Chapter Nineteen

“Just around the corner in every woman’s mind is a lovely dress, a wonderful suit, or entire costume which will make an enchanting new creature of her.”

—Wilhela Cushman

Low-level strip lights along the baseboards provided a shadowy illumination to the museum’s architecture and design displays, much like a flashlight held under someone’s face as they told a camp-side ghost story. A shiver snaked its way up Sylvie’s spine.

“Why don’t we talk here?” Her taffeta skirt rustled as she sat down on the bench near a collection of handblown glass.

Ivy remained standing. Something in the tilt of her head and tension in her jaw made Sylvie’s unease bloom into anxiety. She glanced back at the foyer packed with elegantly dressed guests, and the urge to return to the safety of the crowd turned her palms clammy.

“Say, how about we go grab a drink first?” She stood and took a few steps back.

Ivy shook her head. “There’s a new installation I really want to show you. It’s pretty amazing and just a little bit farther in.” She laced her fingers together and brought her joined hands to her lips as if in prayer, gripping them so tightly her pale knuckles turned white. Crisscrossing red marks covered her hands. “Please.”

Something predatory glimmered in Ivy’s eyes. Sylvie’s anxiety grew as she realized the marks were nearly healed scratches, the kind of damage a cat might have inflicted. But Ivy was allergic to cats. She’d always said if she was going to get a pet it would be a rat. Oh, God. Sylvie’s heart skipped a beat as the image of the dead rat the troll had sent her flashed in her mind. What if Tony had been right about Ivy? Anders had never confessed to being the stalker, but he had admitted to everything else. Why leave out something as trivial as hacking a Web site?

He wouldn’t.

And Tony had said he sent only a few emails, early on, before the threats got serious.

Which left…

Ivy?

But before Sylvie could take her suspicions to the cops, she had to get the other woman to talk. “Okay. Lead on, Macduff.”

As they walked farther down the hall, Sylvie made sure to stay out of arm’s reach.

“You know the quote is actually ‘Lay on, Macduff’? It’s been misquoted for nearly a hundred fifty years. Crazy, right? It’s from Macbeth’s speech when he’s ordering Macduff to launch a vigorous attack.” Ivy chuckled as she turned a corner. “How appropriate.”

The tall redhead stopped suddenly and Sylvie had to pull up short so she wouldn’t ram into her.

“Here we are. Isn’t it beautiful?”

Sylvie stepped around Ivy and her breath caught, the stunning display momentarily outshining her suspicions. It was a throne. Unlike the half-shadowed lighting of the rest of the displays, it sat bathed in a soft glow. Designed to look like a medieval throne, its back soared twenty-feet high. However, instead of being carved from oak or another hardwood, it had been fashioned of gleaming gold, copper, and silver coins stacked one upon the other.

“It’s called the Throne of Hope.” Ivy’s voice echoed in the quiet room. “The artist is Trace Wilkes. He inherited a huge tract of land, and when he was clearing it to build a stand-alone studio, the workers found a small, long-abandoned wishing well. Some of the coins in it date back from the 1700s, but the most recent coin found was dated 1910.”

Ivy reached over the red velvet rope surrounding the display and glided her long fingers over the coins before stepping back. “Instead of leaving the well as it was, Wilkes drained it and—once his new studio was built over the wishing well’s grave—he used the coins to make this throne.”

Hoping to lull Ivy into her comfort zone and keep her talking, Sylvie kept her own mouth shut and leaned closer, pretending to inspect the chair. She watched Ivy out of the corner of her eye as the other woman fiddled with her beaded evening clutch.

“It’s absolutely gorgeous to behold,” Ivy continued, taking a step closer, “but it’s made from something worse than blood money. He stole their wishes, their hopes.”

Something in her voice made Sylvie turn. But too late. Something sharp jabbed into her neck and fire shot through her jugular.

“He stole their dreams, all for his own glory.” Ivy’s voice turned hard. “Sound familiar?”

Panic roared through Sylvie’s body and she stumbled. “It was you.”

