Chapter Twenty-six
Gracie’s hand gripped her stepfather’s shoulder. “You don’t know that, David.”
“Yes, I do.” Attempting to sit up, he clawed the covers. “I saw him.”
“Saw him what?”
With the hair standing up on his neck, Dylan became aware that he’d stumbled into a momentous disclosure. Gracie cast a pleading glance in his direction but for what he wasn’t sure. He drew nearer, determined to hear the rest.
“That night. I saw him in his car, driving from Old Maine to the cabin.”
“Was Lana with him?” Gracie asked, her voice tense, cautious.
“She must have been. Maybe she was already dead. Maybe she’d told him about the baby, and he killed her.”
“But it wasn’t his baby, David. He’d had a vasectomy several years earlier.”
“That’s what he said, but that can’t be true or why would he have killed her?” David asked the question of Gracie, but he looked deep into the shadows of the past for the answer. “It must have been his child.”
“When did you ask him about it?” The words sprang from Dylan’s mouth unplanned.
Gracie shushed him and gestured for him to stay back. But he ignored her and edged closer.
David shielded his eyes from the dim lamp, trying to see outside the circle of light. “Ask who about what?”
“The senator,” Gracie said. “When did you ask the senator about the baby?”
“The day he died, of course.” He plucked at the sheet with nervous fingers. “I asked him about Lana, but he laughed. He denied everything. Said I’d lived in a small town too long and believed too many rumors.”
Dylan had heard too much, but hadn’t heard enough. He wanted to leave, but had to stay. He could see Gracie wanted to put an end to David’s narration. But after keeping his secrets for so long, the old man couldn’t be silenced. He pressed onward like a windup toy wound too tight.
“We were down at the dock. He was going out in the boat. We quarreled. Sharp words escalated into a struggle. He fell and hit his temple.” He shook his head as if to clear the memory. “It happened so fast. I tried to save him, to pull him from the water, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t, Gracie! My arm was broken and in a cast, remember? I couldn’t save him. You know I would have if I could.” The old man’s grip tightened around her fingers as he begged for understanding.
“I know.” Her voice trembled, and when she turned to Dylan, a sheen of tears glistened in her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she said, but he didn’t know who deserved her sympathy the most.
Meeting Gracie’s compassion head on, he collided with the full impact of David’s confession. The revelations weren’t just the ramblings of a sick old man.
David Collier had killed Dylan’s father!
A US Senator. A husband. A man. A father.
Accidental, perhaps, but the outcome had been just as final as an assassin’s bullet.
Dylan strode forward, eager to confront him, to pummel him, to shout out the anger and pain roiling inside him. This man shriveling before his eyes was the villain who had cut his father’s life so tragically short.
This withered and pathetic old man.
His father’s killer should have horns and a tail and wear a red cape, so that Dylan could curse and rave and swear revenge. Evil and injustice shouldn’t wear the face of a kindly physician, a trusted friend, and a respected humanitarian.
Try as he might, Dylan couldn’t picture David as evil or unjust. Only old and sick and possibly confused by events that had happened a long time ago.
God damn it! A swift kick at the bedside table sent a pillbox, pen and paper, and water glass flying.
“Dylan,” Arthur said from the threshold.
David turned his head toward the newest intruder in his bedroom, sputtered and grew pale. “You! Get out! You killed Lana! Don’t ever come here again! Get out of my house!”
Arthur reeled backward. “What!”
“He thinks you’re Dad.” Dylan moved forward to protect him from the doctor’s confusion.
“You’re dead!” David shouted. “You killed her and you died.” He rose up with a burst of strength, waving his arms. “Get out of my house. Stay out of my dreams. Leave me alone, or I’ll kill you again.”
The doctor’s face darkened from ghostly white to red. He collapsed on his pillow and rubbed his left arm with his right hand. “My med—med—” His face contorted in pain as he reached for the pillbox from the nightstand. “My medicine,” he gasped.
“Call 911!” Gracie had already snatched up the pills from the floor and spilled a tablet into her hand. David opened his mouth and lifted his tongue.
Pushing his uncle out of the room, Dylan pulled his phone out of his pocket.
She didn’t take her eyes off the old man while she took his pulse. David’s breath sawed in and out, and his chest heaved with the effort. “Relax, David. Just relax and hang on.”
After a terse conversation with the 911 operator, Dylan returned to Gracie. He placed his hands on her shoulder, letting his fingers massage the tense muscles of her neck. “What else can I do?”
She shook her head, brushing her fingertips across his hand.
Dylan wanted to stay with her, but needed to get back to his uncle before the senator required medical help, too. Slumped in the hallway, his complexion was ashen and pale. “Come on. Let’s wait outside for the ambulance.”
The senator allowed Dylan to lead him to the porch. “Uncle Arthur, I’d rather keep this quiet for now. You don’t intend to inform the authorities, do you?”
“Inform the authorities that some lunatic accused me of killing a woman?” Fear and pain flashed through his eyes. “I should say not.”
“No, not that.” Dylan shrugged. “He’s always thought Dad killed Lana. I meant the part about him being responsible for Dad’s death.”
”Is that what he was raving about?” Arthur’s voice sharpened with disbelief and malice. “He claims he killed Matt, and you don’t want to inform the police?”
Put that way, Dylan couldn’t believe it himself. “What good would bringing charges against him do anyone? Least of all Dad. If David killed him, it was unintentional. Revealing the truth now would hurt a whole new group of people.”
A speeding vehicle approached, lights flashing, sirens wailing. Two EMTs rushed up the walk with a gurney. “Where is he?” one of the men asked.
Dylan showed them to David’s room but stepped away as they zoomed in on the patient.
Soon enough they rolled the doctor out of the house and lifted him into the rear of the ambulance. With a stethoscope draped around her neck, Gracie left his side to speak to Dylan. “I’m going with David.”
He reached out and stroked her arm. “Are they taking him to County General? I’ll meet you there.”
“Thanks.” Fear for her stepfather held her posture ramrod straight.
“What else can I do for you?” he asked, taking her hand.
“Would you—” She bit her bottom lip. “We need to find Clay. He’s not on call, and he never turns off his phone, but I got his voicemail. Tanya’s not picking up either. So, you know…”
“Is it that urgent?” Dylan hated like hell to be the one to track the couple down and interrupt them.
Her fingers fluttered inside his. “Yes.”
“Gracie,” one of the EMT’s called. “Come on.”
She moved toward the vehicle, and Dylan moved with her. “Please, find Clay.” She cast a pleading look over her shoulder as she climbed into the back of the ambulance. “Tanya lives on Adams.”
“I’ll find them.”
As the emergency vehicle went screaming away, Dylan noticed the groups of neighbors gathered on their lawns and porches, watching the drama.
“Will the doctor be all right?” asked a little old lady in flannel pajamas and hair curlers.
“I’m sure he will.” Dylan turned up the walk. His usually powerful and decisive uncle waited on the porch, seeming at a loss. “I have to find Clayton, and then I’m going to the hospital. Where’s your car? Can I drop you off somewhere?”