by Shayla Black
“Where is it parked?” He hoped like hell he simply hadn’t seen where Heath had parked it.
“Out front.”
As he raised his zipper, foreboding rolled through his gut. “Not anymore. It’s gone.”
Heath’s eyes flared wide as he soaped his hands in the sink. “I can’t think of a single reason they’d move the car elsewhere. We weren’t in a no-parking zone.”
Quickly, Axel washed up, too. “Then she’s in danger. I’m beginning to suspect that her aunt sold her out.”
After a considering pause, Heath nodded. “She made coffee for everyone while we were at the bank. She was the only one who could have doctored the brew.”
“I’m convinced she gave me something that’s made me need to pee every ten damn minutes, probably in that lemonade I drank as we left the farm.”
“It’s possible she’s been waiting all these years for Mystery to claim her mother’s articles so she could gain control of whatever bloody secrets Mrs. Mullins held.”
“Or she may be guiltier than that. Maybe she’s looking to cover up her own crimes,” Axel grated out.
Together, they pushed out of the bathroom, Heath wearing a frown. They hit the stairs and began running down. So many possibilities. So little time to save the woman he loved.
“We have to find them. Any idea where to start?”
Heath still looked weak, like he wanted to puke again, but he sucked in a breath and grinned. “She’s got my key fob.” He reached for his phone. “I’m forever losing my keys, so I made sure I can track them.”
* * *
WITH her free hand, Aunt Gail snatched Heath’s keys from Mystery and shoved them in her purse. The woman was all business as she fished out a pair of handcuffs and, with an awkward one-handed maneuver, used them to restrain her niece to the car door.
Mystery would have fought back, but the barrel of the firearm hovered barely a foot away from her face.
Her aunt wore a ladylike little smile as she clicked the cuffs into place. “You couldn’t have been polite and simply drank your coffee. It contained a little something to keep you compliant. After so many years as a nurse, I know my controlled substances. I had a lovely Schedule Four waiting in your coffee, but you had to be difficult.” She heaved a sigh of annoyance. “Stay put.”
When her aunt would have shut the door, Mystery worked her way past the shock and stuck her foot out to block her. “No. Stop! What are you doing?”
Her aunt thrust the gun closer to her face, then glanced at her watch. “Shut up. I’ll explain on the drive. We’re running late.”
“For what?”
Aunt Gail just kicked her leg out of the way, her practical shoes surprisingly mean, then shut the door and bustled behind the car. The older woman climbed into the driver’s seat and started the engine, pulling out of the parking lot sedately, as if refusing to attract attention. “I had a car like this once, a nice big sedan. My father gave it to me as an engagement present.”
Engagement? Mystery thought her aunt had never been married—not that it mattered right now. Figuring out what the heck was going on and escaping did.
“Where are we going?” she demanded. “You can’t shoot me. I’m your niece. You’re—”
“Prepared to do what I must,” she snapped. “You’ve asked questions, and I’m trying to explain, so pay attention.
“When my engagement fell apart, I decided to move to Hollywood and try my hand at acting. I’d been in a few school plays. I could sing and dance reasonably well. I’d been told I was pretty. So I saved some money and packed my bags. Julia had graduated from high school the year before and didn’t want to live on the farm any more than I did.” Aunt Gail gave a long-suffering sigh. “Why I let her wheedle her way into driving to California with me, I’ll never know.”
“I’d appreciate it if you stopped pointing the gun at me and let me go.” Mystery could barely concentrate on her aunt’s words. Her stare locked with the semiautomatic in the older woman’s hand, nestled against her torso.
“Quiet! You’re just like your mother. You think you’re special and deserve more than everyone else. You want everyone to cater to you. You’re certainly a whore, like her. I heard you and that . . . man early this morning. But the fact that you’re a promiscuous slut doesn’t surprise me at all.”
Was this woman even the same Aunt Gail she’d known all her life? She seemed unhinged and bitter, not to mention violent.
“What do you want? The things I picked up from my mother’s safe-deposit box?” Mystery offered. “I’ll give them to you. You can let me go.”
“That’s not for me to decide. I’m telling you what you want to know, jezebel. What I’ve been dying to tell you. Now close your mouth and listen.” She cleared her throat, obviously incensed. “When Julia and I reached Hollywood, we both found agents quickly and started auditioning. Julia landed a few roles, nothing major. She was wholly unremarkable but somehow managed to catch your father’s eye. I’d met Marshall first at a party and we dated a bit. Then he hired my sister for a bit part. That was the last movie he made before that silly action film that launched him wide.” She scoffed as she stopped at a red light. “Next thing I knew, he and Julia were an item. I couldn’t believe when he proposed to her.”
Mystery blinked. Her aunt’s words registered but . . . She’d had no idea that Gail had ever dated her father. She also knew her father too well. “You had sex with my dad?”
“Yes and no.” She giggled, then sobered. “You keep interrupting. Stop that!” She waved the gun again.
The thought that her father had taken her aunt to bed before marrying her mom made her ill. Yeah, what about after?
Honestly, if they’d continued screwing after his wedding to her mother, Mystery didn’t want to know.
