Her Dark Lies

by J. T. Ellison

  It goes on and on like this, page after page, some entries rational, some jumbled, convoluted remarks and observations that would make sense only to the writer. Threats of violence against Jack, his family, even herself.

  “She doesn’t seem to be in her right mind,” I say, flipping the pages.

  The book falls open. The spine is broken here, and an entry halfway through catches my eye. It has been circled, again and again and again, the swirls wild and fierce, and here the paper has been torn by the pressure of the pen.

  Darling darling darling darling darling darling you will miss me when I’m gone fuck you DARLING.

  I finally look up, confused. “There was a note, earlier. I totally forgot to ask you about it. In the vanity, in the bath. It said ‘Don’t you miss me, darling?’”

  “See? This is all too weird. I’m telling you, Claire, I think this might be Elliot’s doing. Screwing with us. Trying to disrupt the wedding. Trying to chase you off.”

  “But why? I don’t understand.”

  “I don’t know. Because I’m trying to get out of the business? Because I’m finally happy? Because he’s sick in the head? Because Amelia is divorcing him? Because he had a thing for Morgan, and he’s upset she’s dead? Because he killed her and it might be about to come out, so he’s making it look like we’re crazy? Damned if I know.”

  Because by marrying Jack, I will take a third of his estate? And that means less for Elliot in the long run? Surely, he’s not that greedy. Though this kind of money is worth killing for.

  “He hit on me, you know. At his wedding. He was bombed, and cornered me. I pushed him away.”

  Jack is looking at me as if I’ve just given him the scroll to decipher the Rosetta Stone.

  “Wow. He’s an even bigger asshole than I thought. He screwed around with Morgan, too. Though she took him up on it, apparently.”

  “Oh. That’s...awkward.” I close the notebook and set it on the table next to me. “Why would Elliot want to hurt you like that? You’re his brother.”

  “God knows.”

  “Why would he want to hurt Henna? And what would he have to do with Malcolm, who was your security? I mean, Malcolm was clearly trying to drag me off somewhere. Were they in league together, and he was taking me to Elliot? So he could do what to me?”

  “I don’t know. Before she died, Morgan was trying to blackmail the family. She’d been spying on me, on Elliot, and figured out how our business arrangements worked. When she signed the NDA, I thought that meant we were safe. But on our honeymoon, I found some correspondence. She’d been mapping everything out. You can see from the notebook she was surveilling me. I found her electronic footprints all over my computer, my phone, my car—she’d put a GPS tracker in my wheel well.”

  He takes a huge breath, spikes a hand through his hair. Little droplets of water splash on the hearth and rise as tiny fragments of fog, and the dogs watch him intently.

  “I need to know it all. I need to know the truth of what happened to Morgan.”

  I feel his body tense beside me. “Claire, I’m not sure I know the whole truth.”

  “Then go back to California. The story is she fell off your boat, was swept away. She died at sea. That’s not true, is it?”

  “No. She didn’t go off the boat in California. That’s what we told the media. She disappeared from here. From the island. We came here for a family meeting. It didn’t go well. She made her threats, and then she ran out into the night. There was a terrible storm, like now. We split up to look for her, and somehow, she went off the cliff.”

  Jack’s face is tortured and he’s babbling his confession now, talking so fast I can hardly follow.

  “My mother and Elliot were there. Fatima and Will, too. They were all staring over the edge, and the rain was pouring down, and we couldn’t see her. I can’t even tell you the horror I felt. Claire, I heard her screaming as she fell. She was screaming my name. I got a boat and searched all night. I thought she’d been dragged out to sea. There was no way she could have survived. The storm was terrible, the waves were ten feet high. I barely made it back to land myself. And I grieved. I grieved for years.”

  “And you lied for years. Why? Why not tell the truth?”

  He shoots the last of his Scotch, laughs mirthlessly. “I just wanted to protect the family. If Morgan died in California with me instead of Isola with all of us, I would be the only one at risk. With one small detail changed, the family was protected. I knew Morgan had no one who would question our story. That the police could be bought if necessary. And I was right. No one cared about the details. No one cared but me.

  “And then I met you. And Claire, you have to believe me. If I could do it all over... I would have just let the truth come out and be damned with the consequences.”

  “How could you lie to me about this?”

  “Darling, I have lied to everyone about this, for many, many years. I’ve had no choice.”

  A log in the fire rolls and bursts apart, shooting sparks onto the hearth. The dogs jump away from the hot embers, and Jack sweeps them back into the fire.

  “Were you ever going to tell me the truth? Or is it with all these things, with Elliot perhaps trying to stop us marrying, you’re being forced to tell me?”

  “No. I have always wanted to tell you. I was just waiting for the appropriate moment.” He breaks off, looks at his hands. “I understand if you don’t want me anymore.”

  “I won’t leave you because of it, if that’s what you’re worried about. I have a few deaths under my belt now, too.”

  I do. I’ve killed three men now. The first was the worst. By the third? Well, it wasn’t easy, but it felt...familiar, in a hideous, awful way.

  “But Jack, you have to swear to me, you will never lie to me, or omit, again. Will you give me your word?”

