Replacing Gentry

by Julie N. Ford

  Anna-Beth holstered her gun. “That’s very noble, Marlie, but this has nothing to do with you or the charges against you,” she said, motioning to the others to lower their weapons.

  “Then why?”

  Steven tucked his nine-millimeter into his belt. “He’s one of them,” he said, exaggerating his look of disgust.

  A dreadful feeling corkscrewed around my gut. “One of who? Of what?” I asked, growing certain I wouldn’t like the answer.

  Steven took Johnny by the chin and twisted his face toward me. “He’s an imposter,” he said, spewing tiny droplets of spittle with his words.

  I turned to Johnny, studying his eyes. He kept his focus just off center of mine, but still, I couldn’t see anything that hadn’t been there before.

  “No, his eyes are the exact same color.”

  Steven tightened his grip on Johnny’s chin, twisting his face harder in my direction. The tendons in Johnny’s neck knotted in defiance. “Take a closer look,” Steven hissed through his teeth. “Amber surrounded by green.”

  “Yes, the contrast is unique but what does that prove?” I charged back.

  Anna-Beth put a hand to Steven’s arm. After another firm squeeze to Johnny’s face, Steven let go.

  “Yes, but not with that much distinction. Central heterochromia,” Anna-Beth explained using the professional tone I was still unable to equate to my college roommate. “We’d have missed it too if he hadn’t have been so reckless as to break you out of the hospital. Pretty gutsy move.” She slapped Johnny on the shoulder. “We’ve had our suspicions but after last night, we now know who you really are.”

  I pressed my hands against my head, trying to smother the truth before it could surface. No, he couldn’t be, he wasn’t like Paul, like the woman from the cemetery. It wasn’t true! How could I have felt such a keen closeness to someone so villainous? My mind skipped back, replaying the first time I’d met him that day at the reception and then to all the inscrutable things he’d said and done along the way.

  We all tried to warn you, Paul’s words echoed again in my head.

  “Johnny?” I implored.

  Johnny lifted his chin. “When you came back to Nashville and then again when you called me last night and asked for my help, I thought fate had brought us back together,” he said like we both knew what he was talking about. “I’m sorry, Marlie. I never meant to hurt you.”

  My mouth turned down in confusion. Fate? “Sure, you’ve done and said some mean things, but you didn’t hurt me,” I said, shaking my head. “You helped me. You got me out of the hospital. You were going to help me prove my innocence.”

  His eyebrows pulled into a frown. “No, that’s not what I’m talking about,” he said, his eyes seizing mine with a heartrending stare. “I hope that some day you’ll be able to forgive me for leaving you—”

  Steven yanked back on Johnny’s cuffed hands, turning him toward the door. “All right, that’s enough. This touching moment is bringing a tear to my eye.” He brushed a finger mockingly across his cheek.

  I looked to Anna-Beth for answers. My mind raced back to the day her man had kidnapped me and the way she’d said, Finn is gone. Gone—not dead. “Wait,” I said, knocking against the dining room chairs, trying to get to Johnny. “Stop!” I yelled.

  Reaching out my hand, I lifted Johnny’s chin until our eyes met straight on. And that was when I saw it—the answer to the riddle he had taunted me with all along. Though his eyes were not what I remembered, deep down there was an undeniable familiarity that reached back in time and into my soul.

  “Finn?”

  A sad smile drew up the corners of his lips. “I never wanted to hurt you,” he said. “I loved you.”

  I took a step back. “Then why?”

  Straining against Steven’s grasp, Johnny . . . Finn, tried to close the space between us. “I joined the Iphiclesians before I met you. I wanted to make the world a better place,” he explained, his tone desperate. “When I asked you to marry me I was already in too deep, but I was too young, and too stupid, to realize it. I thought I could keep you safe.

  “But you’ve always been so damned curious. I knew you’d discover the truth of what they wanted from me sooner or later, and when you did, you’d leave me. Or worse, they’d get rid of you. Either way, I’d lose you. I’m so sorry I wasn’t there for you when you needed me—when you lost our baby.”

