The man’s mouth quirked. “I get the feeling you have some very unpleasant plans for him.”
“That,” Alice said, fighting the rage that always filled her at the thought of Aaron’s illegitimate son, “is my business.”
“For now,” he said agreeably.
“AARON DID SEND your mother money,” Kendall said. “Just like it says he did.”
Jason’s head came up at that. He was sitting in the same chair as before, his feet on the floor now, his elbows resting on his knees as he stared at the floor between his feet. What he’d told her was so grim that she’d stayed away from the subject, staying with something relatively simple and less painful.
“I can prove that,” she added. “Right now. It’s one of the things I did today, before . . .”
She suppressed a shiver; what had happened since she’d awakened in the motel bed early this evening had done much to distract her from the horror of her own afternoon, but the memory still had the power to shake her. To cover her reaction, she stood up—a little gingerly, favoring stiff muscles that had made getting dressed in her jeans and sweater again a slow process—to dig into the box Officer Browning had brought inside for her. She took out a small stack of envelopes and held them out to Jason.
He made no move to take them, until she tilted them so he could read the name and address on the top one. She saw his eyes narrow and then, slowly, he reached out for the small bundle. She watched as he flicked through the first few envelopes.
“They’re all to her,” she said. “She wouldn’t meet him, not after he’d told her he still couldn’t leave Alice. She wouldn’t let him see you, either. He started writing when she refused to even talk to him on the phone. He sent her money. She sent it all back. When she left for L.A., he found her and went after you both. She sent him away.”
He didn’t look at her; he just stared at the stack of unopened envelopes. “He . . . kept these?”
“He had them hidden at the house for a while. But when he got sick this last time, he gave them to me, to put in my safe deposit box. He thought I might need them to convince you.”
“Convince me?”
“That he never abandoned you.”
“He just gave up looking.”
Kendall’s brow furrowed. “Yes, he did. And I don’t know why. Aaron never gave up on something he wanted. But he gave up on finding you. When I asked, he would only say he’d had to stop.”
He grimaced. “Just wait. It’ll show up in that damned book.”
Kendall gaped at him. Was he really joking? Even wryly? She couldn’t quite believe it. She took a breath. Now or never, she thought.
“Does it really say . . . Alice had something to do with your mother’s death? I thought it was an accident.”
His head came up then, and she nearly shivered again under the fierceness of his gaze. “That’s what they said. A hit-and-run. Someone ran her off the road.”
Kendall’s breath caught in her throat. “Off the road?”
“Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?”
Her knees suddenly unable to support her, Kendall sank down to sit on the edge of the bed. “What . . . what does the book say?”
“That Alice arranged it. Hired the driver that did it.”
“And . . . you?” She didn’t want to hear it, but needed to know.
“I should have been with her. Would have been. She usually picked me up at the diesel repair shop I worked at after school. But old man McKenna closed down early and gave me a ride. I’d left her a note, and she was on her way home when . . . he came out of nowhere. Pushed her off a bridge into the Duwamish River.”
Kendall shivered violently this time. It was so eerily similar to what had happened to her, and some gut-level instinct told her both incidents had the same source. Alice Hawk.
Jason made a low sound that could have meant anything. Then he shoved the book at her. “Everything matches. Even why I wasn’t in the car. It’s all there. Places. Dates. All of it.”
She didn’t want to, but she couldn’t stop herself. She forgot her own aches as she read; the account of Beth West’s death was no less grim for having happened twenty years ago. She had to blink and look away from the tragic narrative. When she looked back again, her eyes still slightly blurry, something else entirely seemed to leap out at her. She stared at the juxtaposition of dates, the comparison she’d never made before.
He just gave up looking.
Yes, he did. And I don’t know why.
The exchange echoed in her head. As did Jason’s later words.
It’s all there. Places. Dates.
And then it was Aaron’s words, ringing with fury and frustration, telling her he’d been forced to stop looking for his son, but refusing to explain why.
“My God.” She sat staring down at the book on her knees. “I think I see what happened twenty years ago. And earlier, when you were little. It all fits the pattern.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Don’t you see?” She looked up at him. “It makes perfect sense. When Aaron was diagnosed with lung cancer twenty years ago, he was afraid he was going to die, so he started again to try to find you. And within a month . . . your mother was dead.”
He was watching her intently, and she kept going.
“It’s just like before, when Alice found out about you from the old hospital bills. She threatened your mother. And you. So your mother took you away, for your own safety. Alice must have threatened Aaron, too, when he kept trying to see you, after you’d gone. She must have told him that she’d . . . do something drastic if he didn’t give you and your mother up. So he did. And he only began searching again, all those years later, when he knew he was dying. It’s the only thing that makes sense.”
She saw his brows lower, saw his eyes change, sharpen somehow, and she knew the intelligence she’d sensed early on had kicked into high gear.