Ivy arched an eyebrow and shrugged her shoulders. “What do you think?” She tipped her head and regarded Sylvie. “I considered using a gun, but this way I get to watch you squirm when you finally realize it was me tormenting you…and that now you’re going to die.”

Sylvie’s survival instinct spurred her into attack mode, and she lunged forward. But the world wavered and she fell to the floor, her legs tangling in her voluminous tulle underskirt. She pushed up against the hard marble with trembling arms that didn’t seem to be a part of her own body. Icy fear strangled her lungs. Instinctively, she sought out her clutch with her asthma medicine, but her limbs failed to respond to her mind’s commands.

An all-encompassing euphoria overpowered her. Warmth soaked deep into her bones. It was as though she’d dashed across a snow-covered deck and then sank up to her chin into a steaming hot tub. All of her muscles melted into warm goo. Way back in the furthest corner of her mind a voice screamed for help, but by the time it reached her, it was only a faint echo. God she felt so amazing.

“W-what…” Even that one word had taken supreme effort to utter.

“Heroine. And you should thank me. They say it’s a lovely way to go. But don’t you die on me yet, I’m not done with you. Come on now, let’s get you up on this throne. I think it’s the perfect spot for your final farewell. Don’t you?”

Ivy hauled her up and wrapped an arm around her waist. Though Sylvie knew she desperately needed to get as far away from the homicidal psycho as she could, making any move without her tormentor’s aid was beyond the realm of possibility.

Every shuffle forward took all the energy she could muster, but Ivy pushed and half-dragged her, and at last Sylvie sank onto the throne. Her head lolled back against the metal and her eyelids fluttered downward. She smacked her lips together in slow motion, but the move did little to alleviate the desert in her mouth.

“Damn, I’m sorry as hell I’m going to miss seeing them find you like this when they unveil the Throne of Hope to all the fund-raiser attendees in an hour. But I’ll be off discovering the new me, the person I can finally become with you dead and gone.”

Sylvie rolled her neck so she faced her would-be killer and fought to keep her eyes open. She had to keep fighting or she’d die. Even in her drugged state, the dire state of things reverberated through the foggy high. “Don’t underst—” Her tongue thickened and she couldn’t finish the thought out loud.

“Of course you don’t understand, you stupid bitch.” Ivy cracked her palm across Sylvie’s cheek. “Did you know that rehab is a lot like prison? They tell you what to wear, where to go, what to eat, and how to live, every fucking second of every fucking day. I was ready to snap into a million little jagged pieces. I’d survived it once, but you, you greedy bitch, forced me back a second time.”

She scraped a long fingernail down Sylvie’s cheekbone and across her bottom lip. The force pushed her head backward against the unyielding coins of the throne’s high back.

Ivy leaned in, her mouth so close to Sylvie’s ear that the humidity of her hot breath tickled her sensitive skin, even through the growing numbness. “Have you figured it out yet, what got me through those days when the withdrawal was sawing my body in half and I could see the devil waiting for me in every corner?” Ivy wove her fingers through Sylvie’s hair and yanked her head to the side, exposing the lethargic pulse in her throat. “Planning to kill you, the bitch who stole it all from me. That’s what.”

Adrenaline and pain should have spurred Sylvie into action. Instead, everything in her body lay mired in cold molasses. She couldn’t raise her head. Drool pooled at the corner of her mouth. Her breathing slowed and grew shallower. She knew was going to die, but she was too high to be terrified.

A lingering regret threaded its way through the haze as thick as woven fabric.

Tony.

She’d hoped there’d be time. For more. More what exactly, she didn’t know. But time for more with him. Wasn’t that the ultimate irony? Here she was on the Throne of Hope without any hope left at all.

