Chapter 3

The old South Building was a private nursing home the Delgados had put up years ago.

It had been shut for eight years. The cameras and fire systems had all been stripped out long before.

The police told us to stall for time.

The moment Rex heard Jill crying on the line, he grabbed the car keys.

I pressed my hand flat against the door.

"I'm going with you."

"No."

"They asked for me by name."

For the first time, panic flickered in his eyes.

"Gwendolen, you already ended the contract."

The words came too late.

For three years he'd pushed me out in front of every risk the therapy carried.

Now that the contract was gone, he finally remembered I had the option not to go.

I pried his fingers loose.

"I'm going to save Aunt Jill. I'm not taking a risk for you."

There was no Jill at the old South Building.

Only Rex's uncle, Curtis Delgado, and four masked men.

The instant I stepped into the hall, the iron door slammed shut behind me.

Curtis pushed a tablet toward us.

On the screen, Jill lay in another room, her wrists strapped tight to the bed rails.

"That care trust in her name gets transferred out today."

Rex moved in front of me.

"You want shares, come to me."

"Your shares were pledged off long ago."

Curtis turned his cold eyes on me.

"Miss Swanson knows better than anyone whose voice Jill still listens to when the episodes hit."

He wanted me in the white dress, playing Seraphina, coaxing Jill into speaking the authorization phrase.

At last I understood why that stand-in contract three years ago had gone through so smoothly.

The person who first recommended the scenario-substitution program to Rex was Curtis.

From the very start, he'd been waiting for Jill to mistake me for Seraphina.

"She's already recognized me."

Curtis let the smile drop.

"Then we make her sick again."

He had them pin Rex down hard in a chair.

The gun wasn't loaded. The knife was real.

When the blade pressed to the side of Rex's neck, Jill's crying broke through the tablet.

I put on the dress and sat down in front of the camera.

Curtis handed me the script.

I glanced at it, then tore it to shreds.

"She won't say it."

The blade sank into Rex's skin.

Blood ran down along his collar.

He kept his eyes locked on my face.

"Gwendolen, don't worry about me."

Hearing my name, I almost laughed.

When he needed me to play someone else, he called me Gwendolen.

And when he might lose me, all he could say was don't worry about me.

Curtis ran out of patience and struck me hard across the face.

I hit the corner of the table, my mouth full of the taste of blood.

On the other end of the tablet, Jill suddenly stopped struggling, staring at the dress on my body.

"Gwendolen, take that dress off."

Curtis's face went livid.

Jill kept cursing.

"Curtis Delgado, you used these clothes to trick me for three years, and now you want to trick me a second time?"