"My mother got ill," Ethan said to no one in particular. "She didn't know what to do. She couldn't reach Connie."
"She was in Florida by then," Harrison explained. "No one had heard from Lina since she left, and Connie had lost touch with her." Harrison squared his shoulders. "Then Lina brought you back. She was so ill by then."
Deirdre concurred. "She looked awful."
Harrison went on. "I felt like I had finally been given a second chance to make things right. I told Father I was going to marry her."
"But you didn't," Abby said.
"Lina wouldn't," Harrison insisted. He nodded at Ethan's raised eyebrow. "I begged her. I swear I did."
"It's true," Deirdre told her nephew. "I was there for several of the conversations they had. Your mother didn't want you to become a Montgomery."
"Can you blame her?" Ethan's voice was so flat and emotionless, Abby felt like weeping. When she thought of the strife of his childhood, she realized how much richer her own had been.
"Not really," Harrison answered. "But I was concerned about my ability to protect you when she died."
"Your father didn't throw me out," Ethan pointed out.
"Connie wouldn't let him. And neither would I. I agreed not to formally adopt you if he'd let me make sure you were financially secure." Harrison's face registered his pain at the memory. "I will never forgive myself for how much I hurt you."
Abby studied him for a moment. "What about after?" she prompted.
"After?" Harrison looked at her.
"After your father died. What happened then?"
"Ethan, you were nine years old by then. And you already resented the hell out of me." Ethan didn't respond, so Harrison continued. "I didn't see any reason to make the matter worse than it already was. I—I didn't do all I could have. Maybe I was weak, or immature in a way—I don't know. I had no idea how to reach you. You were sullen and withdrawn."
"So you turned me over to Letty?" Ethan asked, his tone dry.
"It wasn't like that," Harrison protested. "I'm sure you don't remember, but I tried. I did everything I knew how to do, and you wouldn't respond to me. I'd never been a father before. Hell, I'd never had a father to speak of. I'd had a despot."
Ethan surged up from the arm of Abby's chair and crossed the office to stare out the window, as if he could no longer bear to watch as the story unfolded.
Harrison looked at Abby. "You already know the rest. Things went from bad to worse, and Ethan left home at eighteen."
"Tell Abby," Ethan said from the window, "where she fits into this."
Harrison dropped his head back against the sofa with a low groan. "The year after Lina left Chicago, I enlisted in the army."
"Harrison!" Deirdre stared at him. "Are you serious?"
"Yes." He nodded. "I was supposed to go to Vietnam. Father was furious."
"You were in college," Deirdre pointed out. "You could have been deferred."
"I didn't want that. I couldn't find Lina, and I hated Father for what he'd done to us. I wanted to go. I think," he confessed, "I wanted to die."
Abby's stomach had started to twist into knots. "You knew my father," she said. "Didn't you?"
Harrison shook his head. "Not then. Later."
Deirdre was confused. "But how—"
Harrison interrupted her. "Father was livid when he found out. He wasn't about to let me get myself killed. There had to be a Montgomery to run his empire." Harrison's laugh was humorless. "I think he secretly hoped it wouldn't be me—that maybe Connie could produce a second heir for him. But when she couldn't stand living with him anymore, he had to accept that I was his last hope. That's probably what killed him."
"But my father—" Abby insisted.
Harrison flashed her a faint smile. "Sorry, darling. I'm getting there. I enlisted, and Father was going to kill me before he let me leave. So he pulled some strings at the Pentagon. MDS was heavily into defense contracts at the time. Still, I never knew how he did it."
"Colonel Don Fisk," Ethan said from his position by the window.
Harrison turned to him in surprise. "What?"
Ethan faced them again. He leaned back against the window with his arms folded over his chest. Abby searched his face for something that might tell her what he was thinking.
"Don Fisk," he repeated. "He was a low-level Pentagon official with ties to the Chicago recruiting office." He looked at Abby, his gaze intent. "He knew Montgomery because of a few shady deals with defense suppliers."
