There had been a few mentions of seven children, however, so Kacey had scoured deeper. When she'd looked through the archived obituaries, she'd discovered an earlier daughter, Agatha-Rae, “Aggie,” who had died at the age of eight from a fall. Agatha-Rae's birthday was exactly one week before her own, so she and Kacey would have been the same age, had she lived. Inwardly, Kacey shuddered and gripped the wheel of her car a little more tightly. No wonder her mother had been vague about Gerald's children.
Snow was beginning to fall again, and she flipped on her wipers. Using her portable GPS as a guide, she made her way through Missoula, a larger city by Montana standards that lay in a valley near the river and was rimmed in snow-covered mountains. She drove past restaurants and storefronts, and an old lumber mill turned into several individual shops now, and then finally crossed a wide bridge to discover Johnson Industrial Park. Newly shoveled pathways cut through the low-lying buildings and rimmed a series of icy ponds complete with cattails and ducks. The new snowfall was already covering the cement.
Though the structures seemed identical, they looked to be built in pods, each grouping housing a different piece of Gerald Johnson's empire and connected by breezeways edging several parking lots.
Money,
she thought uneasily, easing along the winding road and spying areas marked
MANUFACTURING, RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT, TECHNOLOGY
, and finally,
ADMINISTRATION.
“Bingo,” she whispered as she pulled into a parking spot marked for visitors and cut the engine. Giving herself one quick, final pep talk, she grabbed her briefcase.
Outside, the wind was brisk, carrying tiny, hard snowflakes that caught in her hair and seemed to cut into her cheeks. Quickly, she made her way along the aggregate walkway to the door and stepped inside to a vast reception area where yards of gray, industrial-grade carpet swept across the floor and the white walls were covered with awards and pictures.
A wide counter separated those who were visiting from the sanctum of inner offices, which was visible through an open doorway leading deeper inside.
“May I help you?” a girl in her twenties asked. With a pixielike face and short hair that showed off multiple earrings, she was seated at a desk complete with large computer monitor and little else. Her nameplate said
ROXANNE JAMISON
.
“I'd like to see Gerald Johnson.”
The smooth skin of her forehead wrinkled. “Do . . . you . . . have an appointment?” she asked while looking at the computer screen.
“No.”
“I'm sorry. You need to have an appointment.”
“Please tell him Acacia Collins Lambert is here to see him. And let him know that I'm Maribelle Collins's daughter.”
The receptionist lifted her brows. “O . . . kay.” She pressed a button on the sleek phone and, with more than a tinge of skepticism in her voice, relayed the message. “Yes . . . here in the lobby . . . of course, Mr. Johnson.” She eyed Kacey with new respect, saying, “He'll see you now. I'll show you to his office.” She climbed off her desk chair, opened up a portion of the counter that swung inward, then led Kacey down several hallways, past glass doors, and around a final corner to an office with large walnut double doors that were standing open, as if waiting.
Kacey felt an ache of dread in her heart as she followed Miss Jamison inside.
Gerald Johnson sat at his desk, his shirt sleeves rolled over tanned arms, his eyes on the doorway, his silver hair combed smoothly away from his face.
“Mr. Johnson, this is Miss Lambert,” the pixielike receptionist said.
He climbed to his feet. “Thanks, Roxie. Please, close the doors as you leave.”
The receptionist did as she was bid, and Johnson, about six feet tall, still square-shouldered, his silver hair just beginning to thin, turned all his attention on the daughter he'd never met. He didn't bother smiling, just said, “Hello, Acacia. I've been expecting you.”
Â
His hands were tight on the steering wheel, his heart was pounding triple time, and sweat was dampening his shirt despite the snow he saw falling outside the window as he drove, pushing the speed limit, his Lexus flying over the road.
She knew!
That bitch understood.
She'd realized the maggot who had spawned her was Gerald Johnson, and now they were having a showdown.
He should have killed her sooner!
All of his work ... about to be destroyed.
All of his planning, how careful he'd been, about to be exposed.
