“I’d appreciate it if you stopped pointing the gun at me and let me go.” Mystery could barely concentrate on her aunt’s words. Her stare locked with the semiautomatic in the older woman’s hand, nestled against her torso.
“Quiet! You’re just like your mother. You think you’re special and deserve more than everyone else. You want everyone to cater to you. You’re certainly a whore, like her. I heard you and that . . . man early this morning. But the fact that you’re a promiscuous slut doesn’t surprise me at all.”
Was this woman even the same Aunt Gail she’d known all her life? She seemed unhinged and bitter, not to mention violent.
“What do you want? The things I picked up from my mother’s safe-deposit box?” Mystery offered. “I’ll give them to you. You can let me go.”
“That’s not for me to decide. I’m telling you what you want to know, jezebel. What I’ve been dying to tell you. Now close your mouth and listen.” She cleared her throat, obviously incensed. “When Julia and I reached Hollywood, we both found agents quickly and started auditioning. Julia landed a few roles, nothing major. She was wholly unremarkable but somehow managed to catch your father’s eye. I’d met Marshall first at a party and we dated a bit. Then he hired my sister for a bit part. That was the last movie he made before that silly action film that launched him wide.” She scoffed as she stopped at a red light. “Next thing I knew, he and Julia were an item. I couldn’t believe when he proposed to her.”
Mystery blinked. Her aunt’s words registered but . . . She’d had no idea that Gail had ever dated her father. She also knew her father too well. “You had sex with my dad?”
“Yes and no.” She giggled, then sobered. “You keep interrupting. Stop that!” She waved the gun again.
The thought that her father had taken her aunt to bed before marrying her mom made her ill. Yeah, what about after?
Honestly, if they’d continued screwing after his wedding to her mother, Mystery didn’t want to know.
“None of this should have surprised me. Julia had always been the devil’s mistress. Everyone thought she was so beautiful and sultry—like you. She seduced your father into forgetting I existed. But after they married, his career took off. It wasn’t long before your mother heard rumors of his infidelity.” Her aunt sneered, then sped away when the light turned green, heading toward the edge of town. “She said she needed spiritual solace, and she sought it from a man of God, one of the most esteemed I’ve ever had the honor of meeting. But could she respect his pious service to the Lord? No, not your mother. She lured him like a serpent in the garden, coaxing him to eat the forbidden fruit. She coerced him to immorality and rendered him temporarily wicked. From that unholy alliance, you were conceived.”
“What?” Mystery breathed but she couldn’t possibly have heard that right. No way had Aunt Gail just told her that Marshall Mullins wasn’t her biological father.
“So you didn’t know.” She smiled with malicious glee, picking up speed as they approached the outskirts of the downtown area. “I don’t even think you suspected. Julia hid the truth from Marshall and gave you that silly name to disarm his suspicions.”
Mystery wondered how she could ever live with this secret. If, by some miracle, she didn’t die today, what would she tell her dad?
“As the years went on, Julia began insisting that she intended to divorce her husband,” her aunt continued. “She told me that she intended to write a tell-all book, telling all.” She scoffed. “I applauded her desire to drag Marshall through the mud. He deserved it, always thinking with his instrument of lust. But your mother could not be allowed to shame and stain such a beacon of light—of God himself—because Satan’s mistress had weakened him in one terrible moment. She had to be silenced.”
Mystery gaped at her aunt, a million thoughts racing through her brain so quickly she couldn’t grasp onto or give voice to just one. The implications just zoomed through her head. She blinked, gaped, jaw hanging as her aunt pulled up to an abandoned building with a rusty metal ladder leading up to the roof and a FOR RENT sign inside its lone, dark-tinted window. The rest of the building had been boarded up. On one side, she saw a dirt lot where someone’s antique shop had been torn down and the rubble remained. On the other side sat shabby storage facilities. Why would Aunt Gail bring her here?
“You had something to do with my mother’s murder?” Mystery finally voiced the thought that had been buzzing the fastest and loudest in her head.
“Everything. Your biological father can’t have his life’s work destroyed by one stupid whore. He’s destined for much greater things, and when I told him about Julia’s plans, we worked together to send my sister to the light. He assures me I’ve helped him achieve God’s will and that she’s at peace now.”
Mystery stared, blinked, shook her head. It occurred to her that she had to get over her shock and fight back, but Gail just kept dropping bombshells, one after the other. “I—I don’t understand. She was your only sister.”
“Who spread her legs often to tempt men to sin.” Gail scoffed. “She’d stepped off the righteous path long ago. I insisted that she be blessed just before her death, and the blessed man assures me that she was. So we can rest easy that we saved the reputation of a man of God and my sister’s soul the morning she went to heaven.”
Every word out of her mouth sounded twisted, and Mystery cringed. “My biological father was the man in that picture snapped by the hikers just before Mom’s death? He killed her?”
“You’re missing the point; he sent her to God, who is glorious and will forgive all. He will remake her soul into something worthy.”
And Aunt Gail sounded one hundred percent whackadoodle crazy.
As they pulled around to the back of the building, Mystery spotted another sleek black car empty and waiting. Someone else was here. It was finally hitting her that her aunt meant her harm and may have called for some help.
“After Julia was gone, things were lovely and quiet. Then you turned eighteen and were legally able to collect your mother’s effects. You didn’t seem to want them at first, so all was well. But then you mentioned coming to get them during your second semester of college and . . . something had to be done.”
Mystery absolutely didn’t recall that, but she always got sentimental about her mother and their last trip to Kansas before her death. Maybe she had mentioned it. “Something?”
“Your abduction and the DNA test. Did you remember someone taking your blood?”
Shock drilled through her composure. “That’s why?”
“We had to know for certain that you were the out-of-wedlock spawn of sin. And you were. But Marshall had you rescued before you could be eliminated.”
Eliminated? “You and my biological father—who is he?—planned to kill me?”
Gail looked her way as if speaking to a simpleton. “We didn’t silence Julia only to have this secret revealed by a silly girl. Thankfully, the abduction seemed to put some fear into you. Then you moved to the UK and seemed to lose all interest in anything associated with your ‘misfortune’ or your mother. We breathed easier, at least until you insisted on coming back to the States. And you know the rest.” Her aunt waved her away. “I drove to Dallas and left you the picture in your hotel room, hoping you would take the hint and leave the country again. But you proved stubborn, like your mother. You brought the one Neanderthal, Heath, with you. Thankfully, drugging his coffee took care of him. But the other one, the man you fornicated with in my house . . . Getting rid of him was fun. I overheard you two talking in my kitchen. Poor little girl scarred by her cheating ‘daddy.’” She sneered. “And him, all damaged by his mother’s abandonment.” She rolled her eyes. “It was pitifully easy to orchestrate your breakup. My messiah, the man who gave his seed for you, knew just how to hire an actress capable of causing a fight between you two. I slipped a diuretic in Axel’s lemonade, and when he went to the restroom, she moved in. Then you saw what you expected and walked out on him. It was perfect. Of course, I suspect Axel may already be looking for you. He’s not one who will give up easily, so let’s hurry inside, shall we?”