Deirdre muttered a disgusted curse. "That doesn't surprise me. Father liked to make money— and he had no qualms about how he did it."
"We had several bids," Harrison added, "that Fisk had fixed to ensure we came in low. Father gave him a kickback on every contract the Pentagon awarded us."
"So when the old man needed help to bail out his son"—Ethan waved his hand in Harrison's direction—"he called on Fisk."
Harrison nodded in agreement. Ethan continued. "At the time, Abby, your father was working in the recruiting office here in Chicago. Fisk pressured him to rate Harrison ineligible. I'm sure he was threatened."
"They turned me down," Harrison told Abby. "I never knew why."
"Did my father know why Fisk was involved?" Abby asked Ethan.
"Not at first," Ethan said. "But Don Fisk got greedy. He realized that Harrison's father was in a position to ease his transition into retirement."
"He called my father," Harrison said, "and told him that if he didn't arrange for his early retirement and a high-paying job with a defense contractor, he'd reveal what he'd done on my behalf."
Deirdre's laugh was derisive. "I can imagine how well Father responded to that."
"He didn't take threats well," Harrison agreed. "He decided the only thing to do was to get rid of whatever evidence Fisk had. So he had your father put on an active-duty roster and sent to Vietnam."
"Three years after I was born," Abby recalled. "My mother told me."
Harrison leaned forward on the sofa to bury his face in his hands. "It all went away for a while. While your father was gone, Fisk had no recourse but to keep quiet." His face had paled. "I think Father hoped your dad wouldn't return."
"But he did," Abby said.
"Yes," Harrison answered, "but by then Fisk had already left the Pentagon for his own tour in Vietnam. I'm certain Father pulled strings to arrange that."
"What happened when Dad returned?" Abby asked.
"Montgomery was still nervous," Ethan explained. "MDS was heavily invested in the defense industry, and with the antiwar movement growing, he didn't want to draw any negative attention. As insurance, he offered to pay your father ten thousand dollars a year to keep the issue quiet."
Abby's eyes widened. "My father took money?" She looked at Harrison. "Did you know this?"
"Yes," he confessed, and shot Ethan an angry glance. "I didn't think you needed to know that."
"She has a right," Ethan said, his tone utterly devoid of feeling. "Finish the story."
Harrison's sigh was harsh. "He took money, Abby. And stock tips. Father made sure he could invest the funds and turn it into a neat little fortune. That's how he purchased the restaurant— and the house. His retirement pay never would have allowed him to do that."
Abby felt shaken. She rubbed her eyes with her thumb and forefinger. "All this time," she said to Harrison. "You've always known this."
"Yes," he said.
"And when he was killed? Did you know why?"
Harrison shook his head. "No, I didn't."
"There was a lot of money involved," Ethan said.
"Yes." Harrison rubbed his hands on his trouser legs. "Jack Lee had begun passing stock tips to his war buddies. Those poker games in the back room of the restaurant—" He shook his head. "They didn't play poker, Abby."
"Illegal trading?"
"Yes."
"I see." Her blood had started to run cold. "The jack of spades," she said softly.
Harrison gave her a sad look
. "Do you know what that means?"
"No. Dad said he'd picked up the nickname in Vietnam."
"Not exactly. My father was part of a group of men who'd made their fortune off the military-industrial complex. For reasons I never fully understood—maybe they thought of themselves as high-stakes gamblers—they used playing cards to distinguish themselves in correspondence. Father was always referred to as the king of spades."
"And my father," Abby said, "was the jack?"
"Something like that. Jack Lee used the jack of spades as his calling card. Everyone in his inner circle knew what it meant. After my father died, Jack developed enough contacts to keep his investments going, but pressure was starting to mount."
"The Feds got suspicious," Ethan said.
"The investigation—" Deirdre glanced at Harrison. "That wasn't an IRS audit, was it?"
