The Gray Zone (34 page)

Kelly recognized her parents’ names immediately. She flipped the picture back over. A buzzing started in her ears. The girl in the center was not her. It was her mother. The boy on the right was her father. The boy on the left was Gillis.

Gillis had known her parents.

Horror washed through Kelly as she sat frozen, staring at the picture.
Gillis knew my parents
, she repeated to herself. Her vision became a tunnel.

As if moving through wet cement, she struggled to her feet and staggered out of the room. Passing the closets, she stopped. In Gillis’s closet the rods were lined with suits and shirts, probably a hundred of each, abandoned. Above the closet rods was a long shelf that held rows of plastic boxes. Kelly ran to grab a chair and threw herself at the upper shelf. She tore through the contents of the boxes—shoes, sweaters, cuff links, belts—until she got to a cardboard box hidden behind the others. She pulled it to the floor and opened the lid.

She was not really surprised by the first thing she pulled out. A gallon-sized Ziploc bag, rust powder obscuring its contents. She undid the plastic zipper. In the bag was the knife, of course, the one Gillis was saving to destroy her life. But Kelly felt no relief now at having found the object of her ruin. Something told her the box contained far more sinister answers. Dropping the plastic bag containing the knife into her duffel bag, she lifted out the next thing from the box.

It was Gillis’s high school yearbook. Underneath it, letters and notebooks. She didn’t need to read many lines before realizing what they revealed: Gillis had been in love with her mother. He had been insanely jealous of her father. His letters to her mother were juvenile
declarations of the deepest love. She must have returned them to him. The ramblings in the notebooks were teenage screeds of mayhem and murder, all directed at her father. With each page she read, Kelly felt the life as she thought she knew it unravel more and more.

All of a sudden she became aware of a movement off to her left. Wrenched from her thoughts, she spun around and saw Griselda creeping toward her duffel bag. With a yell, the housekeeper sprang forward, grabbing for it.

“Not yours! No take!”

Kelly heaved herself toward the small woman, catching her around the shoulders and rolling her backward. Griselda clawed and kicked. Kelly, bigger but matched in strength, threw herself over the woman, trying to grab her arms. Growling, the woman wriggled free.

“No take! Mr. Gillis know!” She feinted left and faked Kelly into lunging that way. Fleetly the woman grabbed the bag and slipped past Kelly. Regaining her balance, Kelly sprinted after her through the bedroom into the hall. She leaped for Griselda’s shoulders and brought the woman down on the tile. Kelly heard a crack as the housekeeper’s head hit the hard floor. The woman grunted, the handle of the duffel bag still gripped in her fist.

Kelly pried open the woman’s fingers and then noticed the blood on the housekeeper’s head. Griselda lay motionless.

Kelly ran back to the closet, threw the papers into the box, scooped it up, and returned to the hallway. Griselda was stirring. Kelly touched two fingers to her neck. Her pulse was strong. She would be alright.

Without looking back, Kelly ran down the stairs and out the front door. She threw the box and the bag into the passenger seat of the rental car and drove off to a hotel, her mind untangling her life with every mile, like a bobbin unraveling. Nothing was what it had seemed.

On the hotel bedspread she followed the unspooling thread
through more letters written by Gillis, but unsent, telling Kelly’s mother that she belonged to him forever. At the very bottom of the box Kelly found the object that destroyed everything she had believed of her family’s history until that moment: In a plastic sandwich bag, stuffed into the corner of the cardboard, was a small envelope. Inside it was her mother’s wedding ring, the ring that had disappeared the night her mother was murdered. The meaning was unmistakable. Gillis had been there that night. Gillis had killed her mother. Gillis had been the shadow she had seen in the doorway, the voice that had commanded her not to move an inch.

“Go back to bed,” he commanded. “Don’t move an inch.” The timbre of his voice, deep with intensity, demanding obedience. The light from the hallway made it impossible for her to distinguish his features, but she remembered his form blocking the entire doorway, he appeared so big.

