“Was she connected with Tabitha?” Gabby asked.
“No.” Harris didn’t actually know if that was true. “I mean, it’s possible Tabitha was on her organization’s website, but I don’t know. I’ll ask.” Gabby blinked a few more times than was normal, so Harris dropped that topic. “But we’re off track here.”
“Good summation,” Damon said in a tone that suggested Harris had blown it.
“I’m still confused,” she said.
Before Harris could go back and clean up his comments, Damon started talking. “Bottom line, we think your uncle is a dick and that you’re more than likely innocent.”
More than likely? “Damon.”
“What?” Damon shrugged. “That’s a positive statement.”
“It’s okay.” She put out her hand when Harris started to say something else. “Better than I usually get, actually.”
Damon stared at her for a second with his eyes narrowing. “What were you digging out of the wall?”
She glared at Harris. “You told him.”
“He saw it. Our mutual friend has surveillance equipment on the island. Really well hidden, but it’s there.” Harris didn’t see any reason to hide that fact. She wasn’t the one running around causing trouble. And if she did decide on another midnight digging session, she might actually ask him to come with her. Clearly this three-mile stretch of land was not as safe as they’d hoped.
Her face lit up. “Then you know who started the fire.”
“I like your practical side.” Damon winked at her. “I was actually going to review the video but then Harris came in here talking about . . .” This time Damon shook his head. “Something.”
“Let’s look.” She glanced around the floor and to where the table used to be. “Wait, where?”
“You may not like what you see.” Thinking about who could be on that tape worried Harris. She’d been abandoned by so many, some willingly and others not. She didn’t need another body blow.
She made a huffing sound. “You do understand my family history, right? It’s hard to shock me at this point.”
Wrong. Something deflated inside Harris. “Don’t ever say that.”
She frowned. “Why?”
He slipped his hand under her elbow and guided her back into the hallway to the office Damon had been using for days. “It invites trouble.”
Ten minutes later, Damon had the video cued up. He ran it off his laptop, but Harris knew Wren had reviewed it first. Since his cell hadn’t started ringing, Harris figured the video didn’t provide many clues. Wren would be barking out orders if it did.
Now it was their turn to pick the video apart.
Harris and Gabby hovered over Damon’s shoulders. The laptop screen was divided into eight small boxes, each one showing a different part of the island. The timestamp indicated the video had taped last night.
The images were grainy but easy to make out. The buildings. The front porch of the main house. The darkness. Wren should have installed the sensor lights he had at his house. That would have made all of this easier.
The images flipped by at timed intervals, showing different angles. Gabby pointed as one flashed on the screen. “There. Stop.”
Damon slowed the images down, focusing on a figure appearing by the retaining wall by the pool as if rising out of the water. Tapping on the keyboard, Damon followed the person’s trail then sat back hard in his chair. “I see a person in a hoodie.”
“Not Kramer.” That was the part Harris picked out. Kramer had a specific walk. He didn’t run and didn’t stand up perfectly straight. No, this person moved with speed and agility. Harris tagged him, and he was pretty sure the person was a younger man.
Gabby frowned at him. “You can’t think that Kramer would set fire to the house.”
That was exactly what he’d thought. The guy had access to everything. It made sense that he could come and go unnoticed. “Disgruntled employee who has always been on the fringes of a wealthy family. They pretend he matters, but he’s never really invited into the inner circle.” When she continued to stare at him, Harris shrugged. “It happens.”
“None of that is true.”
While he appreciated her near-automatic response to protect the people she cared about, Harris wasn’t really in the mood. “He’s an employee, Gabby. Don’t think he doesn’t get reminders of where he stands in the Wright family every single day.”
“I understand that. I’m not trying to paint my parents as saints, but they weren’t ogres either.” Damon looked up at her, and with both men watching her, she seemed to grow more nervous. She shifted around as the words rushed out of her. “I know the rich-people stereotypes. Trust me, I went to school with a bunch of them. They’re hanging off the branches of my family tree. But my parents didn’t really live that life.”
Damon winced. “They owned five houses.”
“Okay, yes. I don’t deny how lucky I was, how lucky they were, when it came to finances. I’m not looking to play the victim here. But if my mom had her way my dad would have turned it all in and she would have gone back to being an interior designer. That’s how she met my dad. She helped him buy a couch.”
“That is a strangely romantic story,” Damon said as he spun his chair fully around to face the two of them.
Frustration pulsed off Gabby. Her desperation to convince them played in every word. Harris understood her devotion to her family. With his background, he didn’t suffer from the same issue, but he could recognize it in others. His worry was that it clouded her judgment here.
“My parents weren’t perfect. Believe me. But they did love Kramer. He got money when they died. More than I did.” There was not a hint of anger in her voice. If that fact hurt her, she hid it well.
“He didn’t fake a kidnapping,” Damon said.
The skin tightened around her mouth. “Neither. Did. I.”