“Canada,” he said, his voice barely above a murmur.
“What?”
“She used to talk about how close Seattle was to Canada. That we could make it in a day, if we had to. I always wondered why we would ever have to, but if I asked, she just told me not to worry about it.” He’d said it without looking at her, but the moment the last words were out, his head came up and that predatory gaze fastened on her. “Are you saying my mother was killed just because the old man started looking for us again?”
“I know it sounds . . . incredibly sinister, but think about it. If Alice also thought Aaron was going to die twenty years ago, and knew he was looking for you again, she must have suspected he wanted to . . . make amends, to provide for you and your mother. And she wasn’t about to let that happen.”
“You’re forgetting one little detail,” he pointed out. “How did she find us?”
Kendall shook her head. “Maybe she didn’t have to. Maybe she knew. Maybe she had you tracked from the time you left L.A.”
“You’re saying she knew where we were, but the old man couldn’t find us?”
“Maybe she was why Aaron hadn’t been able to find you. I wouldn’t put it past her to have paid off the investigator he hired.” Realization struck her. “That’s why he hired . . . a friend this time. Someone he knew he could trust. He must have suspected she’d done something like that before.”
“So she . . . what? Kept tabs on us for years? And did nothing?”
“As long as your mother did as Alice told her, there was no reason for her to do anything. But when Aaron began to search again, there was always the chance he might find you.”
“So she hired a killer?” He shook his head. “I don’t know if that boat’s going to float, Kendall. That’s presupposing a lot of craziness.”
“Don’t underestimate her, Jason.” Her mouth twisted sourly as she flexed muscles that were still tight
with strain. “Not like I did.”
“You really think she’s capable of trying to murder you?”
A chill swept through her at his words, but after a moment Kendall shook her head. “The day she told me what they’d done about the will, she was so smug, so . . . contemptuous . . . but I don’t think she intended that. She just wanted to scare me. To show me that she . . . meant what she’d said.”
“I’d say hanging by your back wheels over a seventy-five-foot drop is more than just a warning,” he said, his mouth twisting downward at one corner.
“I just can’t believe . . . Alice is a very calculating person. She’ll do what she thinks is necessary, but only that. Otherwise, she would have—”
She broke off, suddenly aware of the insensitivity of what she’d been about to say.
“Otherwise she would have killed my mother when she first found out about her,” he finished for her. His tone was blunt, unemotional. As if he was talking about somebody else.
“Yes,” she said simply.
He lapsed into silence then, and she couldn’t begin to guess what he was thinking. Her knack of reading people had never been as erratic as it was with Jason. Sometimes she looked at him and knew exactly what he was thinking, other times he was an enigma that seemed beyond her comprehension. And sitting here staring at him was not helping her resolve that particular dilemma. All it was doing was making her too aware of the unexpectedly soft, thick fringe of his lashes, the lean strength of his body . . . and the remembered heat of his mouth.
She forced herself to think about something else, anything else. To think about what else was in that box, and to ponder the wisdom of showing him now or waiting until he was more apt to listen to her.
In spite of it all, she nearly laughed at the idea of waiting until Jason was in a more receptive mood. He’d been about as receptive as a cornered porcupine ever since she’d met him. Decided now, she got up once more and took the single step to the table that held the box containing the things the police had retrieved from her wrecked car.
She took out a heavy manila envelope and held it out to Jason. It was a moment before he looked up; he was still staring at the small stack of letters he held. She wondered if he would ever read them. At last he put down on the table and shifted his gaze to the big envelope she was holding.
“What’s this?”
“The codicil to Aaron’s will. The only copy Alice hasn’t gotten her hands on.”
His expression was unreadable as he took it. “It was in your safe deposit box, too, I presume?”
“Yes. I took it and the letters out when I—”
“When you what?” he prodded when she stopped.
“It doesn’t matter. I just—”
“Right now, everything matters, Kendall. What else did you do at the bank?”
He had the right to know, she supposed. After all, if Alice went through with her nasty little plan, he’d be implicated as much as she would. With a sigh, she told him what she’d done with the hundred thousand dollars Alice had had put in her account. And to her amazement, he smiled.
“You walked across the bank lobby carrying a hundred thousand in cash, and just plopped it into your deposit box?”
She nodded. “I had the notary who works in the bank witness that I went in with the money and came out without it. And when.”
“How long after the time on the withdrawal record?”
“Two minutes.”
He shook his head, still smiling. “Nice work.”
Her mouth quirked. “I know a good lawyer would tear it to bits, but it was all I could think of on short notice. And I’d be a lot more confident if the Hawks didn’t completely own the bank, and Alice didn’t in effect run it.”
His smile faded. “And have the bank’s staff in her hip pocket?”
“She could have any one of them fired in an instant,” she agreed reluctantly. “But I couldn’t risk taking it somewhere else. Too much time delay for them to use against me. I wanted it out of the account and into the box as fast as possible, and some kind of record of it.”
