by Jacie Floyd
“We’ll get in your car, and you’ll take me to the Podunk airport where your plane is stored.”
“Right.” His head swam as he tried to get to his feet, but she waved him back to the floor with the gun. “What about the cash you need?”
“You can get it for me when we get to the Caymans.”
“When do we leave?”
“As soon as it’s dark. I don’t want to be seen again here in East Bufu.”
“Then tell me about Lana Harris while we wait.” With his head swimming, he listed to the side and took advantage of the position to rest his pounding temple on the hardwood floor. “What did you have against her?”
“That bitch! She was about to get everything I wanted.” The harsh lines of her face attested to burning emotions undimmed by the passage of time. “It wasn’t enough that she had Matt’s child and was pregnant again, but he was thinking about giving up his family and everything he’d worked for to be with her.”
“Why do you think that?”
“She sent Matt the positive results of a pregnancy test. I saw them on his desk and started digging around. He’d bought property for her out west and made travel arrangements to go with her.” Karen’s face contorted. Dylan flinched when she slammed the hand with the gun into her other palm. “I couldn’t let him throw himself away on that trashy nobody and ruin his career and mine along with it.”
The fruitcake’s intensity fueled Dylan’s fear. If only one of them could think clearly, it would have to be him. Unfortunately, his synapses weren’t firing on all cylinders. Little of what she said made sense. “You were having an affair with Uncle Arthur, too?”
“Arthur?” she scoffed. “That pale, wimpy imitation of Matthew? Never. Matt was the man for me from Day One. I’d never have settled for less.”
“My father?” He jerked up his head only to be tortured with another shaft of nauseating pain. Hanging onto the edge of consciousness by his fingernails, he forced out his next question through gritted teeth. “You thought my father was having an affair with Lana and had fathered her children?”
She gave him a look of pity. “Everyone knew it.”
“Everyone knew wrong.” He fought to focus but having three of her pacing around the room increased his wooziness. “Clay and the unborn child were Arthur’s.”
“No! He was just covering for Matt the way he always did.”
“My father had a vasectomy years before Lana disappeared. Her second child couldn’t have been his.”
“He didn’t have a vasectomy!” She pulled back as if he’d slapped her. “He would have told me.”
“Why would he?”
She sneered. “Your parents had nothing between them. Matthew was just waiting for the right time to leave that ice princess he was married to.”
Dylan would never believe that. “Do you think the right time would have ever come? It would have been political suicide.”
“He loved me! I know he did.”
Chapter Thirty
“Did you have an affair with him?” With her thinking so warped, would Karen know or tell the truth after all of this time?
“Nothing so tawdry. He bought a condo for me in LA. We agreed we couldn’t be together any place close to home, and I admired him for his caution. He said he didn’t want any gossip to circulate about us, but then the rumors sprang up about Lana. When I found out he was serious about that tramp, I intercepted the message about a meeting between them and came here to warn her away. She wasn’t ruining my chances to be presidential press secretary.”
“But something went wrong.”
“She laughed at me. She said I didn’t know what I was talking about. We struggled, and I killed her, but I didn’t mean to.”
“That’s what they all say,” Dylan murmured to himself, finding it ever more difficult to concentrate.
“Arthur came in after it happened, and I hid in here. He panicked, the fool, and took the body away with him. No one would have known about me if it hadn’t been for the damned security camera. Henry began blackmailing me almost immediately. When you started poking around, I’d had enough.”
God, Dylan wished she’d stop pacing.
“Henry and I met last night, and I paid him his hush money for the last time. When he left, I went to pass him on the road, and somehow the old geezer went over the bluff. Such a tragic accident. But I’m afraid someone saw us together. And Henry always said he’d leave the photos someplace where they’d be recovered if anything ever happened to him. I’m not waiting around for those to surface, so I’m off to warmer climates. With a little help from my friends, of course.”
Dylan decided to play along. “I’m always happy to help a true humanitarian. Getting rid of Henry Stillberg was a service to the world.”
“What was your beef with Henry?”
“He tried to blackmail me, too. It seems he had various versions of the story, wringing money out of anyone who’d pay.” Dylan grimaced, only partially an act. His head pounded beneath a sizable lump as his attention faded in and out. He’d rubbed his wrists raw with his attempts to free his hands, to no good result.
She’d have to release him at some point—to fly the plane if not sooner. He didn’t have much doubt he could overpower her, as long as there was only one of her, instead of the psychotic triplets he saw now. Sleep, maybe, would help. He’d try to rest before they went wherever she wanted to go.
He leaned his head against the wall, pulling on the cord around his hands one last time for good measure. He hurried to cover his surprise when they broke apart. He looked at Karen, still walking and talking, so proud of her story that she probably couldn’t turn it off now if ten FBI agents barged into the room. If only they would.
The sound of her voice droned on, and Dylan’s vision and consciousness wavered. He figured that must be the case or he wouldn’t have such a clear image of Gracie standing outside the door. Brave, beautiful Gracie. No telling what she’d do to rescue him if she really were here.
