by Lisa Childs
But he had obviously fallen deeply in love with Marie Kendall.
“She did use you,” Thad brutally agreed. He had no defense for his mother’s actions. “She didn’t care about you at all. You were just a means to an end.”
“I left Kendall Communications,” Turner said, “and started my own company. I was going to prove to her that I could be a better man than your father. That I could be richer and more successful. But while I was gone building my company, Joseph built his even bigger. And I realized that no matter what I did, I would never be enough for Marie.”
“No,” Thad said. “But you were enough for Emily.”
Turner met his gaze, and grief filled his dark eyes. “Emily…”
“We found her diaries in the house. She loved you. She knew everything. And she loved you.” He didn’t dare look away from Turner, but he wanted to glance at Caroline, to see if she could ever love him like Emily Turner had loved Ed.
Unconditionally. No matter the monster he’d been. No matter where he’d been.
“I realized that, too,” Ed said. “I never deserved her. I came home that Christmas, and I wanted to start over with her and Wade. Emily had worked on some charity event—it was The Nutcracker ballet. She and Wade and I attended.”
“We were there.” He remembered jerking at his tie and scuffing his shoes. And his mother being mad that he and his brothers weren’t behaving like little gentlemen. She’d wanted everyone to think they were the perfect family. Why did they have to act like animals? Why couldn’t they act the perfect little princess like Natalie?
“I know,” Ed said gravely. “I saw all of you. I saw Natalie. And I knew she was mine. And your mother had never had the decency to tell me that I had a daughter.”
Caroline choked on a small cry of alarm and guilt. But she wasn’t at all like his mother. The situation was entirely different.
But Thad didn’t dare try to reassure her with even a glance much less a word. For the moment Turner had forgotten all about her and Mark.
But to save them, Thad had to remind the man that they were there.
“So you were pissed off and you killed her,” Thad said. “Because you were mad and probably drunk. And you wanted revenge. Just like now.”
Turner shook his head, but he wasn’t able to voice a denial.
“You’re not threatening my family for justice,” Thad insisted, “because justice was done when I killed your son and saved your daughter. Killing my son and the woman I love won’t be justice. It’ll just be murder.”
He uttered a heavy sigh of pity. “And that makes you the most careless person of all. A vengeful killer.”
PANIC QUICKENED TURNER’S PULSE as the guilt rushed back over him. After twenty years of living with the burden, he had finally fought it off only for Thad Kendall’s words to settle the weight back onto his shoulders.
He wasn’t that kind of man, or Emily wouldn’t have loved him like she had for as long as she had.
He shook his head in denial. “You’re wrong. It’s not about revenge.”
“It’s not about justice, either,” Kendall said. “Not unless you wanted your son to kill your daughter. Is that what you wanted?”
His stomach churned as the truth rose to the top. “No.” To him she would always be the sweet little girl who’d looked like a princess that night at the ballet and an angel that night as she lay sleeping and he came to her room.
“I had to kill him,” Kendall insisted. “It was the only way to save Natalie’s life because he was determined to end it.”
“That was my fault,” Ed admitted. “I wasn’t a real father to him. I was never around—I was off trying to build my company.” Trying to be Joseph Kendall. “I left him and his mother alone so much. Then after she died and he found her diaries…”
His breath shuddered out as he remembered the final confrontation with his son. At the cemetery after everyone else had left, Wade had verbally and even physically assaulted him. Ed had let him get in the one blow, knowing he deserved it. But he’d stopped him and tried to hold him, had tried to apologize and explain…just as he’d been trying to explain to Thad. “He blamed me for breaking his mother’s heart. Hell, I think he blamed me for her cancer.” And maybe that had been Ed’s fault. If he’d been home more, if he’d taken better care of her… Wade had been right to blame him. “He hated me.”
“He wouldn’t have tried to protect you had he really hated you,” Kendall argued. “Despite everything, he loved you.”
“I gave him no reason to love me,” Ed said, the misery eating at him. His hand began to shake as finally he succumbed to the effects of alcohol withdrawal. He’d started drinking even before that Christmas Eve. He’d started drinking when Marie had refused his offer to leave Emily.
But he had control. He could handle it. Just a little shot in his coffee in the morning. A drink at lunch, just enough to take the edge of his anger and his regrets.
“How long has it been since you’ve had a drink?” Thad asked. Of course he would notice Ed’s shakes; the guy didn’t miss much.
If Ed hadn’t stopped drinking, he never would have kept up let alone gotten the jump on Kendall. He’d known from that single kill shot that the man was more than just a photojournalist. Just as Ed had been more than a communications company owner. He was a killer, too.
“I haven’t been drinking since that night they showed Wade’s picture on the news,” he admitted. “Even from that grainy security cam footage, I recognized my son. I knew it was him.” Probably more because of the sick feeling in his gut than that horrible security still photo.
“He used to be a good kid,” Ed defended his boy. “He was smart, too. I think he always knew I was guilty. He woke up that night I came home from killing your parents. He thought I was Santa Claus…until he saw the blood.” Kendall shuddered.
