“Anything else?”
“You’re a widower. About a year back. You have my condolences. Me and the missus have been married for twenty-two years now, have two fine sons, one at the university and another going next year. Couldn’t be prouder of either one of them.”
“Detective, much as I like hearing about you and your missus and your sons, I’d like to be on my way.”
Lannigan’s head dipped until it seemed to be resting on his chest. “You know what you have to do. Come down to the department, fill out a report.”
“I need to call my partner, let her know what happened.” He recognized his choice of words as deliberate, as though by referring to Rachel as partner, he denied any personal feelings for her.
Who was he trying to fool?
“We can put it off for a while but get in by the end of the day,” the detective said. “You and Ms. Martin sure manage to keep life interesting. I wouldn’t have minded if you’d taken your business to another precinct.”
“We’ll try to do that the next time some homicidal maniac is after us.”
The crime scene team showed up just as Grey was leaving Kelvin’s house. He hadn’t heard from Rachel and hoped she was having more success than he was. He punched in her number, but the call went to voice mail. A tendril of worry worked its way through him as he tried to make sense of Kelvin’s death.
Was he involved in Lily’s abduction at all? Rachel had continued to maintain that Kelvin didn’t fit the profile of the kidnapper, and even Grey didn’t see the man as a viable suspect.
Yet he was a part of this, even if an unwitting part. Kelvin had been following Grey and Rachel—that much, they knew. Had he seen something, something that made him dangerous, and Michaels had taken him out because of it?
The theory noodled around in Grey’s mind.
With the prospect of a long trip to Ansley Park in front of him, he didn’t want to wait to talk with Rachel. He needed to tell her about Kelvin’s murder. He left a message and asked that she call him. When fifteen minutes passed with no word from her, he tried her number again, with the same result.
He told himself not to panic. She was just visiting Roberta. Though the two women didn’t like each other, she was safe enough, but a nagging sense of unease refused to leave him, and he stepped on the gas with a heavy foot.
* * *
After pressing the button on the gate to identify herself at the Gyllenskaag mansion, Rachel waited for what seemed an unconscionably long time before being admitted.
Roberta herself opened the door. Though she was perfectly turned out as always, she appeared a bit winded. “Ms. Martin. I didn’t expect to see you again.”
“I hope you don’t mind that I dropped in,” Rachel said, pretending that their last exchange had never occurred. “Are you all right?” Though Rachel didn’t like the woman, she was concerned. Roberta had to be in her late fifties or early sixties, and it could be that the stress of Lily being missing was getting to her.
Roberta put a hand to her throat. “I’m fine. Just a little breathless.” A deep inhalation later, she drew herself up. “I am accustomed to having people call first before, as you say, dropping in.” She led the way to the parlor and took the same chair she had the last time Rachel had visited.
Rachel played the game and sat on the uncomfortable settee, as was expected.
“But,” Roberta continued, “I’m glad you stopped in. I owe you an apology.”
“For checking me out?”
The older woman shook her head. “No. I felt and still feel that that was necessary. But I apologize for going to Greyson with what I’d found instead of confronting you first. I shirked both my duty and my manners. I don’t expect you to believe me, but that is not who I am.”
“I don’t blame you, either for checking me out or for going to Grey with what you learned. You were protecting your granddaughter. I’d have done the same in your place.”
“Thank you for that. I’m afraid I don’t deserve your graciousness. I know we didn’t get off to a good start—my fault. Perhaps we could begin again.”
“I’d like that.” Rachel held out the folder containing the blood work Maggie had ordered. “Grey and I found this and thought you could explain it.”
Roberta took the folder, opened it, scanned the report. She appeared nonplussed for a moment, then nodded. “You’ll have already deduced that Margaret was not my biological child.”
“You never told her?”
“Nils and I could never find the right time. I regret she had to discover it the way she did. No, Margaret was not my biological child, but I loved her as I would my own child.”
The words were right, but the tone was not. Rachel filed that away and moved on to the subject of Michaels’s murder. “I’m afraid I have some bad news.”
Roberta gasped. “Not about the child?”
“No. About Wingate Michaels. He’s dead. Grey and I found him in his home just a short while ago. He’d been murdered.”
“No. You have to be mistaken. Wingate was fine when I last talked with him.”
“And when would that be?”
“Last night, I believe.” She dropped her hands to her lap. “We discussed what I could do to help with the search for Lily after withdrawing the reward. He was nearly as distressed as I was. He cared deeply for Margaret and therefore for her daughter.”
“What can you tell me about his personal life?” Rachel asked. “Anything that might give us a clue as to who killed him.” Michaels and Gyllenskaag had to be close, she reasoned. After all, Roberta had called him to be with her following the kidnapping.
“Despite spending considerable time together, Wingate and I were not terribly close.”
The swift denial rang false to Rachel.
Roberta clasped her hands to her heart. “What a horrible thing for him to have been murdered that way.” A small shudder. “Two shots to the forehead. It’s barbaric.”
