Jack smiled. "Why? Because I know a song from a musical?"
"Well, my friend was, and he was heavy into theater and sound tracks. And you knew all about Promises! Promises! too."
"Credit my mother. She loved musicals and My Fair Lady was one of her favorites. Played it all the time while I was growing up."
Jack could hear the overture right now. Part of the sound track of his youth. A shiver of melancholy tingled through him. Mom… he could almost hear her voice from down a long hallway… humming along.
Christy said, "Anyway, it seemed as good a name as any, so I became Christy Pickering and my daughter became Dawn Pickering." She sighed. "And I'm so glad I kept her. She's been a constant source of joy… until now."
Jack didn't have the heart to tell her that what he suspected was much worse than she thought: That Christy and her daughter were part of some incestuous breeding experiment wherein Dawn had been impregnated by a man who was a full uncle, not just a half.
Nor could he tell her that he had the answer to the question of how Bolton knew about her tattoo: He'd seen every inch of her when he and his brother imprisoned her.
"So that's my tale of woe," Christy said.
And some tale it was. She'd been through a nightmare ordeal—kidnapped, imprisoned, and raped multiple times. And yet she'd bounced back. Changed her name, changed her life, become a loving mother and successful day trader.
"You should be proud of the way you handled it. You could have let it define your life, started identifying yourself as a victim. But you didn't. You beat it."
She shrugged. "You think so? 1 was just doing what felt I had to do to survive. My mother was furious with me for screwing up my life by keeping the baby. I suppose I could have told her about the rape, but I didn't think she'd believe me at that point, and if she did she'd really want me to give Dawn away. She was driving me erazy so I deeided to leave. Me and my baby—we were going to make it. But I spent years in terror that it would happen again. I never walked when I eould drive, even when it was a block away. And when I was on the street I walked way inside with my shoulder practically brushing the buildings, eyeing every van whether parked or driving along the street."
"Do you still?"
"I've relaxed a little, but not completely. I keep a gun hidden in my bedroom and I know how to use it."
"Good for you."
Jack wished he could get Gia interested in learning how to shoot. He couldn't be around her twenty-four/seven, and a pistol, even a small one, was a mighty equalizer. But she had something akin to a phobia about them.
"I still dream about them, though—those weeks. I still look at Dawn now and then and wonder about the unknown half of her gene pool and what diseases are hiding there. Cancer? Heart? Diabetes? Insanity?" She looked at him. "Do you think any of that will show up in the genetic testing you're doing?"
Jack fumbled for a quick reply. "I—I doubt it. I only asked for relationship testing. I don't even know if those other tests exist."
"Well, if they don't, someday they will. And maybe we can track down her father."
Jack didn't dare look at her. "And if you found him… what then? Start another search for a hit man?"
"I don't know. Would my life have been different if he hadn't done what he did? Absolutely. Would it be better? I don't know… I just don't know." She shook herself. "But enough about the past, what about the present? What are we going to do about that man?"
"Before we go there, I just want to make sure we've taken killing him off the table. Have we?"
She loosed a long sigh. "Yeah, sure. I went a little crazy, I guess. I feel so trapped. I'm boxed in by this big lie he's told about me and I can't see any way out. It's almost like being chained up in that cellar again. Killing him seemed like the easiest way out."
Jack needed to drive the no-killing concept home.
"Not easy at all. After what's been going on between you and him, you'd be a prime suspect. Even with an alibi. And if they catch the hit man he'll give you up in a heartbeat. And then where will Dawn be? Single and pregnant with no one to turn to. Sound familiar?"
She nodded. "Yeah. Too. So if we're going to let him live, what do we do about him?"
Jack didn't have a plan. This new wrinkle had muddied the water. He needed time.
"Let's wait and see what the DNA analysis shows. Maybe Dawn will change her tune when she sees how closely related they are. Maybe pushing information about the increased chance of birth defects from mating with a relative will put her off."
"I don't know… she's completely taken with this guy."
"In the meantime I'll sift through my notes and see if I can come up with a backup plan."
She was staring at him.
He stared back. "What?"
"You really seem to care." She smiled. "You have no stake in the outcome here, but it really seems to matter to you."
Lady, if you only knew.
18
Jack sat at the table in his front room and arranged his notes before him, trying to construct a timeline.
Jonah Stevens first fathered Hank. Then less than a year later, Jeremy. And a year after that, Christy—or Moonglow.
Eighteen years later Moonglow is kidnapped by the boys and Hank repeatedly rapes her until she becomes pregnant.
Moonglow tries to get an abortion but the boys kill off the two abortionists she visits. Jeremy is caught, locked away for life, and winds up at Creighton.
Hank, meanwhile, gets tagged for interstate GTA and also winds up at Creighton.
Coincidence? Not according to Levy. They both tested positive for oDNA, so they became instant candidates for Creighton. But the timing…
Did Hank arrange to have himself arrested on a federal beef so he could visit his brother?
No, that didn't square. He didn't know about the oDNA project at Creighton so he couldn't know he'd be sent there.
Jack checked his notes for the date of Bolton's arrival in Creighton, then opened his copy of Kick to the section covering Hank Thompson's wild, criminal youth.
When he saw the date of his capture, he checked back to the timeline for Jeremy's arrest and saw that Hank had been locked up in Creighton when Jeremy was nabbed… locked up for six months.
Jack's mouth went dry.
He rechecked the dates of the weeks Moonglow Garber had gone missing. When he found those, his stomach took a dive.
"Oh, shit."
TUESDAY
1
Dawn sat alone at the kitchen table and sipped a Diet Pepsi. Nothing else would stay down during her first couple of hours after rising.
Were you supposed to get morning sick this early in a pregnancy? Did it mean something might be wrong with the baby?
She didn't know. But then, she didn't know a thing about being pregnant. All she knew was that she hated feeling this way. How long would it last? Not the whole nine months—please!
And school. She'd missed yesterday and could so not bring herself to go today. Not that graduating would make much difference once they finished their video game idea and got it sold, but she'd worked hard for four years and totally wanted that diploma to show for it.
She bit back a sob. She felt so alonel God, she wished she had someone to talk to about this. Couldn't mention it to any of her friends—it'd be totally all over school in like two seconds. Under normal circumstances Mom would have been the obvious choice, but these circumstances were nothing like normal.
She shook her head. Still couldn't believe it. Coming on to Jerry. Her mother had gone crazy. That was the only possible explanation.
Well, crazy or not, she was so never speaking to that woman again.