“I was the one who introduced you to Drea—my best friend,” Ivy snarled, clearly starting to lose it. “I invited you to join our blogging group. I helped you work out the security kinks and set everything up so your real identity was hidden away. And how did you repay me? Not just by stealing the spotlight. You stole my closest friend.” She started to pace. “Catwalk Style was supposed to be my reinvention. I’d failed as a model. I couldn’t afford to fail again. Not if I wanted to regain my rightful place in the industry.” She spun, and her voice rose as she gestured erratically at her. “The blog was going to get me back on top. Instead, you tossed me to the side with your stupid High-Heeled Wonder blog. People stopped feeding me gossip and started sending it your way. Advertisers told me they didn’t have any room in their budgets. Funny, they always found a little extra money to send your way. When Pippa Worthington refused my call, it was an insult only cocaine could numb. I didn’t fall off the wagon. You pushed me with both fucking hands. You!”

Ivy reached into her handbag and pulled out a thin rectangular box, pinched the clasp, and withdrew another hypodermic needle and a blue ribbon. “Oops, looks like you won’t match.” She tied the ribbon around Sylvie’s bicep. “After three months of planning in rehab, I knew exactly what I was going to do. Frighten you. Expose you. Kill you. And that’s exactly what I’ve done. Well, almost. The first hit was enough to get you high. This second dose is what will finish you off.”

She lowered the needle to Sylvie’s arm, centering the point on the engorged vein in the crook of Sylvie’s elbow. “This will only hurt for a minute. Trust me.”

Tony spotted Anya as soon as he sprinted through the museum’s double doors. “Where’s Sylvie?”

“She’s talking to Ivy.”

His heart stopped beating in his chest. “Where?”

Sudden concern darkened Anya’s expression. She pointed toward a hallway off the crowded lobby. “Down there. Why? What’s—”

He took off at a dead run. God help him, he would not be too late. He would not fail the woman he loved.

He burst into the room at the end of the hall. Sylvie sat thirty feet away, slumped over in some weird chair, drowning in a sea of stiff red material. Ivy Rhodes was nowhere in sight.

A primal rage curled inside him, squeezing his organs so tightly he felt they could implode from impotent fury.

He sprinted over to Sylvie and waded through the waves of satin and lace. He felt for her pulse at the base of her neck. Slow and unsteady, a barely perceptible rhythm.

He tapped the com device in his ear that connected him to Ryder and Carlos. “She’s still alive! Get an ambulance here pronto.” Knowing they had him covered, he turned back to the woman who’d kicked him out of her life less than twenty-four hours ago. “Stay with me, Sylvie. Help’s on the way, baby. I promise, you’re gonna make it. Just hang in there.”

Her olive skin had a ghostly pallor, and a blue tint colored her lips. Tony’s entire world shrank to the space she occupied. He couldn’t lose her. He had so much to make up for.

She took in a ragged breath and he squeezed her hand. Her breathing returned to a slow but steady in and out. Thank God. “That’s it, you’re doing great, honey.”

A soft click sounded behind him, just loud enough to punch through the worry fogging his brain. He jerked his head up. The Rhodes woman had her back turned to him as she pushed against a door a few feet away that must lead to a secondary exit. She pushed again. Again the click sounded, but the door still didn’t open.

He leaped to his feet. “Where the hell do you think you’re going?”

Rhodes turned. For a millisecond he saw the hate twisting her model-perfect face before it disappeared, replaced by a doe-eyed innocence.

“Thank God you’re here. I just found her like this and was going to get help.” She made a move toward the main exit. “You stay with her. I’ll go find a phone to call an ambulance.”

Everything that had been burning with fury a moment before turned ice cold. He aimed his Beretta at her chest. “You’re not going anywhere.”

She blinked as if confused. “But she needs help. What in the world, Tony?” She took another step backward.

“We know it was you. We found Sylvie’s laptop.”

The bitch clutched her beaded purse close to her chest, her façade slipping a little. “Funny, I heard you found it at Anders’s office. Right before you killed him.”

Refusing to be baited, he checked Sylvie’s pulse while keeping his weapon trained on Rhodes. The somewhat steady pulse under his fingers reassured him. He just had to keep from shooting Ivy until backup arrived. “We found the thumb drive with your sick-ass poetry on it.”

