Free Canyon Road by Thea Thomas

are no longer in my employ. I nearly fired you yesterday. Now add breaking and entering and threatening me and we have reached the termination of your involvement with my aunt's estate and with me." She moved cautiously around him and opened the door wide. "And we will see what falls out regarding your probable embezzlement." As soon as she said this, Sage regretted it. Poke a stick at the tiger, will you, she said to herself.
    And she was right. She could hardly believe the transformation that appeared before her. Rattnor's eyes became slivers, his teeth crunched together roping his jaw, his face flushed a fire-anger red, and his entire body became ramrod, every muscle clinched.
    "Shut up," he hissed. "shut up, shut up, shut up. I have had it with you Elgin bitches. First one then the other. Flaunting your bodies around, teasing. Flaunting your money. You don't deserve one single cent. You ought to be living in a tent. Who are you? Nobody, nothing. You've never done anything worthwhile in your life. Never lifted a finger.
    "I've slaved around the clock, day in and day out. And for what? Only to have you think you can tell me I'm fired? Well, that's not going to happen, little girl. What's going to happen is another accident. Perfect too. Just like your Aunt. Perfect justice. You miss her so much? We'll just have you join her."
    He reached out to grab her, she stepped back behind the door. "What are you saying? What are you saying about Victoria?"
    A rictus grin crossed his features. "Nothing. Just that, it looked like her horse threw her. Her horse, that she loved more than anything or anyone. That she'd raised from birth. And excellent rider that she was, too."
    Now trapped behind the door, Rattnor grabbed her, with lightning strength, he spun her around and pinned her arms behind her back. "And you're going to have an accident too." In a steel grip that stunned her, that she could not escape, he drug her backwards across the foyer. "I can just see the headlines now, "beautiful heiress tumbles down her own winding stairway. So sad, too bad. Cut short in the midst of her frivolities."
    They reached the bottom of the stairs. "Let. Me. Go!" Sage screamed in his ear, struggling with every bit of her strength.
    "Shut up!" He slapped her across the face so hard she became disoriented.
    He drug her up three steps. "Have to get high enough to accomplish the goal."
    "Think about what you're doing," she tried to reason.
    "I have thought about this long and hard, for many hours, you can count on it. Shut up." He drug her up another couple of steps.
    "Anthony is on his way over," she whispered, knowing that, if Rattnor was successful, Anthony would be too late.
    Rattnor stopped and looked down at her incredulously. "Oh, that's pathetic! You must think I've very stupid. I know you can't stand him. I know you would never have him here. Honestly, Victoria, I am so sick of the way you patronize me. I'm so sick of your thinking you're superior to me."
    "Sage," Sage said.
    "What?"
    "You said Victoria. Victoria is dead. Apparently you killed her. I'm Sage."
    He looked confused for a brief moment then shook his head. "Who cares? There's no difference between the two of you. One of you, two of you, ten of you, it's all the same. You're this endless monster in my life. Soon to be over. What I've worked on so long and hard will finally be mine. Finally!" He drug her up another step.
    "How so?"
    "Don't you remember willing everything to me in that giant stack of papers I had you sign in our executor meeting. You don't? Never mind, it's all taken care of. Not to worry."
    Sage kicked off her heels and got some traction on the carpet. "If I'm going down, you crazy creep, you're going with me." She gambled on the six or seven steps being a less dangerous fall that the entire stairway. Throwing everything into her thrust, she lurched on top of him, and they rolled to the bottom of the stairs.
    As Sage felt herself slip into unconsciousness, she heard