Evil Secrets Trilogy Boxed Set

by Vickie McKeehan

  Jake nodded and turned to face John Griffin, who held out his hand in introduction. Jake ignored the handshake and brushed past him to greet Ben Griffin.

  “You’re a hard man to find. Was that on purpose?” Jake asked.

  Ben Griffin spoke in a heavier Irish brogue than his father. “I never knew I had a sister, never knew anyone was trying to find me until two weeks ago. I think my father has a great deal of explaining to do. I’m reluctant to admit I’m more than a bit confused myself at this point.”

  “Your father had a few thousand miles to explain the situation to you before the plane touched down. But just like so long ago he had a chance to do a lot of things and passed on every last one of them,” Jake divulged.

  With that, he turned his attention to the limo driver. Reaching into his pocket he handed, him several large bills. “You might want to hang around. I’d give it at least an hour, okay? If you happened to overhear a great deal of yelling and screaming, maybe you could ignore it, okay?”

  Inside the house, the living room filled with people and tension. Kit’s support system, Gloria, Dylan and Baylee, Quinn and Reese, along with Jake, crowded around her as if showing the enemy there was strength in numbers.

  Because at this point, John Griffin was considered the enemy by everyone in the room.

  From across the span of space, Gloria blinked twice at the stunning realization that John Griffin wasn’t dead but alive.

  She did her best to ignore the man who had stabbed her in the heart by being part of the plot to steal her children. Instead of giving him the satisfaction of showing surprise on her face or anything else for that matter, she concentrated on looking at her son, long and hard. Her hand flew to her mouth as a tall, handsome man stepped into the room behind his father.

  For the first time in twenty-five years she laid eyes on the baby boy she’d given birth to and never got to hold.

  Kit saw the struggle in her mother’s eyes and took Gloria’s hand. “Come on, Mom, let’s go meet Ben. He’s come a long way to see us.”

  Kit and Gloria moved toward Ben as a unit. Kit reached out her hand but at the last minute changed her mind and grabbed him around the neck. “Oh, hell,” she said before her eyes filled with tears.

  Ben shot them both a wide grin, a curve of lips so like Kit’s.

  With her hands on her son’s face, Gloria exclaimed, “My god, you both look so much alike it’s uncanny.”

  Kit elbowed Ben in the ribs. “Hmm, it’d be a shame if she couldn’t tell us apart.”

  Ben snickered, and when Gloria tightened her grip, he reached down to wrap her up in his long arms.

  The three stood locked in an embrace for several lengthy minutes before Gloria commented, “Such a tall handsome man you are with your white blond hair, your green eyes, so like your sister in looks. You both have my coloring.”

  She dabbed at her eyes as the tears came for real. “You have no idea what it means to me to have you here today, to be able to touch you, hug you, for the very first time.”

  A bit awkward, Ben replied, “I’m pleased to meet you. I’ve seen pictures. Pop here showed me plenty of pictures over the years but they aren’t the same thing as finally getting to see you in person. I was told you were dead.”

  Her jaw dropped. She shot a furious glare at John. “Well, as you can see, I’m alive and well. Of course, I used to be a lot prettier.”

  Ben relaxed a little more and smiled broadly. “You look pretty enough to me.”

  Kit introduced Ben to Jake, “This is the man I plan to marry.”

  Even though they’d spoken at the car, the two men exchanged handshakes before Kit added, “And these people are the rest of my family. Baylee and Quinn are my sisters, not by blood of course, but in every other way possible.”

  She introduced Dylan and Reese, and then dragged Ben over to sit beside her on the sofa telling him, “Ben, you understand we’re all a little surprised to see John here today. Because it just so happens I’ve spent the last ten years believing he was dead.”

  Ben sent a look of horror over at their father. “Pop, you let everyone think you were dead? Why? You told me you finally decided to retire from the movies because you got tired of all the travel. He told me my birth mum couldn’t keep me so he brought me to live with my grandmother in Ireland. Then when I was maybe five or so, he told me you’d died in a car accident.”