Rachel didn’t react, though Roberta’s words sent off a warning to her primal core. She had said nothing about how Michaels was murdered. How had Roberta known it was by a double tap to the forehead? Rachel slipped her hand behind her back for her weapon, but her gauze-wrapped hands made her clumsy, and she fumbled with it.
Roberta stood, then stumbled. Automatically, Rachel reached to help her, but the woman drew a .38 from the pocket of her precisely tailored slacks and held it on Rachel.
“Put it on the table.”
“What?”
“The gun you’re reaching for.”
“I wasn’t—”
“Don’t bother lying. I knew I’d made a misstep when I said that about Wingate being killed by two shots to the forehead. Your reaction confirmed it.”
Rachel rested both hands in her lap and assumed a perplexed expression. “I’m sorry. What are you talking about?”
“Don’t pretend. You’re a poor liar. I gave myself away. Perhaps it’s better this way. I was going to have to get rid of you eventually. That’s probably why I had my little friend here—” she moved the revolver from one hand to another “—close by. I knew from the first time I met you that you weren’t the type to give up. Though I admire persistence, in your case, it’s an unfortunate quality. Now, withdraw your weapon and place it on the table. Very carefully.”
Rachel dropped the pretense and reached behind her back once more, pulled the weapon from her waistband and relinquished it. While Roberta was busy placing the gun out of Rachel’s reach, she slipped her hand in her pocket and managed to push the key for Grey’s number at the right hand corner of the screen. At the same time, she muted the sound and pressed the record app.
She’d trained herself to operate the phone without looking at it, a skill she’d thought would prove useful. Turns out, she was right. It had taken a lot of practice, but she could manage a number of tasks on
her phone without even glancing at it.
Rachel thought of the killings, the weapons used. “You killed Jenae, didn’t you? I thought it was Michaels, but it was you.”
“Wingate didn’t have the stomach for killing that stupid girl, so I had to take care of it myself. Just like I took care of him and like I’ll take care of you and Greyson. My father taught me how to shoot when I was still a girl. Pretty soon he was taking me hunting with him. I skinned and butchered my own kills. Other girls pretended to be appalled by it, but not me.
“All my life, people have underestimated me, thinking I was only one of society’s darlings who had nothing better to do than to attend foolish luncheons and fashion shows. I built Gyllenskaag Jewelry to what it is today while Nils was busy playing father. I’ve been planning this for a long while. I ordered Wingate to romance that silly girl I hired to take care of the child. She’d have done anything for him, even handing over the brat to a stranger.”
“All to get Grey back to the States so you could kill him.”
“I couldn’t let him and that child take everything from me.”
“It was Michaels who fired at Grey after his first visit here, wasn’t it?” Rachel asked.
A short nod. “The fool missed. Just like he missed every other time.”
Rachel thought of Michaels and realized he had only been Roberta’s gofer. “So Michaels was nothing more than an errand boy.”
Another nod. “I ordered him to follow you and Greyson. Some agent you are. You never caught on. Not once.”
Rachel recalled how she’d felt someone was following them. After taking down Kelvin’s men, she’d thought the problem solved.
Roberta kept talking, relating how Michaels had witnessed the confrontation between Grey and Kelvin and, later, Kelvin tampering with Grey’s rental truck.
“We’d hoped that Kelvin would do the job of killing the two of you for us, but you escaped. Wingate did some research on Kelvin and learned he became an expert with explosions during his time in the army, so Wingate planted the bomb in Greyson’s home.”
“All to frame Kelvin.”
“Now you’re catching on.”
Rachel listened as the woman bragged about the brilliance of her plan, from kidnapping Lily to arranging for Grey to be killed. Roberta Gyllenskaag was a narcissistic sociopath, wanting someone to appreciate her work, however depraved.
“And Michaels was behind the shooting at the cabin and planting the IED.” Rachel already knew this, but she wanted to keep Roberta talking.
“He was competent enough, but he’d outlived his usefulness and was becoming tiresome with his constant worrying and whining.”
“What happens now?” Rachel asked.
“I told you. I have to get rid of you. I can’t allow you to run around telling what you know.” Gone was the lady with the cultured voice and finishing school manners. In her place was a hard-eyed woman with a weapon she held steadily in her beautifully manicured hand. The incongruity of it would have been humorous if the circumstances had been different.
Roses and dahlias perfumed the air. Lovingly cared for antique furniture gleamed with lemon-scented polish. Not a speck of dust dared find its way inside the exquisitely decorated room.
And yet.
The beauty was a parody of what lay beneath. Just as Roberta was a parody of a true lady.
“I could tell you were going to be trouble the first time we met and hoped I could make Grey cut you loose. He never did have any class.
“It didn’t surprise me at all to learn that you’d left the FBI under a cloud, but that will work in my favor. When it comes out—and it will—that you were a disgraced agent, people will wonder. They’ll say how ironic it was that the same thing happened again and whisper that it must have been your fault that another child was found dead.” Roberta made a tsking noise. “You should have learned your lesson the first time around and stayed out of it. Your death will be but one more tragedy in the search for the child.”
