Page 46 of Whispers at Dusk
But he guessed they weren’t expecting company.
They came to a small road that skirted around an area of dense trees. The ground was beginning to rise, but they weren’t at any great height.
When the car turned off onto another road that was barely wide enough for the blonde woman’s vehicle, he drew to the side of the road himself, slipped out, nodding to Bisset to do the same, and started jogging carefully after the other vehicle. Taking great care, he hid within the trees.
The blonde woman stopped the car in an area of heavily thicketed forest.
Mason watched and waited.
The good thing was with these two possible killers, they weren’t talking about a pair of Harvard scholars with deep knowledge regarding criminology.
The blonde had glanced back while driving, and Della had pretended to be asleep.
They had reached the small highway leading away from Lillehammer when “Tom” went out like a light. But Della leaned against him, and her assumption that he was left to care for their unconscious victim must have been accurate.
The blonde didn’t try to speak to him. And the way Della had maneuvered things, it looked as if his head was just bent—the better for him to watch her.
And when she parked the car, “Mandy” stepped out of it immediately, coming around to Della’s side of the passenger seats, and opened the door.
Della pretended to half slide and half fall out the door.
The woman swore, stepping over Della and looking into the car.
“Tomaso!” she snapped.
Of course, he didn’t respond.
“Men!” she snapped in English. “Ass drank some of the beer. Well, he is an ass. Leave it to me. And if you want it done right, do it yourself. The Master is a fool, too! Male, and... Damn, I’m better than this idiot, but...argh! But I will prove myself! I will sit beside Him through all the sweet years of our immortality!”
The blonde was apparently American—one who believed whatever she’d been fed. Incredible! Then again, throughout the years, people did often believe the most bizarre lies that could be told. Maybe people just believed what they wanted to believe.
“I will do it!” the blonde snapped.
Of course, Della still had no idea of whatdoing itmeant, so she lay still, eyes slit, and tried to see what the woman was up to.
She opened the car’s tiny trunk, taking out what looked to be a physician’s medical bag. She set it down near Della and opened it.
There was a small pole for an IV drip that the woman set up, and then an apparatus with needles, what someone might see in a hospital to deliver life-saving fluids and medications intravenously.
Or the same type of apparatus that might be used in a traveling blood bank, where donors gave in the almost-comfort of a large van or bus.
And Della knew then, of course, what was about to happen. The woman meant to assure herself Della was out—and then insert those needles into her neck and bleed her dry.
She’d waited; she’d needed to be sure.
But when the woman started toward her to lay her out in a better position for the operation, Della struck, rising to a seated position and head-slamming the woman while reaching for her Baby Browning.
The blonde jumped back, a startled scream escaping her, and then a barrage of curses.
“Drop it all,” Della said. “Hands behind your back.”
“Maybe not!”
Della was startled herself when Tom or Tomaso suddenly appeared on the other side of the car, still the worse for wear, but brandishing what appeared to be a high-powered German gun.
“Drop it. Now!” he ordered her.
“Oh, no, no,” Della said. “You are not going to bleed me dry forthe Master. You’ll have to shoot me—but by then, I’ll have shot her.”
