“How are you going to pay the ground rents now?” Hansen couldn’t imagine the pressure she was under. Losing her husband, her financial security, and potentially her reputation all in the same moment. Devastating emotional blows, especially for someone like Ruthie, whose self-worth was wrapped up in her board position.
“I’ve been selling things. Trying to track Daniel, but it appears he and the girlfriend are vacationing with a portion of the stolen funds. I’m sure Ellis and Arianna have the balance of the money, along with what I’ve paid for their secrecy.”
Ben stood up and put the chair back where he found it. He gave the house a quick scan before facing her again. “Where are they now?”
“I heard them say they were going to dinner at the lodge, so I thought—”
“You’d come here and find some dirt on them.” Hansen admired the quick thinking. That survival instinct was no joke.
In her position he would have done the same thing. He’d also have safeguards in place for the checks and would have run to Ben at the first note of blackmail, but he understood the choices she’d made.
“I was desperate.”
“While you’re being honest, tell us about the contact with the senator.” Hansen took a shot.
“That wasn’t me. I promise.” She couldn’t quite meet his gaze when she looked up. “But . . .”
This had to be bad. “Just say it.”
“I investigated you.”
Not a surprise. She’d already made that clear. “Why?”
“You were with Ben all the time. He confided in you and not the board about what was happening on the island. You were a wild card and I thought I should check you out, especially since I knew what could happen when a con artist moved to town.”
“Anything else?” Ben asked without a note of emotion in his voice.
“Once I knew about your past, I told Judson you were here.” Her gaze continued to bounce around the room before it finally landed on Hansen. “Not on purpose. I asked questions and Kerrie emailed me back. Told me how dangerous you were.”
Everything inside Hansen froze. “Kerrie?”
Ben pushed ahead. “When?”
“Maybe three weeks ago.”
Ben whistled. “That’s interesting.”
Not the word Hansen would use. He thought of all those times Kerrie had grabbed on to him. The way she thanked him. Then Allen. It all felt off to Hansen. The tears seemed real and the shaking a symptom of genuine fear. The talk of Judson being dangerous rang true.
The pieces spun in his head until he questioned every interaction with Kerrie on Whitaker. Now he knew she played him, and he’d been so desperate to believe Judson was a violent piece of garbage that he didn’t question the sincerity of her grief or her forgiveness.
Ruthie looked from Ben to Hansen. “Judson came here because of me, didn’t he?”
The anger and confusion pummeling Hansen eased long enough for him to hear the pain in her voice. She had enough guilt without him piling onto it. “He came because of me. You just made it easier for him.”
She shook her head. “I didn’t mean to put you or anyone else in danger.”
“We know.” Ben touched her shoulder. “Okay, you’re going to go home and gather any evidence you have on the blackmailing scheme.”
Ruthie blinked. “Wait—”
But Ben was off and issuing orders. He turned to Hansen next. “You find Tessa. I’ll pick up Ellis and Arianna because I’m betting after I dig a bit, we’ll find a trail of victims.” He glanced at Ruthie again. “Clearly you were not their first target.”
“And Kerrie?” Because Hansen wanted a crack at asking her a few things.
“I’ll take care of her.” Ben continued to stare. “I’m serious. You’re too close to this.”
“Are you going to arrest me?” Ruthie’s voice sounded small from her seat on the sofa. “For hiding the information about Daniel.”
“You’re going to have to tell the board. Probably step down. There will be an investigation,” Ben explained. “Sylvia will help you maneuver through it.”
“She hates me.”
“You know, if you trust people just a little, you might be surprised how much they’ll help you.” Hansen knew that from experience.
THE WIND HIT Tessa the minute she stepped out of the lodge. She missed her jacket and regretted not bringing a purse with her. She had a wallet and her cell stuffed in her back pocket. And her father. He would slow her down.
He stepped in front of her, blocking the light and casting his face in shadow. “What’s the plan?”
