Obsession Falls (33 page)
“You met Michael Gracie.”
“Right. I worked a party at his house. And I saw Dash. He was palling around with Mr. Gracie, and I thought … I thought Dash was going to kill him.”
“And you cared?”
She had cared. She had thought she saw something great and noble in Michael Gracie. In a few brief moments of conversation, she had been captivated by his charisma. When she thought of him, she was afraid, but also … something stirred in her, some emotion that buzzed with delight at the memory of his face and his voice. She looked down and moved the ice bag to a different bruise. “I didn’t want to see him dead.”
“Why would you care so much about a stranger?”
Nothing on earth could make her tell this cool-eyed man about her hallucination of her father, his prophecy that she would die if she didn’t seize her opportunity and his urging her to do so. She could only imagine what Kennedy would say about
that
. Anyway, that wasn’t the only reason she had found herself in that wine cellar. “Don’t we all have some kind of obligation to do what we can to save a life, even a stranger’s life?”
“You believed you were saving Michael Gracie.” Kennedy picked up her hand and held it before her eyes, so she was forced to look at her mutilated finger.
“I was an idiot. He shot Dash in the head. I saw it. I was trapped. I had to cut off my finger to escape.” There. She had said it.
He hesitated as if he really would like to spend the evening harping on her imprudence. “Give me the details.”
She told Kennedy everything she could remember from the moment she had followed Dash and Michael Gracie down to the wine cellar to stowing away in the body locker in the airplane. “He knew what he was doing. He has a system set in place to dispose of the bodies. Yet he has a spotless record. He’s after you. He’s after your family.” She grasped Kennedy’s fingertips. “Get him, or we will all die.”
Kennedy turned his downturned hand and held her palm to palm. “Please go to California.”
“It’s too late for that.” She leaned back wearily. “He’s found me, and the only way I’m going to get away is to take him out. You have to figure out who he is, what he does, and how to pin these crimes on him.”
“I have the resources to protect you in California.”
She shook her head. “If I believed that, I would go. But I don’t, and if he’s going to kill me, I want it to be here. Virtue Falls took me in.”
“You’ll endanger your friends.”
“He won’t make another mistake. Any other murder attempts will be more precise.” It was up to her now to inspect every event and every occasion and weigh the percentages that Michael Gracie had engineered a trap … and a killing.
Standing, Kennedy paced across to the desk and his computer.
She watched him, then closed her eyes. Her head hurt. Her body hurt. She was tired: tired of being afraid, tired of hiding, but mostly just tired. She wanted to go to bed and sleep, and wake up to sunshine and singing birds and a world that looked like a Disney movie.
She must have drifted off, because she started when Kennedy sat down on the ottoman again. She opened her eyes and looked at him. He wasn’t as noble as a Disney prince, but right now, he looked pretty good. She smiled.
He didn’t. “I just now looked up your caterer. I thought he might be a source of information.”
“You don’t want to involve him. He could get hurt.”
“He disappeared about two weeks ago.”
She started feeling sick.
“In Ketchum, Idaho, a dog found a human thigh bone and brought it home. Yesterday, they found what was left of the remains, not much, apparently, but his hands were the hands of a chef.”
She remembered. “Georg was missing a fingertip.”
“Law enforcement is testing the DNA, but his assistant in the business has IDed the body as Georg.”
To her horror, Summer burst into tears.
Kennedy leaped into action—picked her up, put her in his lap, and sat down in the chair. He handed her his clean white handkerchief, which he just happened to have in his jeans pocket—who even carried a handkerchief anymore?—hugged her, and rubbed her back.
She tried to speak, to tell him that she never did this. But every time she opened her mouth, she sobbed so loudly she was embarrassed. Finally, she crunched herself into a little ball, grabbed his shirt in her fists, and bawled like a newborn calf. Her grief about Georg, her fear, her sense that she was trapped in a never-ending nightmare … it all came pouring out in unrestrained emotion that, despite her attempts at control, lasted far too long. And worse, oh, God, the very worst thing was—she had to blow her nose. On his handkerchief. Loudly.
