Her mother made her do it.
Miles listened to the tale with nothing short of absolute amazement. It was the kind of story that, if he’d read it in a newspaper, he’d have thought someone had to be making it up. It reminded him of that story from more than twenty years ago. That woman in Texas who wanted her daughter to get picked for the cheerleading team and was arrested for trying to hire a hit man to kill the mother of her daughter’s rival. A family tragedy, the woman figured, would leave the other girl too distraught to try out for the team.
Couldn’t have happened. Yet it did. What Caroline had put her daughter up to rivaled what that Texas mom had tried to do.
No, it was worse.
“She said we’d be doing it for Dad,” Samantha confessed, teary-eyed. “Mom said you had done a terrible thing to him, cutting him out of your will. Which, I won’t lie, sounded kind of shitty, considering everything. You were going to give all your money to these biological kids, strangers, Mom said. Wasn’t right, she said. She had a plan to make everything okay but needed my help.”
Samantha said her mother had a list of the heirs and researched them online to determine the best one to target. The women were excluded — Caroline had found nothing in their online profiles to suggest any of them were lesbians — so that left the five young men. Jason Hamlin’s profile suggested he was in a relationship. Dixon Hawley retweeted a lot of stories about gay rights. There wasn’t a lot of information on Colin Neaseman or Todd Cox. But Travis Roben ticked all the boxes. He wasn’t much to look at, showed no evidence of being in a relationship, and had nerdy interests. Caroline was betting there wasn’t a girl out there who’d ever given him a second look.
He’d fall for Samantha in an instant.
“How did she know?” Miles asked. “How did she have the names?”
“There was a picture,” Samantha said. “Of the list.”
Miles thought back to when he was in the Porsche with his brother, getting out briefly when he did not feel well. A printout of the list had been in the car. Gilbert would have had enough time to take a picture.
“So your dad was in on this, too?”
Samantha shook her head. “No. Mom came up with a story about me going to London. To see a whole bunch of plays in the West End, because I’ve been majoring in theater.”
Caroline, Miles figured, must have known about the picture, sent it to herself off Gilbert’s phone. She wasn’t exactly the type to respect her husband’s privacy.
“Instead, you went to Fort Wayne to give the performance of your life. I don’t understand. What was the plan? So you find a way to meet Travis. What then?”
This part was hard for Samantha to talk about. She was ashamed of what she had done, what she had been talked into, how outrageous the scheme sounded when she said it out loud.
“I’d meet him. Become his girlfriend.”
“Go on.”
“We’d get...”
“Jesus. Not marry him.”
“Mom said it wouldn’t have had to be for long.”
“What did she mean by that?”
“She was never very specific,” Samantha said. “Anyway, we’d become a thing. Live together. And when Travis got all the money—”
“—you’d find a way to con it out of him,” Miles said.
“Mom said that’s when we would make everything right for Dad. Get the money to him. At least a share of it.”
“But really, it was for your mother. How were you going to trick him into giving you his money?”
“She hadn’t talked about that,” Samantha said quietly. “I’m not sure that was the plan.”
Miles waited.
“If... if something happened to Travis, the money would go to me. That’s w-why,” she stammered, “when those two came to, you know, kill us, I thought somehow the wires had got crossed. That someone had been told to do it. But too soon. And thought it was supposed to be both of us.”
Miles studied Samantha for several seconds, wondering if he’d really heard her say those words.
“I need to stretch,” he said.
He unbuckled his seat belt, stood, and took what was a short walk to the back of the plane, dropped into one of the other empty seats and looked out the window.
Was it possible? Miles wondered. Could Caroline be behind everything? Was she trying to whittle down the list so that a greater share would go to Travis, and ultimately to her and Samantha? Even for Caroline, that seemed too diabolical. Mounting something of that magnitude — tracking down people across the globe and disappearing them — would require the help of other people, people who were professionals at that kind of thing. It would also require a lot of money.
She might have it.
Maybe Caroline’s approach to the Google executive hadn’t been the only one. It was the only one Miles knew about. If she’d pulled off a successful scam with someone else — maybe an individual instead of a company — she’d have the money to hire some help. She did work in the criminal justice system. Had she crossed paths, at some point, with someone who could help her with this?
And it didn’t have to be someone charged with a crime. He thought back to that story out of New York from fifteen or more years ago. The two cops who were doing hits for the Mafia. Hadn’t Travis said the two who tried to kill them had identified themselves as police?
He was willing to believe anything at this point.
Miles had decided getting Samantha home took priority over heading to the west coast to find the others on the list. From the plane, he had made an awkward call to Dorian and asked her to get back to that FBI agent. There was more than enough evidence now, Miles believed, for the authorities to step in.
“Okay,” Dorian said. “On it. Anything else?”
He wanted Charise waiting for him when he got back. He wanted to take one last run at Dr. Gold, press him even harder this time. Maybe it was time to take Charise — former bouncer and wrestler — up on her offer of assistance. He had a feeling she could be very intimidating if the circumstances called for it.
“Is everything okay, Miles?” Dorian asked.
“Is that a serious question, Dorian? Considering everything I’ve been through?”
“I know, but you sound... funny. Is there something you’re not telling me?”
Miles wanted to fire the same question back at her, but not yet. The truth was, he still needed her help.
“No,” he said, and ended the call.
And then Miles called Chloe.
The call went immediately to voice mail. “It’s Miles. Please call me back,” he said. Then he added, “There’s been some big... developments. You’re still important to me, Chloe.”
For good measure, he sent her a text message saying basically the same thing. He watched to see whether the text was delivered.
It was not.
Miles decided to try again later.
He went back to his seat, across from Samantha, and asked, “What did you do after those two tried to kill you? Did you tell your mother? Did you call your dad?”
“There was this other person I was supposed to contact, a kind of middleman?”
“Do you know who that was?”
She shook her head. “I sent texts but there was no response. The last one I sent said everything had gone wrong. I couldn’t call Dad because he didn’t know anything about it. And Mom had told me not to contact her directly. And I knew she’d be mad, that the whole thing had fallen apart.”
Miles had been wondering when to break it to her. That the entire scheme was pointless. Now seemed as good a time as any.
“There’s new evidence, a new DNA test, that suggests I’m not Travis’s biological father,” he said. “He’s not in line for any windfall.”