Her response didn’t leave a lot of room for debate. Harris believed her. He also knew there was something else going on, possibly a bigger piece that she kept hidden. The digging. The secrets. Hell, even the undying support for the family that didn’t back her with equal fervor. Something wasn’t right.
“Male, probably in his late twenties.” The desk chair squeaked as Damon turned back to the screen. “That leaves us with Craig, Ted, someone hired by your uncle to cause trouble or some random attacker.”
Harris knew Damon skipped a step. “You can’t tell a person’s age by the hoodie.”
“The reveal had more dramatic effect with the age, so I added it.”
Gabby stepped closer to the screen. “Where are those cameras?”
“Outside,” Harris said.
She snorted. “That’s not helpful.”
“I wasn’t trying to be.”
She turned away from him and squinted at the screen. “Okay, then what about the day someone messed with the library?”
Damon shook his head. “I checked that this morning. Same hoodie.”
She asked the right questions. Harris liked that about her. She pushed and poked at the facts until she understood them. Harris was starting to think she had an equal ability to bend those facts when needed. He believed her comments about Kramer. That was how she saw things as a kid growing up in the house, but who knew how Kramer saw it.
But the second after Harris thought about Kramer, his mind circled back to Tabitha. This all started and ended with her. Gabby, the woman who insisted she didn’t feel anything, granted a lot of devotion for the people she knew. But Tabitha was her ultimate soft spot.
Then it hit him . . . if Gabby were going to lie for anyone, she would lie for Tabitha.
“The person sneaks in at night,” Gabby said, as if trying to put the pieces together in her head.
“And knows exactly where to go.” To the place Tabitha spent the most time. Again, Tabitha. Apparently more than one of the Wright daughters kept secrets. Harris wanted to know if they were the same secrets. “Whatever Tabitha hid she likely kept it i
n the library, and the person who killed her doesn’t want it found.”
“What’s ‘it’?” Damon asked.
Harris tried to reason it through—the kidnapping, the seclusion, the murder. He couldn’t see how they were related, not with a decade in between, but there was one person in the room who might. “Gabby?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know.”
But that voice. Harris heard the bobble. He saw how her hands shook as she rubbed them together. “For the record, this would be a good time to talk about why you were digging.”
Her eyes closed just for a second before reopening. “It’s not my secret to tell.”
Damon watched her now. “What does that mean?”
“She’s protecting Tabitha. The rock and shovel were never about you and the kidnapping, right?” He had no idea what it was about, but the same word kept screaming in his head—protection. At first he’d thought the shovel incident was Gabby covering up her secrets. Now he was convinced she was keeping someone else’s.
“Tabitha is dead. She didn’t set the fire or search through the library.” Gabby backed up toward the door to the office. “You two should stay focused.”
Harris watched her run right into the open door then maneuver around it into the hallway. “You never struck me as a runner.”
“Really? That’s weird because I’ve been running my whole life.” That was all she said then she slipped out.
Harris didn’t go after her because he wasn’t sure what to say. Pushing her might force her to shut down.
“You’re not really going to stand here, are you?” Damon glanced up at him. “You can’t be that much of a dumbass.”
“She’s—”
“On the verge of opening up to you despite the way you bulldozed into that conversation.”
Damon was right . . . not that Harris intended to admit that. “Try not to burn the rest of the house down while I’m gone.”
Harris just stepped into the hall when Damon piped up again. “You know, if you did care about her, which I know you don’t because you’re so honest and everything, but if you did now would be a good time to show it.”
“Love-life advice from you?” Harris couldn’t think of a less likely place to get it.
“Only one of us standing here has a love life to worry about.”
Chapter 15
Gabby could barely hold it together. She paced in front of the guesthouse couch. She’d come so close to spilling it all. Harris asked a simple question in that reassuring voice and her world broke apart. It was as if the ice inside her cracked and shifted and a small bit of light shined through.
That was why she bolted. She needed to walk away and regroup. She’d kept this secret for years. Turned her life upside down to maintain it. Changed who she was and how she viewed her family as a result. To then just blurt it out . . . and for what? A man she barely knew?
She walked faster, tripping over the area rug then kicking it aside with her sneaker. The energy bouncing around inside her demanded release. She wanted to scream and shout and run. Flee.
God, why had she come back here? She should have let the court rule against her and walk away. Not try to solve the murder or protect her sister one last time.
Her gaze went to the bedroom and her duffle bag on the floor. She didn’t own a lot of things. Stuff, collectibles, no longer mattered to her. Once “things” were taken away she realized how little they meant. What she missed was her family. What she called up in those dark moments were memories of the good times.
That was how it had worked for her. Her parents stopped the flow of money all those years ago and she morphed from how-dare-you furious to panicked to afraid. When she hit acceptance and no longer demanded her parents listen, they let her back in. All those tales of her being cast out weren’t quite true. They cut off the money and made her reprioritize. It turned out to be a gift in that way, but every other aspect of what happened was a nightmare.
Without a knock, the door opened and Harris stood there. He didn’t breach the entry. He hovered in the doorway, watching her. Those intense, intelligent, all-seeing eyes looked dull. His body, usually so alive with confidence and energy, seemed listless.