She’d probably want him to create a diversion so she could rush Lana. Yes, the Gracie in his vision wanted exactly that. He leaned to the side and groaned in acute pain, more real than fake. Karen drew nearer, but not near enough. Suspicious, that was Karen. He couldn’t blame her.
He groaned again, louder.
Karen took another step forward. As Gracie tiptoed up behind her, Dylan had a blinding flash of clarity.
She was real!
With a renewed sense of purpose, he kicked his legs out, and tripped Karen. Gracie rushed in and clunked her on the head with a two-by-four from the other room. Gripping Karen’s wrist, she banged it against the floor until the handgun came loose. Gracie grabbed it and focused it on Karen.
“My God, are you all right?” she asked Dylan.
“I think so.” He pulled his bloody hand from behind his back and rubbed the bump on his head. “Maybe a concussion.”
“Oh,” she said, frowning. “And look at your poor wrist. Is the other one like that, too?”
He pulled it forward and nodded, but the nod sent him adrift on waves of vertigo. He clutched his head to halt the dizzying rotation.
Sirens wailed outside, sending the top of Dylan’s head through the ceiling. “How—?”
“I went into town after I got home from the hospital. Marvin Gardens said he’d been riding out this way and saw your car in the factory parking lot. When you didn’t come home, I got worried. After I got here and saw the trouble you were in, I called the police chief.”
With Fleming and a deputy bursting through the door, Gracie abandoned her position guarding Karen and rushed to Dylan’s side. She peeled his lids back and stared into his eyes. “How many fingers am I holding up?”
He blinked and frowned at the fourteen or so digits she held in front of him. He could see them, count them as requested, but they blocked all of her face from his view except for her beautiful eyes.
“How many?” she demanded.
“Too many.” He
took a stab at folding them into the palm of her hand just before he slid back into darkness. “I can’t see nearly enough of you.”
The next morning, Gracie waited outside Dylan’s room wrestling with a tangle of emotions. After regaining consciousness the night before, he had settled into a dark funk someplace deep inside himself where she couldn’t reach him. Where he didn’t want to be reached. He’d insisted that she go home and leave him alone.
She hadn’t overheard everything Karen Hammonds had said, but enough to know the woman was fixated on the long dead Matthew Bradford. How much was truth and how much she’d invented was a task for Chief Fleming and a state psychiatrist to tackle.
Gracie gripped a bag containing Dylan’s clean clothes. She desperately wanted to see him and reassure herself that he was all right, but she also wanted to put that off as long as possible. He’d already told her he planned to leave for New York as soon as the doctor released him. Not much left to say after that.
Preparing to greet the patient, she pasted a big fake smile on her face. At the sound of her name, she stopped and turned, gulping back her surprise.
“I’d like to see Dylan if I may,” Senator Bradford said, more humbly than she’d come to expect from him. Anxiety accentuated new lines etched into his face. He looked closer to his true age now, where just two days ago his polished, youthful appearance had seemed to defy time.
“That’s up to Dylan, Senator.”
He nodded and pushed the door open, gesturing for her to enter ahead of him, but she hesitated. “Maybe you should speak to him alone.”
“Oh, I doubt if we have any secrets from you. And maybe he’ll be a little more receptive with you at my side.”
Gracie doubted that, but she acquiesced.
As they entered the room, her heart went out to the man lying as still as a corpse in the hospital bed, gazing out the window. He didn’t bother to turn his head and acknowledge their presence. Gracie hovered near the door, but the senator moved to Dylan’s side.
The brilliant blue eyes that had been listless beneath the swath of white bandage, blazed to life. “You’re not in jail.”
“No.” The words “Not yet” hung in the air unspoken.
Chief Fleming had explained that charges would be brought, and a hearing seemed inevitable. The general public would gobble up all the scandal the senator had tried so desperately to avoid as it aired on Court TV, non-stop network news, and made the cover of newspapers and magazines from coast to coast.
But admitting his sins to the other members of his family would be the worst punishment any Bradford could face. The thing Arthur had sought most strenuously to preserve was the one thing that would be lost to him forever. He’d made his own choices, wrong, illegal, irrational though they might have been. She understood about loss, but could dredge up little sympathy for him.
Only for Dylan, who looked as if his heart had broken. And for Clay, and David, and Lana, and even Matthew, all of the innocent victims of this one man’s selfish acts.
Arthur reached out tentatively, but Dylan shrugged his hand away and looked at Gracie. “Why is he here? Did you bring him?” His voice and eyes were as cold and distant as a glacier.
She advanced toward him, lifting her chin, determined not to let him see how deeply his withdrawal hurt. “It took courage for him to come see you. If you don’t listen to him now, you’ll always wonder what he had to say.”
He gave a snort of disgust and turned his head away. “I’ve heard more than enough from him already.”
Arthur cleared his throat. “I know my actions are indefensible and unpardonable, and I’m sorry. In light of family ties and our past relationship, I hope you can forgive me.
Dylan’s facial muscles flexed, biting back a boatload of emotions Gracie could only guess. All she knew for sure was that he’d taken a bone-crushing grip on her hand. “I’m not the one who needs to forgive you. You hurt many others more severely than me. You might begin with Aunt Delia. And your sons. Both of them.”
