by L. C. Shaw
“When Damon told me about our great-uncle, the monk, I wondered if he was still alive.”
Taylor’s heart skipped a beat.
“Is he?”
Jeremy smiled. “Yes. He’s still there. I tracked him down and spoke with him on the phone not long before you and Jack found me. We need to take them to him. The three of us, all with the same blood flowing through our veins, can do together what we can’t do apart. He quoted from Ecclesiastes 4:12, ‘A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.’ But in the meantime, I think we go back to Carl’s and find a nearby church or cathedral.”
Taylor’s father spoke. “Where does this Carl live?”
“New Hampshire.”
“That’s a long way to drive with people trying to kill you. We need to get you somewhere safe, fast, until everything hits the paper and we can put these guys away. Then you can do whatever you need to do.”
“How about the cottage?” She thought of Jack.
Her father nodded, then looked at Jeremy. “That should work. Okay with you?”
“Sounds good.”
Parks nodded. “It’s settled then. It’s nearly a three-hour drive. Let’s stop and get something to eat on the way and you can both fill me in on all of it.”
As they were getting in the car, Parks stopped to look at his phone.
“Everything okay?”
He looked up. “Yes. Just need to send a quick text and then we’ll be on our way.”
Chapter Sixty-One
FBI RESIDENT AGENCY, SALISBURY, MARYLAND
JACK HAD BEEN SITTING IN A WOBBLY CHAIR, HIS HAND cuffed to the table, for what seemed like hours. He had a dull headache from the cheap wine, and his mouth felt like cotton.
He looked up at the agent sitting across from him. He wanted to tell him to quit wasting his time. He had done nothing wrong, but even so, he wasn’t going to talk without his lawyer.
“We’re trying to get in touch with your lawyer now,” the agent said calmly. “But it’s in your best interest to tell us where Taylor Phillips is. Now. If we find her now, and alive, things will go much better.”
Jack said nothing.
“Suit yourself. But you’ll be out of options soon.”
Jack knew his rights.
“Aren’t you supposed to take me before a judge?” Jack asked.
“You would think,” the agent answered. “Things seem to have gone a little off script.” He shrugged.
Jack wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of a reaction.
The agent stood. “I guess I am going to have to let you go. The search gave us what we need, and I can’t keep you much longer.” Then he smiled, and Jack got a sick feeling.
The agent picked up his pen, his thumb clicking the top up and down. “When I say I’m going to let you go, I mean I’m going to let you go with . . .” The door opened and two men walked in. The agent made a sweeping gesture with his hand. “These nice detectives from New Hampshire. See, when we ran your name in NCIC before we came to get you, it set off some flags. These two have been driving nonstop from New Hampshire just to meet you. I guess they want to chat about a murder. Know anything about that, Logan?” The agent laughed. “You don’t have to answer that. If your lawyer ever shows up, I’ll tell him where you’re headed. Enjoy the ride.”
Chapter Sixty-Two
AS SHE SPOTTED THE FORD ESCORT PARKED IN THE DRIVEWAY, Taylor’s heart soared at the thought of seeing Jack again. She looked at the old clapboard house, where she hadn’t been in years. Her father and Evelyn had bought it when they were first married and used it as their weekend retreat. She’d failed to see the charm, finding it isolated and barren, and she spent as little time there as possible.
As soon as they were out of the car, she knew something was wrong. The door was slightly ajar and when she pushed it open, she saw the chaos—drawers wide open, their contents strewn, the floor littered with papers and objects. The sofa cushions were scattered on the floor, and all the cabinets in the kitchen hung open.
“Jack,” she called, as she ran to the bedroom, frantic. “Jack, are you here?”
“What the hell happened here?” her father yelled.
Jeremy looked around the room, taking it all in. “Looks like the house has been ransacked.”
She ran back in the living room, out of breath. “He’s not here. He’s not here!”
Her father pulled out a gun and pointed it at her. “Sit down.” He looked at Jeremy. “You, too.”