All pretense came crashing down from Rhode’s face. “Damn, I wondered where I lost that. It must have slipped out of my pocket when I dropped off our dear Sylvie’s laptop.” She took two more steps backward. “Oh well, I don’t need the poems any more. I’m reinventing myself.”

“Stay where you are,” he ordered, but a soft cough from Sylvie pulled his attention away for a split second.

Ivy took instant advantage, pulling a gun from her purse and taking aim. At Sylvie.

Tony’s gun hand wavered slightly.

“Looks like we have ourselves a standoff,” she said.

“You’ll be dead before you release the trigger,” he growled.

“Maybe, but she’ll be dead first,” Ivy said calmly. Too calmly. The woman was a psycho.

He froze in horror, knowing she was right.

She knew it, too.

“You’re going to lower that gun and let me walk out of here,” she said. She started to slowly back away. “Do yourself a favor. Don’t become another one of her victims. All your precious little Sylvie does is use people to get herself further up the ladder.”

“Sounds like you’re describing yourself, not Sylvie.” Despite the terror clawing through his body, he curled his fingers around the Beretta’s grip, ready to make his move.

“Nuh-uh-uh, big guy. Lower your piece or I’ll blow her brains out. Better hurry. I’ve given her enough horse to knock her out forever unless you get her to a hospital right away.”

Tony’s insides twisted between staying with Sylvie and the need to avenge her.

“Choose, pretty boy. Let me go and save her, or come after me and we all die. What’s it gonna be?”

He glanced around at Sylvie, his weapon lowering slightly with the movement.

Ivy took that as his answer and slithered backward deeper into the room’s shadows. “All right. I’m walking out of here. Starting a new life far away from Harbor City.”

He forced his worry for Sylvie to the back of his mind. The best way he could help her right now was to forget he cared so damn much. Releasing a smooth breath, he raised the Beretta again. “You couldn’t be more wrong.”

Behind him, Sylvie slipped farther down and started to slide off the chair. In a split-second decision that went against every lesson he’d learned on the force, he let go of his weapon and caught her before she cracked her head on the marble floor. Holding her close, his ability to compartmentalize shattered in the face of her slight, ragged breaths.

A shot cracked through the air.

“I don’t want to shoot you, Ivy, but I will,” Carlos called out from the room’s main entrance.

Rhodes emerged from behind the column, her eyes wide. “Zephyr? What are— You aren’t supposed to be here.” A red laser dot instantly appeared on her wrist above the gun.

“Yeah, as I recently learned, some surprises suck.” Carlos moved his weapon, painting the ominous red dot down to her hand and then back up her arm and chest until it slid up to rest between her eyes. “I’m even better at this in the real world. Put the gun down, Ivy. Game over.”

Her left eye spasmed and her gun jiggled in her loose grip. “So do it, then.”

Abruptly, she dropped to one knee, escaping Carlos’s aim, and fired off three rapid shots at Tony and Sylvie.

Two went wild.

One pinged off the coins above Sylvie’s head and ricocheted back toward Rhodes.

Another shot exploded through the room.

An oomph sounded.

The redhead crumbled to the ground.

Carlos hustled over, kicked the pistol out of her reach, and kneeled down, feeling for a pulse.

“Is she dead?” Tony asked, lowering Sylvie gently to the floor.

“Yeah.” Carlos stood.

“The ricochet?”

“No.” He wiped his bloody hands on his pants. “I shot her.”

“I’m sorry you had to do that ’Los.”

“I’m not. Scarlett deserved more than to be Ivy in the real world.”

Without another word, the team member Tony had always considered just the geeky tech guy spun away and disappeared into the crowd of paramedics and cops now flooding into the room.

“Okay, what have we got here?” The paramedic snapped on gloves and crouched on his haunches.

“Not sure. She’s got needle puncture marks.” Tony’s gut lurched at the words.

The paramedic took Sylvie’s pulse and his face darkened. “Damn. We gotta get her out of here stat.”