Tynan grinned at her. “That’s the idea.”
“Oh, Ty, that’s dreadful of you. That man could get killed.”
“Hmph! You’d rather I’d have worn the suit and let myself get killed?”
“That isn’t what I meant and you know it.”
“Then you’ll be happy to know that I’ve already heard that Chanry escaped, a little dented maybe, but he’s alive.”
“And looking for you, no doubt.”
“I seem to be a popular fellow,” Ty said.
“Do you have any idea why Dysan wants you? He seemed to be very interested in you.”
“I doubt it. He just wanted to see who could get through that gauntlet he set up. Chris, seeing as this might be our last night alive, would you like to—”
He didn’t get to finish. “Of all the audacious, disgusting things I have ever heard, that’s the worst. After the things you said to me! How dare you ask me something like that! What kind of woman do you think I am?”
“But in the cabin—”
“In the cabin I thought I was in love with you and I thought you were going to marry me. That was before I found out what kind of low-life scum you really are, that you have no more feelings for a woman than what you can get out of her. But I can tell you that you will never, ever get anything out of me again.”
“I just thought I’d ask,” he said and there was a hint of a smile in his voice. “Let’s get some sleep now.”
Chris didn’t say anymore but she didn’t sleep either as she sat there, her blood boiling. How dare he? How dare dare dare he?
She was still angry when the door was unlocked and opened.
Chapter Twenty
A man grabbed Chris’s arm before she was out the door, roughly pushing her toward the stairs.
“You’re ours once he’s through with you,” the man whispered in her ear as she stumbled up the stairs. “And after he’s killed the pretty boy,” he added, meaning Tynan who was walking behind them. Another man, holding a rifle, brought up the rear.
At the top of the stairs, they were shoved into the dining room where Dysan waited for them. Dysan didn’t say a word as the men tied Tynan to a chair, then left the room.
Dysan lit a cigar, looking at Chris standing at the end of the dining table and at Tynan as he sat immobilized in a chair by the window.
“I have waited a long time for this,” he said at last. “I’ve spent years planning this, what I would do, how I would do it. I had no idea that you’d drop the answer into my hands so easily.”
As Dysan was speaking, he was looking at Tynan, it was as if Chris weren’t even in the room, but she got the impression that she was the answer to which Dysan was referring. She was what Dysan was going to use to do what he wanted to Tynan.
“Before we…die,” Chris said, “could you tell us why? What have we done?”
Dysan took a long draw on his cigar. “I have no intention of telling you anything. By tomorrow, this house will be a pile of cinders and in the ashes will be the bodies of two people. No one will even be able to identify the bodies. Your father will never know what happened to his little daughter.”
“What about the world? Won’t they want to know what happened to Nola Dallas?”
Dysan didn’t speak for a moment. “You are certainly full of surprises.” He turned to Tynan who was still and silent in the chair. “As well as yourself. She isn’t like your usual women.”
“What is it you have against Tynan? And if you think he wants me for anything, you’re wrong. I’m nothing to him, absolutely nothing.”
Dysan gave a little smile of delight. “Of course you’re not. Now, come here.”
Chris stiffened. “I will not.”
“For every order of mine that you disobey, I will take an hour from his life. You obey me and he lives longer.”