ScreenRant Presents An Exclusive Excerpt From Greta Kelly's The Throwaways

Fantasy author Greta Kelly steps into a whole new genre in The Throwaways, a thrilling action-packed spy adventure available now. A popular and critically acclaimed epic fantasy writer, Greta Kelly is best known for her Warrior Witch duology and The Queen of Days (a phenomenal read that's widely compared to Six of Crows). Now, though, she's stepped into a whole new genre in her thrilling new release, The Throwaways. The Throwaways is a dark, funny thriller with an edge, eaturing three generations of sharp-tongued women, a decades-old KGB secret, and a creepy doll that signals deadly trouble is on the way. The Calloway women are known for their Olympic-level banter, an inexplicable fear of dolls, and a talent for keeping secrets. But when Aster Calloway sells her grandmother’s Fabergé music box to help fund her mother’s mayoral campaign, she unknowingly exposes a list of names that has protected her grandmother Iris, a defected KGB operative, and her descendants for forty years. The Throwaways is available now from retailers like Amazon. Screen Rant is now sharing an exclusive excerpt. Chapter 3 IRIS I smiled down at the coffee cup cradled in my hands, admiring the flowers my granddaughter had painted on the mug. It was part of a set of three she’d made for Christmas: purple asters for herself, red poppies for her mother, and Prussian-blue irises for me. I didn’t usually use the mug, preferring to keep it safe in the cupboard at home, but something about it had called me that morning, and I found myself bringing it to work. Perhaps it was a sign. I idly wondered what mischief Aster was getting into today. My gaze cut to the cash register where a picture of my girls stood on the desktop. Poppy, tall and willowy and pale-golden on the right. Aster, shorter and fine-boned, on the left. She was holding her prizewinning frog from the town’s ridiculous Derby Days Frog Race close to her chest. Like life would always be this sweet. Then the security system pinged a warning across the cash register’s screen, and all thoughts of family evaporated. Through the crisp lens of my antique shop’s exterior cameras, I saw Tiffany Harden pull into the parking lot. Interesting. I watched her slide out of her pristine SUV and tug the hem of her blazer. Tiffany was of that generation of American women who seemed to exist solely in athleisure, yet she’d dragged herself all the way out to Seven Devils Antiques in a two-piece charcoal suit, her cream-colored blouse a perfect match to her three-inch heels. The suit was her armor—this I understood. I checked my lipstick in the warped glass of an antique mirror while I considered the reason she could be here. Then I cut the cameras. The bell above the door jingled, slicing through the silence of the store as she stepped inside. Her heels echoed off the towering aisles, and she craned her neck, looking around. Though I knew she’d seen me standing behind the checkout counter, she didn’t speak. A wise choice. I’d seen the ads she’d plastered across town that morning, and the only words I was inclined to speak would be accompanied by an eloquent level of violence. Her overfilled lips folded into a moue of distaste as she examined the shop. She’d been a persnickety child, I remembered. I wasn’t surprised that the seeming disorder of my store didn’t meet her standards. She looked at my antique shop and probably saw nothing but a dusty space filled with secondhand junk. Sewing shears worthy of a German fairy tale lay beside a beaded clutch whose lining was stained with bootleg liquor. Ancient scythes and hoes leaned against walls next to smoke-stained oil paintings. Hatpins the length of a man’s hand lay on velvet cushions beside costume jewelry. To her, it must look senseless. She was limited that way. Pampered child that she was, she couldn’t see that the aisles weren’t narrow and twisting out of carelessness, but to confuse. This wasn’t a shop. It was a labyrinth, one that funneled into chokepoints and disorienting dead ends seeded with conveniently placed weapons—antique, to be sure, but still serviceable. “You can stop checking the aisles, Tiffany,” I said, watching with satisfaction as she tried to repress a flinch. “We’re alone.” She took a beat to compose herself. Gathering her courage, but for what? “Hello, Iris,” she said with a fake little smile. “What do you want?” She tutted. “There’s no need to be rude.” “Your bench ad says differently.” “You saw those?” A smirk touched her lips before she smoothed it away. Since the answer was obvious, I didn’t reply, just watched as her smug expression fell a fraction. She’d never liked silence. I had countless memories of her coming to our house as a girl to play with Poppy, and