  This was not happening. Finn, my Finn, the man I’d been hopelessly pining after for a decade, had not become this creature. He had not murdered someone and taken his place, stolen a husband from his wife, a father from his children. And yet, here he was looking at me through eyes that weren’t Johnny’s but not Finn’s either.

  Tears flooded my eyes. “So you made up that story about choosing your inheritance over me for my own good?” An insurmountable grief exploded in my chest. “You broke my heart,” I sobbed.

  “No,” he shook his head, adamant. “I saved your life.”

  Chapter Thirty-two

  How many times do I have to tell you, I can’t talk to you about my work?” Anna-Beth groaned as she retied the straps of her bikini top and flipped over onto her back.

  It was the last week of September and although we’d had some cool days, and downright cold nights, today the sky was a clear slate of robin’s-egg blue, the bright sun warming the earth to a balmy eighty-five degrees.

  I shifted on my chaise lounge to face her. “I just want to know what happened to him,” I said, trying to keep my voice casual though lately I’d found myself thinking about Johnny more often than I cared to admit. The last words he’d spoken to me . . . No, I saved your life . . . continued to gnaw at me.

  Anna-Beth yanked her Ray Ban’s from her face and slapped me with an irritated stare. “For the love of Pete, Marlie! It’s been months. I already told you he’s cooperating with my agency, so why are you bringing this up again?”

  I lifted a nonchalant shoulder. “I don’t know; curiosity I guess.”

  Anna-Beth leveled me another perturbed glare. “Why do you care so much?” she asked, sliding on her sunglasses and laying back. “He lied to you. He broke your heart.”

  “I loved him.”

  “You know what you love?” Anna-Beth pointed out to the pool where Daniel and the boys were shooting baskets, playing a game of pool horse. “Them. Your husband, your step-sons, the people who are capable of actually loving you back. Not some imposter who was surgically modified for deception. No matter how gallant Johnny/Finn may have seemed there at the end, don’t let that fool you. Sooner or later he would have betrayed you again. That’s what his kind do. That’s all they know.”

  “I know and I do love my family. I would never want anyone or anything other than what I have,” I insisted. “It’s just that . . .” My thoughts trailed off. Then the day they’d taken Johnny away unfolded in front of my eyes again, the way the memory often had over the last few months.

  Dazed by forty-eight hours of rollercoaster events so unnerving I felt as though the undertow would eventually pull me down, I watched brokenhearted as Steven lead Johnny away. The husband I thought had deceived me had turned out to be my ally. The man I’d believed had swooped in to save me, the man who made me feel at home for the first time since coming to Nashville, had been the deceiver. Afterward, Daniel went to the hospital to get checked out and I to the Metro Police station to turn myself in. While they took Electra’s statement and then corroborated it with Herbert’s, I waited for Daniel to come pick me up. When the officers finally released me, it was dark again.

  Once home, I locked the door to our master bath, stripped out of the scrubs Johnny had stolen for me, and fell under a cascade of warm water. It washed over me like the dance of a thousand massaging fingers. And there I waited, waited for the haze to clear, for the facts to fall into place, for the pain and confusion to make sense. Faces, voices, and images rained down on me with every drop, pelting me with one disturbing memory after another—Gentry’s lifeless
face discarded in the alley. Paul’s eyes, his voice, his threats. He’d nearly killed me. And then, there was Johnny who’d turned out to be Finn, the love of my life. My legs gave out and I slumped to the shower floor.

  It was all too much. Daniel knocked on the door a couple of times to check on me. Through the agonizing sobs, I answered, telling him I needed some more time.

  It was then that the door to the bathroom slammed open and an instant later Daniel was on his knees at my side, lifting my quivering body up and into his lap. His clothes growing saturated with water, he rocked me, his tears falling in unison with mine.

  Over the next few days, we barely left our room. Daniel had become my drug and I his. For the first time since our wedding day, it was just Daniel and me. We talked, we read, we made love—we connected. Daniel wasn’t a perfect man but he was a moral man. He’d made mistakes, hidden the truth, but had done so to protect the people he loved. I felt blessed to be counted amongst them.