"No," he concurred. "The year before your father's murder," he told Abby, "federal investigators came to see me about alleged insider trading and the possible involvement of some of our top executives. The Justice Department had initiated a crackdown on all white-collar crime. Every successful company in the country—and especially those with ties to the defense industry—was suspect."
"Dad was implicated?" Abby asked.
"His name came up. The investigators felt sure they could get him to wear a wire, use him as an informant."
"Oh, my God." She shivered. "He agreed, didn't he?"
"Yes. But something went wrong. The night of the murder, the entire case was coming to fruition. I think they were expecting to blow things open. Your father and his friends met in the back room like always."
"They let him get killed." Abby's heart was pounding so hard, she could hear the blood pumping in her veins. "No one protected him."
Harrison's face showed his anguish. "I never could find out exactly what happened. By the time I heard about it, the facts were buried somewhere in the federal case files." He held out his hands in a helpless gesture. "I knew that my father—and I, to some extent—was at least partially to blame. The only thing I could do was to give you a job and try my best to protect you."
Abby sank back against her chair in disbelief as a string of random memories assailed her. So many things made sense now. The endless red tape she'd encountered during the investigation. The way important evidence had apparently been overlooked. The confusing circumstances surrounding the murder and the apparent ambivalence of the Chicago police. She struggled to assimilate everything Harrison had told her.
"There's something I don't understand," Deirdre interjected. "You said earlier that someone was blackmailing you, Harrison. What is that about?"
He looked absolutely defeated. "A few months ago, I got a letter threatening to expose all of this. The person was going to tell you," he said to Abby, "about your father's involvement. I didn't want you to find out like that. I thought a onetime payment would take care of it."
"The blackmailer got greedy," Ethan said.
Harrison nodded. "He wanted more. And soon I saw that there was only one honorable way out." His gaze turned pleading as he regarded Abby. "I've made a lot of mistakes in my life. I've done some terrible things." He glanced at Ethan. "You may never forgive me for some of them, and I suppose you've got a right to that. But for the first time in thirty years, I felt like I had the chance to redeem myself. I kept thinking about Lina telling my father to go to hell and take his money with him. She wouldn't have let some bastard blackmail her."
He sighed. "I knew the only way out of this situation without hurting either one of you"—he glanced apologetically at Deirdre—"or without exposing the entire nasty mess to the family, was to liquidate the company. If I'd sold it then, there would still be enough capital left to make me vulnerable to the blackmailer. But if news of the devastation of the Montgomery fortune got out, I'd be free of it."
"You were willing to lose everything?" Deirdre said.
"I knew you'd all be protected. I've spent years ensuring that everyone would have sufficient assets to live in comfort. There might have been some trimming, but no Montgomery would have suffered."
"So you were deliberately sabotaging your accounts?" Abby asked.
"Yes," he replied. "And well enough so that no one noticed." He looked at Ethan. "Until you."
Abby thought that over. Had she not brought Ethan into the picture and subjected Harrison's business ventures to such close scrutiny, he probably could have gotten away with it. The stock would have dropped far enough to warrant an unfavorable sale, and though he would have lost most of his stake in the company, he wouldn't have been destitute.
Suddenly she realized there was still one question as yet unanswered. "Then who left the jack of spades at my house, Harrison, and why did it turn up now?"
fourteen
Rachel brushed one hand over the tablecloth in an absent rhythm. "Ethan?"
"Hmm?" It was Sunday night, and in the wake of Harrison's confession, his relationship with Abby had settled into an uneasy calm.
Abby had been understandably overwhelmed by yesterday's events. Ethan had never intended for her to learn the truth from anyone but him, but in the end, it seemed best that Harrison himself had delivered the blow. Ethan had come to Chicago ready to show Abby the evidence he'd accumulated. He'd already known the majority of Harrison's story, having pieced together the missing information about Jordan Fisk from his conversation with Hansen Wells, and the truth about her father's hand in Harrison's deferment from Carter Jameson. His plan had been to lay it out for her, piece by excruciating piece, taking care to paint a picture she could live with.