  He gets down on one knee, like he did the night we were engaged, taking my hands in his. He looks me in the eye.

  “I swear to you with my life, Claire, I will never lie to you. I didn’t kill Morgan.”

  There is no doubt in my mind he’s telling me the truth.

  61

  Liar

  Liar.

  Liar, liar, liar, liar, liar.

  Don’t let him fool you now.

  The last face I saw when I went over the wall was Jackson.

  And I take offense at his characterization. I am not disturbed.

  I am disruption.

  62

  The Blackmailer

  I’m admittedly shocked. I really had wrapped my head around the idea that Jack was responsible for Morgan’s death.

  “I believe you.”

  “Thank you.” He breathes out heavily in relief. The tension between us has dissipated, but I sense Jack isn’t finished with his confessions.

  “I wouldn’t have had the patience to bring her here. I would have knocked her off the boat and let her drown.”

  Jack smiles ruefully at this. “Don’t think I didn’t want to. But I wasn’t about to do something rash. I had no idea how much she actually knew at that point, nor what she’d done to secure her safety. I didn’t know who she’d told. And I wasn’t willing to go to jail over her.”

  This is a sentiment I understand fully.

  “I believe you when you say you didn’t kill her. But you have to admit, she died at a very convenient moment. What did she have on you?”

  He takes the notebook gingerly, distaste on his face at even touching Morgan’s madness again. “You need to know that once I tell you this, you’re complicit. Our truth is the cost of marrying me.”

  “So why tell me, Jack? It is worth it? Am I worth it?”

  “Yes. God, yes. I want to be happy, and I want you to be happy, and that means I need to share this with you, and if you decide to walk away, then I’ll have to live with it. I’ll let you go, tho
ugh it will kill me to lose you.”

  I take his hand. “Jack. Just tell me. Trust me, at this point, there’s not a lot that would be bad enough to chase me away.”

  He kisses me then, wild and unrestrained. “I love you, Claire.”

  “I love you, too. Now, for God’s sake, tell me what the hell is going on?”

  “All right. What Morgan was trying to blackmail us about—it’s complicated. But in its purest form...we broker information. On the side. It’s something that started well before me, or my dad. My great-grandfather was a spy in the war. Though he was an American, he had an allegiance to Churchill, and handed over as much information as he could that would help the Allies win the war. My grandmother Eliza worked with him, too. They had a good thing going, until she died. But William wasn’t about to stop fighting, so he brought Will into the family business. That’s how it happens, each son is brought in when the time is right. My grandfather was well positioned to gather information through the artistic community, and eventually, my dad saw ways to leverage technology to accomplish what couldn’t be done by a person, face-to-face.

  “There’s essentially a back door written into all Compton software that can be opened if our partners need to see what’s happening. It’s clean, it’s safe, and it’s a very useful tool to stop powerful people from hurting innocents. I swear to you, that’s all it’s used for. None of our people are spying on your average Joe. It’s only for international relations.

  “But now, with the servers hacked—the servers where we hold this gathered information—we’re vulnerable. Elliot is tied to this somehow. Someone might be trying to put pressure on him alone, and he’s running scared. He won’t tell us what he’s done, but it will come out. Are you following?”

  I follow. Prince Charming is a spy. This isn’t the worst thing I could have heard, but I proceed with caution anyway, because now I’m starting to get it.

  “What do I bring to the family table? I assume that’s another reason why I signed the NDA?”

  Jack nods, respect that I’ve grasped it so quickly mingling with dread on his face. “Your art. It opens doors into even more areas. Say we have a paranoid despot who has stopped communicating electronically. But he or she puts great stock in art. There are ways to rig up a painting with surveillance. It’s not complicated. Only another avenue in.”

  This is insane. “Keep going. I’m still listening.”

  “Men with money have enemies. Enemies who will pay to gain an upper hand, to use leverage against them. It used to be different. It was more personal. Now, it’s all driven by technology. Three minutes with a mark’s cell phone and we have every keystroke we need to track his wrongdoings, gain access to his accounts, legal and otherwise.

  “It’s part of what I’ve been doing under the cover of the Foundation. I’m not proud of it, but if I can get close to someone who’s taking advantage, who’s going to harm people, I do. I know it sounds like I’m justifying breaking the law, but we are saving lives.”

  “But who decides who is the bad guy? If you’re targeted because you don’t go along with a government’s decision, how do you know they’re bad?”

  “Trust me, I have a strong moral compass. I can tell who’s bad. We only go after people who hurt people, darling.”

  I try to wrap my head around this.

  “Claire? Say something.”

  “Is this why someone was spying on us in our own home? Could it be one of your enemies, trying to get back at you? Using me as leverage against you?”

  “We don’t know. I’d hoped Karmen would have a line into where the cameras were transmitting to by now. Malcolm was involved, obviously.”

  “He was willing to take the blame for me, though. For me shooting Shane.”

  “We will never know what he planned to do with that information, thank God.”

  “You hope. There’s no way of knowing who has the video of that night, Jack.”

  “We’ll figure it out. I swear it. It’s all tied to Ami Eister. And Karmen is about to get an ID on her.”

