Bran New Death(94)

My mind raced with conjecture. I eyed Rusty, and felt my heart wobble. Poor old man! He must have been . . . my eyes widened in shock. Had he been living out on the land for ten months? Through a long, upstate New York winter? I set that aside to marvel at later; I couldn’t get distracted. We needed to both get out of this fix, and fast.

I could hear the tentative sounds of something: bushes rustling, footsteps . . . Dinah, now cagey enough to be careful in her search?

“Merry Wynter, I know you’re here,” she said in a conversational tone, so close I almost jumped out of my skin. “I have nothing against you. We could be allies. I know for a fact that you’ve inherited that big, old castle and that you don’t have money to fix it up or live in it. I have a hundred ways for you to make money.”

Her tone was honeyed, persuasive. I glanced down at Rusty, and his watery blue eyes had a pleading look in them. I shook my head. There was nothing she could say that would convince me to give him up.

I couldn’t see her, I could only hear her, and it was terrifying. I was squatting in a muddy ditch, hidden (I hoped) by greenery, with a fast hold on the arm of an old man who was in very poor health, listening to a madwoman try to tempt me to give up the old guy to her not-so-tender mercies. She intended to kill Rusty. But she didn’t yet know that I was not on her side. I could either stay where I was and wait for her to find us—given that she was holding a high-powered rifle I figured I knew the outcome of that scenario—or I could do something about it.

I let go of Rusty, fixed my gaze and pointed my finger at him then at the ground, hoping he’d get that I was telling him to stay put. I crept away from him as quietly as I could until I was behind where I thought Dinah was standing. I sighted Becket crouching nearby, his tail slashing back and forth, his gold eyes fixed on a spot. That had to be where Dinah was. Good cat.

Doing my best to hide, I said, “We can talk, Dinah. But you have to let Rusty go.”

There was a pause; as she tried to figure out where I was? Probably.

Then she said, “I will. I don’t really mean to kill him, you know, just scare him some. I love the old coot.”

And I was a dainty ballerina. “Did you say something about him killing your son?”

She was silent, but after a minute, she said, “Yeah. But . . . but Dinty tackled him, I guess. Poor old Rusty couldn’t help it. Dinty never did like him, so I guess he . . . I don’t know.”

Weak. I would have bet that Dinah sent her son into the bush to kill trusting Rusty, and it went sour somehow. I’d best leave it alone if I wanted her to think I was willing to make a deal. “I am interested in how to make money,” I said, moving slightly to try to see her. I caught sight of her; her back was to me, and she still had that damned rifle up, finger on the trigger, but as I watched, she was honing in on my voice, and turning, scanning the forest with her rifle sight.

I crouched and moved out of range. She had no intention of making a deal with me; she still wanted to shoot me.

“What about Tom Turner?” I asked.

She whirled, her eyes scanning the woods near me. I was wearing a green sweater. Maybe I melted into the background.

And then it came to me, two things at once: Dinah was likely the one Silvio had Tom following, and she had killed him because of it.





Chapter Twenty-five





WHAT HAD HE discovered about her that made him so dangerous? Was it about her enterprises, or Rusty still being alive, or something else?

“What about Tom?” Dinah asked as she turned, looking for a target.

I was not going to oblige by answering. I heard rustling in the bushes, and figured it was likely Becket, up to his stealthy panther moves—“Moves Like Jaguar”—I almost giggled. Old Maroon 5 song references rarely make me laugh, so this was hysteria; not good at that moment. Stifling my laughter, one hand over my mouth, I tried to figure out what to do. Where was Rusty now? Had he managed to gather his courage and get away? How could I handle a sharpshooter with a high-powered rifle using only the strength of my muffin-baking hands?

So many questions, and not a single answer. There was only one chance, I figured, and that was to move back toward the castle, if I could figure how to do that. I knew I should have gone to Girl Scouts, like Grandma wanted me to. Mom opposed it; said they were just a breeding ground for conformist fembots. I squinted and looked up through the glowing-green canopy above. It seemed to me that when I was at the castle watching the sunrise, it was over the arboretum. Since it was still early and still rising, I needed to walk away from the direction of the sunlight to get back there, right?

Made sense to me.