always she was talking, talking, talking. She hadn’t changed with age, only gotten better at using other people’s words against them. In many ways, it made her a suitable political operative. I might have been oddly proud of her had her ambition not set her on a collision course with my daughter. “They aren’t personal,” she said, her hand unconsciously going to the cross she wore at her neck. “I have to do what’s best for the town. The people need to understand that they aren’t voting for candidates, but for the soul of Seven Devils.” I allowed another beat of silence to settle between us. “I’ve always found performative Christianity tedious. And dangerous. It lets people justify all manner of sins.” “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.” I carefully pushed aside the silver candlesticks I’d been shining lest the temptation to bludgeon her became too overpowering. “I’m pointing out the hypocrisy of you being the one to guard the town’s soul. Doesn’t seem that long ago you were caught with your skirt off beneath the bleachers at the homecoming game. Though I suppose you were on your knees at the time.” All right, it was twenty years ago. But what were a few decades between enemies? Scarlet blotches stained her fair skin. “Many of us are sinners before we repent in the light of the Lord.” “And is that what you mean to do after you leave here? Repent?” She fell back a half step in confusion. Poor lamb. “Am I mistaken, or did you not come here to threaten me?” Annoyance stained her dark eyes. Not because of my accusation, but because of how easily I’d read her. “Don’t be dramatic, Iris.” She tossed her chestnut hair over her shoulder, marching up to the counter in fake outrage. “You know, I’ve always liked you. I used to wish you were my mother. You were cosmopolitan. Mysterious.” “Funny, because I never wished you were my daughter.” She sucked in a sharp breath, anger and humiliation obvious in the way she tugged at the hem of her jacket—as if imagined wrinkles were the cause of my disdain. “Well. Your little aura of mystery is something my team has been talking about a lot recently. How you’ve lived here for decades, yet what do we really know about you?” I straightened from where I leaned on the counter and slowly, slowly squared up to her. Tiffany was taller than me—not hard, since I wasn’t tall by any definition. But only a fool underestimated a woman based on size alone. “Don’t be coy, dearie. Say what you mean.” “Well, it’s only that I know how much you value your privacy,” she began, amused. “How much you’d dislike the idea of an investigator poking around into your business. Into...your past.” I felt the weight of her eyes on my face, drinking in my expression. Was she hoping I would flinch? Or did she think I would wilt in fright? She should have been paying more attention to my hands. To the sharpened number two pencil that lay a hairbreadth from my right index finger. It’s amazing the amount of damage a number two pencil can do when rammed into the soft tissue beneath the chin. It takes hardly any effort at all to drive it straight through the soft palate and into the brain. Pity that I wasn’t that kind of person. Anymore. “What exactly do you think you’re going to find?” “A young woman blows into town in the middle of the night with a ten-year-old daughter and very little personal information? After having moved—what was it Poppy told me? Four times in three years? I haven’t hired the private investigator yet, but I can only imagine what there is to find. “Unless you can persuade Poppy to see sense and drop out of the race. Then there wouldn’t be any reason to ask uncomfortable questions.” She smiled a venomous smile that was very nearly the last thing she ever did. Luckily for her, she was standing on my second-favorite area rug. I’d have hated to see it ruined with her blood. The little cross Tiffany wore gleamed in the low light, and an idea filled my head. “It’s funny, you are using your old friendship with Poppy like it’s a weapon that only cuts one way.” Her smile froze. “You may think you know me, Tiffany, but I actually do know you. So while you might be dragging our names through the mud for the way Poppy let Andrew Woods knock her up in high school, I clearly remember you panting after his older brother, Sean.” She flinched at the boy’s name, practically egging me on. “I suppose you weren’t too fussed about religion back then, but as you say, we’re all sinners. Still, the timing of your conversion always struck me as, well...convenient. It was right after poor Sean had his little accident. Drowned? Right?” The casualness was feigned. That night still gave me nightmares. The kids of this town always liked to go exploring the bluffs surrounding Seven Devils. They’d sneak away