“Arthur?” she scoffed. “That pale, wimpy imitation of Matthew? Never. Matt was the man for me from Day One. I’d never have settled for less.”
“My father?” He jerked up his head only to be tortured with another shaft of nauseating pain. Hanging onto the edge of consciousness by his fingernails, he forced out his next question through gritted teeth. “You thought my father was having an affair with Lana and had fathered her children?”
She gave him a look of pity. “Everyone knew it.”
“Everyone knew wrong.” He fought to focus but having three of her pacing around the room increased his wooziness. “Clay and the unborn child were Arthur’s.”
“No! He was just covering for Matt the way he always did.”
“My father had a vasectomy years before Lana disappeared. Her second child couldn’t have been his.”
“He didn’t have a vasectomy!” She pulled back as if he’d slapped her. “He would have told me.”
“Why would he?”
She sneered. “Your parents had nothing between them. Matthew was just waiting for the right time to leave that ice princess he was married to.”
Dylan would never believe that. “Do you think the right time would have ever come? It would have been political suicide.”
“He loved me! I know he did.”
Chapter Thirty
“Did you have an affair with him?” With her thinking so warped, would Karen know or tell the truth after all of this time?
“Nothing so tawdry. He bought a condo for me in LA. We agreed we couldn’t be together any place close to home, and I admired him for his caution. He said he didn’t want any gossip to circulate about us, but then the rumors sprang up about Lana. When I found out he was serious about that tramp, I intercepted the message about a meeting between them and came here to warn her away. She wasn’t ruining my chances to be presidential press secretary.”
“But something went wrong.”
“She laughed at me. She said I didn’t know what I was talking about. We struggled, and I killed her, but I didn’t mean to.”
“That’s what they all say,” Dylan murmured to himself, finding it ever more difficult to concentrate.
“Arthur came in after it happened, and I hid in here. He panicked, the fool, and took the body away with him. No one would have known about me if it hadn’t been for the damned security camera. Henry began blackmailing me almost immediately. When you started poking around, I’d had enough.”
God, Dylan wished she’d stop pacing.
“Henry and I met last night, and I paid him his hush money for the last time. When he left, I went to pass him on the road, and somehow the old geezer went over the bluff. Such a tragic accident. But I’m afraid someone saw us together. And Henry always said he’d leave the photos someplace where they’d be recovered if anything ever happened to him. I’m not waiting around for those to surface, so I’m off to warmer climates. With a little help from my friends, of course.”
Dylan decided to play along. “I’m always happy to help a true humanitarian. Getting rid of Henry Stillberg was a service to the world.”
“What was your beef with Henry?”
“He tried to blackmail me, too. It seems he had various versions of the story, wringing money out of anyone who’d pay.” Dylan grimaced, only partially an act. His head pounded beneath a sizable lump as his attention faded in and out. He’d rubbed his wrists raw with his attempts to free his hands, to no good result.
She’d have to release him at some point—to fly the plane if not sooner. He didn’t have much doubt he could overpower her, as long as there was only one of her, instead of the psychotic triplets he saw now. Sleep, maybe, would help. He’d try to rest before they went wherever she wanted to go.
He leaned his head against the wall, pulling on the cord around his hands one last time for good measure. He hurried to cover his surprise when they broke apart. He looked at Karen, still walking and talking, so proud of her story that she probably couldn’t turn it off now if ten FBI agents barged into the room. If only they would.
The sound of her voice droned on, and Dylan’s vision and consciousness wavered. He figured that must be the case or he wouldn’t have such a clear image of Gracie standing outside the door. Brave, beautiful Gracie. No telling what she’d do to rescue him if she really were here.
She’d probably want him to create a diversion so she could rush Lana. Yes, the Gracie in his vision wanted exactly that. He leaned to the side and groaned in acute pain, more real than fake. Karen drew nearer, but not near enough. Suspicious, that was Karen. He couldn’t blame her.
He groaned again, louder.
Karen took another step forward. As Gracie tiptoed up behind her, Dylan had a blinding flash of clarity.
She was real!
With a renewed sense of purpose, he kicked his legs out, and tripped Karen. Gracie rushed in and clunked her on the head with a two-by-four from the other room. Gripping Karen’s wrist, she banged it against the floor until the handgun came loose. Gracie grabbed it and focused it on Karen.
“My God, are you all right?” she asked Dylan.
“I think so.” He pulled his bloody hand from behind his back and rubbed the bump on his head. “Maybe a concussion.”
“Oh,” she said, frowning. “And look at your poor wrist. Is the other one like that, too?”
He pulled it forward and nodded, but the nod sent him adrift on waves of vertigo. He clutched his head to halt the dizzying rotation.
Sirens wailed outside, sending the top of Dylan’s head through the ceiling. “How—?”
“I went into town after I got home from the hospital. Marvin Gardens said he’d been riding out this way and saw your car in the factory parking lot. When you didn’t come home, I got worried. After I got here and saw the trouble you were in, I called the police chief.”
With Fleming and a deputy bursting through the door, Gracie abandoned her position guarding Karen and rushed to Dylan’s side. She peeled his lids back and stared into his eyes. “How many fingers am I holding up?”
He blinked and frowned at the fourteen or so digits she held in front of him. He could see them, count them as requested, but they blocked all of her face from his view except for her beautiful eyes.
“How many?” she demanded.
“Too many.” He took a stab at folding them into the palm of her hand just before he slid back into darkness. “I can’t see nearly enough of you.”
The next morning, Gracie waited outside Dylan’s room wrestling with a tangle of emotions. After regaining consciousness the night before, he had settled into a dark funk someplace deep inside himself where she couldn’t reach him. Where he didn’t want to be reached. He’d insisted that she go home and leave him alone.
She hadn’t overheard everything Karen Hammonds had said, but enough to know the woman was fixated on the long dead Matthew Bradford. How much was truth and how much she’d invented was a task for Chief Fleming and a state psychiatrist to tackle.
Gracie gripped a bag containing Dylan’s clean clothes. She desperately wanted to see him and reassure herself that he was all right, but she also wanted to put that off as long as possible. He’d already told her he planned to leave for New York as soon as the doctor released him. Not much left to say after that.
Preparing to greet the patient, she pasted a big fake smile on her face. At the sound of her name, she stopped and turned, gulping back her surprise.
“I’d like to see Dylan if I may,” Senator Bradford said, more humbly than she’d come to expect from him. Anxiety accentuated new lines etched into his face. He looked closer to his true age now, where just two days ago his polished, youthful appearance had seemed to defy time.
“That’s up to Dylan, Senator.”
He nodded and pushed the door open, gesturing for her to enter ahead of him, but she hesitated. “Maybe you should speak to him alone.”