The Perfect Liar (Last Stand #5)(89)
Author: Brenda Novak

Soon, she’d just be dead.

Chuckling silently at her own joke, Kalyna felt her way around the exterior of the cabin to the window with the cut screen.

A splash sounded not far from the boat. Startled, Kalyna froze. The noise had been loud and close, as if something large had dived into the water. But she had nothing to fear from the river. There were no crocodiles in the Sacramento delta. There were some pretty big salmon, though. They came in from the ocean and swam upstream to spawn. She’d probably heard one jump.

Getting back to work, she found the cut in the screen. The window was closed except for a very small crack. Everything was just as she’d left it.

The window squeaked as she opened it, so she had to go slow and do it by inches. There was another splash a few seconds later, but she paid no attention. She was too focused on creating a space big enough to accommodate her.

When she had the window open as far as it would go, Kalyna squeezed her upper body through. The metal rim dug into her hips, but she managed to balance, relieving the pain until she could grab the inside wall to steady herself. From there, she dragged her legs in and was just trying to get down off the dresser when she lost her balance and fell, taking the lamp with her.

A crash woke Ava. She lay in bed, blinking at the darkness, trying to figure out exactly what she’d heard. It’d been loud, she knew that–too loud to be the kind of settling noise that used to frighten her before she’d grown accustomed to the creaks and groans of living on a boat.

She sat up, listening, and heard sounds of movement in the next room. Someone was in her house!

As she scrambled out of bed, her mind grasped for a logical explanation. Was it her father? Did he need a place to stay? Or could it be Geoffrey? When he’d left, he’d been pretty upset.

She couldn’t imagine either one of them coming into her house in the dark of night, though.

Where was her phone? She’d called Luke to tell him good-night once Geoffrey was gone. Where had she put it? She had to find it. She needed it right away, needed to call for help.

Trying to get her bearings amid an avalanche of adrenaline, she spun in a circle as she struggled to remember. Then it occurred to her. Her phone was in the living room. She ran for the hall, but the person in the next room managed to disentangle himself from whatever he’d broken and came charging out at the same time. Ava almost ran into him before ducking back inside her bedroom and slamming the door.

The snarl that came from the other side as she locked it made every hair on her body stand on end.

"Open this door, bitch!"

Oh, God! It wasn’t a he at all. It was a she: Kalyna. Kalyna was standing between her and her phone–and she was trying to break down the door!

The whack of a heavy metal object made Ava gasp involuntarily. She flipped on the light to see the end of a hammer or crowbar come through the wood somewhere near her head. Kalyna was crazy, just as Luke had claimed. And she was violent, just as Ava had feared.

"Kalyna, stop it! You need to calm down. If you hurt me, you’l go to prison."

"I’m not going anywhere, except to Luke’s apartment to console him over your death," she said.

She was serious. And because they were so isolated, she could say those words out loud, without risk of anyone hearing or coming to help.

Horrified, Ava stared at the door as Kalyna hit it again. Another hole appeared, close enough to the first to create one large hole.

"Where’s Tati, Kalyna? What have you done with her?"

This caused a brief hesitation. "I don’t know what you’re talking about.

She’s in Arizona, where she lives."

"No, she’s not. She came here, to your apartment. I found her purse in your bedroom. What have you done to her?"

Kalyna smacked the door again. "You’re lying! I haven’t seen Tati or her purse. And how would you get into my apartment? It was locked when I got home, exactly the way I left it."

Ava measured the distance from the dresser to the door. "It hadn’t been closed al the way when we–when I got there. I put Tatiana’s purse back under the bed, where I found it. And I locked the front door."

"Shut up! You weren’t in my apartment! You’re making it all up."

The dresser had eight drawers and a mirror. It was heavy. Would she be able to move it? "Then how do I know about the wet carpet, Kalyna?

The spot in front of your dresser?"

Silence.

"Kalyna?" If she could move the dresser so could Kalyna. But it might buy her some time….

"Did you make that spot? Did you spil something in my room?"

Kalyna sounded bewildered.

Ava had never known a more convincing liar. "I didn’t put anything there. I saw the spot when I went in, looking for Tati. She’s missing and your father’s worried sick about her. Call him, see for yourself."

"I’l call him when I’m done here."

"You kil ed her, didn’t you, Kalyna?" She began shoving the dresser toward the door. "You kil ed her and then cleaned up the blood."

"Stop making shit up!" she screamed, whacking the door again. "I’d never hurt my own sister."

"You kil ed your mother."

"Norma had it coming. She had it coming for a long time. Tati’s never hurt anyone."

The damn dresser moved, but only by centimeters. And it required so much energy. "Then what happened to her?"

"Shut up! Trying to scare me about Tati isn’t going to save you."

Scare her about Tati? Could it be true that she didn’t know Tati had come to her apartment? Ava didn’t see how, but she tried a different tack as she continued to wrestle with the furniture in hopes of creating some sort of blockade. "Luke doesn’t want you, Kalyna," she said. "He’s never wanted you. You’re doing this for nothing."

"Not for nothing," she said. "I’m doing it for my own satisfaction. How dare you think you can take what’s mine? How dare you think you can be my friend and then stab me in the back!"

"You were lying to me the whole time, using me to punish Luke! How is it that I’m the one who betrayed you?"

Kalyna didn’t answer. She screamed in outrage and started swinging harder. There was no reasoning with her; she was too far gone to respond to logic. And it was only a matter of time before she hacked through the door. The doors on the houseboat weren’t solid. They were made with flimsy panels.

Her body clammy with sweat, Ava left the dresser where it was.

Kalyna would be inside before she could get it all the way to the door.

Instead, she went in search of something she could use to defend herself.

But there wasn’t so much as an envelope opener in this part of the cabin.