Taking several calming breaths, he told himself that this was just another small challenge, a bump in the road. He could handle this, he could.
He blinked his eyes.
But he didn't let up on the accelerator as he passed a long, nearly empty van marked
ST. BARTHOLOMEW'S HOSPITAL
heading the opposite way, toward Grizzly Falls.
Within minutes he was forced to slow for traffic as he guided his Lexus through the streets of Missoula.
Pull it together,
he told himself as he stepped on the brakes and waited at a light for a woman on a cell phone who barely noticed the waiting traffic as she crossed to the far side, where a storefront, decorated with mannequins dressed in red and green for the season, beckoned.
Inside his driving gloves, his hands were clammy, and nervous sweat dampened his shirt though the temperature in the car read only sixty-seven degrees and outside snow was beginning to stick in earnest on the roads again.
Glancing into the rearview mirror, he saw no car hanging back, as if following him, no sinister driver hiding behind aviator shades. Nor was there anyone in a long trench coat leaning on a lamppost while observing him, no man on a park bench ostensibly reading a newspaper, while, in fact, surveying his every move.
Of course not!
That was just the stuff of movies!
He counted his heartbeats and punched the accelerator the second the light turned green.
The rest of the drive was excruciatingly slow, while his thoughts were flying through his head a mile a minute. Short, sharp bits of mental movies of those he called his siblings, of those who were now dead, and of the bitch who was currently hell-bent on destroying it all.
Forcing a calm he didn't feel, he drove the Lexus into the parking lot of his father's business and spotted her car parked near the administration building.
His stomach clenched, and he had to remind himself that all was not lost.
Yet.
CHAPTER 28
“
Y
ou were expecting me?” Kacey stared at the man who, if only by the chance of genetics, was her father. Hadn't Maribelle said Gerald Johnson didn't know about her? Then again, hadn't her mother been known to lie? To keep secrets? “So you know I'm your biological daughter? I thought it was all a big secret.”
“Is that what Maribelle said?” He almost seemed amused as he waved her into the large office with its oversized desk, floor-to-ceiling windows, and a sitting area complete with leather couch and matching side chairs. Through the glass wall behind him, she saw another duck pond and beyond, rising in the distance, the mountains, where the ridges seemed to scrape the graying sky. Snow had already begun to obliterate the view. All that was clearly visible was the edge of the parking lot, where she caught the noses of a Cadillac SUV, a BMW, and a Jaguar.
Not just a parking lot,
she thought,
but the executive lot.
“She told me that you didn't know that I existed,” Kacey said.
“And you believed her.”
“Well, yeah. Now you're telling me something else.”
He waved her toward him, where two visitor's chairs were positioned on one side of his desk. Kacey removed her coat and draped it over one chair, settling cautiously in the other. On the side wall were awards, certificates, and his medical diplomas, prominently displayed.
“I assume my mother called and warned you that I intended to find you,” Kacey said.
“She did.”
“So all her secrets, her insistence that you be kept out of it, that was all just what? A smoke screen? Why?”
“Your mother tried to act as if the babyâyouâwere Stanley's. I didn't believe it, of course. She'd been trying to have a baby for years, and then, after we got ... close, she became pregnant, so I assumed the truth.” He drew a breath and exhaled it heavily. “Our affair was winding down at the time. I was going to move the company from Helena to here and ... so,” he said, leaning forward, hands clasped, forearms on the desk, “I saw no point in trying to keep what we had going. We were both married, neither wanted a divorce, and so . . . we let it die, and I allowed your mother the fantasy that I didn't know about you. It was just simpler.”
“For whom?” she asked carefully.
“Everyone. Including you.”
“How thoughtful,” she said, hearing the anger rising in her own voice. “You don't know anything about me.”
“That's where you're wrong. Of course I found out about you, but I didn't let on. Your mother and I were over, anyway, and we were both married, and at least one of us was happy.”
Kacey felt her jaw tighten. Gerald Johnson had a pretty high opinion of himself.
He lifted one shoulder. “I thought it was best if I pretended I didn't think you were mine. I had a family, a wife, a company to run.”