to hike the forested trails and kayak the river that ran past cliffs and caves. They’d even try to scale the crumbling remains of the decommissioned radar site outside town. Poppy and Tiffany hadn’t been any different. Only one night, when they were supposed to be sleeping over at Tiffany’s house, they decided to sneak out with the Woods boys and camp in the forest. Come morning, Sean Woods was dead, Tiffany was inconsolable, and Aster’s father was nearly catatonic from grief. And Poppy was...changed, somehow. It was an accident, according to the children, though the Woods family always laid the blame at Poppy’s feet. It was easy for people to blame her—the pregnant teen must always be the bad egg in the basket. It didn’t matter that she’d also been valedictorian. But there was something about the night Sean died—something I didn’t know. A question that hadn’t been answered. But Tiffany, her skin going green, didn’t need to know that. “I don’t know what she told you—” “Have you ever heard of mutually assured destruction?” I asked. She blinked her confusion. “You must have missed that day in history class. Shame really, it would have saved you the embarrassment of this conversation. “Mutually assured destruction is a form of strategic deterrence, dearie. It’s when both sides of a conflict possess the ability to inflict unacceptable levels of damage upon the other, even after a surprise first strike. That shitty little bench ad you’ve put up all over town? That was your first strike.” I hefted one of the candlesticks, tilting it up toward the light like I was admiring the shine. Then I let it hit my open left palm with an echoing slap. “A second will not be tolerated.” Tiffany’s breaths sawed in and out, flaring her nostrils. How strange it must have been to suddenly find that the world was a cold and unforgiving place. “What exactly did Poppy tell you?” “That’s not the question you should be asking,” I said, leaning forward slightly. “The question you should be asking, is... Which one of us has more to lose?” Tiffany jumped, nearly snapping her slim ankles at the surprisingly sharp peal of the bell over the door. Poppy walked in, looking more frazzled than usual even before she registered Tiffany’s unexpected presence. Tiffany recovered faster than Poppy did. “There’s something seriously wrong with you people,” she hissed, clipping Poppy with her shoulder as she all but ran for the door. Laughter welled in my throat as I watched her go. I wondered what she’d tell her team. Wondered what lies she’d spin to explain why they wouldn’t be hiring a private investigator. Whatever story she invented, I hoped they’d listen. The thought snuffed out my amusement. I looked at my daughter, taking in the messy ponytail failing to contain her long blond hair, the flush of her lightly tanned cheeks, and the slight traces of sweat on the edges of her sky-blue tank top. Had she jogged here? I tried not to compare her bedraggled, slightly frantic appearance to Tiffany’s elegant composure. As unwise as it was for Poppy to be running for mayor, she could at least try to look the part. Not that I was going to say that aloud. I hadn’t seen Poppy since last week, when I’d tried to convince her to drop out of the race for exactly the same reason that I’d just threatened Tiffany. There were things in my past that did not bear scrutiny. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one. “Tiffany said something interesting,” I began in lieu of greeting. My daughter, for all her many virtues, had an unfortunate tendency to spill her guts when she was surprised. “It was about that night in the woods with—” Poppy crossed the room in three long strides, slamming something onto the counter so hard the glass shuddered. “What the hell is this, Mom?” A breath of cold that only I could feel crept up the back of my legs, worming beneath the hem of my indigo blouse and slithering up my spine. Its forked tongue slid through my unguarded back, its poisoned fangs piercing my heart. The store faded at the edges as the slanted walls of a cottage closed in around me. A north wind wailed in my ears, nearly drowning out the sound of a child’s laugh. And that cold white face peered up at me in the darkness. “Where?” The word scraped out of my throat like it had been dragged across broken glass. “It was delivered to my house,” Poppy replied. Her voice was unsteady, but not for the right reason. She was angry. She should have been scared. “When?” “I don’t know. It was there when I got home fifteen minutes ago. Mom, talk to me,” she said, pleading now. “Tell me this doesn’t mean what I think it means. Tell me you don’t expect us to run. The nightmare is over, right? It has to be over.” I recognized the anger in Poppy’s green eyes and the fear that lay behind