“Dad! What are you doing?”
His voice turned cold. “I’m not your father, and I think you know that.”
This had to be a joke. Was he actually pointing a gun at her? She moved toward him, and he cocked the gun.
“Stay back.”
“What are you doing? I don’t understand.”
“Taylor, do as he says.” Jeremy’s hands were up, and he sat on the sofa.
She continued to stand. “Why are you doing this? I’m your daughter. I love you.” Taylor was too devastated to feel any fear. “Dad, please!”
Parks shook his head. “I never wanted kids. I had a vasectomy before I married your mother. Then she went on and on about becoming parents. Drove me nuts. I finally went along with the IVF just to shut her up.”
She felt as if she’d been stabbed in the heart. “You mean she wasn’t infertile? You let her think that she couldn’t get pregnant and all the while you’d had a vasectomy? I don’t understand. I thought you loved me.” She sounded pathetic, even to her own ears. He didn’t love her. Her father didn’t love her. She had loved him. Still loved him. She felt her heart break into a million pieces and a cold lump take its place.
“He’s not worth it, Taylor,” Jeremy said.
Parks put his free hand over his heart and flashed a phony smile. “Aw. Your big brother coming to your defense.” He looked at her coldly. “It all worked out. Crosse got an extra kid, and he provided me with more money than I could ever spend, plus no messy emotional attachments. My time at the Institute was well worth it.”
“You were trained at the Institute?”
He laughed, a humorless, odd laugh. “Trained, raised, made.”
“You were one of the orphans?”
“Yep. How many poor throwaways do you know who have the power and money I have?”
“But I thought that your parents had died when I was too young to remember them. That’s what you said. I’ve seen pictures of them. Pictures of you with them. Even a few of them holding me.”
He sneered at her. “I showed you my cleverly designed cover.”
She sunk to the sofa. “Both you and Malcolm were raised there?”
“Poetic, no? You’ve belonged to Crosse forever. Before you were even born.”
A surge of adrenaline shot through her. “I don’t belong to him and I never will. You’re evil, and you’re going to rot in hell.”
He narrowed his eyes at her. “Just like your mother, with the fire and brimstone. How about you let me worry about my eternal soul? And by the way, thanks for finding the coins. Your useless mother couldn’t tell me where they were. Even when my guy tortured her.”
“I hate you!” she screamed.
“Don’t you want to know why she died?”
Jeremy reached out and grabbed her hand.
“Crosse had me marry her so I could find the coins, but your grandparents wouldn’t give them up. He figured after a while, she’d confide in me. All those years, she pretended to know nothing. Then one day I hear her talking to you. Right after your fourteenth birthday. Do you remember? You had just gotten back from Greece a few weeks earlier.”
Taylor thought hard and a memory came to her, of her mother sitting on the edge of her bed, talking to her before she went to sleep. Yes, it was coming back. She looked at the man holding the gun. Not her father—a stranger, an imposter.
“How could I have forgotten? The family’s sacred trust. She said we were guardians of the faith, that we had to keep a relic hidden and th
at when I was twenty-one, it would be my turn. But I had to have faith. It could only be entrusted to one with faith.”
Jeremy gasped. “That’s why they told your mother about them, but not mine. My mother had lost her faith.”
Parks said, “I knew then she’d been lying to me all those years. I could pretend a lot of things, but going to church every week, pretending to be devout, that was beyond even my abilities. I wanted those coins. Why should Crosse have them? I’d researched them, figured if it was worth making me marry this woman and wait to find them all those years, they had to be something special.”
“So you killed her?” Taylor asked.
“I wasn’t going to wait anymore. I hired someone to interrogate her. To torture her if necessary. She wouldn’t tell him anything.” A scowl transformed his face. “I couldn’t let Crosse know what I’d done, so I had the guy steal her jewelry and murder her, made it look random.”