  Kit put a hand to her mouth, took a deep controlled breath. “Such lies. Are you telling me you don’t know that we were stolen from our mother? Two women, evil to the core, stole both of us. One kept me, raised me, beat me. Our father here was part of the plot.”

  “Stolen?” Ben looked horrified. He shot a look at his father. “Pop?”

  But Kit went on, “Gloria had no idea she’d even had a son. You and I were snatched from her, stolen mere hours after she gave birth, by two women who had no regard for anyone but themselves. Up until a few weeks ago, I thought the woman who raised me was my mother. It’s only been that brief time that I’ve known the truth.”

  Sensing a complete slide into turmoil, Jake decided it was time to address the entire sham. Having never taken a seat, he stood jingling the change in his pocket and stared down at John Griffin, who sat stoically on the couch.

  Jake wanted answers, enough of this polite stall. “We’ll catch Ben up on the circumstances of his birth after Mr. Griffin here tells us what precipitated him to fake his own death ten years ago in Spain.”

  John Griffin licked his lips and swallowed hard. “I had to do it to break the hold Alana had over me. It was the only way. I’d tried so many times in the past to get her to relinquish her iron-fisted control, but I just never could get her to back off.”

  “Bullshit,” Jake challenged. “You have the nerve to fly seven thousand miles, get here only to hand us another layer to the lie? We want the truth and we want it now. After what you put Kit through over the years, she deserves to know everything.”

  John nervously licked his lips again and scrubbed his fingers over his mouth. “Do you have anything stronger than the coffee? Maybe a little whiskey would give me the courage to tell you the story.”

  Reese got up and strolled to the bar, took out a bottle of Jameson’s, poured him a generous glass, and handed it off to Griffin. Without a word he sat back down next to Quinn on the love seat—and waited for the whiskey to loosen the older man’s tongue.

  As if more comfortable with a glass in his hand, it didn’t take long for John to start talking. “Alana was good at blackmail. She and Jessica both were. There was an incident in my past that would have been the end of me as a working actor, put an end to my career for certain, if it had come to light. Alana and Jessica knew about it because they were there when it happened.

  “I’d been drinking one night after a party. It was a little after seven the next morning. I was hung over and driving down Benedict Canyon arguing with Alana, who sat in the front seat while Jessica sat in the back. The women were flapping their gums about the meat at the party the night before. And I’m not talking about steak here, people.”

  He stopped long enough to glance at everyone sitting around the room. “Don’t look so shocked. We’re all adults here. Anyway, I took my eyes off the road for a second and hit something on the narrow shoulder of the roadway. I stopped the car, got out, and discovered I’d hit a little boy on his bicycle.” This time he paused to take a long stiff drink of the liquid before going on.

  “There was some discussion about what we should do, but in the end…” He wiped his mouth and took another drink before admitting, “We did nothing. The boy was already gone and… we left him there on the side of the road.”

  He swallowed hard and went on. “When we got back to Alana’s, I telephoned the police, made an anonymous call, told them there was a little boy…those were the days before cell phones. A couple days later I found out his name. David Foster. He was nine years old. He’d had a morning paper route. That’s what he was doing on the roa
d so early, delivering his papers.”

  Kit stared at the man she had so loved once upon a time when she had believed he was the best thing that had ever happened in her life.

  All she felt now was revulsion, a sickness in her stomach, watching him drink like a fish knowing what he’d done to a little boy.

  “From that moment on, Alana and Jessica blackmailed me into every goddamn scheme they cooked up.”

  He stared up at Gloria. “And yes, that includes taking away your babies, Gloria. I knew what they planned to do all along. For two months before they did it. I wasn’t on location making a film when you went into labor but rather five miles down the road holed up in a beach bungalow waiting for you to give birth. The surprise came when you had not one baby but two.

