relocate."

"Yeah," I said. "To their graves."

Marcus shrugged. "Unfortunate, certainly, but nevertheless necessary. Still, in order for us to advance as a civilization, sacrifices must occasionally be made by a select few – "

"I doubt Mrs. Fiske agrees with who you selected to be sacrificed," I interrupted.

"What may appear to one party to be improvement may appear to another to be wanton destruction – "

"Like the annihilation of our natural coastline by money-grubbing parasites like yourself?"

Well, he'd already said he was going to kill me. I didn't figure it mattered whether or not I was polite to him.

"And so for progress – real progress," he went on, as if he hadn't even heard me, "to be made, some simply have to do without."

"Without their lives?" I glared at him. "Dude, let me tell you something. You know your brother, the wannabe-vampire? You are every bit as sick as he is."

The car, right at that moment, pulled into the driveway of Mr. Beaumont's house. The guard at the gate waved to as we went by, though he couldn't see me through the tinted windows. He probably had no idea that inside his boss's car was a teenage girl who was about to be executed. No one – no one – I realized, knew where I was: not my mother, not Father Dominic, not Jesse – not even my dad. I had no idea what Marcus had planned for me, but whatever it was, I suspected I wasn't going to like it very much … especially if it got me where it had gotten Mrs. Fiske.

Which I was beginning to think it probably would.

The car pulled to a halt. Marcus's fingers bit into my upper arm.

"Come on," he said, and he started dragging me across the seat toward his side of the car and the open passenger door.

"Wait a minute," I said, in a last ditch effort to convince him that I could be perfectly reasonable given the right incentive – for instance, being killed. "What if I promised not to tell anyone?"

"You already have told someone," Marcus reminded me. "My nephew, Tad, remember?"

"Tad won't tell anyone. He can't. He's related to you. He's not allowed to testify against his own relatives in court, or something." My head was still kind of wobbly from the smack Marcus had given me, so I wasn't at my most lucid. Nevertheless, I tried my best to reason with him. "Tad is a super secret keeper."

"The dead," Marcus reminded me, "usually are."

If I hadn't been scared before – and I most definitely had been – I was super scared now. What did he mean by that? Did he mean . . . did he mean Tad wouldn't talk because he'd be dead? This guy was going to kill his own nephew? Because of what I'd told him?

I couldn't let that happen. I had no idea what Marcus intended to do with me, but one thing I knew for sure:

He wasn't going to lay a finger on my boyfriend.

Although at that particular moment, I had no idea how I was going to prevent him from doing so.

As Marcus yanked on me, I said to his thugs, "I just want to thank you guys for helping me out. You know, considering I'm a defenseless young girl and this guy is a cold-blooded killer, and all. Really. You've been great – "

Marcus gave me a jerk and I came flying out of the car toward him.

"Whoa," I said, when I'd found my feet. "What's with the rough stuff?"

"I'm not taking any chances," Marcus said, keeping his iron grip on my arm as he dragged me toward the front door of the house. "You've proved a good deal more trouble than I ever anticipated."

Before I had time to digest this compliment, Marcus had hauled me into the house while behind us the thugs got out of the car and followed along . . . just in case, I suppose, I suddenly broke free and tried to pull a La Femme Nikita–type escape.

Inside the Beaumonts' house – from what I could see given the speed with which Marcus was dragging me around – things were much the same as they'd been the last time I'd visited. There was no sign of Mr. Beaumont – he was probably in bed recovering from my brutal attack on him the night before. Poor thing. If I'd known it was Marcus who was the blood-sucking parasite and not his brother, I'd have shown the old guy a little compassion.

Which reminded me.

"What about Tad?" I asked as Marcus steered me across the patio, where rain was pattering into the pool, making hundreds of little splashes and thousands of ripples. "Where've you got him locked up?"

"You'll see," Marcus assured me as he pulled me into the little corridor where the elevator to Mr.

Beaumont's office sat.

He threw open the elevator door and pushed me inside the little moving room, then joined me there. His thugs took up positions in the hallway since there was no room for them and their over-muscled girth in the elevator. I was glad because Thug #1's wool peacoat had been starting to smell a little ripe.

Once again, I had a sensation of moving, but couldn't trace whether it was up or down. As we rode, I had a chance to study Marcus up close and personal. It was funny, but he really looked like an ordinary guy. He could have been anyone, a travel agent, a lawyer, a doctor.

But he wasn't. He was a murderer.

How proud his mom must be.

"You know," I remarked, "when my mom finds out about this, Beaumont Industries is going down. Way down."

"She's not going to connect your death with Beaumont Industries," Marcus informed me.

"Oh, yeah? Dude, let me tell you something. The minute my mutilated corpse is found, my mom's gonna turn into that creature from Aliens 2. You know the one where Sigourney Weaver gets into that forklift thing? And then – "

"You aren't going to be mutilated," Marcus snapped. He was obviously not a movie buff. He flung open the elevator door, and I saw that we were back where all of this had started, in Mr. Beaumont's spooky office.

"You're going," he said, with satisfaction, "to drown."

CHAPTER

19

"Here."

Marcus, by applying steady pressure to the small of my back, had steered me into the middle of the room. He went around the desk, reached into a drawer, and pulled out something red and silky. He threw it at me.

I, with my lightning quick reflexes, caught it, dropped it, then picked it up and squinted down at it. Except for the lights at the bottom of the aquarium, the room was in darkness.