“And Mom?”
“She got what she always wanted out of the deal. A child.” Gerald's gaze held hers. “It worked out.”
“Did it?” Her stomach soured as she thought of all the lies that were her life. “What about my dad?” she said. “The one who raised me?”
Gerald's lips flattened a little, and some of his equanimity seeped away. “What? Are you coming to me now because he's gone? You're looking for a new father figure? Or, maybe it isn't even that altruistic. Perhaps you're looking for something else?”
“I don't know what you're getting at,” she said, though she did, and it was pissing her off.
“Look around.” He gestured grandly.
“Get this straight, Mr. Johnson. I don't want anything from you but the truth. People are dying, and I think you have the answer.”
“Dying? Good Lord, you're as melodramatic as your mother.”
“Maybe. But it doesn't alter the facts.” She stood up, unable to sit in front of him like a sycophant.
Deep furrows cleft his brow. “I don't know what you're talking about.”
“Let's start with Shelly Bonaventure.”
“Who? The ... actress? What about her?”
“You don't know her?”
“Of course I don't. Why would I? The only reason I know about her is that my daughter Clarissa reads those tabloids and the like.”
“She was born in Helena.”
“All right.”
She felt herself falter inside a little. Could she be mistaken? He seemed genuinely at a loss. “Did you know Jocelyn Wallis?”
“Jocelyn who? I have no idea what you're talking about!” Then something sparked. “Wait a minute. I read something about a woman who died recently. She fell while jogging?”
“Or was pushed. I don't know the details,” Kacey admitted. “Only that her death is being investigated, maybe caused by foul play.”
“What does this have to do with me?”
“It's because of the resemblance. See . . .” She pulled the pictures of the two women she'd mentioned from her briefcase and slid them across the desk, faceup. “These two, and Elle Alexander, who was a patient of mine.” She found Elle's photo and slid it across as well. “I guess Mom didn't mention this when she called?”
“She said that you were on some mission, but I was busy, didn't pay attention to her ramblings.”
“Maybe you should have.”
“I assumed she meant you were looking for me to come out and claim you.”
“That's not it at all.”
“I don't know these women. Never met any of them.”
“I think they could be related to me.”
“What? These women?” He looked down at the photos again. “Through me?” He let out a short bark of a laugh, as if he expected some dark, macabre punch line. His skin reddened. “Is this some kind of shakedown?”
But there was something he wasn't saying. She saw it in his eyes, a lie he was trying to disguise. There was more here; she just wasn't sure what.
“Are you trying to punish me?” he demanded.
“Punish you.”
“For not acknowledging you like I did with Robert.” He said it as if it was a cold, hard fact, one they both understood.
Kacey blinked. “Who's Robert?”
“You know.”
“I don't.”
They stared at each other, and he seemed to be sizing her up again before he clarified, “My son? Robert Lindley? That's what this is really about, right?”
A chill, as cold as the bottom of the sea, settled at the base of her spine. What the devil was he talking about?
When she didn't respond, he prodded, “Janet's boy.”
“I'm sorry. Who's Janet?”
His lips twisted a bit. “You didn't do all of your homework, did you? Robert's a few years older than you, and I . . . claimed him, once Janet and her husband split up.”
How had she missed this?
“He works for the company, too, like the others. He's in research and development. Great technical mind.”
So there was another half sibling in the mix. Her life as an only child seemed suddenly distant.
“When your mother called, I thought you wanted in, to be a part of the family, get whatever it is you think is your fair share of the company.”
Kacey snapped back. “Trust me, I'm not here about your company. I'm here for these women,” she said, motioning toward the pictures on his desk. “What you're telling me is that you're not their father. You're not related to any of them.”
“That's exactly what I'm saying,” he responded emphatically, but a guarded look had slipped across his face, a trace of quickly hidden deceit. Though he stared at her as if she'd gone stark raving mad, there was something more, something darker in his gaze. “I don't know what you think you know.”