As if on cue, the door swung open and Clay stepped in. It startled Gracie to see the three men together, their features so similar, each expression stonier than the last—Clay’s flushed. Dylan’s pale beneath his bandages. The color leeched from the senator’s face.
“Perfect timing,” Dylan said. “Arthur, I don’t believe you’ve met Clayton Harris.”
If any more color could drain from the senator’s face, it did. She’d never seen anyone so ghostly white remain standing.
He squared his shoulders. “I’m sorry,” he told Clay. “I owe you an apology and an explanation.”
“You don’t owe me anything,” Clay snarled. “All I ever wanted was to know who my father was, and now I know. I don’t want anything else from you. Ever.”
The senator accepted the rejection with a tight-lipped nod. “Ever is a long time. If you change your mind in the future, my door will always be open to you.”
“Too little.” Clay turned on his heel. “And a damn sight too late.” He stopped before exiting. “David’s asking to see you, Gracie.”
“I’ll be right there,” she told him, trapped for the moment in the coil of tension that spooled between Dylan and his uncle.
“I’ll leave.” The senator turned slowly toward the door. “Is there anything I can do for you before I go?” he asked his nephew.
“Tell me one thing,” Dylan said, reluctantly.
“Anything.” A few quick steps returned Arthur to his side.
“How much of Karen’s story was true?” With his expression hard and flinty, his fingers tightened around Gracie’s. “Did my father have an affair with her?”
The senator winced. “It’s best to let some things go, Dylan.”
“I asked you a question.” His voice lashed across the room like a bullwhip. “I’d appreciate an honest answer. Did my father have an affair with Karen Hammonds or not?”
“Not an affair.” The senator licked his lips and looked away. “Not really.”
Pain clouded the depths of Dylan’s eyes. “But he slept with her.”
“Once or twice. And to my knowledge, those were the only times he was unfaithful to your mother during their marriage. Karen was a relentless piranha. She pursued him until he gave in. And he regretted it.”
“Is a feeling of regret all it takes to make infidelity acceptable by Bradford standards? I’m sure that was a great consolation to my mother. And will be to Aunt Delia.” Dylan turned his head on the pillow, dismissing his uncle, but the old man persevered.
“Matt loved your mother, and he did the best he could. That’s all any of us can do.” Arthur ran his perfectly manicured hand through his professionally styled hair and turned on the heel of his expensive shoe. “I’m sorry that’s not good enough for you.”
Dylan flicked a look of disgust toward his uncle. “The best most people can do is damned better than the Bradfords’ best, isn’t it?”
Gracie watched the senator struggle for a semblance of dignity. “I sincerely hope so.” He bowed his head and exited the room.
Gracie’s heart broke during the seemingly endless ride to Liberty House with Dylan slumped in the passenger seat of the truck. Try as she might, she could not draw him into conversation about his uncle, his father, his sister, his health, Karen Hammonds, the weather, the NBA playoffs, or anything else. After a while, she let him be.
It might take him a long time to accept and deal with the information they’d uncovered. Dylan’s wounds were still too raw to be touched or examined. Experience had taught her that each person healed at his or her own pace.
He accompanied her up the stairs and into the apartment. He gave MacDuff a half-hearted greeting then headed to the bedroom to gather his luggage. Gracie thought of asking him not to go. But under the circumstances, she couldn’t see any reason for him to stay. There was no way their lives would fit together.
She was a bossy small-town girl with too many people depending on her. And a medical practice she�
�d be returning to shortly.
He was something else altogether, a lot of things she didn’t even like. Rich and famous party animal… daredevil… fun-seeker… risk-taker.
Wounded… despondent.
But she shook her head. She knew how to set broken bones, treat pneumonia, and cure diaper rash, not how to heal a disillusioned spirit.
Cautiously, they drifted around each other in a disjointed dance of indecision then headed downstairs.
“You can call me, you know, whenever you’re ready to deal with what’s between us,” she blurted after he’d closed the tailgate of the Navigator. She crossed her arms to keep from reaching for him.
He stayed several feet away from her. She hoped he was fighting the same impulse to close the gap. “I’d like to say that I will, that it will be soon, but I don’t know, Gracie, and I don’t want to lie to you.”
She swallowed the lump in her throat. “I don’t want that either.”
He stuffed his hands in his pocket. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“Nobody ever does.” She tried for an ironic smile, but it trembled and faded on her lips. It wasn’t like she hadn’t prepared herself for his departure.
“I’ll say good-bye to your grandparents.”
“They’ll like that.”
Gracie took a seat on the back steps and began a listless game of fetch with MacDuff. If she weren’t a glutton for punishment, she’d go up to her apartment. Or into town. Anywhere rather than watch him climb into his car.
But she’d stick it out to the last.
If these were the last moments she’d ever have with him, she wouldn’t turn away before they were over.
As she waited for Dylan to come back out, a pulled up the drive. She blinked and rubbed her eyes before staring at the silver BMW. Oh, no, not now. What in the world did he want?
