Wicked Love

by Michelle Dare

  “I shall accompany you to her room. I thank you for doing it, seeing as how it would have been very painful for Agnes to do a search. Perhaps some of the others would like to join us?” The manservant gave Timothy a pointed look.

  “Not bloody likely. I’m not gallivanting around this castle for some maid again,” Timothy muttered from his seat. “Besides, I’m trying to get the Wi-Fi going.”

  The manservant cleared his throat. “Very well. Agnes and our groundskeeper, Sven, will stay behind to watch over you.”

  “A female and an old man? What are they going to do, throw pillows at the killer? Don’t make me laugh.” Timothy picked up a dagger from the table by his side. “Don’t you worry, old chap. Now that I’ve got a weapon of my own I’m ready for this nutter.”

  Jane didn’t bother to point out that Timothy was likely older than the groundskeeper. It would just have started another round of pointless arguing.

  The manservant led them down to the servants’ quarters, letting them into Heidi’s bedroom. Once they were inside the manservant began to patrol the hall outside, holding the rifle tightly in his hands.

  Though the room was smaller than the ones on the upper floors it was well furnished, with a TV, sofa, bookshelf, and dresser.

  Gabriel moved over to the nightstand by the bed and picked up the stack of papers on top. “I can search through this pile first. We should also look for her cell phone.”

  “Right. Otto had been looking for it before…” Before he had also been killed. Had that been why he was murdered? Because he had searched for documentation about Heidi? Jane shuddered, and decided to focus on their task.

  She headed over to the dresser and opened the top drawer. There she found clothes, socks, and underwear. Guilt ate away at her. It felt wrong to go through a dead woman’s belongings like this, even if it was for a good reason. “Why do you think Heidi was killed?” she asked softly.

  “I’ve tried to come up with theories,” Gabriel replied. “It has to be connected to the castle inheritance. That’s the simplest explanation.”

  “Why go after Heidi, though?” she asked. “I’m the only person here who stands to inherit.”

  “Not necessarily.”

  She frowned and looked over at him. “What do you mean?”

  “We both got translated copies of von Westen’s will.” Gabriel paused to pull a piece of paper out of his jacket pocket. “Look at the relevant section of the will again.”

  She took the paper from him and unfolded it. “Okay. Well, it says that the nearest legitimately born blood relative without a criminal record will inherit the castle.”

  “What does the fine print say after that?”

  Her frown deepened as she kept on reading. “It says, that if no blood relative fits this criteria, anyone designated as next of kin would be next in line inherit. Which means—”

  “Which means that since Timothy was von Westen’s brother-in-law, he could be designated as next of kin. But only if you and my client are out of the picture, Jane.”

  “Okay. That looks bad for Timothy,” she conceded. “But the killer went after Heidi. If getting the castle is the motive, then I’d be the number one target. Nobody has come after me.”

  “Not yet.”

  His words frightened her and Jane sucked in a breath. The storm was dying down. That meant the police would get to the castle soon. They just had to hold on for the police.

  She glanced back down at the paper in her hands and her mouth fell open. “Timothy might not be the most likely suspect.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “There’s more fine print,” she explained. “It says that if nobody is designated next of kin, then a blood relative who is either illegitimate or has a criminal record could inherit.”

  “Okay, but there are no other candidates that fit that criteria.”

  “There is another candidate.” She folded the paper and gave it back to him. This was the last topic she ever wanted to discuss. Least of all with her rival. It would only give Gabriel more ammunition to use against her. But he had told her about his own pain, and that had to mean something. “My father.”

  9

  Gabriel had never liked surprises. Above all else, he required control. He was never more out of control than when he was with Jane. Especially now. He could never predict what she was going to say or do. Which made her irresistible to him. Irresistible and dangerous.

  “Your father?” He looked her directly in the eye, trying to figure out if she was playing him. During this entire legal battle he had followed Otto’s lead and narrowed the inheritors down to Jane and his own client. There had been no mention of another von Westen relative. He’d assumed that her father had passed away or something. “Your father has a criminal record?”

  “Yes. That’s probably why Otto overlooked him.”

  “So, he’s in prison.”

  She averted her gaze, the corners of her lips tugging downward. “No. Not in prison.”

  “He’s an ex-con?”

  “Yes. Sort of.” She wrapped her arms around herself, in what looked like an attempt to calm down before continuing. “He was in prison before I was born for a couple of years. But he’s in a mental hospital for the criminally insane now.”

  He stared at her, stunned into silence for several moments. “Why? What did he do?”

  “You’ve heard of him,” she breathed out, her thin voice barely audible. “My dad is Harold Westen.”

  The name didn’t ring a bell at first, and then a memory from his childhood struck him. News bulletins and a city in panic. “Holy shit. The guy who hacked all those people to death on the Fourth of July?”

  “Yes. That’s my father.” She lowered her arms and stared down at the floor. “So you know the worst thing about me now. I wouldn’t blame you if you wanted nothing to do with me.”

  He didn’t say anything. With her eyes on the floor, it was clear she didn’t realize that he was looking at her.

