“And I thought that perhaps you’d oblige me,” he said. “This is disappointing.”
For a moment, again only silence, as Cassidy held me and I waited, holding my gun, watching the doors. With no other ideas, I tried the door handles, again pulling up and pushing. No such luck. They were, of course, still locked. Then, I caught just the faintest hint of an unfamiliar smell, a faint but distinctly chemical odor.
“What’s that?” Cassidy whispered, her entire body shaking. “It smells bad in here.”
I took another whiff. I hated to say it, but I had to. “Some kind of gas I think,” I said. I looked over at her, but my eyes blurred. I couldn’t see her clearly, and I didn’t have the strength to hold her up when she swooned, her head sinking onto my lap.
This wasn’t going so well. I had to admit that maybe I needed a plan B. Quickly. Pounding on the privacy window, I screamed, “Okay. Okay,” but my fists felt too heavy to lift, and my voice was little more than a mumble. The gas burned my throat, and I would remember nothing more.
“You really should have just given me the gun,” Peterson said, perched on the edge of a tan metal desk. He looked miffed, but his voice didn’t give away any sign of irritation. “It would have made it so much more pleasant for all of us. It wasn’t easy carrying you both here. I’d only planned on the girl.”
The room was floating, and everything had a yellowish hue. It felt like swimming through chicken broth. I took a look around. A metal door, gray like the walls, bolted from the inside. I could breathe but my lungs ached from the gas. As my vision cleared, I saw Cassidy across the room, on the floor. A few mops and buckets, dust rags and some spray cleaners on a shelf suggested we were in some kind of maintenance storage locker. When I looked back at Cassidy, I realized she was handcuffed and chained to a wall. I tried to move my arms and felt, instead of chains, plastic-covered electrical cord cinching my hands behind my back. I looked down and saw a length of cord anchored me to the small steel-framed chair I sat on. Only my legs were free.
Cassidy rolled over, moaning. She was waking, and Peterson, still wearing his black cowboy hat, couldn’t have looked happier if he’d just finished scoring the final measure of a new symphony.
“It was nice of you to come with her, Lieutenant,” he said, with
a smirk. “I hadn’t hoped for quite this much success. If I had, I would have made sure I had two sets of chains and handcuffs. But I believe I’ve adapted to the situation quite well.”
“Justin, you really don’t want to do this. It’s all a misunderstanding,” I said. “Let Cassidy tell you what we’ve discovered about the two of you. It’ll explain why you’ve felt so drawn to her.”
“The truth is, Lieutenant, I’m not interested,” he said.
“Where are we?” I asked, again looking about the room. “We’re downtown, right? Somewhere in the tunnels?”
It’s one of those oddities only the locals know about. On any even vaguely inclement day, at street level Houston’s main business district appears deserted, while streams of office workers mingle in air-conditioned comfort in a web of underground passageways, accessed through the city’s soaring skyscrapers via a maze of stairwells, escalators, and elevators. Monday through Friday, nine to six, the tunnels are flooded with pedestrians frequenting underground shops and restaurants, dropping off dry cleaning or picking up prescriptions, all the while avoiding cold, rain, or Texas’s unrelenting summer heat. After working hours, the tunnels and the skyscrapers above were mostly dark and quiet. Since it had to be ten or later, if that was where Peterson had us, we could scream, but the likelihood was that no one would hear us.
“Ah, you are good, Lieutenant,” Peterson said, with a grin. “Deductive reasoning, I suppose. Length of trip, etc. Very good.”
“Great, well, how about freeing us and we’ll talk?” I suggested. “Cassidy has something she wants to tell you, something that’ll clear all this up.”
“If that’s what I wanted, I would,” he said with a shrug. “Too bad for the two of you, it’s not.”
Boy but I wanted to wipe that smirk off his face. If my hands were free I would have done just that.
“But, you don’t understand,” Cassidy pleaded.
All afternoon, I knew she truly believed she just had to explain their connection, to let Justin know they were sister and brother, and she’d have her happy ending. The way this guy was acting, it appeared my fears were right. Having a connection with Cassidy wasn’t Peterson’s only motive. There was more going on, but what?
“I’m your sister,” she said. “Please listen to me. It’s true. I’m your sister.”
“You are?” he said, with exaggerated surprise. “How can that be?”