“None of this should have surprised me. Julia had always been the devil’s mistress. Everyone thought she was so beautiful and sultry—like you. She seduced your father into forgetting I existed. But after they married, his career took off. It wasn’t long before your mother heard rumors of his infidelity.” Her aunt sneered, then sped away when the light turned green, heading toward the edge of town. “She said she needed spiritual solace, and she sought it from a man of God, one of the most esteemed I’ve ever had the honor of meeting. But could she respect his pious service to the Lord? No, not your mother. She lured him like a serpent in the garden, coaxing him to eat the forbidden fruit. She coerced him to immorality and rendered him temporarily wicked. From that unholy alliance, you were conceived.”
“What?” Mystery breathed but she couldn’t possibly have heard that right. No way had Aunt Gail just told her that Marshall Mullins wasn’t her biological father.
“So you didn’t know.” She smiled with malicious glee, picking up speed as they approached the outskirts of the downtown area. “I don’t even think you suspected. Julia hid the truth from Marshall and gave you that silly name to disarm his suspicions.”
Mystery wondered how she could ever live with this secret. If, by some miracle, she didn’t die today, what would she tell her dad?
“As the years went on, Julia began insisting that she intended to divorce her husband,” her aunt continued. “She told me that she intended to write a tell-all book, telling all.” She scoffed. “I applauded her desire to drag Marshall through the mud. He deserved it, always thinking with his instrument of lust. But your mother could not be allowed to shame and stain such a beacon of light—of God himself—because Satan’s mistress had weakened him in one terrible moment. She had to be silenced.”
Mystery gaped at her aunt, a million thoughts racing through her brain so quickly she couldn’t grasp onto or give voice to just one. The implications just zoomed through her head. She blinked, gaped, jaw hanging as her aunt pulled up to an abandoned building with a rusty metal ladder leading up to the roof and a FOR RENT sign inside its lone, dark-tinted window. The rest of the building had been boarded up. On one side, she saw a dirt lot where someo
ne’s antique shop had been torn down and the rubble remained. On the other side sat shabby storage facilities. Why would Aunt Gail bring her here?
“You had something to do with my mother’s murder?” Mystery finally voiced the thought that had been buzzing the fastest and loudest in her head.
“Everything. Your biological father can’t have his life’s work destroyed by one stupid whore. He’s destined for much greater things, and when I told him about Julia’s plans, we worked together to send my sister to the light. He assures me I’ve helped him achieve God’s will and that she’s at peace now.”
Mystery stared, blinked, shook her head. It occurred to her that she had to get over her shock and fight back, but Gail just kept dropping bombshells, one after the other. “I—I don’t understand. She was your only sister.”
“Who spread her legs often to tempt men to sin.” Gail scoffed. “She’d stepped off the righteous path long ago. I insisted that she be blessed just before her death, and the blessed man assures me that she was. So we can rest easy that we saved the reputation of a man of God and my sister’s soul the morning she went to heaven.”
Every word out of her mouth sounded twisted, and Mystery cringed. “My biological father was the man in that picture snapped by the hikers just before Mom’s death? He killed her?”
“You’re missing the point; he sent her to God, who is glorious and will forgive all. He will remake her soul into something worthy.”
And Aunt Gail sounded one hundred percent whackadoodle crazy.
As they pulled around to the back of the building, Mystery spotted another sleek black car empty and waiting. Someone else was here. It was finally hitting her that her aunt meant her harm and may have called for some help.
“After Julia was gone, things were lovely and quiet. Then you turned eighteen and were legally able to collect your mother’s effects. You didn’t seem to want them at first, so all was well. But then you mentioned coming to get them during your second semester of college and . . . something had to be done.”
Mystery absolutely didn’t recall that, but she always got sentimental about her mother and their last trip to Kansas before her death. Maybe she had mentioned it. “Something?”
“Your abduction and the DNA test. Did you remember someone taking your blood?”
Shock drilled through her composure. “That’s why?”
“We had to know for certain that you were the out-of-wedlock spawn of sin. And you were. But Marshall had you rescued before you could be eliminated.”
Eliminated? “You and my biological father—who is he?—planned to kill me?”
Gail looked her way as if speaking to a simpleton. “We didn’t silence Julia only to have this secret revealed by a silly girl. Thankfully, the abduction seemed to put some fear into you. Then you moved to the UK and seemed to lose all interest in anything associated with your ‘misfortune’ or your mother. We breathed easier, at least until you insisted on coming back to the States. And you know the rest.” Her aunt waved her away. “I drove to Dallas and left you the picture in your hotel room, hoping you would take the hint and leave the country again. But you proved stubborn, like your mother. You brought the one Neanderthal, Heath, with you. Thankfully, drugging his coffee took care of him. But the other one, the man you fornicated with in my house . . . Getting rid of him was fun. I overheard you two talking in my kitchen. Poor little girl scarred by her cheating ‘daddy.’” She sneered. “And him, all damaged by his mother’s abandonment.” She rolled her eyes. “It was pitifully easy to orchestrate your breakup. My messiah, the man who gave his seed for you, knew just how to hire an actress capable of causing a fight between you two. I slipped a diuretic in Axel’s lemonade, and when he went to the restroom, she moved in. Then you saw what you expected and walked out on him. It was perfect. Of course, I suspect Axel may already be looking for you. He’s not one who will give up easily, so let’s hurry inside, shall we?”
