“Dan, all right, Dan—”
But Dan was moving already, pocketing his phone. The ghosts were beckoning him to make all speed. He drew his weapon.
He’d find Katie, and he would shoot anyone in his way.
The pain in Katie’s head was ungodly.
It felt like an axe was sticking into her skull!
But as she slowly regained consciousness, she knew nothing was protruding from her body.
Not yet.
She was tied up, though. Wrists bound together. Her feet, she saw, were free. If she could just manage to get up, she could run...
Where was she? Think! Her head was spinning. She closed her eyes, willing for the spinning and dizziness to stop.
Time might mean everything.
Think! Maybe she was in the stables.
She wasn’t. No, she would know the smell of the animals and the hay. No...
She was in a bedroom. Someone’s bedroom, and not her own. There was a closet on one wall, a sturdy oak dresser against another, and a window that looked out opposite where she sat. There was a bed, a big one. And...
A chair in front of a small desk. There was a jacket laid over the back of the chair. A big jacket.
A big jacket for a big man.
“Ah, love, you’re with me now!”
She swung around.
A big man. A tall man, and a big man. Oh, dear God, why hadn’t she seen...
Even now, she couldn’t believe.
Monty? Monty Trudeau, a stone-cold, vicious killer without an ounce of empathy?
“Monty,” she said. “You?”
He smiled, so pleased with himself.
“Katie, love, I can’t tell you what pleasure I derive from seeing your face right now! You’re so stunned! Yes, Katie, me. This is my place. My town. And I learned quickly I could seize all the power I wanted. I studied the city, you see. Studied it as you, my guides, never quite did. I learned so much, and I learned how to earn my way to immortality.”
“Monty, you are not going to live forever.”
He shook his head, hunching down in front of her. “Katie, you don’t understand the immortality situation. You see, I am not the Axeman’s Protégé. The media just had to go with that. No, I am the Axeman! I am the Axeman. The real thing. He died and was reborn time and time again, and now he lives in me.”
“So, you’re the Axeman of New Orleans.”
“In this shell.”
“Monty... My father... Why? I mean, you were forming this club of yours—”
“Club?” he demanded.
“Sorry, group?”
“The Six,” he said. “Just The Six. There is nothing else like us. Immortals.”
She started to laugh and then realized she shouldn’t. Her laughter angered him, and she had to figure out some way to get out. She had to escape, she had to survive...
Dan!
Monty wasn’t playing well at all, maybe because he was growing desperate. Dan was at her house; he would be coming for her, and he would know...
Wouldn’t he?
“I’m sorry! I didn’t study the past as much as I should have,” Katie said. “And honestly, I never seriously connected Allan Pierce with the Axeman. I always felt it was a mystery we’d never get to the bottom of. But I should have read everything out there. It’s hard, though, you know. There’s so much history.”
It was his turn to laugh.
Katie frowned.
“Um—”
“Katie, Katie, Katie. Do you think I really believe all that hogwash?” He leaned closed to her, and she saw he was holding an axe behind his back.
His friendly, bearded, big face was just inches from her own.
“Yes, hogwash, Katie, but it’s amazing. I had a pack of fools doing whatever I asked, because I convinced them that being with me would turn them into super beings and they would become immortal. Then I convinced Bella—oh, not sure if you know that yet or not, but Jennie’s real name was Bella, Bella LaPointe—and that idiot Sonny we’d made a mistake, that Brian and Aubrey were turncoats and traitors and had to be eliminated. Oh, by the way, the real Brian was the one your father knocked around. He was very happy to listen to me about people needing to die and how as one of the six he would be special, and others would die because of him. I had a few problems with him. He wanted to kill your father so badly, and there was no way your dad wouldn’t have recognized him from that confrontation. So, well, I had to send Sonny and Bella instead. Oh, watching you all running around trying to catch your own tails! Priceless!”
Katie shook her head. “You knew who I was when you hired me six years ago. You could have killed me so many times over. Let’s see, you probably arranged for me to have such a bargain on my house, too, right?”
“Ah, guilty as charged!”
She shook her head. “Why?”
“I always wanted to do the Axeman bit!” he said. “The thing about the power is real. And I can’t explain to you what euphoria it is to kill, to watch blood splatter—”
“Why didn’t you kill me years ago?”
“Power of six. I had to do it right. Murders, murders, murders... This! The great finale of this part of the game, anyway. The Axeman back in New Orleans!”
“Did you even know George Calabria?” she asked him.
He smiled and shook his head. “The bastard wasn’t supposed to survive. Neither were you, actually. But then, when we found George in Orlando...and then that idiot, Dan Oliver! Wow, he made my day going after George the way that he did. I mean, I made sure he was led toward George Calabria all the way, and I’m good at what I do.”
“I guess so. You had Carly Britton as your sixth?”
“Carly couldn’t get going in business. I managed to set her up. And afterwards, she was happy to be one of The Six, though the most worthless, I’m afraid.”
“She saved your ass this morning,” Katie noted sweetly. “And then you killed her,” she added softly.
He shrugged. “I