“Sarah can tell you. We figured it out. There are even records.”
“You’re sure about that?” he gasped, followed by an indulgent grin.
I gauged the delight he took in her pleas, saw how he savored having Cassidy, having both of us in his control, and I thought,
he’s toying with her.
“Listen to me, Justin,” she pleaded. “I’m telling you the truth. The reason you’re so interested in me, I know you don’t understand, but the reason you feel drawn to me is that we’re family. We’re related.”
“Why do I feel drawn to you, Cassidy?” he asked. “What is it about you that makes it impossible for me to think of anyone but you?”
“It’s because I’m your sister, don’t you see?” she said, tears coursing from her eyes, frustrated at his seeming inability to understand. “You’re my brother, Justin.
My brother.
”
Then, any doubt was gone. His smug expression left no room to be mistaken. “He knows,” I said. “He’s known all along.”
Cassidy shot me a puzzled glance, but Peterson laughed, a hard, rueful cackle that resonated off the blank walls.
“How did you figure it out?” he asked.
“I should have known from the beginning. Your e-mail, about her freckles,” I said. “I thought maybe it was a good guess, based on her fair skin, but you knew. You remembered.”
“There you’re wrong. Actually, it was a guess. Cassie was too young for freckles when our paths diverged,” he said. “But my mother had freckles as a little girl. I’d seen them in her pictures. I assumed, since they look so much alike, that my sister would, too.”
“You remember?” Cassidy asked. “But Justin . . .”
“Believe me when I tell you that a five-year-old never forgets a detail of the day his mother deserts him. The day she left him at an orphanage,” he said, every ounce of his being focused on his sister.
“But that wasn’t me. I didn’t do it,” she countered, her voice small, frightened.
“True. But you were the one she picked,” he said. “I was the one she left behind.”
The kid looked scared but at the same time angry. “Maybe she tried, Justin. Maybe Mom wanted to be with both of us. Maybe she couldn’t take care of both of us. Whatever, I don’t know. But we both know she didn’t have an easy life. Our mom had a lot of bad stuff, especially from our dad,” the girl said. I was proud of her for standing up for her mother, at least trying to understand. “Maybe Mom thought she was doing the best she could for us, like she couldn’t think of a better option.”
“I don’t care about her problems,” he said, spitting out the words. “As for our relationship, yours and mine, well, some things are more important than sharing the same bloodline.”
“Like what?” she asked. “What’s more important than family?”
“To me? Revenge,” he said with a surly grin. Looking at him made the acid in my stomach churn. “Cassidy, you and I have an old score to settle.”
“That’s not fair. I was just a baby,” Cassidy said, her eyes hard on her brother. Despite her hopes, the teenager was beginning to understand that this wouldn’t be the happy family reunion she’d hoped for.
Peterson gazed at the kid with utter contempt.
“How did you find me?” she asked, her voice hoarse with sadness and fear.
“That was easy. I just waited until I was old enough, and then pulled some records, looked at old files. You see, I remembered our last name. I always remembered,” he said. “I went looking for Mom a few years ago, and found out she was dead. Sadly for you, the alcohol took away any opportunity to punish her. With Mom gone, you were next up. You were, I must admit, a little harder to find, but not much. You look just like her, and your face was all over the television and magazine racks.”
I tugged at the cord around my wrists. Tight, too tight. It wasn’t budging. And the gun, where was my gun? Maybe behind him, on the desk? Or in a drawer? Or maybe he left it in the car? Where was the damn gun? Where were the captain and David? There should have been some way to figure out where he’d taken us. Someone must have seen something.
“Instead of making up that stuff about wanting to mentor my music, why didn’t you write and tell me that you were my brother?” Cassidy charged, growing ever angrier. “If you had, I would have contacted you.”
“You sure?” he asked, his voice level and calm, yet contemptuous. “You’re sure that’s what you would have done?”
“I would have understood,” she said, in a small, quiet voice. “I would have sent for you.”
Peterson stood up, walked over, and peered down at Cassie, and I saw a bulge under his shirt, at the small of his back. My gun or his? It didn’t matter.
“Really, you would have sent for me?” he scoffed. “And why would you have done that? Why would you have chosen me to believe? With all the crap you get every day, the fan mail, the bizarre
claims. Why would you have chosen to believe me? Why wouldn’t you have disregarded my letters, exactly the way you did when I wrote you offering help and friendship? Tell me that.”
