Dylan knocked on the door, his rap sending the door ajar. Apparently it hadn't been closed all the way.
"We can't just go in," she whispered. "It's someone else's home."
"This is the island; everyone just goes in. The people are probably at the beach or on a hike. And we won't find any information out here." He stepped into the living room. Catherine slid in behind him. No one seemed to have heard them. Nor did anyone appear to be in the house. The little living room was very neat and very empty.
Catherine moved farther into the room, her gaze sweeping over the furniture, the couch, the tables, the photographs on the mantel. From that distance she could see two little girls, a mother and a father. She started across the room, and then stopped abruptly, the picture on the wall stirring her memory.
A sand castle with turrets and towers, and a moat to protect the prince and the princess and all the children inside. But the waves came and the water swirled through the open doors and windows, drowning everyone inside.
She drew in a deep breath and moved closer to get a better look at the picture. Next to the sand castle stood two little blond girls and their mother, all wearing bathing suits. Behind them was their father, a tall man also in a bathing suit and a bright yellow T-shirt, a big grin on his face. The man had his arms around all of his girls, and they looked impossibly proud.
"What are you staring at?" Dylan asked.
"I saw this picture in my head a while ago— yesterday, I think. I thought I was connecting to your mother, but this woman isn't her."
Dylan crossed the room and took the photograph off the mantel. "I think I remember when this was taken. Those were the girls I played with. What were their names? Shannon was the older one, and Julie was the younger one. Yes, Shannon and Julie." Dylan gave her a pleased smile, which quickly faded as he read her expression, as he reviewed what he'd just said in his mind. "No, it can't be." He turned his gaze back to the picture. "My God, Catherine. I think that's Julie Bris-tow, the woman from my office."
"So you finally remembered me. It's about time."
Catherine swung around as Julie came into the room. Catherine was shocked to see that the woman was in a wheelchair. When she'd met Julie before she'd been sitting at a desk. She'd had no idea that the woman was disabled. There was a blanket over her lap hiding her legs, but there was no hiding the expression of disappointment on her face.
"He didn't kill you," she said, as her gaze settled on Catherine. "I had a feeling he would fail. Dylan always wins. He's the golden boy. He saved you, didn't he?" She turned to Dylan with pure hatred in her eyes. "You're always the hero."
Catherine had thought Julie was in love with Dylan, but now she saw it was the opposite: Julie despised him. She wanted him to suffer. She wanted him dead. She was the one who'd made the plan. The realization hit Catherine hard. They'd been wrong about Dylan's
father.
It was Julie. It had always been Julie.
Catherine glanced at Dylan and saw the same shock in his eyes.
"Julie, what's this about?" he demanded. "What's going on?"
"You haven't figured it out yet? I thought you were so smart."
"I know my father isn't my father."
"Very good," she said. "Give the boy a prize."
Dylan stared at her in confusion. "You knew that?"
"Of course I knew."
"I don't get it. You set me up? This is your work? I thought we were friends. Why would you do that to me? Why would you use Erica? Shit! Why would you kill Erica? She was an innocent woman."
"Not so innocent, and she was just the means to an end. I wasn't going to kill her at first, but I knew they wouldn't be able to pin a murder charge on you without a body, so she had to go. I wanted to see you in jail, suffering, trapped. I saw how happy you were when you sent the senator there. Even though he hadn't been convicted yet, you crowed about how he would never be free again. You don't know what it's like not to be free. You need to know. I figured you'd believe the senator was behind the plan to frame you, that you'd never suspect me, and you didn't. I left you that video from the Metro Club so you'd wonder about your father, about Blake. And I told you that Blake had gone to Seattle with Erica so that you'd eventually figure out to come here. Even though you didn't remember me, I thought you might remember coming here. Then I planted your mother's obituary in the drawer of your old house."
"Julie, you're not making sense."
"I'm not making sense? Maybe you're not listening. You never listen. You're far more interested in talking."
"I'm listening now. Tell me the rest."