He extended the arm holding the gun and aimed it at Taylor. “And now it’s time for you to join her. Crosse will think that you two are still hiding somewhere, and he’ll never know that I have the coins. Then I’ll have the power. Maybe even immortality.”
Jeremy flew from his seat and knocked Parks down, reaching for the gun. It went flying, skidding over the wood floor. They struggled, rolling on the ground, and Taylor jumped for it. The gun was now a few feet from Parks’s arm, and he was reaching for it, but she got there faster, picked it up with a shaking hand, and pointed it at him.
“Get away from Jeremy.”
Jeremy was pinned on his back, Parks straddling him, a hand on his neck. She saw Parks reach into his pocket and pull out something shiny. There was a click and a blade popped out. He was going to kill Jeremy. His hand moved toward Jeremy’s neck, poised to slice. Taylor got ready to pull the trigger when a voice made her jump.
“What in the world is going on here?” She looked toward the door. It was Evelyn. Her entrance had distracted Parks, too. Jeremy took the opportunity to knock the knife from his hand and push the older man off him.
Before they could stop him, Parks ran to the door, shoved his wife out of the way, and jumped into his Suburban and took off.
Evelyn ran out the door after him, but he was gone. She came back inside. “What happened here?” She started walking toward Taylor, but Taylor raised the gun to stop her from coming any closer.
She looked her stepmother in the eye. “I think you’d better tell us what’s really going on.”
Chapter Sixty-Three
YOU LET THEM GET AWAY AGAIN?” DAMON CROSSE WAS livid. He had a bunch of imbeciles working for him.
“They shot down the helicopter and took off. They landed a plane in Maryland but we lost them.”
“Damn it to hell! I won’t allow him to undo everything I’ve accomplished.”
“We recovered the flash drive from Parks. We also swept Jeremy’s facility. And Logan’s been arrested.”
That was one bit of good news. But Jeremy and Taylor were still free.
“Find them. Do you hear me? Find them and bring them to me. And remember: don’t let anything happen to the woman.”
“What about Jeremy?”
“Bring him, too. He has information I need.”
The man continued to stand there, looking at him.
“If I have to repeat myself, you won’t live long enough to hear it. Get moving!”
After he had left, Damon opened the center desk drawer and pulled out the large black book. He turned to the familiar page and began to chant. Enough was enough. He should have known better than to ever show Jeremy that tape of Maya. He was furious with himself that he had unwittingly played a part in helping her achieve her agenda. How was he to know she would turn to God? He had selected her so carefully, made sure that her position as an atheist was solid, her idolatry of science secure. She had reached out from the grave and converted his son. His son. He had been foolish to forget the power of prayer. He knew all too well what it could accomplish. He had devoted his life to convincing others of the absence of God, knowing full well God’s power. He had believed Jeremy was cut from the same cloth as he and that he would assume his role. The insolence! Plotting against him. Him! Jeremy had been conspiring with those traitors. It would stop now.
Picking up a rubber ball, he squeezed it in his left hand over and over. Frustrated, he threw it against the wall. He had one more chance and this time he wouldn’t squander it. Time was running out. At best, he had another twenty-five years left, unless he got more of the coins and could turn the clock back. Taylor had eluded him thus far, but she couldn’t stay out of his reach for much longer. Her child would be his. And this child would never betray him or search for his mother. Damon would provide a mother for him, one who shared his own ambitions. He would grow up in a stable environment and be more than willing to take his place when the time came.
Chapter Sixty-Four
EVELYN PUT HER HANDS UP. “DON’T DO ANYTHING CRAZY. I’m not here to hurt you. I came here to help you.”
Taylor was skeptical. “Did you know he was bringing us here to kill us?”
“Not until a few hours ago. Taylor, you need to tell me everything that’s happened since you went missing.”
“Why should I trust you?”
She looked at the gun in Taylor’s hand. “You’ve got me covered, at least, let’s talk. Warwick duped us both.”
“He did more than dupe us. He killed my mother!”
Evelyn’s face filled with resignation. She shook her head. “I began to suspect it just a few weeks ago.”