  As expected, there was no body in Gentry’s grave, so the ashes of Unidentified Woman 1—all that remained of Daniel’s beloved Gentry—were quietly exhumed and laid to rest in her rightful burial place. The woman from the cemetery had been in the car but hadn’t died. The autopsy had been performed by an imposter and then later stolen to secure the truth. The crash had been an elaborate hoax concocted by Paul to keep his identity from being discovered, his comrade and lover alive.

  Disappointed with himself for turning a blind eye to all that Paul had done, Daniel resigned his senate seat both as penance and as a pledge to spend more time with our family. I pleaded with him to expose the members of the Iphiclesians to Anna-Beth and her agency. Reluctantly, he’d agreed. Daniel’s secrets had become mine and mine his. We would have no need to ever speak of them again.

  When the time came to fetch the boys from camp, we’d gone together. Without divulging our need to get the family somewhere safe while Anna-Beth and her team rounded up the corrupted echelons of the Iphiclesians, we surprised them with a trip to Bali for the opening of my parent’s school. We helped set up the school, snorkeled in the reefs, and bonded. I cooked and picked up after the men in my life like a regular wife and mother. It was the best month of my life.

  By the time we made it home, Anna-Beth and her agents had secured the technology used for genetic modification and arrested all of the dangerous Iphiclesians. The remaining ranks, the innocent members, of the secret society now needed new leadership, an honest man, and Daniel was their choice. Dutifully, Daniel and I both agreed he should be the one to lead them. We were safe for now. Out of tragedy and misunderstanding we rose from the rubble to become a family—a real family.

  By all accounts, all was finally right in the Cannon household. But for me, underneath the smiles and family dinners, a few questions continued to pester me.

  I turned my attention back to my friend. “Come on Anna-Beth,” I whined, using my sweet voice. “Please. For me, your oldest and dearest friend, could you answer just a few questions? I think you owe me that much after all I’ve been through.”

  She continued to sunbathe in silence, her face pointed up to the clear sky so long I thought that maybe she hadn’t heard me.

  “Anna-Beth?”

  She held up a finger. “Fine, but just one,” she agreed in a bothered tone.

  “I was thinking more like five,” I countered.

  She rolled her head toward me. “Okay, two then.”

  “Four?”

  “Three, and that’s my final offer.”

  A satisfied smile tweaked my lips. Maybe she was some sort of savvy secret agent but underneath, she was still my best friend and I knew just how far to push to get what I wanted. I rushed on before she changed her mind. “When Finn and I were married, the Iphiclesians were grooming him for politics. How did he end up here in Nashville, taking the place of a music industry lawyer instead of in the lime-light, running for office like Daniel?”

  Anna-Beth turned her face back to the sun. “Apparently, after y’all broke up, he didn’t have the heart for politics anymore.” She waved her hand dismissively. “From what we can gather, and Johnny’s sudden burst of success, they put him in as Johnny instead where he could influence the music industry and keep an eye on Daniel.”

  I moved on to my next question. “Why is that woman from the cemetery still walking around looking like Gentry?” I asked. “Why didn’t she change into someone else or back to who she was before?”

  “Would you want to go through that extensive of plastic surgery once, much less twice?” Anna-Beth said. “Essentially, complete replication of another person is a one-way trip.”

  “Have you caught her yet?”

  “No, but it’s only a matter of time.”

  I didn’t like that answer. It bothered me that a woman, a depraved, deceitful woman, was out there looking like Bridger and Bodie’s mother. I knew that Anna-Beth’s agency was actively keeping a close eye on our family; but still, Daniel and I were going to have to be careful, vigilant even, in order to keep the boys safe.

  “Okay, and third—” I started when Anna-Beth cut me off.

  “That was your third question.”

  “No, technically that was a follow-up question,” I disagreed.

  Anna-Beth lifted her head from the chaise and then dropped it back with a groan. “Fine,” she growled. “But this is the last one!”

