Page 54 (1/1)

He’d wanted to keep it

He pushed the thought away The housethe hallwaysthe treesthe line of fire He ran through various scenarios, visualizing the target, anticipating the worst, but it wasn’t a target, was it? His sister had Nora and he’d seen her with his own eyes

He stood at thein Daniel’s bedroo on the first floor No doubt so in the same direction "Please, Marie-Laure, don’this back to the , and noticed for the first ti in the shadows He’d been in Daniel’s bedrooeois bit of furniture in the otherwise elegantly decorated roo No doubt she had rocked the children to sleepthe to her husband’s bed as his own mother had with him and Marie-Laure

Whatever Marie-Laure’s crimes, she was still his sister She’d even nao when he’d asked as to bla him such a decidedly un-French name Marie-Laure, only three years old, had a set of paper dolls--knights and squires, lords and ladies, kings and queens One day Marie-Laure took the king doll and placed it on top of hisher daughter to know French and English, had pointed at the doll on her sto" For the next two months whenever curled up with herstosley was born

How did it happenhow had it come to this? His sister had been a sweet child once, his er and her beauty had blossoone off like a bomb complete with mushroom cloud and utter devastation Mon Dieu, the fallout--he’d never seen anything like it before or since Nora had broken her fair share of hearts but she soed to leave the men better off than she found them--even Daniel, especially Daniel But his sister At the time he’d been too busy with his own conquests to payhe wanted to think about ho his sister was spreading for Looking back, they should have seen the signs One boyfriend had threatened suicide over her dismissal of hi a bottle of pills, Marie-Laure had laughed and bragged about it to friends and said it could only have been better had he died Perhaps that’s where she’d gotten the idea--punishing so yourself But for whatever reason she had come back and seen both hisley had wealth and power and thewoman in the world in his bed Søren had a peaceful life in his parish, and the respect and devotion of his entire congregation And he had his Little One, whom he loved above all others and who loved him in return in her own beautiful if broken way Marie-Laure’s first attee had failed This was take two

He would make sure her second attempt would fail like her first had

And this time, Marie-Laure would stay dead

19

THE QUEEN

Nora lay on the floor and stared at the door After her late breakfast with Marie-Laure, Andrei had escorted her to a room, locked her in and , Daht outside the door ready to shoot her--or worse Death waited outside that door She barely noticed the rest of the room The footsteps in the hallway commanded her complete attention

The footsteps faded and Nora forced herself to breathe, to relax Carefully she got off the floor and tried theThat was a waste of ti had the childhood fro her home to an absurd extreme If Nora had a lead baseball and a cannon, she still couldn’t have shattered theglass And someone, Damon or Andrei, had kindly nailed the wood to the fra to do but wait and stare and pray the day away

And plan

After all, while she believed in the power of prayer, she also believed in having backup plans on the off chance God wanted her to get off her ass and do it herself Escape plansthese were her specialty The daughter of a man who ate his meals with the Mafia, she’d learned early on that the world was an ugly, dangerous place full of ood kid and then walk out the door and kill so them The lowlifes of the world had been her father’s best friends, his worst enee of eleven she’d started to figure things out A coat hanger bent the right way could unlatch a car door in under a second A tiny ball bearing held between two fingers and ailass could shatter it into a thousand pieces This wire to that wire and the car would start, no key necessary, no per her into the rooh door,or ceiling Trappedshe was trapped in this house that had been a house of horrors to Søren growing up He’d alht him with his sister in the library He’d alht, too