“Then she could know what you did. That it means you plan to fight her. And if they called her, she knew where you were.”
A new, frightening edginess filled her, and Kendall began to pace. “You think they did?”
He answered her with a question she knew she should have thought of already. “Either that or you’re being followed. How else did the guy who rammed you know where to find you?”
“I can’t believe she’d really hire somebody to . . . kill me.”
“Why not? Hell, maybe it’s even the same guy from twenty years ago. He did a damn good job then.”
She stopped pacing. He sounded bitter—rightfully so, she thought—and only half joking. For a long, strained moment she looked at him. Then, quietly, she asked, “Then you believe it?”
“That the merry widow had my mother killed?” Kendall saw his jaw tighten. “I don’t know. But I know how to find out.”
“How?”
“Simple,” he said, standing up. “I’m going to ask her.”
Chapter Fifteen
THE MINUTE ALICE Hawk had walked into the room, the hair on the back of Jason’s neck stood up in primitive, gut-level reaction. And he knew what Kendall had said, in her effort to talk him out of this, was true; this woman had the capacity for genuine viciousness.
Kendall had nearly begged him not to confront her, but he’d only become more determined. He couldn’t face down the old man, but he could do the next best thing. And whether she wanted to or not Alice Hawk would tell him, one way or another, the truth.
“How dare you come here!”
The old woman’s voice rang with outrage. Jason, who had been lolling with intentionally insulting casualness on the expensive sofa, his booted feet impudently on the even more expensive marble coffee table, controlled his instinctive reaction and looked up at the woman glaring down at him. She was even thinner than he’d thought, and no less rigidly straight and furiously angry than she’d been at the funeral. Definitely a tough old bird, he thought. A vulture, given the chance. But he’d turned the tables on more than one scavenger in his life; it was a lesson he’d learned years ago.
“Come now,” he drawled, “I’m sure that’s not why you let me in here. If you just wanted the pleasure of throwing me out, you would have had that bouncer at your front door do it already.”
“I may still do just that.”
She was really playing the grande dame, he thought. And she looked the part, dressed even at this hour in a businesslike dark silk dress, her silver hair swept up into a regal style atop her head. A large solitaire diamond graced the ring finger of her left hand, surrounded by the glitter of several smaller stones. A small fortune on that one finger, Jason thought. He wondered if Aaron had bought it for her, or if she’d bought the ring for herself along with the husband.
“No, you won’t throw me out,” he said, grinning at her. “You’re too curious.”
Something flickered in her dark, narrowed eyes. It was the same sort of look Kendall gave him right before she told him he’d done something that reminded her of Aaron. Except in this woman the look was somehow malevolent, especially compared to Kendall’s amused wonder.
“Perhaps I am,” Alice said. “Curious about where you got the gall to show your face here, in my home.”
“From what I’ve heard, I’d say the gall came straight from my father.”
As he’d intended, she reacted to the last two words as if he’d slapped her. She went rigid, but before she could speak, he went on.
“But I’m happy to say I inherited my mother’s spine. You won’t control me by controlling the purse strings, like you did my father.” He used the words again purposely, knowing it rankled her. “I don’t want a
damn cent from the Hawks.”
And as quickly as he spoke the words, her expression changed. Calculating, Kendall had called her. It showed right now. Clearly.
“That’s very good,” Alice said with cool contempt, “because you’ll never get a cent. Never.”
“There’s only one thing I want from you. An answer.”
“I don’t answer to anyone, least of all you.”
He maintained his casual, careless posture, but kept his gaze riveted on her face, watching her eyes, knowing the reaction he was looking for would be there.
“How about to the police? They may not be quite as impressed with you in Seattle as they are here.”
For the first time he saw a hint of caution alter her expression. But it didn’t show in her imperious voice. “Seattle? Why should I care about the police there?”
“I think you know why.”
“I don’t have the slightest idea what you’re talking about. Now leave my house.”
“There is no statute of limitations on murder, Alice. Twenty minutes or twenty years after, it’s all the same under the law.”
For a split second he saw something flicker in her eyes, something beyond wariness but short of fear. “You’re impudent. And crazy. Now get out.”
“Why did you do it? She did what you told her to. She left. We were out of your way, out of your life. She never even spoke to my father again.”
“But he died speaking her name.”
Alice’s voice quivered with rage, and Jason sensed she had tried very hard to hold back those ill-advised words. And he saw too that she knew very well what was implied by those words. She was quick to try to cover her tracks, and he had to force himself to ignore the realization that Kendall had told the truth about Aaron’s last words and concentrate on what Alice was saying.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about, and I’ve had quite enough of you and your wild accusations. You can’t prove anything now, and you never will. Get out of my house or I’ll have you thrown out.”
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