She grabbed her phone. “I need to find Hansen.”
“How is your boyfriend going to help us here?”
This would go faster if she didn’t have to stop every two seconds to answer her father’s questions. She should appreciate the attention, but she knew this was really about his fear of letting her out of his sight before he got his way about the press conference.
“He has connections. Here and back in D.C.” She lowered the phone before she hit the button to call Hansen. “He’s not as powerful as you, at least not in politics, but he knows people. He might be able to get a lead on Allen and—”
“This isn’t your job, Tessa.”
More lectures. Great. “I’ve been wrapped up in this since the first murder.”
He shook his head. “You can’t get involved in this sort of thing.”
“I actually can.”
“Hansen should know better than to play with your safety.”
“You care?”
“When have I put you in harm’s way? If anything, not being connected to me let you have a normal and safer upbringing.”
Maybe part of that was true, but the response seemed rehearsed. A total rationalization for his failure to be there.
She glanced at her phone again. “Hansen trusts me.”
“He needs to rein you in.”
Her hands dropped to her sides. If he was going to say that garbage, then she wasn’t going to ignore him. He deserved the lecture this time. “He’s not you. He actually loves me.”
She didn’t know if that last part was true, but it didn’t matter. She knew what she felt for him and he was not the type to tell her to stay home and out of the way. Sure, he protected her, but he was never a condescending dick about it.
She went back to her phone. Had to turn up the backlight when the night grew darker around her.
The whack! caught her off guard. She looked up just as her father’s eyes rolled back and he crumpled to the ground in a heap. Before she could go to him, the figure behind him smiled at her.
The feral expression made bile rush up the back of her throat. “Allen?”
“It’s a shame about that love thing.”
“What are you—?” A hand knocked the phone out of her fist. She turned and saw the woman who’d touched off an alarm in her head since the moment they met. “Kerrie?”
“All you had to do was stop investigating long enough for us to get out of town, but no.” Then she put something over Tessa’s mouth and the world went blank.
Chapter 26
Hansen couldn’t breathe. When he’d called Tessa and couldn’t reach her, he swung by the lodge. More than one person talked about how she and the senator rushed out without saying anything. The easy explanation was that they’d fought over family issues and left, but then why not answer his calls? No, something felt off and the longer he went without talking to her, the harder it became to stay rational.
He paced the small open space in Ben’s office in front of his desk while Ben made a series of calls. When he finally hung up the phone, Hansen turned on him. “Where’s Maddie? We need her here.”
“I got a call from a government official earlier today.”
Hansen stopped walking. “Meaning?”
“Maddie is fine and my job is to stop asking questions about her.”
That sounded more covert than Hansen expected. Maybe witness protecti
on? At the moment, he didn’t care. All he wanted was to find Tessa, and Ben had dragged him back here instead of letting him search the island.
“She’s not at her house or mine. I checked with Sylvia.” He ran through the list of possible whereabouts a second time, hoping whatever he missed would jump out at him. “The last anyone saw her was when she was having dinner with the senator and now both of them are missing.”
Whitaker wasn’t a place with lots of security cameras. There were a few around stores, but none at the lodge. None in the parking lot. Nothing pointed them in the right direction.
Ben studied the notes he wrote out as he made his calls. “Could he have convinced her, or forced her, to go back to D.C. with him?”
“The plane is still here.”
The knock on the door startled Hansen. He spun around hoping to see Tessa but she wasn’t there. Disappointment swamped him. Weighed him down. He fought to keep his mind working.
Doug stepped into the doorway. “Hey.”
Ben held up a hand. “Now isn’t a great time.”
“I’m here, too.” Ruthie followed her son inside the small office.
Seeing them, not having answers, ratcheted up Hansen’s anxiety. It soared through him, cutting off his breath.