  Jane appeared smaller. More fragile. Almost resigned to what was coming. Her curtain of copper hair fell around her shoulders and hid part of her face from view. Long, dark lashes brushed against the curve of her cheek, preventing him from seeing her brown eyes. But he didn’t need to see her eyes to know that she was distressed. A single tear rolling down her cheek told him all he needed to know.

  “It’s a lot to take in,” he said finally.

  Her shoulders heaved. “I-I figured it would be.”

  Gabriel walked up to her, reaching out to curl his fingers around her shoulders. “It’s a lot, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to turn my back on you.”

  She lifted her gaze, her lower lip trembling as another tear slid down her cheek. “You’re not?”

  It killed him to see her in so much pain. No wonder she had been able to handle being stuck in the castle so well. She had gone through trauma already. “Of course not. Your father committed a crime because he’s insane, so he isn’t responsible. If he can’t be held responsible, why should you be?”

  “I’ve kept it a secret for so long,” she admitted. “Never told anyone he was my dad. It was bad enough that I shared the same last name as a mass killer. I even thought about changing my last name when kids at school started bullying me, but by the time my dad faded from the news it wasn’t a problem anymore.”

  “I’m sorry you went through that,” he said. “Damn, you were suffering in silence all this time.”

  “The only people who knew were my mom and a handful of relatives,” she said. “It was the secret we couldn’t let anybody know. I was so freaked out I got all kinds of psych evaluations to make sure that I wasn’t like him. I’m not, but…I look like him, Gabriel. I have his mannerisms.”

  Gabriel cupped her face between his hands and stared into her shimmering brown eyes. He had to get her to see. To see herself the way he saw her. As the remarkable, brave, caring, beautiful, terrifyingly intelligent woman she was. “You’re not him.”

  Sh
e trembled at his touch. “How do you know?”

  “Because I know you,” he said firmly. “We’re trapped in this castle during a snowstorm and the only person I can count on is you. Maybe that makes me a trusting fool, but there it is, Jane.”

  “I probably should have told you sooner.”

  “You don’t owe me that part of your past,” he said. “That kind of trauma isn’t anybody’s business but yours. Still, thank you for telling me. I’m sorry you went through that. It can’t have been easy.”

  She started to swipe at her tears and he took a step back to give her some space.

  “No, it wasn’t easy. But it was so much worse for the victims’ families. I can’t even imagine their pain,” she said, her voice shaking. “Anyway, I told you because I don’t want you to get hurt. In case he’s the one behind all this.”

  “Wait, you think he’s responsible for these killings?” he asked.

  “I don’t know.” She sighed. “But my father is a mass murderer and all of these killings are happening. Based on what von Westen’s will says, my dad would be eligible to inherit if enough people were out of the picture. That’s motive.”

  He thought her words over. “True, but your father is insane. Killing to inherit would take careful planning. None of these deaths and disappearances seem like the work of a deranged person. Besides, your father is in a mental hospital. Hardly likely that he found out about the castle, managed to escape the hospital, and booked a flight to Germany.”

  “Timothy seems to think the killer is crazy,” she pointed out. “Plus, we still haven’t figured out the connection between Heidi and Otto. They might have been under the same roof, but Heidi wasn’t like Otto. She wasn’t a lawyer with knowledge of the legal case. Heidi was just a young woman trying to do her job.”

  “That’s why we have to keep searching for her family’s contact details. She deserves a better resting place than the castle grounds,” he said. “Feel up to it?”

  She wiped at her face again, then smoothed her hands down over her hair. “Yes. We can’t save her, but at least we can find her family.”

  They went back to searching through Heidi’s belongings, and Gabriel looked through all the documents he found on the nightstand. Most of the papers looked like old bills or receipts. Nothing with her family’s contact details.

  With that pile of paper dealt with, he opened the nightstand drawer and retrieved the stack of papers inside. Receipts, photocopies of Heidi’s IDs, a day planner, prescriptions. It was all so mundane the he started to put the papers back into the drawer when something caught his eye.

  His heart started to pound the way it did when he knew he was close to winning a challenging case. “I found it.”

  Jane looked up from her search through a handbag. “What? What did you find?”

  He held up a pair of documents. “The connection between Heidi and Otto. I found the killer’s motive.”

  Jane rushed over to him, her heart hammering. “What’s the motive?”

  He handed over a yellowed document. “Start with this.”

  She looked at the parchment in her hands. It was old. At least a hundred years old, by the look of it. The very type of document she had come to Germany to look for. “It’s a family tree.”

  “Right. With all the von Westens on it.” He pointed lower down on the tree. “The paper is probably centuries old, but each generation gets added as time goes by. In the old days, a castle historian or archive keeper was responsible. My guess is that Otto was in charge of it more recently.”

  “This is my name,” she said, staring at her place on the tree.

  “Yeah. And this is my client’s name,” he said, pointing to the name ‘Kyle Westen’.

  “So that’s the client you were trying to keep secret,” she said wryly.

  “I’ve got way bigger problems than letting my client’s name get out,” he said with a sardonic smile. “Anyway, this proves what I feared.”

  “Which is?”