Though he readily claimed a son and now her as his children, he wouldn't associate himself with the women who'd been killed. As if he didn't believe he was related to them.
Had she been mistaken? He didn't have any brothers; she'd checked. And his only other sibling had been a sister who had died in her twenties, so if not him . . . then ... ?
She glanced to the medical diplomas on his wall, noticed that he'd graduated forty years earlier.
And then, like a ton of bricks, it hit her, the elusive notion that had been nagging at her since last night's nightmare: he didn't know about these women, because he didn't realize he might have fathered them.
What had JC, her husband, bragged about to her years before?
“I should have been a sperm donor, like those other med students. I could have made a fortune. Women are looking for men like me. I could still do it. I've got the pedigree, the intellect, the IQ . . . and athleticism and looks to boot.”
Kacey heard his voice in her head as if he were speaking to her now. And Gerald Johnson, nearing seventy, was a strong, strapping man. . . .
“I'm not related to these women,” he insisted, but she could hear the faintest trace of uncertainty in his voice.
“You weren't a sperm donor around thirty-five or forty years ago, maybe when you were in medical school?”
“That's ridiculous! Just because these women slightly resemble each otherâ”
“Not just slightly,” she interrupted. “And not just each other. This one”âwith one finger she pushed the picture of Jocelyn Wallis closer to himâ“looks enough like me that when she was brought into the ER, several of my associates thought something had happened to
me.
Look at them!” She slid the other pictures closer to him. “I've seen pictures of your family. There is an incredible, uncanny resemblance.”
A muscle worked in his jaw as he stared at one picture, then the next. He even went so far as to pull a pair of reading glasses from his pocket to study the images. Finally, as if disgusted, he tossed the glasses onto his desk. His lips were pulled into a serious knot. “So why are you here, Acacia? To confirm that I could have fathered these women because of something I did in my youth?”
“So, you
were
a sperm donor.”
“You are fabricating some kind of conspiracy theory that someone is killing peopleâwomenâwho resemble each other and who might have been conceived through artificial insemination? And you're looking at me as the sperm donor?” He was incredulous.
“Someone tried to kill me,” Kacey said. “A long time ago. Not rape me. Not rob me, but kill me. I thought it was a random act until just recently,” she admitted. “Now, I'm not so sure. Just yesterday I found out my house is bugged. With listening devices and who knows what else? Meanwhile, women who look like me are having accidents. Deadly accidents that, at second look, aren't really accidents at all. Both Shelly Bonaventure and Jocelyn Wallis have connections to Helena. I figure that if I go there, I'll find a fertility clinic where they were all conceived, and probably there are records for Elle as well. She was just born somewhere else.” She leaned across the desk. “How many more will I find, Gerald? Five? Ten? A hundred? Fiveâ”
“This is crazy,” he snapped. The color in his face rose and turned his cheeks livid red. “There's no serial killer who's intent on killing children conceived at a certain clinic!”
“Only those fathered by you,” she said with renewed certainty.
“That's even crazier.”
She didn't have an answer for him, but she was convinced she was on the right track. Yet she had to hear it from him. “What's the name of this clinic?” she asked. “I'm going to find out, one way or another. You may as well just save me some time, before whoever is behind this kills me.”
“You weren't conceived by artificial insemination. Trust me on this.”
“Doesn't make me safe.
“When I compare my DNA to any of these women,” she said, fanning her hand over the pictures, “I'm going to bet that the test results will prove we're related on the paternal side andâ”
“Enough!” It was his turn to stand. Nearly six-one, he had half a foot on her, allowing him to look down his strong, straight nose into her eyes. “I was a sperm donor in my youth. Yes. But I have no proof that any of these victims were my progeny. I think your theory is outlandish. More than that, it's slanderous. I met you today because I thought it was high time I acknowledged you, but I clearly was mistaken.”
“Don't you even care to find out about these women?”
“No. I do not. Now, if you're done with your mad accusations, I have work to do. Important work. Not only does this plant employ a lot of people in the area, but our products, many of which I developed myself, save lives.”