“Ruthie, I caught them,” Ben said, referring to Ellis and Arianna. “One is in the cell. The other is locked in the conference room.” He’d grabbed them at the lodge in the middle of dinner. They were so sure in their blackmailing scheme that they hadn’t even tried to run. They’d thought Ben was saying hello . . . and then the yelling started.
Hansen knew because everyone was talking about it. Every place he stopped on the island in his futile search for Tessa, people were talking about “poor Ruthie” and all she’d been through. That was the right answer, of course. He just hoped she learned from it.
But that’s not where his mind was right now. His thoughts jumped around. He couldn’t concentrate.
Ruthie waved off Ben’s concern. “We’re not here about that.”
Hansen’s control snapped. He fought to keep his voice even but he could hear it shake. “We can’t discuss this now. Tessa is missing.”
Ruthie put her hand on her son’s shoulder. “Doug, tell them.”
“She’s on the boat.”
Hansen knew he meant Tessa. Doug didn’t even need to say her name for Hansen to know. “What boat?”
“I was following her.” The words raced out of the kid. He talked with his hands as the sentences tumbled out. “I know I wasn’t supposed to, but everyone keeps dying and you weren’t around, so—”
“It’s okay.” Ben inhaled as he watched Doug, getting the kid to mimic him. “There you go. Stay calm and tell me where you saw her.”
“The man was dragging her to a boat.”
Hansen’s heart stopped. The beats cut off in a shrill screaming second. “The senator?”
“The man that looks like Kerrie.”
TESSA TRIED TO stop the shaking moving through her body. It was a cool evening that only got cooler out on the water. And that’s where they were. On a yacht in the middle of the water somewhere. Water lapped against the side and the smell of water filled her nose.
She’d been knocked out and she had no idea for how long. They could be anywhere. She looked around for lights and the shore but it was hard to see anything from where she sat on the deck. Her vision blurred and she had trouble focusing. Whatever Kerrie had hit her with, something to knock her out, left her fuzzy. But in the distance, she could see the outline of what she thought was Whitaker—but it could be any one of the islands in the area.
Bands held her wrists and ankles together in a tight grip. She moved her legs and her foot hit against something. She blinked, trying to make out the form in the darkness. Then she saw the blood dripping down the side of her father’s face.
They’d hit him in the head with something. That fact registered in her muddled brain.
Before she could lean over and check on him, she heard Kerrie’s voice. It hadn’t lost any of its breathiness. “This is all Judson’s fault.”
Tessa’s head shot up and a shock of pain moved through her. Crashed from one side of her brain to the other.
She heard footsteps right before men’s shoes came into view. Black dress shoes. Had to be Allen. They were all out on the deck now.
“He was supposed to come here, implicate Hansen. But Judson had this elaborate plan to destroy the guy, as if killing his sister wasn’t enough.” Kerrie took a sip of her drink. Some sort of cocktail. “And then he got angry when I questioned him. He spent most of our time together angry.”
Allen topped off her drink from the pitcher in his hand. “He was a bastard.”
Leave it to these two to celebrate killing. Tessa could see it all so clearly now. The facts pushed through her clouded mind. The setup. The crying. The lies that put Allen on Whitaker long after he actually arrived. She guessed he came on the yacht with Judson and Kerrie.
She looked at Kerrie. Noticed her jewelry and the makeup. She’d bounced back from her grieving phase pretty quickly. “You killed him.”
Tessa didn’t ask it as a question because she didn’t have any doubt.
“No, I did.” Allen set the pitcher down, then rejoined them on the deck of the yacht where Hansen and Ben had found Kerrie tied up days ago. “See, Judson had a plan, but so did we.”
“I learned from him. Take out an insurance policy and kill the spouse.” Kerrie shrugged. “He admitted what he did to Alexis one night. Got drunk and dropped the bombshell as if I didn’t know the truth already. As if I hadn’t dropped hints that we couldn’t be together while he was married and how nice it would be to have a piece of her money.”