“Yours wasn’t the only Christmas I ruined,” Ed pointed out. Maybe because he hadn’t been sober long enough, he hadn’t realized before everything he’d taken from the Kendall children. Not just their parents, however sorry excuses they’d been for a mother and a father. He had taken away their childhoods, just as he had taken away Wade’s.
“He was only eleven,” Thad reminded him. “He would have been too young to figure out what happened. He didn’t know then that Natalie was his sister, did he?”
“No,” Ed replied. “I couldn’t have told him that. And when that other man was arrested for the Christmas Eve Murders, I think he forgot all about that night.”
“Until that man was cleared of the conviction.”
He nodded. “That was around the same time his mother died, and he found her diaries. Then he put it all together and realized what I had done twenty years ago, that Natalie was mine.”
“He hadn’t wanted just to kill her, though,” Thad said. “He had wanted to hide your guilt.”
Ed groaned as the pain overwhelmed him. “No one could hide my guilt. I wasn’t ever able to even drink it away. I can’t go on like this. And I can’t let my son die alone.”
He lifted his gun. But he was too much a coward to pull the trigger himself. Or he would have committed suicide years ago. All he had to do was point his gun at Thad Kendall’s family.
Even though Thad Kendall had already figured out Ed’s plan, he wouldn’t take the risk that Ed might actually shoot his son and the woman he loved. He put his finger on the trigger and waited, hoping Kendall wouldn’t make him press it before he fired the first shot.
Chapter Seventeen
The gunshot echoed through the living room. Then the room exploded, bodies catapulting through windows and doors. Guns drawn and pointed.
Caroline wrapped her arms tighter around Mark and hoped he wasn’t able to see or hear anything. Only Ed Turner’s hand bled, his gun lying on the floor beneath him. Thad had shot only his hand, which had caused Turner to drop his gun. Despite all the reasons he had to hate and want revenge for his parents’ murders and his son’s kidnapping, he hadn’t
killed the man.
She stared up at him, stunned by his action and his compassion. He had stepped between the killer and the lawmen, protecting him with his own body.
“It’s over,” he told them all, staring first at her, then the SRT members and lastly at his brother. Ash gripped his gun tightly, its barrel trained on Ed Turner’s head. “It’s over, Ash.”
His breath shuddering out in a ragged sigh, the detective lowered his weapon. He forced his gaze from his parents’ killer to his nephew and Caroline. “Are you both all right?”
She nodded, her throat too choked with fear and tears to reply.
“I’ll bring in the paramedics to check you out,” Ash said.
“No, we’re fine,” she finally managed to assure him.
“Ed needs medical treatment,” Thad said. He had turned back to the man, checking his injury himself. No doubt he had experienced treating gunshot wounds in some of the areas he’d been.
But how many had he treated that he’d actually inflicted?
“Why didn’t you kill me?” Turner asked. “Because it was what I wanted?”
Thad turned to her and Mark then. And she knew it was because of them. He hadn’t wanted to kill a man in front of his son, not even to protect his son.
She couldn’t believe she had once had doubts about his ability to be a parent. He was a better one than she could ever hope to be. She needed to tell him that and so much more.
But he turned away from her again and told his brother, “Get her and Mark out of here. Take them to the estate.”
She glanced around at the broken windows and doors and the Christmas tree she would never be able to salvage by morning.
Cuffs were already being slapped on Turner’s wrists despite his injury. He wouldn’t get free again; he was no longer a threat.
As if Ed Turner had seen her lingering fear, the older, broken man spoke to her. “I’m sorry.”
She couldn’t absolve him of his sins. She could only gather up her son in her arms and follow his uncle out to a waiting patrol car. She glanced back at Thad, hoping it wasn’t the last time she’d see him.
Now that his parents’ killer would finally be brought to justice, would he head back to one of those countries where he thought they needed him?
Ash caught her backward glance. “I won’t let him leave.”
“You can’t keep him here unless he wants to stay,” she said. And that was why she hadn’t told him about her love the last time they were together. It was also why she’d fought so hard against falling for him again.
“WHY ARE YOU HERE?” Turner asked as he met Thad’s gaze through the holding cell bars.
Thad wasn’t really certain himself, except that something had drawn him back to his parents’ killer. Despite everything they had said to each other at Caroline’s house, it felt as if they’d left too much unsaid, too.
Maybe it was the reporter in him that had Thad wanting answers to more questions. Maybe he’d lived the cover too long. What had made Ed Turner the monster—Marie Kendall’s rejection or what he’d done in order to build his wealth and power enough to impress her?
“You’re on suicide watch,” he remarked.
Ed shrugged. “We both know I’m not going to kill myself. Or I would have done it long ago. I should have done it long ago.”
“We all have our reasons for doing what we do,” he said with a weary sigh. “What are your reasons, do you think?”
“I didn’t kill myself because of Emily,” he said. “I never deserved her love or her loyalty. I never returned it. But I couldn’t do that…?.” He sucked in a shaky breath.
“Why did you kill my parents?”
“I explained all that to you already,” Ed said, confusion on his face.
