Right?
Paula said, “Jane never told you any of this?”
Andy didn’t bother to confirm what the woman already knew.
“Did she tell you who your father is?”
Andy kept her mouth shut. She knew who her father was.
“Don’t you want to know?”
Gordon was her father. He had raised her, taken care of her, put up with her maddening silences and indecision.
Paula gave a heavy, disappointed sigh. “Nicholas Harp. She never told you?”
Andy felt her curiosity rise, but not for the obvious reason. She recognized the name from the Wikipedia page. Harp had died of an overdose years before Andy was born.
She told Paula, “You’re lying.”
“No, I’m not. Nick is the leader of the Army of the Changing World. Everybody should know his name, but especially you.”
“Wiki said that Clayton Morrow—”
“Nicholas Harp. That’s your father’s chosen name. Half of that bullshit on Wikipedia is lies. The other half is speculation.” Paula leaned across the table, excited. “The Army of the Changing World stood for something. We really were going to change the world. Then your mother lost her nerve and it all turned into a shitshow.”
Andy shook her head, because all they had done was kill people and terrorize the country. “That professor was murdered in San Francisco. Most of the people in your group are dead. Martin Queller was assassinated.”
“You mean, your grandfather?”
Andy felt jarred. She had not had time to make the connection.
Martin Queller was her grandfather.
He had been married to Annette Queller, her grandmother.
Which meant that Jasper Queller, the asshole billionaire, was her uncle.
Was Laura a billionaire, too?
“Finally putting it together, huh?” Paula tossed a stray piece of deli meat into her mouth. “Your father has been in prison for three decades because of Jane. She kept you away from him. You could’ve had a relationship, gotten to know who he is, but she denied you that honor.”
Andy knew exactly who Clayton Morrow was, and she wanted nothing to do with him. He was not her father any more than Jerry Randall was. She had to believe that, because the alternative would have her curled into a ball on the floor.
“Come on.” Paula wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “Give me some more questions.”
Andy thought through the last few days, the list of unknowns she had jotted down after meeting Paula. “What changed your mind back in Austin? One minute you were telling me to leave, the next minute you were telling me to look for Clara Bellamy.”
Paula nodded, as if she approved of the question. “The pig whose nuts you marshmallowed. I figured you wouldn’t have done that if you were working with your mother.”
“What?”
“The pig. The US marshal.”
Andy felt a flush work its way up her neck.
“You fucked up his shit. That bitch was lying on my front porch for an hour.”
Andy leaned her head onto the table so that Paula couldn’t see her face.
Mike.
The Marshal Service was in charge of administering the witness protection program. They could make all the driver’s licenses they wanted because making new documents was part of their job—fake birth certificates and fake tax returns and even fake obituaries for a made-up guy named Jerry Randall.
Andy felt her bowels swirl.
Mike was Laura’s handler. That’s why he was at the hospital when she came out. Was that why he was following Andy? Was he trying to help her because she had unwittingly been in the program, too?
Had she taken out the only person who might be able to save them from this monster?
“Hey.” Paula rapped her knuckles on the table. “More questions. Spit ’em out. We got nothing better to do.”
Andy shook her head. She tried to put together Mike’s involvement since the beginning. His truck in the Hazeltons’ driveway with his rabbit’s foot keychain. The magnetic signs he changed out with each new city.
The GPS tracker on the cooler.
Mike must have planted it while Andy was passed out in the Muscle Shoals motel. Then he’d gone across the street for a congratulatory beer and improvised when Andy walked through the door.
She had assumed that he was friends with the bartender, but guys like Mike made friends wherever they went.
“Hey,” Paula repeated. “Focus on me, kid. If you’re not going to keep me entertained, then I’m gonna truss you back up and watch my shows.”
Andy had to shake her head to clear it. She lifted her chin up, rested it against her free hand. She didn’t know what else to do but return to her list. “Why did you send me to find Clara?”
“Bitch refused to talk to me back when she had her marbles, and Edwin threatened to rat me to my P.O. I was hoping seeing you would trigger her memories. Then I could snatch you up and you could give me the information and happy ending for everybody. Except Edwin got in the way. But you know what? Fuck him for working Jane’s deal to keep her out of prison for thirty years.” Paula crammed a handful of chips into her mouth. “Your mother was part of a conspiracy to kill your grandfather. She watched Alexandra Maplecroft die. She was there when Quarter was shot in the heart. She helped drive the van to the farm. She was with us one hundred percent every step of the way.”
“Until she wasn’t,” Andy said, because that was the part that she wanted to hold onto.
“Yeah, well, we took down the Chicago Mercantile before it was all over.” She caught Andy’s blank look. “That’s where commodities are exchanged. Derivatives. You’ve heard of those? And Nick was on his way into Manhattan when they caught him trying to blow up the Stock Exchange. It would’ve been glorious.”
Andy had watched along with everyone else planes hitting buildings and trucks mowing down pedestrians and all of the horrors in between. She knew that attacks like that were not glorious, just as she knew that no matter what these crazy groups tried to take down, it always got rebuilt—taller, stronger, better.
She asked Paula, “So why am I here? What do you want from my mom?”
“Took you long enough to get to that question,” Paula said. “Jane has some papers your uncle Jasper signed.”
Uncle Jasper.
Andy couldn’t get used to having a family, though she wasn’t sure the Quellers were a family that she wanted.
Paula said, “Nick’s been up for parole six times in the last twelve years.” She wadded up the potato chip bag and threw it toward the trash can. “Every single fucking time, Jasper Fucking Queller climbs up on his podium wearing his stupid Air Force insignia and American flag pin and starts whining about how Nick killed his father and infected his brother and made him lose his sister and wah-wah-wah.”
“Infected his brother?”
“Nick had nothing to do with that. Your uncle was a fag. He died of AIDS.”
Andy physically reeled from the invective.
Paula snorted. “Your generation and its fucking political correctness.”
“Your generation and its fucking homophobia.”
Paula snorted again. “Christ, if I’d known all it took to make your balls drop was to shoot you, I would’ve done you the favor back in Austin.”
Andy closed her eyes for a second. She hated this brutal back and forth. “What’s in the papers? Why are they so important?”
“Fraud.” Paula raised her eyebrows, waiting for Andy to react. “Queller Healthcare was kicking patients out on the street, but still billing the state for their care.”
Andy waited for more, but apparently, that was it. She asked, “And . . .?”
“What do you mean, and . . .?”
“I could go online right now and find dozens of videos showing poor people being kicked out of hospitals.” Andy shrugged. “The hospitals just apologize and pay a fine. Sometimes they don’t even do that. Nobody loses their job, except maybe the security guard who was following orders.”
Paula was clearly thrown by her nonchalance. “It’s still a crime.”
“Okay.”