“You convinced him to kill Alexis?”
“I gave him a push. Trust me, it wasn’t hard to get him there.” She took another long sip, as if she were at a wedding and not talking death while waves lapped at the sides of the boat. “Once he killed Alexis, I made plans to set him up, take the money, and get out. I wasn’t about to be dead wife number two.”
“Enterprising.” It was the only word that popped into Tessa’s head.
“I think you’re kidding, but it’s true. I’m a survivor and when Judson made it clear there was only one way for me to leave our relationship, I knew what I had to do.”
Kill or be killed. If it weren’t so sick and hadn’t destroyed innocent people, Tessa might admire the ingenuity on principle. “All of this, the crying and clinging to Hansen . . .”
Kerrie smiled over the rim of her glass. “Convincing, right?”
“He was a dream. Barging in all heroic. It was a pleasure to punch him.” Allen threw his head back and laughed. “We knew everyone would believe he killed Judson.”
“One problem.” Kerrie made a clicking sound with her tongue. “He was sleeping with you at the time.”
“None of our background research pointed to that,” Allen said.
“Cliff heard you two fighting.” The answers clicked in Tessa’s mind. She said them as soon as she thought them. Looked at Allen. “You’re the one who staged the scene on the boat and Kerrie’s injuries, then stole the clothes and tried to get into my house.”
“Judson was long dead. I killed him in the woods and covered his body until night fell.” Allen smiled. “I improvised the rest, but I could hardly walk around the island in my clothes. I needed to blend in as much as possible, so I stole some from the locals. Then I had to take the old man out because I had no idea what he heard and he kept getting all these visitors. Thought it would be more believable if Hansen went on a rampage after you turned him down.”
“But you didn’t.” Kerrie lifted her glass in a toast. “Good for you, Tessa. Getting a piece of that. Hansen is a handsome one. And that bank account.” She whistled. “Impressive. Well, knowing him isn’t really that great because your connection with him is why you’re not going to make it off this boat.” Kerrie set her glass down and pushed her foot
against the senator on the floor. “You and the senator will go missing. Allen and I will cease to exist but people who look just like us will turn up very far from here and start over.”
“We’ll lose the insurance money, of course. And some of Judson’s assets.” Allen glanced at his sister. “It’s a good thing Kerrie has been stockpiling money. Faking documents. Opening new accounts. Collecting what we’ll need to disappear.”
“It’s amazing how easy Judson was to con when he drank.” She shrugged. “A little flattery here. Some flirting and sex there. The guy was not that deep.”
Her father’s body moved but he didn’t make a sound. Didn’t lift his head. The blood pooled on the deck. Continued to pool. The dark circle seeped out from beneath him.
“He’s a senator.” Tessa didn’t know why that mattered, but she thought, maybe, these two would care about money and power. They’d certainly done horrible things to collect both. All those lies and the bodies in a trail of destruction behind them.
Kerrie shoved at him with her foot one last time. “He’ll sink just like anyone else.”
The water. That’s how this would end. Not with an amazing rescue or her declaring her love for Hansen. With a dark cold cloud of water sweeping over her head and choking her.
The only thing she knew to do was stall for time. Hope was all she had left. That and the vow that when she went overboard she’d grab one of these two and drag them with her. “How many people do you plan on killing?”
Allen didn’t hesitate. “You two will end it. Hansen will walk into a cell, end of story.”
They were quite the pair. Kerrie walked with a bounce to her step and could cry on cue. Allen answered each question with a mix of sarcasm and a slap of anger. Hansen had told her about Allen’s temper. She could almost see the furious heat lurking behind his eyes.
“Thanks for offering his bed the other night.” Kerrie shook her head. “You made it so easy to plant evidence in his house. The knife used to kill Judson and Cliff. A shirt with Judson’s blood on it. The fibers from that one should match fibers that doctor collected on the yacht.”
Her Other Secret Page 25