  I finish the last bit of Scotch in my glass. I should be horrified. I should be storming out of the library. Instead, all I feel is...intrigued. This life with Jack won’t be boring. And Ana...

  “Your mom runs all of this, doesn’t she?”

  “She plays a large role. Yes.”

  I knew it. I knew Ana was more than she seemed. “How does it work, exactly? You get the information and you do what with it?”

  “We turn the temperature up, we turn the temperature down. People respond. If they don’t...”

  “So, you’re blackmailers.”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Yes, exactly.”

  “We are information brokers, Claire. That’s all.”

  “Oh, so you need to carry a gun to broker information? Or to apply pressure when the ‘temperature’ isn’t high enough. Admit it, Jack. You’re no better than Shane, you just have more money.”

  “Claire.” He winces at the insult, but I can’t help it. Now that it’s sinking in, I am so furious. How dare he not tell me this sooner? How dare he not trust me until now?

  “How did you know I have a gun?”

  “Jack. I’m not stupid. I can see the outline under your shirt. And the ankle holster is kind of a dead giveaway.”

  He takes the gun from the small of his back.

  I hold out my hand. “May I?”

  He frowns but racks the slide, popping the bullet from the chamber, then ejects the magazine and flips the gun around, handing it to me gingerly, butt first.

  The metal is warm from his skin, the grip rough in my palm. I gesture toward the magazine. Curiosity crosses his face, but he hands it over. Brave of him, considering that once the gun is loaded, I could just pull the trigger.

  Taking the magazine, I finger the open edge, feeling the hard brass of the bullets. Then I look up at Jack, meet his beautiful eyes, slam the magazine in place and rack the slide, chambering a bullet. I reverse the motions immediately, catch the bullet ejected from the slide in my hand.

  All without looking away.

  “Claire?”

  I sigh and turn the weapon back over to him.

  “Okay, Jack. You were honest with me. Now it’s my turn to be honest with you.”

  * * *

  It was Shane, of course. He forced me into it. I didn’t want to have anything to do with his drug business, except to take them and disappear from the pain of my life for a while. But nothing comes free, does it?

  He used me as a runner. Carrying drugs and money came with bona fide danger. When one of his less savory friends roughed me up one night, stealing both the stash and the cash, he decided I needed to carry a gun to ward off any more robberies.

  This was before things turned south, before the night he robbed the Mapco and I killed my father. This was back when he was small-time, before he went full on gangster badass working for MS-13.

  I was a terrible shot, but I loved the heft of the weapon he gave me. It made me feel strong, invincible. If I couldn’t shoot someone with it, I could clock them across the nose, and that would work, too.

  But the rules were the rules, and he wouldn’t let me carry it until I knew how to use it. He made me practice. Over and over and over, until I could wake from a dead sleep and have a bullet chambered in seconds flat.

  I was his backup, he used to say. He sweet little backup plan. The one no one would ever see coming. Until I became his biggest liability.

  “You asked me if Shane ever hurt me. Of course he did. If I smiled wrong, he’d smack me. If I lost the stash, he’d kick me. If I upset him in any way...well, you get the idea.”

  “You got caught, though. Eventually.”

  “Yes. He had me driving the night he robbed the Mapco. He had a gun on me, there were drugs in his pocket, and more in the tru
nk. But I was a juvenile, and when we got pulled over, he said, ‘Follow my lead.’

  “The cops thought I’d been taken hostage. And that was the story we stuck with. Even when I sat across from him in the courtroom, testifying, looking him in the eye, he nodded and smirked at me to keep me going with the lie. So, I did. I told them he grabbed me from the party, forced me into the car, and they believed it.”

  “He loved you.”

  “Maybe. He treated me like shit on the bottom of his shoe, but in the end, he sacrificed himself for me. He went to jail, and I got my shit straight. He gave me a chance to turn my life around. I did.”

  “Oh, Claire. That breaks my heart. You were so young.”

  “But it made me who I am.”

  For some reason, I don’t feel the need to tell him about my father right now. I will later. I will when I get to the bottom of things.

  He’s quiet for a few moments.

  “Are you... I mean, do you...do you still want to marry me, Claire?”

  I get up and move to him, sit in his lap, put my arms around his neck.

  “Yes. I do. Even though I’m furious with you for not telling me sooner, I do believe you’re trying to do the right thing, Jack. I do.”

  “That’s a relief. Because I don’t know what happens next. Whoever is behind this, whoever is posing as Ami Eister, knows everything and is trying to take the family down. She hired McGowan to plant the cameras. Hacked our servers and tried to release the information to the press through your sister. What’s in those files—this story that was almost picked up—it would be the end of the family, do you understand? If Elliot is behind this, if he hired this woman to pretend to be Ami Eister... I can’t wrap my head around it. I fear Henna realized what was happening and was killed before she could rat him out.”

  “That doesn’t make sense though, Jack. Elliot already has access to all of the incriminating information. Why would he...oh. He’s trying to make it look like you are responsible.”

  He nods. “That’s exactly what I’m afraid of. He’s trying to sell me out.”