  “You both have equal claim to the castle,” he said. “You’re both third cousins of von Westen. From the same generation, with legitimate parentage. Neither of you has a stronger claim than the other.”

  “So we’re back to square one,” she said, sighing. “Wait, you said Otto was in charge of the family tree. Why would Heidi have this, then?”

  “I think this will answer the question.” He handed over another document.

  This piece of paper was a lot more recent, though it was crumpled. Jane peered at the German written on it, trying to remember what she had learned of the language over the past few months. “This is a birth certificate. Heidi’s birth certificate.”

  “Look who’s written as her father.”

  Jane’s eyes went wide with shock. “Oh my goodness. Her father was Friedrich von Westen.”

  “The castle’s former owner.”

  She was so stunned that she was speechless for several long moments. It was taking her brain forever to accept what she was seeing. “I can’t believe this. Heidi was von Westen’s daughter?”

  “His illegitimate daughter,” he pointed out. “Which would have thrown a wrench into everything.”

  “Heidi was my cousin,” Jane said, a dull pain spreading through her. “This whole time we’ve been looking for her family while I was her family all along. I didn’t even know.”

  “I’m sorry, Jane.”

  “Is this why she was killed?”

  “That’s my guess.” Sadness settled over his face, his green eyes darkening with it. “As the castle solicitor Otto probably discovered the truth, and the killer got rid of him, too.”

  “Oh my goodness.” Her pulse quickened, her heart beating so fast she had to place a trembling hand over her chest to try slowing it down. “Timothy. Oh shit, you were right, Gabriel. Timothy must have done this. He’s upstairs right now. What do we do?”

  “We hold on to these documents for the police and get the rest of the servants away from him before it’s too late,” he said, taking the papers back from her.

  “We have to go back upstairs now.”

  “Right. That means we can’t let Timothy know what we’ve found. We can’t risk tipping him off.” He pocketed the documents and headed for the door. “Stay close.”

  She took a deep breath to try to steady her fraying nerves, and then followed Gabriel.

  The manservant walked over to them. “So, you are finished with your search? Have you found any contact information?”

  “Not yet. We’re going to need an extra pair of hands to help,” Gabriel said.

  “Then I will request that Sven and Agnes help us,” the manservant said.

  With her heart hammering wildly in her chest they headed upstairs to the bedroom, the manservant bringing up the rear.

  When they got into the bedroom, Sven and Agnes were warming themselves by the fire.

  “Where’s Timothy?” Jane asked as she approached the servants.

  Agnes got to her feet. “We begged him not to go, Fraulein Westen.”

  “Go where?” Jane asked in alarm.

  “He went up to the tower to try to get better internet service,” Agnes said with a heavy sigh. “We told him it was too dangerous, especially now. But he would not listen to us.”

  Jane glanced at Gabriel, too stunned to speak. If Timothy was on the loose in the castle, far away from prying eyes, there was no telling what he was up to. A chill crept down her spine at that realization. “We have to find a more secure place to barricade ourselves.”

  “You’re right,” he said, grabbing the rifle from a nearby desk. “Come on—”

  A loud thud cut him off. Then a shriek cut through the air, the sound louder than the howling wind outside.

  Terror seizing her Jane looked at the large bedroom window, desperate to find the animal that was making such a bone-chilling sound. A bundle of clothes fell past the window, the shriek louder than it had been before.

  “What the hell?” Gabriel ran for the w
indow, released the latch to open it, and stuck his head outside. Another, more squelching thud, sounded and then the shriek died down. All was silent.

  “What is it?” A wave of nausea washed over her, but she forced herself to move over to the window. “Were those somebody’s clothes?”

  “Clothes?” Gabriel glanced at her in confusion, and then a look of pure horror turned his face pale. “Jane, turn away.”

  She was too confused for his words to sink in, so she did the opposite of what he’d commanded. Jane looked outside, her gaze landing on ground far below them. There on the snow was a broken body, dark blood pooling beneath it. The body was wrapped in gray wool and Jane recognized the coat instantly.

  It had belonged to Timothy.

  10

  “It’s Timothy!” Jane cried out. The sight below was so horrible she shut her eyes and jumped back.

  The three servants behind her rushed towards the window. Agnes turned away the moment she looked down and clamped a hand over her mouth. Probably to keep from screaming. Screaming the way Jane wanted to scream right now.

  “He must be dead. No man can survive such a fall,” the manservant said. “We have to retrieve his body.”

  “No yet.” Gabriel looked skyward. “Someone’s up there on the tower. I can see a shadow.”

  Jane opened her eyes and forced down a breath. “Who is it?”

  “I don’t know. It’s too far up to see clearly.” Gabriel strode up to her. “But I’m going up there. I’m tired of waiting around like sitting ducks to get picked off one by one. Time to stop this bastard.”

  “Gabriel, no! It’s too dangerous,” Jane said desperately.

  He moved past her, ignoring her words as he made for the door. “Does anybody know how to get to the top of that tower?”

  “I will show you the way,” the manservant said, rushing after him.

  “I’m coming with you, then,” Jane said, trying to shove aside her terror long enough to act.

  “No, Jane. Stay here,” Gabriel ordered. “This is the only way I can keep you safe.”