She knew why.
“When did you figure it out?” She expected a flood of pain to engulf her, but the sensations bombarding her didn’t knock her down. For some reason, even more light poured in.
“Standing in the house, right as we were talking.” He still didn’t step inside; it was as if he were waiting for permission. “But, honestly, I’m not sure what I know.”
“I’m trying to figure out if what you just said makes sense.” That was her out. She could shrug him off and change the topic.
They’d forged this arrangement where they told each other things few if any other people knew, but also held back. It was this unspoken agreement. A tentative trust that made sense to them but probably wouldn’t to anyone else.
They matched on that level, both buried in a past that defined them. For him, his mom . . . and whatever secrets he had so far refused to share. For her, the biggest decision she’d ever made. The one that changed everything.
He stared at her, not speaking, for a few more seconds. He finally walked inside and closed the door behind him, shutting them out to the rest of the world.
“You haven’t been hiding your secret. You’ve been hiding hers.” He took a step toward her then stopped. Half a room separated them when he spoke again. “Gabby?”
There it was. The ultimate truth. The same one she never dared to tell.
Before she could deny it, the dam inside her broke. All the memories tumbled out. The shock and the disbelief. Tabitha’s begging. For once, Gabby didn’t try to stuff the emotions back in. They rolled through her, knocking her off balance.
Reaching down, she felt for the couch but touched the table. That was good enough. She sat, waiting for the interrogation to begin. For Harris—art appraiser, junior detective or whatever he really was—to rip apart the pieces of the story she’d told him. It had all been true, or at least a version of the truth, but she’d left the most staggering parts out.
For once he didn’t speak. He didn’t launch into a joke or throw out a sarcastic remark. Didn’t pretend he knew more than he did or try to lie his way through a list of questions. He stood there with his arms hanging loosely at his sides with his face wiped clear of all emotion. No judgment but no pity either.
The quiet waiting worked. She tiptoed into the silence with a simple fact. “She was only twelve.”
Harris nodded, as if willing her to say more. She looked away instead.
With her head down she watched her hands. Saw how red they were from how she twisted them together. She dropped them to her sides and grabbed on to the table. Her palms ached from the harsh grip, but she didn’t let go. This moment called for some pain.
“Even back then, before everything happened, she was really sheltered.” That was an understatement. Their parents’ form of correcting her behavior was not to let Tabitha be a child at all. “My parents thought money corrupted. They had this tremendous life, but it didn’t stop my mom from drinking too much. Didn’t stop me either, and I was sixteen at the time.”
“Sounds like the usual teen stuff.” They were the first words he’d said since he dropped the bombshell that started them down this road.
“Maybe, but when you’re surrounded by all these people with all that money and all that entitlement, you can start to think life owes you something. You figure you can relax and wait to collect the trust fund. I knew so many people like that.” She had been that person. Sure, she went to college, but it was all for show at the beginning. She depended on her parents to give her the means so that her real life could begin.
When Harris didn’t say anything, she filled in more details. “After my freshman year of college, the year I almost flunked out because I viewed classes as optional, my parents made it clear the majority of their money would go to c
harity. That I shouldn’t expect a handout. They thought the family tradition of passing wealth down to the next generation was a terrible idea. That it produced limited people.”
Harris made a noise that sounded like an agreement. “They might not be wrong about that.”
“I get that now, but my nineteen-year-old, private-school, vacations-all-over-the-world self was pissed.” She hated the person she was back then. Such a stereotype. Not as bad as some, but not responsible either. “That’s when it happened. The movie I saw and the joking about staging a kidnapping.”
Harris came the whole way into the room. He didn’t stop walking until he was on the couch perpendicular to her with his knee touching hers.
“It really was just talk, but Tabitha heard. She was always around because my parents didn’t really let her go anywhere else.”
“But you could go out and go to college and have parties?” he asked in a soft, coaxing voice.
“Right. See, they made their mistakes with me and were not about to do it with her.” Uncle Stephen had called her the bad seed. Gabby hated to think she was ever that bad. “My father said that pretty often. Uncle Stephen picked up on it and believed I was the problem child in the family, though I really wasn’t. Selfish and entitled, sure. But not someone who caused her parents a lot of grief.”
Harris nodded. “Until the kidnapping.”
“She was trying to help. Her instincts were off.” Gabby was jerked back into that moment, the one where Tabitha admitted what she’d done. On the floor, crying. Begging Gabby not to hate her. “She drew this map of the house and gave up the alarm codes.”
“Oh, Tabitha.” Harris closed his eyes.
“She was twelve and sheltered. She didn’t know. At that age you have stupid crushes on older boys and one of them took advantage of that.” That piece of shit Gordon. To this day Gabby tracked his movements. She hated that he’d married and moved on. He got away with manipulating Tabitha and planning it all. “This guy, the one in charge, flirted with her and told her she was pretty, which she was, but she didn’t really know that because she’d had so little contact outside of the family.”
The Pretender Page 15