it. Something in me trembled and threatened to break. She wasn’t a child anymore. I couldn’t simply gather her in my arms and carry her away from danger. She was grown. She had a life. A daughter. “Aster,” I said, adrenaline sharp in my veins. “Has she gotten a doll, too?” Is she safe? Poppy’s face paled. “I don’t know. I spoke to her before I got home. She didn’t say anything—” “Call her. Now.” “And say what? She just started medical school. I’m not letting her throw away her future because of some boogeyman you refuse to talk about.” “Better than her life.” “Don’t even joke about that.” “Am I laughing?” Poppy leveled a hard glare at me. “Well, I know you aren’t fucking serious.” “Do you think I want to take your home away from you?” I rounded the corner of the counter. “No, but I’ll do what I have to to keep you and Aster safe.” “Because this feels safe.” Poppy’s hand closed around my wrist, pulling me to a stop. “For once, Mom, talk to me. You owe me the truth.” She could have shot me, and it would have been less painful. Her words seared through the flesh of my chest, burning and piercing all at once. This wasn’t the first time she’d asked—far from it. But the doll was here now, and... Poppy was right. I did owe her the truth. But once I gave it to her, she’d never speak to me again. I shuddered, struggling to push past the thought, to lock it away. It wasn’t important. Not now. Right now, I needed to think. To act. “The doll is a warning from an old friend.” “Who, Chucky?” “It means we’re in danger. In order to find out how much danger,” I continued, as if she hadn’t spoken, “I need to determine our level of exposure.” Confusion wrinkled her brow. “How are you going to do that?” I moved toward the back of the store, feeling a sliver of relief at the question. It meant she was still with me. For now. “We’ve been safe in Seven Devils for thirty years. That safety can’t have been compromised by chance. I need to figure out how.” My office was in the back corner of the store, a sad little square with creaking floors and a spot of damp on the ceiling. I’d never really mastered the art of occupying a space, of decorating it in a way that made it look like a real person spent time there. Despite my efforts to liven the office up with a few paintings, it always looked more like a movie set. Probably because the paintings didn’t really go together either in color scheme or theme. I didn’t even really like them—I’d only picked them because they never sold. The only part of the room that spoke to anything about me was the wall of mismatched computer monitors hanging across from my desk. The message was a simple one: paranoia writ large on a dozen security feeds. Some days, it bothered me. Today, it meant I might have a chance of figuring out where I’d gone wrong. “Holy NSA hell, Mom,” Poppy said, walking backward from the screens until her legs hit the front of my desk. She had no idea how right she was. While she’d been back here many times, I’d always been careful to hide the security feeds behind slideshows of family pictures. “Oh my God! That’s my house. And Aster’s apartment. When did you put cameras up—” “Hush, I’m trying to focus,” I said, running the feeds backward. My eyes raced from one screen to the next, watching the store, my house, Poppy’s house, and Aster’s apartment. I scanned the faces, the cars, searching. Searching. “Wait, I didn’t know Aster was home,” Poppy said, pointing at the upper-right screen. Home, she called it. Not her house, but mine. The one that had been ours when she was growing up. The one we’d brought Aster home to as a newborn. I blinked the sting out of my eyes, focusing on the screen as Aster climbed out of her rusty blue Volkswagen. “I didn’t know either. She never said.” “This is what... Five days ago?” she said, squinting at the time stamp in the corner of the screen. “She should have been in class.” Disappointment was thick in Poppy’s voice, but it couldn’t touch the guilt etched on Aster’s face in the video. “Perhaps that’s why she looks like she’s up to something.” And she did. Aster was built more like me than Poppy, her elfin proportions making her look slightly younger than twenty-two. This, combined with her wide eyes and hair dyed a dark, iridescent blue natural only in unicorns, made my granddaughter appear positively impish. She looked over her shoulder at least a dozen times while she unlocked my front door and let herself in. “Why do I have a bad feeling about this?” Poppy asked, rubbing her forehead. “Wait—doesn’t your security system log entries?” “It does,” I replied, clicking a few buttons on my computer. The camera angle changed, and Poppy made a strangled noise in the back of her throat. “You have a camera inside the house?” My first instinct was to lie, but I