So Axel hadn’t given in to a moment’s lust in the café and betrayed her? He hadn’t come on to that waitress? Mystery tried to piece it all together in her head. The details slipped through her fingers, but the big picture was frightfully clear. Her aunt had conspired with her mother’s lover—her biological father—to split her apart from Axel and Heath. Her aunt had gone to so much effort to get her alone because she’d be more vulnerable. Mystery wondered what the hell she was going to do now.
No phone, no ally, no friends in this town, no police nearby. The only person perhaps capable of finding her was Axel, and he’d sworn that if she walked out on him he’d consider them done forever.
Still, some part of her hoped, wanted to have faith—not in the warped version of God her aunt had clutched to her bitter, dried-up heart and twisted to fill the emptiness inside, but in the love that she and Axel had shared, however briefly.
“I won’t go in that building.”
“You will,” her aunt insisted, grabbing Mystery’s purse from the floorboard. “If you refuse, I will shoot you right here.”
It sucked, and Mystery was terrified, shocked, and beyond furious. But right now, cuffed to the car door, she didn’t see any way to escape. She’d have to watch for opportunities. After all, her aunt was older, presumably not as strong. If she played this right, she might be able to overpower the woman on the way to the door and scream for help. “Looks like I don’t have a choice.”
Gail sent her an acid smile. “Exactly. Now, it’s time you met your true father.”
Chapter Nineteen
THIS far out of town, the only signs of life near the abandoned building were the weeds growing up through the cracks in the sidewalk. Her aunt walked with the gun pressed to Mystery’s spine straight up to the ominous dark door. She would have screamed for help if anyone was around to hear. Scrambling for other options, Mystery decided to take her chances and tackle her aunt on the sidewalk in public.
Suddenly, the door opened from the inside.
Clutching her purse, Mystery blinked, her eyes adjusting to the interior darkness, focused on a black shadow in front of her. Slowly, the shadow sharpened into a man with gray hair sporting hints of brown and pale blue eyes. His pale skin looked oddly smooth, given the fact he must be in his early fifties, and he wore a plastically kind smile that showed a row of even white teeth. She knew that face.
“Peter Grace?”
“The great Reverend Peter Grace,” Gail corrected, her tone superior. “He’s as close to God as you’ll ever see on this Earth.”
The picture of the man at the top of her aunt’s stairs, along with the chatter about him today, only reinforced her notion that Gail was one of his biggest fans.
“Yes. Isn’t she devoted?” He sent her an empty smile as he tugged Mystery inside.
Her aunt followed, and slammed the door shut, locking it behind her. Mystery watched, her heart sinking. She was trapped in an abandoned building with a gun, a crazy bitch, and a man capable of committing murder.
She blew out a nervous breath, praying they just wanted her mother’s possessions. “What are you after? The SD card my mother left in the safe-deposit box? You can have it. I’m not sure I want to know what it says and I don’t care. To me, Marshall Mullins will always be my father.”
“I’m glad we’re on the same page. I would prefer for the world to believe that as well.” He adjusted his tie, his stare almost wistful. “You do look so much like your mother.”
“She’s a sinner, too. Fornicator!” her aunt broke in.
Reverend Grace rested a well-manicured hand on Gail’s. “We’ll show her the Lord.”
That seemed to soothe the woman.
Mystery tensed. Did they mean they meant to kill her? “Look, I don’t want anything except to walk out this door alive. I’ll sign anything you want to have drawn up stating that you and I are of no relation and I have no intention of ever suing you for any reason. I will never speak of this and—”
“That’s a lovely gesture,” he assured. “I’m afra
id it’s not that simple. You see, loose ends have, over the decades, proven to be a problem. Too many still dangle, especially now that whatever your mother wrote has been unlocked. I need to clean everything up. Otherwise, a really intrepid reporter or detective will uncover my sin. And what would my millions of followers think if they learned their favorite man of God had a ‘love child’ while his own wife was expecting baby number three? Jimmy Swaggart’s infamous ‘I have sinned’ speech was useless then, just as it would be now. No, I have to eradicate all lingering traces. Even your middle name is a clue.”
Grace. A wave of dizzy shock swept over Mystery. Her mother had given her his surname for her middle name. As a tribute to Reverend Grace? Or as a taunt at her father? “I’ll change it. I’ll go to court and make it whatever you want.”
He sent her a faintly regretful smile. “I’m afraid that won’t work. The change of name would still be a matter of public record, and therefore, a clue.”
Was he saying his only alternative was to kill her? Mystery swallowed hard and started looking around the empty, cavernous room for anything she might use as a weapon or any exit she hadn’t spotted from the street.
“I’ve ensured the room is empty and all the doors are locked.” Reverend Grace snapped his fingers. “Eyes on me.”