Dolly peeked around my waist and looked at him.
He stepped closer, ignoring me, until I blocked his path. Narrowed eyes glared at me . . . and that’s when I saw it. Those eyes. I knew those eyes. Eyes that looked at me with hatred.
“Eddie fucking Smith,” I said and watched his face tense. I looked down at his uniform and smirked. He’d got his wish after all.
Texas Ranger.
“Rabbit?” Dolly whispered from behind me. “Who is this?” She walked around me. Eddie Smith swallowed as he beheld Dolly in her full Alice in Wonderland regalia. As her blue eyes, eyes that he had once loved for many years, locked on him. By his reaction, I was sure that love had yet to fade.
Eddie didn’t speak, just stared. When Dolly looked at me, waiting for me to answer her question, I said the only thing that came to mind. “The Mad Hatter,” I announced, looking at the Stetson on his head. “Dolly, this is the Mad Hatter.” Dolly gasped in excitement, her hands covering her mouth.
Then, meeting Smith’s eyes, I asked, “Question is, what is the Mad Hatter about to do?”
Chapter 17
Eddie
I couldn’t believe it was her. Ellis. In the flesh. Talking. Smiling . . . happy.
“Question is, what is the Mad Hatter about to do?”
I heard our men upstairs, searching the rooms. I knew that somewhere, Earnshaw would be lying in a pool of his own blood. He was the last target they had, the orchestrator of their abuse. The conductor of every sick and twisted movement that had occurred on the Earnshaw estate.
Only very recently had I learned about it all.
I looked at Ellis and wanted to cry for the things that I heard had been done to her. I flicked my eyes at Heathan. Even though I hated him with every ounce of my being for stealing my girl, I would never have wished on him the things that had been done to him by those evil men.
I thought back to the interview with Simon Wells. The one who made the complaint about Earnshaw and his colleagues years ago. The complaint that was ignored.
I thought back to what he told me, about the terrible things Earnshaw and his colleagues had done to him. About how he had seen Heathan, and later Ellis, being led into rooms where the same fate undoubtedly awaited them. I had run straight to the bathroom and vomited.
“You’re the Mad Hatter?” Ellis’s voice cut through my memory of Simon’s testimony. But what he had told me remained. As I looked at her heavily made-up face, a strange clock drawn around her left eye, all I could think of was how she was taken over and over by those men . . . arranged by her own father.
The dead man upstairs, who I believed had deserved to die.
Hell, they all deserved to die.
“Yes,” I replied. Ellis spoke with a regal English accent. She wore the clothes of a sexualized Alice in Wonderland and, to cap it all, she sported a crown upon her head. “I’m the Mad Hatter,” I confirmed and saw Heathan breathe more easily. When I glanced at him, he was watching Ellis with the same fucked-up, possessive gaze he had when they were kids.
I realized that in his own fucked-up way . . . he loved her.
He’d come back for her.
Jesus . . . I think he’d saved her.
Wreaked revenge on those who had wronged them, no doubt . . . for her.
Ellis ran to me, and I lost my breath at how beautiful she was. I saw the blade in her waist belt. Saw the gun in her hand. Her old doll’s head was on her waist too. “Do you hold tea parties?” she asked with excitement.
Indulging the innocence that was Ellis, I nodded. I played her game . . . one last time. “Yes.” My rough voice betrayed the tightness of my throat. “I hold tea parties.”
Ellis squealed and I winced, praying her voice hadn’t been heard by the men upstairs. “We shall have to attend one day, shan’t we, Rabbit?”
“Sure, darlin’,” Heathan drawled. His eyes cut to the ceiling when the sound of footsteps came closer to the cellar stairs.
“You are very much invited,” I said, and she clapped her hands. I glanced at Heathan and saw him watching me. He was trying to read what I would do.
I saw his cane. I knew from the maid that it held both a blade and a gun. And I expected that he would kill me now. Knowing he was listening, and knowing he would read the subtext, I said to Dolly, “You have to run now, for you’re going to be late. You must follow the White Rabbit down a new hole. But one day . . .” I smiled, seeing her blue eyes wide and so, so beautiful, “But one day, we will have that party. And I’ll bring the Earl Grey tea.”