She covered her head with the blanket, knowing she would never forget the guttural sound that echoed in her ears …

Gillis had watched from the courtroom while Kelly’s father had been tried and convicted for the murder. Gillis had watched as the orphaned girl was sent into the foster care system. He had stalked her while she was in it, had lain in wait for her when she tried to escape. He had controlled every aspect of her life before she had even known him. His whole life had been about destroying hers.

Even in her wildest nightmares Kelly had never imagined a hell like this. Gillis had killed Porter. He would get out of jail eventually, and someday he would kill Jake. Kelly sat on the bed, an animal moan escaping her throat involuntarily. She was more alone than she had ever been.

That night Kelly spent hours in front of a computer at an Internet
café in Houston. With the codes to the Joan Davis account she had discovered in La Jolla, she entered all the false Joan Davis accounts nationwide, transferring just under $10,000 from each fake account to a numbered account in the Cayman Islands. She was amused to discover that even though every one of them had the same mother’s maiden name, no one had ever caught on. When she was done, Kevin and Libby’s future was secured.

The next morning, Kelly had flown back to Lake Tahoe and her kids. The rest of her ultimate escape plan came to her on the plane.

Sitting here now with Jake, seven months later, she took the next step. She had to get him to listen. But she realized he wasn’t going to.

He was saying, “I’m going to figure out a way to get him put away permanently.”

Kelly decided to change her approach. “Jake …”

“We’ve got him on the charity stuff …”

“Jake!”

Jake looked at her as if for the first time.

“You’re right. I won’t go. I’m not leaving.”

“You’re not?”

Kelly shook out her hair. “We’ll stay here for another week, if Jeanette’s okay with that.”

Jake interrupted excitedly. “She said you could stay here as long as you need.”

Kelly continued, “During that time we can look for a place in LA where we can be near you. Not with you, not yet.”

Jake felt the tension drain from his body. That sounded reasonable.

“Anything.”

They held each other in a long embrace. Jake realized Kelly was right. They had this moment. In the next moment, they would go back up to the house. In the moment after that, they would play
with the kids, swim, eat some more. In the moments after that, they would put the kids to bed, sit on the couch, maybe in front of a fire. They would comfort each other. Moment by moment. Jake could live with that.

* * *

And so it went until after lunch the next day, when Jake returned to Los Angeles. The phone call came that evening.

Jeanette, with a puzzled tone in her voice, asking weren’t Kelly and the kids staying another week …

Jake’s frantic but halfhearted calls to his contacts …

No trace of Kelly. No trace of the kids. All three of them were gone. Kelly had made herself invisible at last.

The headlines in the morning papers did not surprise Jake at all. Emancipated foster children all over the country had received substantial checks from a Mrs. Joan Davis. Reporters everywhere were trying desperately to find the identity of this mystery benefactor. But there was no way to identify her. The checks came from many different American Capital banks across the country.

* * *

Todd Gillis almost choked on his toast as his newspaper fell to the floor.

“Bitch!” he cried out. “Just you wait …”

THE MERRIWEATHER MINIMUM-SECURITY PRISON in Nevada was surrounded by a six-foot-high chain-link fence, but no guard towers watched over the perimeters. Low, blue-roofed buildings were arranged around a central courtyard, piazza-style. The inmates wore khaki pants and blue button-down oxford shirts. They walked in twos and threes around the courtyard, some bent over notebooks and binders, others clutching magazines and newspapers. The basketball court was empty. It looked like a campus for a high-tech company or a training school for corporate executives—which, in a way, it was.

The inmates and guards greeted one another with nods of the head, like colleagues in a hallway. In fact, the guards were nearly indistinguishable from the inmates; the only differences were that their shirts were forest green instead of blue and they wore guns on their belts. They also wore baseball caps emblazoned with the prison’s logo.

It was July, and the afternoon sun was hot. The guard was on his usual rounds, noting who was talking with whom and who was out in the sunshine and who was staying in the shade under the overhanging roof of the courtyard.

He didn’t look up at the security cameras that dotted his route, but instead kept his eyes on the ground. He cut around the back of the dormitory and entered it through the main door, unlocked per protocol. Inside were eight double bunks, with metal lockers standing beside each one. The beds were all neatly made, the blankets pulled tight. Communal toilets and showers were in a room off to the right of the entrance door.

