When I found a close up picture of her young face, I wished I hadn’t.
Some strange memories started to flood my mind.
As though I’d blocked them over time and behind bitter grief.
Francis was a beautiful girl, with pin straight black hair and thick glasses that hid her clear, intelligent eyes.
My mind was suddenly a flurry of strange, forgotten memories.
Green eyes, I suddenly recalled, though not from the picture.
From memory, and not just years old memories.
My hands covered my mouth, nausea rising up, as I remembered another pertinent fact. I could recall some vague conversation I’d had with young Francis about her dying her hair black, a rebellious act, as her entire family, extended and otherwise, were blond from birth to death.
“I hate repeating myself,” a gravelly voice said from the doorway of my office.
I whirled.
Heath stood there, arms folded across his chest, looking dangerous and mean.
“But I’ll say it again. If you care about her, the first thing you’ll do, if that happens again, is contact me.”
“You’re the vice president’s grandson,” I breathed, every messy thing clicking right into place. “The criminal.”
All of the oxygen had been sucked out of the room, leaving the air too thin for me to catch my breath.
Because he didn’t deny it. My crazy theory was actually correct.
He smirked, still managing to turn it into an angry expression. “It’s been a bit more complicated than that. I started out as a criminal, got recruited as a spook, and now I’m working with the Feds, on account of my very personal interest in their current investigation.”
A sudden and unexpected fury had my voice shaking. “How was I supposed to trust you, when neither of you told me anything? If you had bothered to tell me that you were her brother, I might have listened to you!”
“It was too risky. She didn’t want you involved. More than anything, she wanted to keep you safe. She’s essentially been a prisoner, and I’m not a complete bastard, I try to let her have as much freedom as I can.”
“Well, you should have been more worried about keeping her safe!” I burst out.
His nostrils flared. “Don’t you dare lecture me about keeping her safe. She’d never even be risking herself, coming out of hiding like this, if it wasn’t for you. God, do you know how long she’s had a thing for you? For years. She was a child. It’s so messed up.”
“Don’t you think I know that?” I shouted, all of it coming to a head, and Heath being the closest target at hand. “I never said an inappropriate word to her, never had so much as a thought like that, back then.”
“It was all one-sided, I know,” Heath agreed. “Only makes it slightly less f**ked up.
“I never would have touched her, when she approached me, if I had any inkling who she was!”
“It’s a bit late for that, and you’re underestimating her. She was very determined, and she’s a resourceful girl.” He nodded at my computer. “She’s been stalking you for a while, though she’d call it research.”
I followed his nod to my computer, then looked back at him. “What exactly do you mean by that?”
“Everything you’ve ever looked up on there, book research, entertainment. Every p**n you’ve watched in the last, hell, who knows how many years, she’s hacked all of it. As soon as she found out you were divorced, she went to work on you. She researched everything that makes you tick, and tailor-made herself into your perfect temptation.”
I was shaking my head, over and over, in denial. This could not be happening, not to me.
Her age had been hard for me to accept before, but this, this was creepy.
And so sordid that I doubted I could ever come to terms with it.
Talk about a mind f**k.
Without another word, I rushed to the bathroom and lost my lunch, quite violently.
Heath was waiting when I came back out. He wasn’t finished with me, which was good.
I wasn’t finished with him either. “So who is it that’s made, what is it, now, two attempts on her life?”
His mouth tightened. “More than two, though only two have gotten close to succeeding. The bridge explosion in Virginia, and the shooting in L.A., a few months back. And the responsible party is our loving grandmother.”
That threw me. I just stared at him. Why on earth . . . ?
“Dear Grandma Diana has been a dirty politician before it was even a trend. She’s hid it well from the public, but it’s hard to hide a thing like that from your family, especially the ones that have a borderline genius IQ.”
“Iris is the witness that’s gathered evidence against her,” I said, right as it dawned on me.
He nodded. “Solid evidence, made much more solid if she survives long enough to actually testify on the stand. What could be more damaging to someone’s ambition to be president than a granddaughter willing to bear witness about dear Granny’s evil deeds? And the list of crimes is mind-boggling, let me tell you. High crimes and misdemeanors just won’t cover this one. Not with at least three murders in the mix.”
I thought back, counting. “Your parents?” I guessed.
He nodded. “Them first. We don’t know why. We can only assume that like us, they knew too much, and weren’t willing to be quiet about it. But we do know why she killed Lorna, and that one wasn’t even done with a hit man.”
I just stared. Lorna was the younger sister, but I couldn’t for the life of me remember the circumstances behind her death.
“She drowned in the backyard pool, shortly after overhearing a conversation our grandmother had where she admitted to having her own daughter killed. But before that, she told Iris what she’d heard.”
“Iris, being the brilliant, resourceful girl that she is, began to collect evidence, to build a case, in secret. She did this for years.”
He took a deep gasp of a breath, looking more agitated even than he usually did.
“I was long gone by then. I ditched out when I realized what kind of a monster our grandmother was. Unfortunately, I left a bit too early, before I realized that she was a monster actually capable of killing her own family.”