Refusing to let Roberta see that she’d gotten to her, Rachel kept her composure. Roberta was the type to feed on someone else’s fear. Like a lion waiting to pounce on an unsuspecting antelope, she was a predator. “You’ve been busy.”
“I’ve always found it best to know my enemies.”
“Why?” Rachel asked the question that had bothered her from the beginning. “I know it’s about the money, but you have more money than most people ever dream about. Why murder for more?”
“Because it’s mine. Mine. I lived with Nils Gyllenskaag for forty years. I put up with his cheap ways. I even put up with his cheating. Oh, yes, I knew about his indiscretions. I knew about the baby. What I couldn’t abide was his bringing that child into our home, my home, but he promised that when he was gone, everything would be mine and mine alone.
“When he died, everything should have gone to me. But no, he had to leave a trust for that girl whom he foisted off on me. The two of them together had made my life a misery for twenty-two years before Nils had the good taste to die.”
Rachel wondered if Grey had overheard the conversation. If he knew she was in trouble, he’d move heaven and earth to get here. All she could do now was pray.
The thought startled her. Since when had she acknowledged the power of prayer? She hadn’t prayed since leaving the Bureau, and, in that instant, she knew she’d never stopped believing in God or in prayer. She’d stopped believing in herself.
“That whole thing about you posting a reward was just so much smoke and mirrors, wasn’t it?” Rachel asked.
The woman’s smug nod confirmed it. “I knew there would be no genuine claims, so there was no harm in offering it.”
“And you come off looking like a devoted grandmother who would do anything to get her granddaughter back. Smart.”
Another nod. “I know what you’re thinking. That I’m a hypocrite of the first order.”
“The thought did cross my mind.”
“Hypocrisies abound in society, and I’m very good at playing the game. The only difference between me and others is that I’m not ashamed of my hypocrisy. It’s a tool, and, like any other tool, has to be used judiciously.” Her gaze held Rachel’s without a trace of remorse.
“Finding someone to do the actual kidnapping was simple enough,” Roberta continued as though confessing to planning a kidnapping and murder was just business as usual. “We wanted someone who couldn’t point the finger at us, so we went to the dark web. As for the men Wingate hired to take you and Greyson out, he defended them some years back and kept tabs on them. It wasn’t the first time he’d used men from his pro bono work. He promised they could make the two of you disappear, but he was spectacularly wrong. He had to be punished for that.”
“So you killed him?”
A regal nod.
“And you tried to kill us with that trick with the stove.”
Another nod. “It was a pity that it didn’t work. It would have saved me a good deal of trouble. Now I’ll have to take care of you and Greyson. So tiresome.”
“It must keep you occupied, arranging so many murders.”
Her sarcasm was wasted on Roberta, who beamed upon Rachel like a proud parent. “You see it, don’t you? I did what I had to. If Nils hadn’t brought his child into my household, none of this would have been necessary. Then the stupid girl had to go and have a baby with that husband of hers. She refused to stop making trouble for me, taking money that should have rightfully been mine.”
That seemed to be the recurring theme in the woman’s justification for kidnapping and murder—insatiable greed.
“From what I’ve learned about Maggie, she didn’t care about the money or any of this.” Rachel waved a hand to encompass the house and its appointments.
While she was talking, she weighed the likelihood of whether or not she would be able to wrestle the gun o
ut of Roberta’s hands. Ordinarily, Rachel would have no doubt that she could do it, but with her hands as they were, she didn’t know. Roberta held the weapon with more than casual ease.
“Margaret was never interested in what money could do. More fool she. Money is power. And power is everything.” Roberta gestured with her gun. “Get up. We’re going for a little walk.”
Stall.
Rachel stood but didn’t move. “Wait. Aren’t you going to tell me where you’re taking me?” If Grey were listening, he’d need that information.
Roberta gave an impatient huff. “What difference does it make?”
“I just want to know where I’m going to draw my last breath. It only seems fair that you tell me.”
“There’s a small structure at the back of the property. Nils used to go there when he wanted to get away.” Roberta gave a shudder of distaste. “After he died, I deliberately let it go. It’s undoubtedly filthy now, full of spiders, maybe even a snake or two. It’s going to prove useful.” She smiled, or what passed for a smile on her. “Very useful.”
Rachel heard the satisfaction in Roberta’s voice. Unless she did something quickly, she was going to become the next victim in the woman’s murderous path.
SEVENTEEN
Grey listened with growing shock. Rachel had been right all along about Roberta. She was behind everything—the abduction and the murders. Her casual admission that she’d orchestrated Lily’s kidnapping and the killings was chilling.
Nausea filled him, and his vision telescoped into a tube. For the briefest of moments, he feared he was going to black out.
No! He had to get to Rachel. Gone was his decision to keep her at a distance. Not when her life was in danger.
How could he have trusted his daughter with Roberta? Why hadn’t he seen beyond the polished manners to the cold-blooded woman who lay beneath? Why hadn’t he paid attention to the fact that she never referred to Lily by name? It was always the child. His negligence could cost both Rachel and Lily their lives.
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