curbed it. The truth was already inches from being revealed—I might as well get comfortable with it. “Technically I have cameras plural inside the house, covering all the doors, the basement, and my study.” “Why didn’t you ever tell me?” she asked, glancing away from the screen where Aster was typing furiously on her phone despite the incessant ding of the security system’s countdown clock. “Wait... When exactly did you put cameras inside the house?” “I installed the original cameras the night we moved in. Though I’ve naturally replaced them as the technology improved. And yes,” I said, answering the question she really wanted to ask, “I did see all the times you snuck out as a teenager.” Poppy blushed, still the good little girl she’d always been. “Why didn’t you say anything?” “I always thought a certain level of mischief was good for a child,” I replied. “Granted, had I known you were making such poor choices with Andrew Woods, I wouldn’t have been as lenient.” “Hey, that ‘poor choice’ is your granddaughter...” Poppy’s reflexive defensiveness washed out of her as she watched Aster on-screen. “Who appears to be hacking your security system.” “That’s not possible.” But my flat denial had no power over the reality staring back at me: Aster typing computer code into her phone. She cocked her head. Smiled. Then, like she had all the time in the world, she entered her key code into the security system. The countdown cut off. The security system went dark. “And you’re sure you didn’t get pinged when she entered?” Poppy asked, an insufferable combination of pity and condescension entering her gaze. She obviously thought I’d simply forgotten. “Yes.” I hissed the word. “I am sure.” “Then how? Did she hack the security company or something?” “This isn’t a movie,” I snapped, chewing on the inside of my cheek. I combed my brain for an answer, almost wishing I hadn’t given up my old life as early as I had. The technology I was trained to use was Stone Age compared to the phone in my pocket, let alone my home security system. Suddenly it all clicked. My home. “She didn’t have to hack the security company. She just needed access to my firewall. Which she had.” “When?” Poppy asked, but the half second of confusion on her face crumpled into comprehension. “On your birthday.” I nodded tightly. Aster had come over early and asked if she could finish her homework in my office. Such an innocent request. It was a betrayal I never saw coming. “She must have installed a zombie on my network.” Poppy opened her mouth—no doubt to make some quip about eating brains—but I cut her off. “It let her control the notifications sent by my alarm system.” And I hadn’t fucking known. My hands itched to hit someone. Myself most of all. I might have kept up-to-date on my reading, but I didn’t have the practical skill to guard against this kind of attack. I’d never seen it coming. Poppy whistled. “I can’t even run updates on my laptop without crying.” She winced at whatever she saw in my expression. “I suppose the real question is why?” I suspected I knew. Fingers heavy with dread, I flipped the screen to the camera in my study. It was perhaps the only room in my life that managed to look like something real. It was meant to be a formal dining room, but we’d never been a formal dinner family, preferring to eat in the kitchen, or as Poppy got older, sprawled in front of the TV in the living room. So I’d taken it over and made a library instead. An antique desk I couldn’t bear to part with occupied most of the floor, with a few velvet-upholstered chairs dotting the rest of the space. The walls were lined with bookshelves I’d built by hand. Many of the books crowded upon them had come with the house, but something about their presence felt anchoring in a way that I hadn’t expected to take comfort in. Possessions usually felt like a ball and chain. But the books felt like a fortress. As if, within that sanctum of stories and history, we would be safe. And we had been. But then I saw Aster dart into the room and go for the rolling ladder. She pushed it to the far corner of the space, the one directly across from a very carefully placed hidden camera. We watched her climb to the very top and reach for a small box tucked between the books. “Oh no,” Poppy muttered. “That’s not your music box, is it? The one with the creepy mermaid on it?” “A rusalka,” I whispered, hardly able to speak it aloud. “Bless you,” Poppy quipped, oblivious to the way the world was cracking open like a ravenous maw, ready to swallow us whole. “You never let us touch it, which I’m guessing means it’s worth a lot?” “It was made by Fabergé.” “The ridiculously-expensive Russian egg guy?” Poppy asked as I logged into Aster’s email. It was easy, since she still used the password we’d invented