Kit sank into a low crouch and scurried close to the side of the porch, letting it hide her from sight.

Footsteps ran across the porch, then stopped.

Kit held her breath, her heart pumping so loudly she was certain Sondra could hear it. She closed her eyes, feeling the fear creep in again, and immediately opened them, her glance flashing to the trees behind the house. She followed the march of their trunks all the way to the back of the shed.

"You stupid little bitch," Sondra crooned.

"You don't really think you can get away from me, do you?"

The footsteps began a slow, steady pace toward the end of the porch where Kit hid. The trees suddenly looked very far away. But she had no choice. She took a deep, silent breath and crept forward until she reached the house proper. There she launched herself forward and sprinted for the safety of the aspen grove. Any second she expected to hear a shout of discovery, the muffled pop of the gun, feel the tear of a bullet into her flesh.

The trees closed around her. She'd made it.

Sobbing with relief, she grabbed on to one of the slender white trunks and leaned weakly against it.

The rush of adrenaline had blocked out all sensation, even the throbbing pain in her head.

She glanced back at the house with dread. There was Sondra, a slim black silhouette against the white snow. She was studying the tracks Kit had left, her gaze following them into the trees.

"I know where you are, Kit," she sang out softly. "You're only making it harder on yourself.

You might as well come out."

Kit flattened herself against the tree trunk, unable to control the mewing sound in her throat. The fear was back, cold like the night air that penetrated the thinness of her clothes and numbed her lungs with each breath. She couldn't stay here. She had to keep moving. She pushed away from the trunk as Sondra took a step toward the grove.

Darting from tree to tree, she worked her way toward the shed, constantly looking over her shoulder, but Sondra had disappeared into the shadows. She tripped on a fallen branch hidden beneath the snow, and fell to her knees, breaking most of the fall with her hands. She scrambled upright, ignoring the stinging in her palm, and hurried on.

At last she spied the rear wall of the shed, the weathered boards rising in front of her. She stopped and scanned the shadows around it. Nothing.

Where was Sondra? There was no sound except her own ragged breathing and the pounding of her heart.

Crouching low, she broke from the trees and ran across the few feet of open ground to the woodpile, then crept along it to the shed's side door. She crept inside and paused to catch her breath. There was the Jeep, the most beautiful sight she'd ever seen.

Kit scurried to the driver's side and climbed in. She groped until she found the keys where she'd left them under the seat. She was so cold and scared she was shivering, her fingers numb.

She fumbled in her haste to insert the key in the ignition switch. She felt the tears rising, the fear like a sharp pain in her chest.

Suddenly the Jeep's door sprang open.

A cry broke from her throat as a hand snared a fistful of hair and jerked it. Kit started to struggle, then froze when she felt the silencer's muzzle dig into her neck.

"I knew you'd try to get to the Jeep,"

Sondra murmured near her ear. "All I had to do was wait." Tugging on her hair, she forced Kit out of the vehicle. "If you're smart, you won't try it again. But you aren't smart, are you?"

"I won't try it again. I swear I won't," Kit lied.

Sondra kept her grip on Kit's hair and jabbed the gun into her spine. "Then let's go back to the house. You still haven't got your special makeup on." She shoved her toward the side door. When Kit stumbled, she pulled on her hair. "Walk."

"I--I hurt my ankle," Kit said, feigning a limp when Sondra pushed her forward again.

"It won't hurt for long," she crooned.

"Open the door."

Outside the shed, Kit kept up the fake limp. It was a long walk between the shed and the house.

If she could pretend to slip and lose her footing somewhere along it, maybe--just maybe--she'd have a chance to get her hands on the gun.

The smell of wood smoke tainted the night air. Kit glanced toward the house, trying to gauge the best place to try her stunt. An eerie yellow light danced in the living-room window. She stared at it for a long second before she realized she was looking at flames.

"My God, the house is on fire," Kit whispered, suddenly remembering the pillow that had landed in the fireplace--and the scrapbooks, photo albums, and paper napkins littering the hearth. And Laura. Dear God, was she still upstairs asleep? "Let me go."

Sondra jerked on her hair, pulling her head back. "The fire only means I'll have to alter my plans slightly."

"You don't understand. Laura's in there."