"When you came to the station the other day I knew you were going to keep running, that it would be difficult to send you to jail, so I had to change the plan. I had to kill you. But first I wanted you to suffer, because dying is easy. It's the rest that's hard." She drew in a quick breath, her eyes filled with the fire of hate. "I wanted you to be afraid of every shadow, every sound, to worry if you would die every time you stepped outside or in front of a window. I wanted you to feel trapped, the way I've been trapped in this chair for the last twenty-three years. And I wanted you to come here, to know the truth before you died. I sent the house key to Erica weeks ago. Originally I was planning to have her come here and leave you a paper trail to follow. But she started asking for more money. She was going to be trouble, so I had to revise a few things."
"You killed her, Julie. Do you even understand that?"
"I didn't pull the trigger."
"You ordered someone else to do it." Dylan paused. "But what did I do to you?" he asked in bemusement. "Why do you hate me so much?"
"Because you were born," she said in a shrill, high voice. "You ruined everything. You made my mother crazy. She found out about you, about my father and your mother." She spit out the words. "Do you finally get it? Our parents had an affair."
Dylan swallowed hard. "Your father is . . ."
"Your father," Julie finished. "And because he couldn't keep his pants up, my mother went insane. She completely lost her mind. She wanted to punish my father. She wanted to destroy everything he had, so she put my sister and me in the car and she drove up to the house where they used to make love. All the way there she ranted about him and her. She said she couldn't leave us with him. He was a bad man. And he had to suffer. He had to pay for what he'd done."
Catherine held her breath as Julie stared at Dylan with wild, crazy eyes. The woman was reliving some horrible moment from her past, and Catherine was almost afraid to hear it. But Julie was going to tell them. She wanted Dylan to know. She'd probably always wanted Dylan to know. That was why she hadn't had him killed before now.
"So my mother drove us off the cliff into the water," Julie said. "She thought we would all die, but guess what? I didn't. I was in terrible pain, but somehow I got out of the car. I tried to open the front door where my sister and mother were, but I couldn't. It was jammed. I could see my mother slumped over the wheel, my sis-ter's hands pressed against the glass, the terror in her eyes as she realized what was happening. I wrapped my hands around the door handle, but the current was too strong. It pulled me away. Eventually I washed up on the shore, my back broken. I was alive, but they were
dead. And I would never walk again. Because of you."
Dylan swallowed hard, his face pale. "Julie—"
She cut him off with a wave of her hand. "My father lied to me when I was in the hospital. He told me that I'd imagined my mother's ranting words, that she hadn't tried to kill me, that he hadn't had an affair, that none of it was true. I wanted to believe him. My mother and sister were dead. He was all I had left. But he lied. And last year when he died I found out that he'd bought the house across the street, that he'd wanted to have it because it was where she was happy. I read the truth in the letters your mother had written to him, letters that he couldn't give away because she was the love of his life. I finally realized what had triggered my mother's breakdown. It was you."
"What do you mean?"
"You were sick. You were in the hospital. You needed blood. Your mother kept calling my father because you both had some rare blood type. My father had to tell my mother that he'd betrayed her in order to save you. You're the reason my family broke apart and she tried to kill me. You're the reason I ended up like this. My father saved you, but he didn't save me."
"God, Julie—please. Think. I was a little kid, too," Dylan cried. "I was born. I didn't choose my parents."
"But they always chose you," she said dully. "Over and over again. I knew I had to find you, meet you, make you pay. So I hired a private investigator to track you down. I got a job at the station. I thought for a few days you might recognize me from the past, but you barely glanced at me. You were set on making yourself a superstar. I couldn't stand that your life was so good. It wasn't fair. It just wasn't fair."
Dylan licked his lips. He darted a quick, pleading look at Catherine, but she didn't know how to help him. And she feared that if she got in the middle it would make things worse.
He turned back to Julie. "What about my mother? Do you know what happened to her? Do you know how she died?"