“Wait, why?” Taylor asked.
She looked up and gave Taylor her full attention. “He was in his study. I was about to come in when I overheard him on the phone with someone. He was arranging some sort of meeting, and I thought he was stepping out on me. He’s done it before.” Evelyn sighed. “I’m not proud of this, but I didn’t want it to be true and I searched around for anything that would prove me wrong. Then I found a burner phone in his study. I saw that he’d texted someone from it to come to the cabin and ‘clean up after him.’ That sounded ominous to me. Then I thought back to the day your mother died. She and I were supposed to have lunch, but he called at the last minute, asking her to pick up his tux for an event that evening. The house manager always took care of things like that, and we both thought it was odd, but when she pushed him he told her that the woman was going home sick. Only, later that day, after your mother had gone missing, I went back to the house and the house manager was still there.”
“So why didn’t you suspect him back then?” Taylor asked.
“I was such a mess in my panic and grief that I forgot about it. And I would never have thought your father could be a killer! But when I saw the text about the cabin, I knew something was wrong. I cloned it and his regular phone.”
Jeremy had a suspicious look on his face. “You cloned it? By yourself?”
“I had a friend help me. The point is, today I saw a text saying they’d taken Jack and the house was clear. The second text he sent an hour ago was to an unknown number, saying he had you and would need someone to come to the cottage and clean up after him.”
“That still doesn’t explain how you got here so fast. What aren’t you telling us?”
Evelyn shook her head.
Taylor walked toward her until she was only a few feet away. “If I have to shoot you, I will. Tell us the truth. Do you work for Crosse, too?”
“Who?”
“Come on, Evelyn, cut the crap.” Taylor wasn’t playing her game. “Were you in on the murder of my mother? Just waiting in the wings to marry her husband? Maybe you’re just pretending you just found out about your husband being behind the murder.” Taylor would never again refer to Warwick as her father.
“Of course not! I loved your mother.”
“Really? It didn’t take you long to become the new Mrs. Parks. Did he tell you that Damon Crosse is my father?”
Evelyn’s mouth dropped
open. “Your what?”
“My father. He made sure his sperm was used when my mother did in vitro at one of his clinics so that my mother would have his child. Warwick had to have arranged it. Jeremy is my brother and my cousin—our mothers were sisters. Jeremy’s mother was a medical student at the Institute. Damon held her hostage, impregnated her, then let her die after Jeremy was born.”
Evelyn looked horrified. “I had no idea . . . about any of this. Taylor, I swear!” She looked up at Jeremy. “What was your mother’s name?”
He narrowed his eyes at her. “Why?”
“Please, I have to know. Was it Maya?”
His eyes widened. “Yes.”
“I thought she had left the program voluntarily. He told me that she’d run off with another man—Brian, I think—who left at the same time she did. Are you sure about this? Held hostage? I can’t believe Damon would do that.” She looked like she’d seen a ghost, and in her eyes was the same shell-shocked look that Jack had had when he found out about Dakota.
“You knew my mother?”
“I was there when she came to the Institute. Damon hired me right after I got my PhD. I thought he was doing noble work. He said I was helping to shape the future. She was in the first group I worked with, and I was so sad when she left. There was something about her that made an impression on me. I can’t believe he would do something like that. It’s so counter to all the work he does, it just doesn’t make any sense.”
Jeremy and Taylor exchanged a look.
“Let her read it,” Taylor said.
Jeremy retrieved Maya’s letter from his satchel and handed it to Evelyn. “My mother wrote this. You want to know about all the good he does at that institute? You’ll see the truth.”
She took the letter, then looked up, panic-stricken. “We have to get out of here. Crosse’s men will be here any minute.”
“What? You called them?” Taylor asked.
“I thought I was doing the right thing. He made me believe that Jeremy was the evil one. He said he wanted the chance to talk to him again, work things out. And I didn’t think Damon would hurt you. He told me he just wanted to make sure you were safe.”