  “Alana certainly wasn’t willing to take both of them and Jessica had just that past May given birth to her third boy. That would be Collin. So when it was decided that Alana would keep the girl that left the boy to deal with. Since no one wanted him, Jessica planned to put him up for adoption. But I put my foot down, said no way. I wouldn’t sign the papers for that. So, I took the boy here, got on a plane and took him to my mother in Ireland so she could raise him there same as she did me.”

  “And left Kit in the capable hands of a psychopath,” Jake finished.

  “I swear I didn’t know…”

  “Save it,” Jake practically shouted at him. “Any time during those first five years when you saw the bruises on Kit and the list of broken bones a mile long, you could have snatched her up and taken her to Ireland just like you did Ben here. But you didn’t do that, Griffin. How does a father leave a defenseless child with a habitual abuser like Alana?

  “Not to mention by this time you had to wonder about Alana and Jessica. Just what exactly were these two women capable of doing?”

  For the first time since coming into the house, John’s eyes got misty. But Jake ignored the tears. “How does a father leave his own little girl with a woman he knows isn’t her mother, a woman who is so into porn that we found reels of the stuff in her attic?”

  John’s face went white. “Now wait a minute, most of that stuff was done long before Kit ever came along.”

  Realizing what he’d said, he started to backtrack. “Okay, I know. I’m sorry, Kit. I’m so sorry I left you there time and time again with that monster. You need to understand I tried to talk sense into her. She’d promise the abuse would stop and that it would never happen again. But of course it always did.”

  Jake shook his head. “I’m not sure you know the depths of Alana’s depravity over the years, Griffin. Or do you? These schemes you were dragged into, did they also include murdering the Parkers?”

  John’s face showed confusion whether forced or genuine, Jake couldn’t tell.

  “Who are the Parkers?”

  Jake went through the details about their deaths, the gun, and how they had tied the crime to Alana and Jessica. He studied the man’s face to gauge his reaction and looked around the room at the expressive watchful eyes of his friends. He’d have to ask them later if they bought into the guy’s performance.

  Because John was adamant, he shook his head. “If I’d known they committed cold-blooded murder, don’t you think I would’ve blackmailed both of them to get them off my back? That’s how desperate I was back then. You have to understand I would have used any means, done anything to get out from under Alana’s control. She was driving me nuts.”

  “So you couldn’t use the porn as leverage but decided to fake your own death instead, is that it?” Jake wasn’t sure who the man thought he was kidding. In his opinion, Griffin had lost every ounce of his ability to act.

  “Yes. I gave up my acting career such as it was back then. I found people that would help me. The key was to make the story so convincing Alana and Jessica would have to believe it and never look for me.”

  For the first time since John’s performance began for the crowd sitting around her, Kit spoke up. “I didn’t believe it, not for a long time. As a matter of fact, I didn’t believe it until two months ago. Tell him, Jake. Tell him how I wanted you to check out the story I’d been told.”

  He nodded. “She did. In fact, she was convinced you were alive and that Alana had told her that to simply get back at her for some infraction she’d committed.”

  John looked at Kit then straight on. “I’m sorry, Angel. I tried to come up with a way out but I just couldn’t think of anything else other than to disappear.”

  Reese walked over to stand by Jake. “Are you telling us the truth, Mr. Griffin? You didn’t even suspect that Alana and Jessica had murdered the Parkers for their money, to get full and complete access to their trust?”

  “Look, I’m telling you, the only thing I knew for certain was both women held a ton of secrets. They had their hands in a lot of pies back then, if you know what I mean. I suspected Jessica was doing something illegal, using her law practice to do all kinds of underhanded things. After all, I’d been a party to stealing Gloria’s babies. I knew she was into handling adoptions all over the state. The only things I ever suspected them of doing like murder was when…” He looked over at Baylee. “When Sarah Moreland disappeared. Something was a little off with their story. It crossed my mind back then that they’d done something to Sarah, Baylee’s mother.”