The large room was empty except for one man. On the bottom of the last bunk, farthest away from the door, hunched over a laptop computer, was Todd Gillis. His fingers clicked on the keys as the guard approached and stood with his back to the camera that surveilled the dormitory lengthwise. Gillis looked up. He smiled.

“It took you long enough.”

“I’ve got my own schedule,” said Kelly quietly, noting that even in the guard’s uniform and male makeup, Gillis had taken but a second to recognize her. “You always were the smartest man I’d ever met. What were you expecting?”

Gillis grinned, cockier than ever. “Something like this. Maybe a little sooner. Maybe out on the yard.”

“You were a very good teacher,” Kelly replied. “What is it you used to tell me … ? Memorize the topography, memorize the population, memorize times of day … Don’t leave a speck without analyzing it.”

Gillis chuckled. “You’re wasting your time. I’ll be out of here before you know it.” He closed the laptop. “This time has been a godsend. No board meetings to distract me.” He tapped the top of the computer. “I’m in pretty good shape, actually.”

Kelly eyed him. She knew he was talking about payback—about the plans he’d made for revenge—but it was also true physically. His hair was grayer, but she could see the outline of biceps under his blue oxford shirt.

“I’ve got one question for you,” she said slowly.

Gillis returned her stare, his eyes mocking.

“You knew my mother,” whispered Kelly.

Gillis smirked. “That’s a question?”

Kelly stared at him.

“You always were so uneducated.” He tossed the laptop on the mattress. “I
more than
knew her.”

“She was pregnant when she married my father.”

“Yes, she was. And to this day, I don’t know whose child she was carrying.” His voice was deep with intent to destroy her.

“You killed her.”

“I wasn’t the one who got the chair for it.”

“You’d been tracking me since she died. You knew the kind of life I endured in foster care.”

“I didn’t want you to turn out too well adjusted.” Gillis grinned.

Kelly spat. “You killed my mother because she married my father, and even after she was dead, you came after me.”

Gillis snorted. “Don’t flatter yourself. You were six years old. Your mother was whoring around with that jackass father of yours right under my nose. After she promised to marry me. It was his money she wanted. She slummed around with me even when they were married. Don’t kid yourself; you’re just like her. A born con artist. And a born whore.”

Kelly swallowed hard. “I know you killed her. I know you were there. I remember the first time you spoke to me. You told me to go back to bed.”

“It wasn’t the last time I said that to you,” Gillis wisecracked,
a smile carved into the mask of his face. “Let’s play ‘what if,’ shall we? What if she and I created you? What if she made your father believe you were his baby daughter? What if it was
him
who stole you from
me
?”

Kelly shook her head at the gruesome suggestion. She felt herself slipping. She fought to take back control of the situation.

“I can play ‘what if’ too. What if we did a paternity test and it proved my mom loved my father, not you? Not ever you?” Even as she heard herself say the words, Kelly knew that the truth of her identity would remain buried with her mom.

The trick worked, though. Kelly saw Gillis shift uncomfortably and knew she was back on top. With that one sentence, she had erased the validity of his entire adult life. She saw his brain frying with the effort not to believe what he knew to be true. She smiled a satisfied smile.

Gillis’s eyes flicked to the gun on Kelly’s guard’s belt.

“You loved me when you married me,” he said, his voice disguising his desperation.

“I thought you were a disgusting old man. You were my escape hatch.”

Gillis lunged for the gun on her belt. Kelly was fast, but he was faster. He twirled it to point at her heart.

“You won’t kill me,” whispered Kelly. “Because then it will all end.”

She angled her body so the camera could pick up what was happening. She goaded Gillis again. “I dare you,” she said.

They both heard movement outside the dorm, and Kelly prayed that her plan was on track. She watched Gillis’s eyes, his brain debating between what she was saying and what he wanted to do.

All of a sudden, eight armed guards stormed the dormitory—four
through the main entrance and four through the back windows. They held their guns in both hands, all eight weapons trained on Gillis.