The Man Who Crossed Worlds (Miles Franco #1)

Chapter Twenty-Six

Just for once, I’d like everyone to be who they goddamn say they are. Was that too much to ask?

Caterina stared at me with her Cheshire cat smile, the gun hanging from her side as if it were no more than a shopping bag. Jesus, was I the only sane person in this city?

Well, given the trail of bodies that lay behind me, my sanity could be debated. Probably in a court of law.

My gaze slid from Caterina to her husband’s body and back again. Her eyes were bloodshot, her mouth twitching every few seconds. She was handling the Chroma well; neither Tania nor I had stayed so calm.

She was waiting for me to speak, it seemed. Christ Almighty. I was being thrown around so much I was getting whiplash.

“Cat,” I started, raising my arms in a desperate pacifying gesture. “Why don’t you put away the cannon?”

She just smiled wider and kept the gun in her hand. With a few slinking steps she was in front of me, close enough that I could feel the heat of her breath against my skin. My legs had checked out along with my brain, and I was stuck standing against the piano, a drugged-up murderess in front of me and a dead gangster at my side. This fucking day…

“I’m sorry you had to see that,” Caterina said, “but it needed to be done. You understand, of course.”

The Chroma had sent her round the bend. At least, I hoped it was the Chroma. What the hell had she been thinking? And since when had she been a Tunneler?

“He was a very bad man,” I said, raising my hands. “I’m sure the world will be better now he’s got a few extra holes in him. Now about that gun…”

“He wasn’t bad,” she snapped, and I flinched as she twitched her gun arm. “He was stupid. Inefficient. He would have let the whole Chroma incident pass him by, thinking of it as some new-fangled drug he didn’t need. He’s always been too caught up in the Ink and alcohol trades to see what he could really do.”

“Christ, Cat, tell me this is the Chroma talking,” I said, pushing myself back against the shattered piano. I was still flashing with impulses to flee, but the logical part of my brain kept me still. Something told me that in her current state she’d be something like a wild dog chasing the mailman. Your best bet was to look it in the eyes and keep it from biting you in the ass.

Caterina didn’t seem to be paying much attention to me anyway. She prodded Andrews’ body with her toe, her lips twisting with disgust.

“It was always money with him,” she said. “The territory, the gang, even his marriage to me, it was all just a means to an end. He couldn’t see what the Chroma could truly be used for.”

I didn’t like where this train of thought was going, and I wanted to get off. Unfortunately, there didn’t seem to be an emergency brake. “Well, it looks like you fixed that. Chroma can’t be used, Cat. It doesn’t play nice with others. I learned that the hard way.”

She smiled then, a smile to set my knees shaking. “Look around you, Mr. Franco. Look what we’ve achieved with Chroma.”

“‘We’? Much as I’d like it not to have been me who scorched those gangsters, I did this. Not you.”

She looked away from Andrews and moved so close I could feel the tips of her breasts pressed against me. Another time, that might have got my engines running, but right now it just made my guts twist all the more fiercely.

I could feel the cold metal of the gun pressed against my side as she wrapped her arms around me, one hand sliding up to stroke my stubble. “Oh come now, Mr. Franco, you’re much too smart to think that. It wasn’t all a lie, you know. Yesterday morning, in the motel room… I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you the truth before, but I just couldn’t take the risk. I didn’t know whether I should trust you. But when I followed you here, and saw you tear apart my husband’s mansion…” She licked her lips, moaning softly. “Then I knew.”