Free Underworld Queen by Sharon Hamilton Page A

his heart to start racing, which set off more alarms. Oh, how I wish I could rob ten years from you like you robbed me of mine. With satisfaction, she witnessed his grimace as his pecker began to harden, making a mound in the sheets at his lap. His eyeballs were bulging, but she’d silenced his tongue so his feeble efforts to speak only frustrated him more.
    “You won’t live out the day, but every minute of it will be in pain. You reap what you sow, Burt.”
    She heard staff coming down the hall so she shifted through the wall of the adjoining room, setting off another series of buzzers as the three older male patients were all awake watching the TV mounted on the wall above the spot she’d just walked through.
    Audray quickly took the other way around and back out to the lobby, passing the now-vacant reception area. She knew that he wouldn’t survive the heart attack that was racking his body. In those last few minutes, he’d be in the most excruciating pain of his miserable life, and he’d be lying there knowing she did it, got even, and wouldn’t be able to tell a soul. She hoped their attempts to resuscitate him were long and equally painful, and that he would die slowly.
    There was a guest bathroom down the hall, where she washed her hands to rid herself of any remains of the sack of flesh known as Burt.
    The red Maserati growled through the gates of Central Valley Cemetery, rumbling up the drive to the top of the hill. Her mother had said to look for the big Guardian angel statue holding a little lamb—the section where her sister was buried, next to her father.
    She parked the car under a hulking willow tree, its ancient branches hovering over and touching the red beast, hiding it in shadows. The afternoon’s heat was coming to a close. Puffs of dandelion seeds blew in the breeze, dotting the air, dancing with moths and flying insects, against the ever-present background noise of the freeway.
    It took her several seconds to exit the car. She saw no one, but she felt watched. Stepping out into the light of day, she noted the birds had stopped chirping. She expected something, not sure what it was. The hairs at the back of her neck and on her forearms bristled. She’d gotten her revenge, and it felt good to have that chapter of her life closed forever. But she also had the eerie feeling someone had been following, watching her every move. She felt like a target.
    Her lunch, what little of it she ate, hung undigested in her stomach. Her red boots ascended the crown of the hill and stopped just before the looming statue with wings, which protected the little lamb. The white marble had turned gray and was streaked as though crying. Birds had dallied there and an abandoned nest sat in the crook of the large angel’s arm next to the body of the lamb.
    Audray had never experienced grief before. This emotion had always been just out of reach. But the devoted expression on the face of the angel moved something inside, and she was surprised to find tears rolling down her cheeks. Something has been lost. Something is gone forever.
    She bit her lower lip as she leaned forward to read the inscriptions on the ground. To the left she read:
    Lt. W. Michael Steele
    December 25, 1945 to June 4, 1980
    Rest in Peace. Your earthly work is done.
    Husband, Father, Soldier
    Guardian of the Weak
    Protector of the Weary
    Audray’s eyes moved over to the right, and she gazed upon the gravestone of her sister:
    Claire A. Steele
    February 14, 1970 to June 1, 1992
    Gone to be with her father,
    Who will protect her throughout eternity.
    Rest in Peace, Little Guardian
    The warm wind caressed her cheek, chilling the tears streaking down her face as she realized something perhaps her psyche had known all along: that she loved her sister, who had given her life to protect her. In turn, her sister’s love for Daniel gave her a second chance as a human, and the love of the man Audray had tried to take away from her.
    “I am so sorry,