Julie shrugged. "My mother killed her, too. She took her out on the boat one day. She told her she wanted to make peace, be friends again. They were friends, you know, all of them. Then she pushed her off the boat and left her in the middle of the sound. Two days later she drove us off the cliff. It was her final act. She wanted to take everyone my father loved away from him. That was his punishment. And mine."
Julie's words came with a sense of finality, as if she had said everything she intended to say. Catherine started, realizing a split second too late where this was headed.
"Stop!" Julie pulled a gun out from under the blanket on her lap and aimed it at Catherine. "Don't take another step."
"She's not the one you want to kill," Dylan said. "I am."
"But you'd suffer more if you watched her die. You like her; I can tell. I saw the way you looked at her when she came to the office. No one has ever liked me. Who would? I'm in a wheelchair."
Catherine heard the pain as well as the madness in Julie's voice. She knew nothing she could say would change any of it, and she suspected that Julie wanted to hear only from Dylan.
"I won't let you kill her, Julie. I won't let you kill either of us," Dylan said firmly. "I'm fast. I can get to you before you pull the trigger. In two seconds I'll have that gun out of your hand."
Julie stared back at him, weighing his words.
Catherine wasn't sure that Dylan could do what he'd said, but she could see that Julie was wavering. And that was all that mattered.
"You're right. You'd win," Julie said. "You always win. You're the golden boy and I'm just the cripple." Slowly she turned the gun toward her own head.
Dylan took a step forward. Catherine put a hand on his arm, afraid that it was a trick, that Julie could just as easily turn the gun back and shoot one of them.
"I'm tired of fighting you," Julie continued. "I'm tired of fighting the world. It's been a long struggle to survive. I should have died when I was meant to die. That would have been easier."
"No," Dylan said with a definitive shake of his head. "I'm not going to let you kill yourself either."
"You think I'd rather go to prison for murder than die? You're a fool. I've been trapped in this chair forever. I won't roll it into a prison cell."
"Julie, don't," Dylan said one more time. "Think about what you're doing."
"It's too late." Her hand tightened on the gun as she pressed it against her temple.
"Oh, God," Catherine murmured.
Dylan rushed across the room, grabbing for the gun before Julie could pull the trigger. For a moment she struggled, but he was too strong. He pulled the gun out of her hand and stepped back.
"I hate you," Julie said, tears streaming down her face. "I hate you for being alive, and I hate you more for not letting me die."
"I know you do." Dylan's chest heaved with his ragged breath. "But you're my sister. God, Julie, don't you realize that? You're my sister. We're blood. And I won't let you die for what they did. You need help, and I'm going to get it for you."
Julie put her head in her hands, and her racking sobs rent the air as the hatred and grief of a lifetime rolled out of her. Dylan stared down at her as if he didn't know what to do.
Catherine crossed the room, and this time she pulled him into her arms, turning his face away from Julie. "It's not your fault," she said, gazing directly into his eyes. "It's never been your fault. Never. You didn't do this to her."
"No, but they did—my mother and her father. They were both married. They had other families." He shook his head, his jaw tight, as if he were struggling with himself not to break down. "They ruined everything. They ruined her."
"But they're not going to ruin you," Catherine said.
"It was all about our fathers and mothers," he murmured. "You, me, Julie—we were victims of our birth."
"We're not victims anymore. It stops here, Dylan, right now," she said firmly. "It's over. It's all over."
* * *
Dylan stood at the rail of the ferry, watching the sun set over Orcas Island as it faded in the distance. It had been forty-eight hours since Julie had put a gun to her head, since his half sister had revealed the depth of her madness and the extent of their parents' betrayal. He hadn't slept for two nights, his mind grappling with the new history that had suddenly been written for him. And during the daylight hours he'd been too busy calling Mark and the various police departments in Washington, California, and Nevada to sort out the mess.
Fortunately Julie had confessed everything to the local police, who had taken her into custody. He was temporarily off the hook. Julie, however, was on her way to the prison ward of a mental hospital. Eventually she would face murder charges for Erica's death, and other assorted charges still to be determined.