He had not been prepared to open the wounds of his own past, especially not when Abby already had him reeling. Harrison's story had hit him with the force of a five-star hurricane. Fresh on the heels of the way Abby had forced herself through his defenses and stormed the door of his emotional restraint, he'd been unable to defend himself from the memories Harrison had evoked.
The tone in Harrison's voice when he spoke of Lina had left Ethan feeling starkly alone. He'd finally had to put physical distance between himself and Abby by moving to stand at the window, abandoning her to face Harrison's truth on her own. Ethan had spent the time shoring up what was left of his defenses so he could face the desolation he'd experience when she realized he'd been investigating her—and had known details he hadn't revealed. He'd been prepared for her rage.
Instead, she'd retreated into a contemplative shell that both alarmed and disconcerted him. He didn't know how to interpret the shifting emotions he saw in her gaze, nor the turmoil that seemed to shimmer just beneath the surface. She was hurting, but he was unable to offer her solace. If he pushed her too hard, she might demand answers from him that he could not yet give her. He was no more ready to talk about Harrison's revelations than she, and so he let the subject drop, though it hung over their heads like the sword of Damocles.
He was more determined than ever to answer the question she herself had asked: why had this come up now? Abby had seemed to take it for granted that he would share her bed, but she'd been distracted and edgy. He hadn't made love to her. And she'd withdrawn even further today. By the time Rachel returned from her weekend away, things had grown unusually tense.
"Did you want something?" he asked.
Rachel was sitting at the table, watching him through narrowed eyes. "Are you and Abby, you know, doing it?"
He raised one eyebrow. He should have been prepared for this, he thought in retrospect. "That's a very personal question."
She didn't blink. "Are you?"
"I'm not sure I'm going to answer that."
He saw a flash of irritation in her expressive eyes. "I'm not a little kid—you know? I know how things work."
"I guess you probably do."
"But you aren't going to tell me."
"I'm not telling you because it's none of your business—not because you aren't old enough to understand."
Rachel's gaze turned shrewd. "You are doing i
t!" she exclaimed. "I thought so." Ethan didn't respond. She continued. "I was kind of sure after the Memorial Day thing, but when I got home tonight, it was really obvious. She was just acting weird."
"Weird?"
"You know—like she's in outer space or something."
Ethan decided not to ask how that had contributed to Rachel's conclusion. Rachel shrugged. "Abby hasn't really been with a lot of guys before. She doesn't go out much."
"I know that."
"It's sort of my fault. I mean, after our parents died, Abby had to take care of me and everything." She lowered her gaze to the table, whose grain pattern she rubbed with her thumb. "There aren't a whole lot of guys willing to put up with something like that."
"I don't think your sister regrets any of it," he said carefully. "Except that you didn't have a chance to know your parents."
Rachel didn't respond for a long time. When she looked at him again, he noticed the sadness in her hazel eyes. For the first time, he clearly saw her resemblance to Abby. He'd been looking at that same sad expression for the past twenty-four hours. "She was a freshman in college when it happened," Rachel told him. "She was going to be a lawyer."
He hadn't known that. He added it to his growing list of Abby's secrets. "She would have been a good one," he said with a slight smile. "She argues well."
A small laugh escaped Rachel. "God, you can say that again."
"She quit college after the murder," he said. It wasn't a question.
"She had to go to work. If she hadn't—" Rachel shook her head. "Things would have been different."
"Do you know how much your sister loves you?" he asked.
"Yeah, I know. It still makes me feel bad sometimes."
"It shouldn't. She doesn't regret any of it."
Rachel frowned. "It just doesn't seem fair, is all. I mean, Abby's never had time for guys and stuff. Except for LuAnne, she doesn't even have a lot of friends. She had to leave work and, like, pick me up at day care or take me to the doctor or something. And she doesn't date—like hardly ever. I mean, there's that one guy from the company, David Wilcox, but that's not like a date date."
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