  Across the pool area, Cooper was directing Herbert on where to plant some shrubs around in the garden. As Daniel’s wife, and the woman of this house, shouldn’t that be my job? But then when it came to Cooper Cannon Collins, what should be, and what was, tended to be two very different things.

  “Are you absolutely sure that Cooper isn’t one of the dangerous Iphiclesians?” I asked. “I mean, I know you said you checked and all, but shouldn’t you check again to be sure—really sure? It doesn’t hurt to be thorough.”

  “Very funny,” Anna-Beth said. “And we’re sure she’s who she appears to be.”

  “You mean bossy, pushy, controlling, and in everyone’s business?”

  Anna-Beth slid her sunglasses down her nose and gave me a confused look. “I thought you two were gettin’ on better now?”

  “We are, I suppose,” I admitted. Since the truth about Gentry and the Iphiclesians had come out, and I’d stood beside Daniel in spite of it all, even encouraging him to take over as the Society’s leader, Cooper had decided that I was all right for a “Yankee California girl.” Financially, Cannon Records was on its own now without the secret organization’s safety net of monetary reserves—conflict of interest—but with Daniel devoting fulltime to the business and Cooper’s husband at his side, we all felt confident that the company their great-grandfather founded almost one hundred years ago, would endure.

  “Well, okay then,” Anna-Beth said, sliding her glasses back into place. “That’s three questions asked and answered. Now, I don’t want to hear any more about Johnny, or any references in general, or specific, to what I do for a living—” she was saying when her cell rang. She turned to fish the phone from her purse.

  I had one more question, a question I’d held back because I was fairly certain she didn’t know the answer. Who had been in the road that day the boys and I nearly crashed on our way to the cemetery? Had that person been a part of Paul’s twisted plan to scare me away? Or, had Gentry, herself, been trying to warn me from beyond the grave? With the demise of Paul, I guessed I’d never know. Some mysteries, I concluded, weren’t meant to be solved.

  Anna-Beth gave her phone’s display a nasty scowl. “Oh, heaven help me, it’s Momma! She thinks Steven is my boyfriend and keeps insistin’ that he come with us to Gatlinburg this weekend. I’d rather die and be buried in a tawdry polyester suit than swap sappy looks with that man for an entire weekend.”

  Pinching the phone between her fingers like it was a dirty, smelly diaper, she swung her feet to the concrete. “Do you mind if I run inside and take this?”

  I bit my lips togeth
er to keep from laughing at her awkward predicament. “No, go right ahead,” I said. She jumped up and hurried off to the back of the house.

  As she went, the smacking noise of heavy plastic hitting the concrete somewhere around my seat made me jump and I wondered if she’d knocked something out of her bag during her hasty retreat. Glancing around my chaise, I couldn’t see that anything had fallen. Amused by the double life Anna-Beth has chosen to lead, I settled back and lifted my face to the warm sun, allowing the chuckle I’d held back in her presence to rattle over my lips.

  Only a few short months ago, I’d never have suspected she was anything but the shallow, endearing, hopeless romantic she wanted everyone to believe she was. But then how many of us are truly what we seem? Daniel, the powerful CEO, the prestigious state senator, had been hiding a file of unthinkable secrets. Me, poking into those secrets for answers like I wasn’t hiding a few of my own. And Johnny, at first I’d found him fascinatingly unnerving, then a friend, and lastly the man I’d once loved—Finn.

  I glanced across the stone deck to see Daniel steady his hands on the edge of the pool, hoisting the rest of his body up and out of the water in one swift motion. My heart grew wings and fluttered against my ribs. He was so handsome, that man of mine, with his lean body, broad shoulders, and dark hair with splashes of gray. Years from now when he was withered and bent against the years, I was certain I would still have to catch my breath whenever he walked, or shuffled as the case may be, into a room.

  Making his way over to me, he dropped his dripping self down onto the chaise Anna-Beth had vacated. “Did Anna-Beth leave already?” he asked.

  “No, she just went in to take a call.”

  His focus shifted to the underside of my chair. “A call?” he questioned as he stretched under my seat and plucked a tiny black cell phone from the ground. He looked it over. “Then what’s this?”