“I would have answered,” she said, her voice aching with pain. “I would have believed you. I would have known. We have the same parents.”
“Wonderful parents,” he said. “Two drunks.”
Peterson laughed, a derisive, searing, mocking laugh. There was no longer any question about what to do. It was obvious that Cassidy and I were part of some strange game. We wouldn’t be leaving this room alive. My guess was Peterson figured he wouldn’t either, but, unlike us, he didn’t care.
“You’re wrong about what’s important. Family is family,” I said to him. I didn’t harbor even a glimmer of hope I could change his mind, but I needed to keep the conversation going, to buy time. “You’ve got a sister now, someone bound to you by the most basic human element, blood.”
Peterson said nothing, only glared at Cassidy, as I went on. “Could anything be stronger? Look how much you have in common, especially music,” I said. “Why not make up for lost time? Why not get to know your only living family?”
“Shut up, Lieutenant,” he ordered. “The teenage superstar and I share nothing, and we’re certainly not family. My father was a drunk who beat my mother. Beat me. Instead of taking me with her when she fled, my mother threw me away.”
“Is that why we’re here?” I asked. “So you can punish your sister for the sins of your parents?”
“Yes,” he said, grinning at Cassidy. “That’s precisely why we’re here.”
“There has to be more. There just has to. What else? You owe us an explanation,” I said, but then, I knew that, too. I remembered that day at the university, as he sat at his piano, when he men
tioned my name in the headlines. “You’re doing this to make sure you’re as famous as your sister, aren’t you? It’s all some kind of perverted game, a sick competition to get your name in the press. You kill her and you become famous, an instant celebrity.”
“No!” Cassidy screamed. “No, Justin, please. I’m your sister.”
The laugh again, that same vicious laugh.
“He’s hopeless, Cassidy,” I said. “Don’t bother.”
“But he can’t mean that. He just can’t,” she cried.
“Yes, I can. For the first time in my life, in my entire existence, I’m in charge, with the power to make sure that the world hears my story. I planted that family photo so you’d find it,” he said, turning to me. “I wanted everyone to know. Imagine what they’ll assume, that I killed the superstar without knowing she’s my sister. Cassidy and I will become tragic figures. They’ll say things like, ‘It all could have ended differently. If that poor boy had only known who she really was.’ ”
“And all three of us will be dead?” I said. “If you don’t die here, you will of a lethal injection. You won’t be around to enjoy your fame. Makes the whole exercise pointless, in my opinion.”
“Too bad for you, not in mine,” he said. “The way I see it, fame, at any cost, is a win. And this level of fame, that of murdering my very own superstar sister, that’ll buy me a level of notoriety I could never achieve with my music.”
I’d been working to free my hands, but the electrical cord wouldn’t budge. If I could just get him to watch Cassidy for a while, talk to her. The final battle against Santa Anna for Texas independence only lasted eighteen minutes. I didn’t need much time.
“Cassidy, tell Justin about what happened during your session with Dr. Dorin today,” I said. “Tell him what you remembered about your mother. She wasn’t a bad woman. Remember what the doctor said, that it was an illness.”
“I don’t care that she was sick,” he blurted out, his eyes dark wells of anger.
“But, Sarah’s right, Justin,” Cassie said. “You have to listen to me. Mom didn’t want our lives to be bad. Maybe she thought she was doing the best thing for us.”
No matter how hard I tried, the bindings on my wrists weren’t giving, so I started tugging at the knot that tied me to the chair. If I kept working, I might . . .
“Sure, and the Easter Bunny delivers colored eggs,” Peterson said. “Mom was a drunk, just like Dad. That and the two of us were the only things those two had in common. When he wasn’t beating one of us, he was threatening to. When Mom ran, I thought maybe we’d be all right. What does she do but give me away? At least she wanted you. At least she cared about what happened to you. Me, she threw away, like an empty booze bottle.”
“Okay, maybe you’re right,” Cassidy shouted back. Despite everything, she wasn’t sitting back taking it. “But like I said, what did I do? What did Sarah do? Why do you want to kill us?”
“The ranger’s here because she ended up here. It was her fate,” he said, each word laced with hate. “You? You’re here because I was the one she gave away, and because killing you is the best way to make sure I don’t die in obscurity.”