Thad nodded. “You did tell me why. I guess what I really want to know is how.”
Ed shuddered. “No one needs to know the details of how their parents were murdered.”
Thad actually already knew them. He’d read the police files long ago. “I mean how did you do it? How did you become the kind of man who could kill?”
“I think you know,” Ed said. “And that’s why you’re here. You’re worried that because we might have done some of the same things in the same places that you’re like me.”
The guy was so smart. How had his life fallen so far apart? Because he’d lost the love he’d thought he wanted without ever appreciating the love he’d already had?
“We did things we had to do over there,” Ed reminded him. “To save our own lives and others’ lives.”
Thad sighed. “We all find ways to justify our actions.”
“What’s your justification for being here instead of with your family?” Ed asked wistfully.
Thad suspected that the man wished he could live his whole life over again.
“Fear,” Thad admitted. “Fear that I’ve already screwed up my chance at happiness.” Fear that he didn’t deserve that happiness at all.
Ed’s lips curved into a faint smile. “So what am I, your confidant now?”
“My mission.” He wanted more from Ed Turner than just answers.
“I’ve been that for too long,” Ed said. “You let me affect your life for too much of your life.”
“Yes,” Thad agreed. “So you’re going to do the right thing.”
“I don’t intend to profess my innocence. I want to do the time,” he said, “for all my crimes.” He shuddered and rubbed a shaking hand over his face. “I can’t believe I hurt so many people.”
So had Thad, without even realizing he had. Like Ed Turner, he had justified his actions as being for the greater good. How much was he really like Ed Turner?
“It’s time for me to face the truth,” Ed said, “without alcohol, without blaming anyone else for what I’ve done.”
Thad breathed a sigh of relief that his family would be spared a long, drawn-out trial.
“Thank you for helping me do that,” Turner said. “And don’t worry—” he waited until Thad met his gaze “—you’re nothing like me.”
That was the question, the fear, that had brought Thad to the jail instead of home to his family.
“I thought you were,” Turner said. “The way you killed Wade. And in all those news interviews, I saw no real guilt on your face. You had totally justified what you’d done. But you were right—it was justified.”
Or had he done what Ed Turner had been doing the past twenty years.
“But if you were really a killer, if you really had that darkness inside you that I have, you would have killed me today.”
Thad chuckled. “It was what you wanted.”
“But you said that wasn’t why you didn’t kill me.”
“I had time to take the shot and the lighting to see your hand,” Thad explained. “It wasn’t like the night that I shot Wade. It was dark that night and there was so much smoke. And I knew I’d only get one shot.” So he’d taken the kill shot.
“You may have had the light and the time today, but you had every reason to want to kill me,” Ed said. “I’m the man who killed your parents, the one who terrorized your son and the woman you love. You wouldn’t even have to have the darkness inside you to justify killing me. No one would have questioned your reasoning for taking me out with a kill shot.” He laughed. “Hell, they would have applauded you, probably even given you a medal.”
“If I’d killed you,” Thad said, “it wouldn’t have been for a medal. It would have been for vengeance.” And Caroline would have known it and never forgiven him for killing a man in front of their son. Thad wanted to be a better man for her, a good father to Mark.
“See, you’re not like me at all,” Ed said. “I gave you something.”
“Turner Connections?” he asked with a laugh.
Ed sighed. “No, I’ve already turned that over to Natalie.”
“She’ll refuse it.”
“Then you can have it. Fold it into Kendall Communications like your brother’s been trying to d
o.”
“Don’t expect Natalie to come see you,” he warned him.
“I’ve put her on the list of people I refuse to see,” Ed said. “I took too much away from her. Affected too much of her past. I just want her to focus on her future.”
Thad nodded in agreement.
“You need to do the same,” Ed said. “Now get out of here. Go be with your family.”
After being gone for so many years, physically and emotionally, Thad wasn’t sure he even knew how to do that.
As if Turner could read his mind, he said, “It’s Christmas. It’s the time for miracles.”
Thad glanced at his watch. It wasn’t Christmas yet. He had a few more hours until midnight, a few more hours to figure out how to make his miracle happen.
HE WAS GONE.
Panic pressed on her chest, stealing away Caroline’s breath. She had thought they would be safe here, with Turner behind bars. But the bed where she’d tucked Mark in less than an hour ago was now empty. In fact, the blankets were so smooth it looked as if he’d never slept at all.
Resisting the urge to give in to her panic and utter a scream, she pressed her hand over her mouth and hurried from the room. If she checked every room, she would wake up the others. Pretty much every Kendall had met her and Mark when Ash had brought them to the estate.
Except Thad.
She didn’t even know if he’d come home yet. Or if he even intended to.
She could wake up any of the others, though, and they would help her search for her son. But she wanted to check one place first, just in case she was overreacting.
She rushed down the stairwell and through the two-story foyer. She stopped, her mind frazzled as she tried to remember again what was where. The house was so big. Hell, it wasn’t a house at all. Nothing with double stairwells and two separate wings of bedrooms could be considered a mere house. The ceilings were so high that noises echoed.
