What did that say about her?
Murderer’s daughter, prisoner of genetics? Keeping up a family tradition? Could she have adapted more smoothly than most to the military? To something expressly homicidal, say, sniping?
She’d worked with former snipers, had a decent idea about what that entailed.
Sitting there, suppressing your breathing, focusing on the target, reducing organic matter to a kill-spot.
Could she do that?
Probably. Whatever it took to survive. She’d always been driven to survive. Which was why she was still around.
A bit of luck didn’t hurt, either. Fate, karma, divine will, choose your delusion.
Be nice to have religious faith, to believe in life fitting together like a gorgeous puzzle. And looking back at her own life, Grace could see how an otherwise rational person could tease out a pattern that really didn’t exist.
Hard-luck orphan with a Ph.D. and a house on the beach. Pretty damn miraculous when you thought about it, call Hollywood!
To Grace, it just felt like her life.
Still, it would be nice to have faith in something. To believe she was destined to be around.
Meanwhile, survival meant you took care of business, so that settled it, she was fine, had done what was necessary.
As she repeated that mantra, keeping her foot steady on the gas pedal, Beldrim Benn’s face faded in her head until it was little more than an airy sketch.
She kept going and it thinned to random lines.
A dot.
Erased.
So why did her eyes ache? The sound... bump bump bump... No, the Escape was bucking and swaying and she realized she’d allowed herself to speed up — edging close to ninety — taxing its suspension.
She quickly slowed down. Checked the rearview and saw nothing but asphalt.
She’d be fine.
Twenty miles later, Benn’s stubbly visage had crept back into her consciousness and nothing she did could get rid of it.
She stopped fighting and just went with it, allowing herself to wonder.
Did he have a wife? Kids? Were his parents alive? What about hobbies? Something other than knifing people?
Switching to the right lane, she reduced her speed further. Annoyingly, though, her pulse had quickened, she could feel the thrum in her neck, at her wrists, her ankles, all those pressure points thumping like a steel band. And now her aching eyes were wet...
The Escape had settled at fifty-five. Time to work on slowing her own engine.
Reaching for the beef jerky, she chewed two sticks to pulp. Worked her jaws like a maniac and finally scoured her brain free of memory.
She was coasting smoothly when the disposable she’d used to call Wayne beeped.
She said, “Uncle.”
“I’m happy to be your uncle, but no need for subterfuge, I’m alone.”
“Me, too. What’s up?”
“Got your message about Selene McKinney. Talk about a blast from the past. It took some time to figure out who to call but I think I may have something.”
Grace said, “She had a child.” A girl, tell me a girl.
Wayne said, “Apparently, quite a while back, a girl lived in Selene’s house but no one ever confirmed she was Selene’s daughter. In fact the assumption was that she was a niece or some kind of ward because Selene never introduced her as a daughter and more important, Selene had never been known to date a man. Or a woman. Her sex was politics.”
“Single woman lives with a child who isn’t hers?”
“It wasn’t that uncommon back then, Grace. Families were closer-knit, people took in relatives all the time.”
“How long ago are we talking about?”
“Shortly after Selene was first elected, which would make it at least forty years.”
“How old was the girl?”
“My source recalls her as six or seven, but she won’t swear to it, she honestly can’t remember the details. Whatever the arrangement was with Selene, it was brief. The girl was seen at the house for a couple of years, then she wasn’t.”
Grace calculated mentally. Forty-six or so, today, meant a woman in her early twenties at the time of the Fortress Cult showdown, no problem having three kids.
So lovely when things came together. “Does your source have any theories about what happened to her?”
“She claimed she’d never thought about it and I believe her. Let’s just say curiosity isn’t her strong suit. When I pressed her, she said young ladies of a certain age often got sent to boarding school but that was just a guess. Bear in mind that Selene was born into huge money, politics was her avocation. We’re talking social circles neither of us have experienced firsthand, Grace, but I know a few things about the mega-rich because my father was a chauffeur for a banking clan in Brentwood. All the children were sent away to ‘develop.’ It wasn’t out of the ordinary. Dad used to joke that if he had the money, he’d do the same to my brothers and me so he could enjoy his life. Would you care to tell me why you’re interested in Selene McKinney years after her death?”
“At this point, everything’s conjecture.”
“I’m okay with conjecture, Grace.”
Grace tried to sort out her answer. Wayne didn’t wait. “All right, then, do you have a moment to listen to my conjecture? You’re thinking the girl could be the mother of those cult children, one of the lunatics who died in the showdown.” A beat. “How am I doing, Dr. Blades?”
“Very well.”
“What led you there, Grace?”
“The only link I can find between the boys’ adoptive parents is Selene.”
“What link is that?”
“Both couples attended her reelection fund-raiser.”
“The boys but not the girl.”
“From the sequence you gave me I’m assuming the girl was adopted first.”
“That’s correct.”
“You couldn’t obtain exact dates—”
“It was all I could do to produce what I did.”
“Right,” said Grace. “Highly appreciated. Anyway, Lily was adopted by a working-class family but the boys ended up in affluent homes. I figured they might’ve knocked around the system for a while, being high-risk adoptees, but now you’ve brought up the boarding school theory, perhaps they got farmed out that way. Either way, the time came when they needed homes and Selene cashed in IOUs.”
“All that,” said Wayne, “because of a fund-raiser?”
“Conjecture,” Grace reminded him, “but the time line fits. And think about it: How often do high-risk male fosters end up on Easy Street?”
The same went for high-risk female fosters. Sophie’s face flew into Grace’s head, then Malcolm’s. Both smiling, encouraging. Proud.
Wayne said, “You okay?”
“I’m fine.”
“It sounded like you gasped and then you didn’t reply when I said something.”
Not good, girl. “Sorry, got the sniffles, Wayne. Anyway, that’s my working theory but I’m a ways from proving it. You’ve been a peach, thanks again.”
Wayne sighed. “I hope I’ve actually helped you.”
“Of course you have.”
“I wish I could be as certain as you, Grace.”
“You’re worried about me. I appreciate that but don’t be.”
“Easy for you to say, Grace. I’m more than worried, I’m frightened. Especially if you are right. What you’ve told me about the older one — Samael — has really sunk in, I can’t stop thinking about poor Ramona, that crippled boy. Top that off with someone who’d do that to his own brother? You’re the psychologist, you know the kind of pathology that implies.”
“I do, Wayne. That’s why I’m careful.”