"Have you ever done it since?"
Don's head jerked up, eyes flashing with anger-with denial. "No! I'd shoot myself first if I ever had such an inclination. I don't know what happened that night, but I saw myself. It was me raping that child. The video wasn't tampered with."
"But someone set the camera up in the first place."
Don nodded. "Yeah. But I didn't know there was a video until five years later."
"When Whitney brought Tansy to you. She's your biological daughter, isn't she?"
Don swallowed hard and ducked his head again, shaking it from side to side. "Whitney called me into his private lab and brought Tansy out. You should have seen her. All white hair and those eyes. She had the same mouth her mother had. I knew she was mine the moment I laid eyes on her. Whitney showed me the tape. And he had tapes of the girl in what looked like a hospital during her pregnancy. She sold the baby to Whitney. Later, he claimed she died in a car accident, and maybe she did; I searched for her, but couldn't find her."
"And Whitney had Tansy for five years."
Don nodded. "He'd enhanced her psychic abilities. Apparently the girl, her mother, was psychic and Peter wanted to see what he could do with the baby. She wasn't the only one he had. He told me they were orphans he'd collected, unwanted children. He had nurses for them and said he was getting rid of them, adopting them out. He told me I could take Tansy on the condition he continued to be her doctor so he could see her progression."
"And you balked."
"Hell yes. The son of a bitch. He had my daughter. He'd set me up. And when he produced the video, I realized he had to have been the one behind the camera, that all those years earlier, he'd been a party to what I'd done." He sighed heavily and leaned back against the headboard, still stroking Sharon's hand. "He wasn't always a madman. I saw the signs, but didn't want to. He was my friend and I didn't have too many of them."
"And he opened doors for you," Kadan wasn't going to let him off the hook. Don Meadows was an intelligent man. He also was ambitious. He wanted the respect, contacts, and money that came from his association with Whitney.
"I can't deny that."
"So he came to you with his proposal. He wanted you to adopt your own daughter. And if you didn't play ball with him, he was going to destroy the life you'd so carefully built."
"He would show the video to Sharon and her family. He said he'd go public with it. That video is sick," Don said. "It would have destroyed all of us."
"And the other children he had in his laboratory. He was experimenting on them and you knew it."
"He was adopting them out. They all had problems, just as Tansy did. He promised he'd give anyone who took them enough money to take care of their special needs."
'And you wanted to believe that."
"I had to believe it, for my own sanity. She was my daughter. My own child. I wanted her living with us any way I could get her. And I knew Sharon would take a damaged child, no matter how bad she was. Sharon desperately wanted children."
"You're a selfish son of a bitch, aren't you?" Kadan said, his tone mild.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
"Damn it! I'm a victim here too," Don insisted. "You have no idea what it was like."
"You didn't want to face up to the music. Whether or not Whitney drugged you, and it is probable he did, you still participated in the rape of thirteen-year-old girl and you got her pregnant."
"She had no one. Whitney told me she was a street girl there that night to try to steal from us."
"I believe she probably didn't have anyone to protect her. Whitney wanted her genes. The rest of her was an inconvenience. He must have found her on another trip, recognized that she had psychic ability and 'bought' her, just like he did the others. He probably offered her money to stay in a nice warm room and she waited there, thinking she had a good gig, a place to stay and food to eat. Hell. For the first time in her life, she wasn't on the street. And then Whitney brought you to her."
"I don't remember."
"You didn't want to remember. And you may have put out a few feelers to try to satisfy your guilt about what happened to her, but you have enough money and enough contacts to find anyone in the world. You didn't want anyone to ask questions about why that girl was important to you."
"She's dead. Whitney told me she was dead."
"And you wanted to believe that."
Don glared at him. "I don't think someone like you has a right to judge me. Do you think I can't take one look at you and know you're a killer?"
If he meant to make Kadan wince, he was mistaken. Kadan knew exactly what he was; cold as ice and willing to get the job done. "Then we understand each other," he said, his voice pitched low. "There is a difference though. I know I'm a bastard and I don't deserve Tansy. I fully admit it to myself and to her. I'm taking her anyway because I'm selfish and I'll work every day of my life to make her happy, and at the end of our days, I hope she'll have no cause for regret. You pretend you're a good guy. You deceive yourself and your family. And you left those little girls with a madman so you could continue your life just the way you wanted."
"I'm telling you, he was putting them up for adoption. The damage to them had already been done."
"He didn't put most of them up for adoption. He's using them in his breeding program."
There was another shocked silence. Kadan could tell by the man's expression that the shock wasn't feigned.
"Are you certain of your information?"
"Yes. And there were other girls as well."
Ryland stirred for the first time. "What about Lily? You had to have known he kept Lily." His voice was very low, almost a whisper, but his tone was pure menace.
Don started, his gaze jumping to the man he couldn't quite make out in the shadows. "He was good to Lily."
"He experimented on Lily. What do you think it did to her when she found out about him? When he let her believe someone murdered him? You knew, didn't you, that he was alive?"
Don nodded. "Someone high up, someone really connected wanted him dead. They knew he was enhancing Special Forces soldiers and they thought it was an abomination. Peter wanted super weapons for his country. He didn't know who it was, but they'd made several attempts to kill him and they'd hit at his soldiers. He told me they'd murdered at least one of them and he was afraid for the others. He had to disappear until he knew who his friends were."
Ryland shifted again, as if he might pursue the subject of his wife, but he let it go. He'd been the man targeted for murder by the faction who thought Whitney's experiments were abominations. He'd seen several of his men die and he'd barely escaped with his own life.
He knows more than he's telling us, he sent silently to Kadan.
"We were locked in cages," Kadan said, "in Whitney's research center. We were the men Lily helped escape."
"Her father wanted her to help them escape. He told me he maneuvered her into the position with the hope that she could do what he couldn't," Don said hastily. "For all of his sins, he wanted all of the soldiers he'd worked on to survive and serve their country."
"Did he know who wanted him dead?" Kadan asked.
"Someone very high up in the food chain. Whoever it is works in the White House and Whitney couldn't touch him. Fortunately, Peter has a lot of friends who covered for him and helped him carry on his work…"