for her Webkinz account a decade prior. And then I saw it. “How much money are we talking about?” Poppy leaned over my shoulder and saw the notice from the auction house. “Fifty grand? What could she possibly need that much money for?” “The Rusalka music box was made in 1882 as a gift from Tsar Alexander III to his youngest child, Olga Alexandrovna.” The words bubbled off my lips almost by rote, as if I was nothing but an automaton. Numb. “So... Fifty grand isn’t going to stay the highest bid?” I looked at her, the few inches that separated us suddenly feeling too vast to bear. “The box itself is worth at least fifteen million dollars.” “Holy—” “But the information inside it is going to get us all killed if we don’t get it back.” I wasn’t sure how I expected Poppy to react, but it wasn’t the way she threw her arms in the air. “Be serious, Mom. You’re an elderly woman who owns an antique store—” “Elderly?” “We live in Wisconsin,” she continued, rolling her eyes so hard they should have popped out of her skull. “The only dangerous things we have to contend with are deer at dusk and drunk drivers after a Packers game.” “Oh, you sweet summer child,” I said, my voice dropping, but not in anger—or not only in anger. But also in desperation. “How quickly you forget that we didn’t always live here. How fortunate you are not to understand the lengths I’ve gone to to secure us the safety of this place.” “Do you also have ‘a certain set of skills’?” “And how utterly foolish you are,” I hissed, talking over her, “to think that I—at my vast age of sixty-six—didn’t have a past before you.” Her answering laugh was sharp enough to cut. “You never talk about your past, Mom! It’s not like I haven’t asked. I’ve been asking since the sixth grade, when Mrs. Johnson assigned a family tree project and instead of giving me any information about who we are and where we came from, you marched into school and yelled at her until both she and the principal were reduced to tears. “I would love to know anything about you—much less why you’ve let some creepy doll chase us out of one home after another. For all I know, you’re a mob wife on the run and my father is Michael fucking Corleone.” The pain in her voice was an open wound. “Poppy, you have to understand—” “No, I really don’t,” she snapped, stopping me before I could get the words out. “Do whatever you want. But I’m not ruining Aster’s life to satisfy your paranoia.” “It’s not paranoia,” I started, but Poppy shook her head, turning to the office door. “Poppy, wait—” I grabbed her hand as the bell at the front of the store jingled to life. Goddammit. Had I really not locked the door? “Please. Let me get rid of this customer and close the shop. Come home with me, and I will do my best to explain.” Poppy shook her head at the wall, like she couldn’t bear to look at me. “Explain what, exactly?” My mouth went dry. Because there were some tales that, once begun, couldn’t stop until the end. The end of us. “Everything,” I said, my voice low with pain. “I’ll tell you everything.” Poppy finally turned to me, studying my face for a long moment, and I felt her anger break when she saw the anguish in my eyes. It wasn’t that I was forgiven—no, she was still too mad to forgive. But there was a kindness in my Poppy. A softness in her heart that always made her want to heal. It was what made her such a good nurse, that unending well of empathy. I wished I could say it was a trait she’d inherited from her mother. I knew better. “All right.” I nodded, hurrying out of the office, afraid I’d somehow lose her if I wasn’t quick. More likely, I’d lose my nerve. I’d take her home and fall back on one of the many half-truths I’d leaned on all these years. Or one of the many lies. It was an alluring idea. Terrible ones usually were. As much as I feared the truth breaking us—and I was truly afraid—I knew I’d lose her if I gave her anything less. I blindly stalked the aisles, my thoughts swirling. Whoever was here antiquing had picked a crap day for it. I’d simply plead a family emergency and shoo them out. “Hello?” The man’s voice reached me before he did, and I saw that it wasn’t a customer after all. A delivery driver, judging by the atrocious color of his company uniform, stood at the front counter. He turned when he heard me coming and gestured toward a long box he’d set by the cash register. “I’ve got a package for you,” he said with a smile that showed too many yellow teeth. “You can leave it there,” I replied, my gaze latching onto the box. My heart thudded dully in my chest. I didn’t need to open it to know what was inside. A promise. A harbinger. “I just need a signature,” he said, holding out a metallic clipboard. “Are you Iris Calloway?” “Yes,” I replied dismissively, and I almost missed the familiar way