He simply hugged her.
When she gradually hiccupped to a stop, she didn’t dare lift her head. Because like Kateri, she was vain enough not to want to display herself when her face was as red and swollen as a birthday balloon.
“I’m sorry.” She spoke into his shirt.
“Don’t cry much?” he deduced.
“No.” She sniffled.
“You needed to.”
Okay, that was unfair. He was caring and civil about her snotting all over his shoulder? If he kept up the cherishing, he’d make her fall in love with him.
Red and swollen or no red and swollen, the thought brought her head up. She stared at him in shock.
He stared back. “What?”
“I should leave.”
“No, you shouldn’t. You should stay here and sleep with me.”
“I can’t have sex.”
He smiled, his mouth half-quirking as if he was amused.
About no sex.
“Despite the rumors of my prowess, I can abstain. But don’t tell anybody. I’ve worked hard to establish those rumors.”
He had a sense of humor.
About no sex.
Who was this guy? “Okay,” she said faintly.
He helped her to her feet. “I made the bed in the master bedroom. There’s a gas fireplace in there. I thought we would light it.” He put his arm around her and helped her walk. “I’m from California, you know. We grab any chance to light a fireplace.”
He made the bed. He wanted to light the fireplace. Next he would say he liked to cuddle. “Have you been reading one of those books on the right thing to say to a woman?”
He drew himself up, magnificently insulted.
“Me?”
“Right. Sorry.” She smiled as she limped into the bedroom.
* * *
Dr. Watchman was right.
The next morning, Summer woke to the smell of coffee and the knowledge that when she tried to get out of bed, it was going to suck.
It did. Every joint in her body ached. She hobbled into the shower and let hot water pound on her back and shoulders. It helped. Some. Her ribs were marvelous shades of purple. Any eggplant would be proud to be her. Yet … she’d enjoyed a good night’s sleep. She’d had to wake up every time she turned over, but Kennedy was there, helping her, holding her. Even better, he always had an erection, which reassured her that he deeply felt the no-sex deprivation. She needed that reassurance even more than she needed breakfast and aspirin.
She pulled on her workout clothes and padded barefoot out into the living room, to find Kennedy staring evilly at his monitor.
He barely glanced at her. “I’ve run through my whole life, every Jimmy I’ve ever met. No matches. I’m going to have to tighten the parameters.”
“How long will that take?”
“Two days, give or take. Once I’ve set up the program, I’ll know for sure.”
“I’m sorry.” She headed into the kitchen and poured herself a cup of coffee. “Do you want me to freshen your cup?”
No answer.
She walked out with the coffeepot in her hand. “Kennedy?”
He didn’t notice her. “I’ve got two ways to go at this, and neither is working. I’m looking for a Jimmy I know. And I’m researching Michael Gracie. I’m good at finding the loose thread in a cover story, and then it can be unraveled. But with Gracie, I cannot locate where the truth begins and the lie ends.”
She went back into the kitchen, set the pot on the burner, and returned. “Did you find his family?”
“He claims to have been orphaned as a child and raised in Chicago by wealthy, elderly, now-deceased relatives who shielded him from the public eye. It’s easy to fake a cultured background when there’s no one to contradict you.”
Impulsively, she said, “You never bothered to create a cultured background for yourself.”
Kennedy’s mouth curled unpleasantly. “No. I come from a family of thieves and scam artists.”
She knew that. His unregistered birth, his felon parents, his childhood edged with crime, were no secret. She had discovered the details in a few brief moments on the Internet. But a single glance at his face, frozen with distaste, showed her the truth. He hated his past.
She pulled up a chair facing him, and sat. “So it’s possible for you to erase all trace of your past, but you never did it?”
“It’s not possible to erase all trace. Somewhere someone will know something. Somewhere there’s a photo or a newspaper clipping or a speeding ticket. I will discover the facts about Michael Gracie. As for me—when the truth is unexpectedly revealed, it can cause great trouble. My past is there for all to see. No one tries to blackmail
me.