  “What? Why?” Baylee asked the man she used to have such respect for. “Why did you suspect them? They did murder her, Mr. Griffin. And no one, not even my own father did a single thing to find out where she’d gone. They pushed her down the stairs, Mr. Griffin. They found Sarah’s body not a week ago buried on the grounds of The Enclave next to the reflecting pool.”

  John looked as though he’d stepped off a cliff and were falling about a hundred miles an hour in a downward drop. “Uh… I don’t know what to say to that.”

  “You might consider getting an attorney, Mr. Griffin,” Reese suggested. “You’ve just confessed to a hit-and-run, a felony. As an officer of the court, I’d say the sooner you retain one and come clean, the sooner you’ll get this behind you. I know this much. You’re lucky. The statute of limitations for vehicular manslaughter is three to six years so you may not even be prosecuted after such a long time. But you left the state for some time and went to live in another country. Believe me, that will count against you and will negate the statute of limitations. By how much, I have no idea. The clock started ticking the minute you left California and faked your own death, which, I might add, is prosecutable if fraud was involved. After so long, the most you may get is a fine and two to three years of jail time.”

  “Three years? Is that all?” Kit asked. She stared at her father. “Reese is right, you are lucky. David Foster’s family deserves to know what happened to their son.”

  “And look what you put your own daughter through,” Ben pointed out. “All this time she thought you were dead.”

  John looked confused again. “You’d both throw me to the wolves, my own children? But I’m here to catch up, spend some time with Kit after such a long time away. Surely you won’t be a party to turning me in for something that happened so long ago.”

  Disgusted, Kit searched her father’s eyes for some semblance of right and wrong. She shook her head. “To think I used to worship the ground you walked on. How pathetic you are now. I’m going to say this once, John. You were responsible for a little nine-year-old boy’s death. Don’t you think it is past time you did the right thing just once in your miserable life? Instead of thinking of yourself, at least make some attempt at doing the right thing for that little boy’s family.”

  She glanced over at Ben, the brother she’d known for less than an hour. “What do you say, brother of mine? How do you feel about what your father’s confessed here today?”

  “Ashamed. Surprised. A lot disgusted.” He turned to John. “I’d want the father I’ve known all these years to ’fess up to what he’s done. Kit’s right. That boy’s family deserves to know the truth even after all these years
have gone by. The boy might have had brothers or sisters who still, even today, need some closure.”

  Proud to have a man like Ben for a brother, Kit leaned over and hugged him. “Welcome to our little family such as it is. How about we take a walk and get to know each other better?”

  She put her other arm around Gloria. “Come on, Mom, you come with us. It’ll be the best family reunion I’ve ever had.”

  After the intense scene with John Griffin died down, Baylee and Quinn did their best to make sense out of things. Back in the kitchen they sat at the table with Dylan and Reese, going over everything John had told them.

  “Why didn’t he just stay in Ireland?” Dylan asked.

  “He couldn’t very well send his son, Ben, and remain out of the picture. Sorry for the pun: actor, picture. Anyway it was sad to watch Kit’s face while he went over everything. You could tell she was devastated at learning how he lied.”

  Quinn sighed. “Yeah, that was the worst, watching the disappointment on her face, seeing how crestfallen she was that everything she’d believed about him had been a lie. She trusted him.”

  Baylee stared at Quinn. “All three of us did. We thought he was—the good guy. Sad to know there doesn’t seem to have been any good guys in our little world back then.”

  “True. At least now she knows the truth and out of his own mouth. She deserves to know that much.”

  “We all do,” Baylee said as she linked fingers with Dylan.

  “Of course she does. It’s just that Jake’s feeling a little raw right now because he’s the one who verified the man was dead from the fall in Spain. He taps into a database listing that info on the site, trusts it enough to verify he’s gone. Bam, she’s upset all over again, has to face the fact Alana didn’t lie. Then he walks in here, big as life.”