Grief swelled in Kellen, followed swiftly by rage. She lifted her head off the carpet. “Really? You Tased someone who two years ago had a brain surgery? And it didn’t turn out well? I’m so sorry to hear that. What kind of idiot wouldn’t know that that would blow all my neurons to hell?”

In a motion so swift Kellen’s dazed eyes could barely follow, Mara came to her feet, lifted and pointed the pistol. “I’m not an idiot!”

Kellen had hit a nerve.

“I’m not stupid. Say it. Say it!” Mara’s feet, clad in those hiking boots, stomped forward, aiming for Kellen’s right hand.

Kellen may have imagined she had nothing to lose, but she’d protected, cherished, worked that hand for too long to have Mara break all the bones. She pulled it close to her body, rolled to her side and onto her feet—and one knee gave way. It hit the rug hard enough to bruise her, jar her spine. Her head spun and with her hand still tucked close, she leaned over the coffee table and retched.

“Yuck!” Mara backed up. “Don’t barf!”

Kellen fought for control of her stomach, her body, her mind. She practiced her breathing, in and out, and when she could, she pressed her good hand onto the table and used it to support her as she stood. She swayed and, head down, stared through her lashes at Mara. “You’re not stupid,” she acknowledged. “You were illiterate, yet still you ran the largest antiquities smuggling operation in this country, from Yearning Sands, and no one knew. No, not stupid. A psychopath. A serial killer. But never stupid.”

That was good enough for Mara. “Good. You’re not stupid, either, so you understand what I’m doing here.”

“No. I don’t. You were in prison.”

“I got out.”

“You escaped!”

Mara smiled with patently false modesty. “Did you imagine I was going to stay there? In that cell? When all I needed was to persuade a few people I should be elsewhere?”

Kellen lifted her right hand to gesture and—

“Look at that. Look at your hand. You were getting better. Now you’re not.” Mara was irritated. “What’s wrong with you?”

Kellen lifted her atrophied hand before her eyes and like an infant, stared as if seeing it for the first time. The Taser blast had fried her nerves. She tried to straighten her fingers, but they were white and cold, without feeling, curled into the tight, terrible C shape they had been after surgery.

Why did Mara know Kellen’s hand had been getting better? Why did she know anything about Kellen’s hand at all?

Because she’d been stalking them. Watching them. Worse—Kellen had lost the advantage of pretending to be disabled. She was disabled.