his left hand moved to the small of his back, reaching not for a pen. But for a gun. “Poppy, cover!” I lunged for the pencil on the counter as the assassin pulled a Glock. Fool. My arm was already moving as he swung his forward. I drove the pencil straight through the meat of his inner wrist and felt the satisfying pop of punctured flesh. He gave a guttural shout as I twisted it, neatly skewering the median nerve, forcing him to drop the weapon. I kicked it across the room, to just past the Chippendale. He wrenched away, rage pooling in his pale eyes. I knew the only reason I wasn’t dead already was because the assassin didn’t expect to be made by a woman like me. Elderly, Poppy had called me. The man obviously agreed—and damn if I wasn’t going to make him pay for it. With the pencil abandoned in his now useless left arm, I was out of weapons. But not options. I snatched the candlestick off the counter with my left hand and claimed a pair of iron sewing shears with my right. Poppy shouted something behind me, but I didn’t have time to listen. I needed to move fast if I was going to get us out of this. Not giving the assassin a moment to recover, I lunged for him, striking left, right, left again. He blocked me each time, but he was losing ground. I blocked a knee aimed for my stomach with the candlestick, but it left me open on one side. I barely managed to twist out of the way as his fist barreled for my face. My shoulder took the hit instead, and my arm went numb. The candlestick would have dropped to the floor, but I was too pissed off to give in to pain. With a whirl of speed he wasn’t expecting, I jammed the point of the shears across his right thigh and shoved him back into the door. But not through it. Fuck. He must have locked it behind him, which meant our fight wasn’t going to spill out onto the street and none of my ever-watchful neighbors would thoughtfully call the police. The assassin lashed out with his right arm. Not for me, but for the sharpened hoe hanging from the wall. I dove back, barely avoiding taking the blade to my skull. The damage was done. I was on my back foot now. I might be smarter, but he was stronger—and now had an extra four feet of reach. An ancient mirror shattered as he swung again. Glass sprayed over me, slicing through my cheeks. I scrabbled backward, my muscles screaming. I was out of practice. Not even the weekly Brazilian jujitsu classes I drove all the way to Madison for were going to give me an edge against a man half my age. My body simply wasn’t used to this kind of fighting anymore. I cursed myself. How the fuck had I let myself go soft? I blocked another swing from the hoe—a block that saved my neck but cost me the candlestick. It rolled uselessly away, and I knew I couldn’t keep this up. I had to close the distance. Now. I waited for the next swing, timing my lunge carefully. I felt the blade swipe through my short hair as I ducked under it and brought the shears up with all my might. He had to drop the hoe to block me. But then his injured hand came out of nowhere and connected with the left side of my face. My teeth rattled in my skull. His other fist hit my solar plexus, and I doubled over. Then I was airborne. He swung me bodily through the air, like I weighed nothing. It was my last useless thought as my back connected with an armoire in the next aisle. I hit the ground face-first. Blood filled my mouth. My legs scrabbled uselessly on the wooden floor, and I screamed internally, willing my body to rise. I glared up at my assailant. Saw the way his chest heaved from the effort of fighting me. Saw the blood dripping off his fingertips and weeping from the half dozen cuts I’d scored into his marbled flesh. And then I saw his eyes drop. To the gun on the floor between us. Adrenaline cracked through my body like the zap of electricity through unguarded skin. I launched myself for the gun a half second before the assassin lunged. We met in the middle, my hand on the weapon, his hand on mine. And goddamn, this was not a fight I could win. One of my molars cracked as I screamed through gritted teeth, struggling against him. No amount of adrenaline was going to make me stronger than this man. No amount of muscle was going to stop him from twisting the gun into my face and forcing the trigger down. Nothing I could do would stop him from killing me. Killing Poppy. Tears seared down my face as I fought with everything I had. I was not losing. Not today. Not Poppy. I barely registered the silver flash of metal slicing through the air. Poppy. She’d swung a golf club straight into his knee. There was a pop of dislocated bone, and he bellowed, half collapsing onto me. I felt the gun twist in my hand. Felt the trigger buckle under my finger. And Poppy’s screams filled my ears.