The Romanov Legacy by Jenni Wiltz

Author:Jenni Wiltz [Wiltz, Jenni]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Thriller
Published: 2012-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirty-Two

July 2012

San Francisco, California

Beth picked up the phone for the tenth time that morning. She held her right thumb over the “9” and her left over the “1,” promising that this time she’d tell the police about Natalie’s condition. But then she pictured Sergeant Lopez tossing Natalie into the back of a patrol car, hauling her to a county hospital, and dosing her with a month’s worth of mind-destroying drugs. She couldn’t do it. She put the phone down.

All her life, she’d protected Natalie from the clutches of the system—lying to social workers, lying to doctors, and lying to anyone who asked why her sister was “weird” or “mental.” After their parents died, Natalie was all she had. Never, she vowed, would those vultures sink their claws into her own flesh and blood. Even now, she couldn’t betray a lifetime’s worth of trust.

In the den, she kept a sideboard as a bar. She opened it up and stared at the dust-covered bottles. She reached for a bottle of single-malt scotch and took a shot straight out of the bottle. It hit her immediately—a slow burn that rose from her belly with the speed of mercury on a hot summer day. She closed her eyes and concentrated on relaxing. Then she heard the noise. A soft click, like a doorknob latching, coming from upstairs.

She’d been hearing strange noises all over the house since early that morning, like the walkie-talkie noise in Seth’s room. Every time she investigated, it turned out to be nothing. Still, she couldn’t shake the feeling that something wasn’t right. Lopez had promised her a squad car would patrol the area until they found her sister, just in case. Images of Natalie’s bed, spattered with bullet holes, sprang to her mind. Don’t be a victim, she told herself.

Beth tiptoed to the kitchen and slid a chef’s knife out of the wooden block. Long and triangular, the blade was sharp enough to slice through a shoe. She held it at eye level and moved toward the stairs. One at a time, she crept up the stairs to the first landing and then the hallway.

The first room off the hallway was her office. She glanced at the phone, resting on a storage cube beside the desk. The handset hadn’t been removed from the console or switched off. That’s a good sign, right? she thought. Don’t the bad guys usually cut your power or your phone before hacking you to bits?

She glanced around the room. Nothing had been moved. The papers on her desk were lined up properly and the shelf of books was still in order.

Then her eyes latched onto the closet doorknob. “Fuck,” she whispered.

She tried to make her feet move forward but they held firm less than a foot from the hallway. You can do this, she thought. You gave birth without drugs. You ran a marathon. You gave the commencement speech at graduation.

She shuffled forward, gaze fixed on the closet door. If the noise had come from this room, the closet was the only place to hide.

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