” In a rare display of disquiet, he ran his hands up and down the arm of the chair. “Except for my own mother, of course, who does on occasion try.”
A big, loud relationship warning alarm went off in Summer’s head. “What does she want?”
“Out of prison.”
“You won’t help her?” Summer didn’t know what she thought of that.
“That’s not an option. She tells me she and my father
had
to steal to survive, that the world was against them, and that they had to make a living any way they could. No matter how successful I am as a strategy analyst, no matter how much money I make as a businessman, she still believes that if I had continued to participate in the family business, my father would be alive today.”
“She blames you for your father’s death?” This was getting real. Gritty. “How did your father die?”
“One Friday night about ten years ago, he climbed onto a roof to rob a school, stepped on a skylight, and fell twenty feet into an empty classroom. Broke his legs, his back … he lay there all weekend until the janitor found him on Monday morning.”
Summer covered her mouth in horror.
“The police took him to a secure ward in the hospital. He took a week to die.” Kennedy showed no emotion: not embarrassment, and certainly not sorrow. “My mother was grief-stricken. I believe she truly was. I believe she did feel affection for him, although perhaps that affection was driven by how easily she could manipulate him.”
“She … manipulated him?”
“She manipulates everyone.”
With bone-dark certainty, she said, “Not you.”
“Most certainly me. For most of my childhood, I observed my father and mother. I saw how she handled him with a combination of charm, guilt, and misdirection, and I despised him for it. I was unaware of her machinations in regards to me. Until … until I saw her with my little sister. By the time Tabitha was two, Mother had taught her to steal wallets from purses. Mother believed in early training, and Tabitha was good, as I had been.” He moved his pen and notebook around the desk, lining them up in different directions, then parallel to each other. Then he stopped, looked at his hands, and gripped the edge of the table. “Tabitha was caught, as I had been. I saw my mother pretend to be horrified, apologize, tell the kind lady that Tabitha would be going to our church and speaking to the minister.”
“You had a church?”
He laughed shortly. “Not at all. That was my mother, stage-managing her way out of police action. But for Tabitha, the incident was her first realization what we did was not a game. That lady whose wallet she lifted cried because she was poor, because she desperately needed the money we would have taken. Tabitha was tiny, but she saw the lady’s children, she saw the poverty, and she didn’t want to steal more.”
“Your mother forced her to—”
“Not forced! Never forced. Manipulated her. Told Tabitha how disappointed she was in her, how we all had our jobs in the family, how if Tabitha didn’t put her own family first she would be our downfall.” Kennedy hated admitting this, hated admitting who and what his mother was. “I’d heard it before. I heard it when I rebelled, when I felt compassion … when I said I wanted to attend school.”
Summer released her in-held breath. “You didn’t go to school? At all?”
“I was
homeschooled.
” The man knew how to use sarcasm.
“You went to MIT. You had to be able to test in.”
“My family is blessed with high IQs and technical brains. Once I was no longer in my parents’ custody, I caught up quickly.”
Summer nodded. “I can see you would.” She could also see why he had become so successful. He had the motivation only the child of a misfit could have, and a mind that had grown outside the bounds of conventional education.
“I will never forget the blistering humiliation I felt when I realized I was as much a creature of my mother’s machinations as were my pathetic father and my baby sister.” Kennedy touched Summer lightly on the shoulder. “Whatever affection I felt for my mother died long ago. But I know my responsibilities. I fulfill my responsibilities without fail. But I will not help Mother get out of prison. If I did, whatever damage she did, whoever she hurt with her scams … I would be accountable.”
“I see that. And I’m sorry.” What else was Summer supposed to say? “I’m sorry.” Reading about his early life had given her insight into the reason for his successes. But it hadn’t given her the details, or a glimpse of the pain that had formed him. Putting down her forgotten coffee cup, she leaned in and hugged him.
He didn’t return her embrace. But he allowed her the gesture.
“How did this affect your sister?” she asked.
He gripped her arms and set her back into the chair. “I don’t talk about Tabitha.”