“Do you ever watch the news or read a paper? Jasper Queller wants to be president.”
Andy wasn’t so sure that a fraud conviction would stop him. Paula was still fighting by 1980s rules, before spin doctors and crisis management teams had become part of the vernacular. All Jasper would have to do was go on an apology tour, cry a little, and he’d be more popular than before it all started.
Paula crossed her arms. She had a smug look on her face. “Trust me, Jasper will crumble at the first whiff of scandal. All he cares about is the Queller family reputation. We’ll work him like a marionette.”
Andy had to be missing something. She tried to work it out. “You saw my mom on TV. You hired a guy to torture her for the location of these documents, and now you’re holding me ransom for them because you’re going to blackmail Jasper into being silent so Clayton—Nick—will be paroled?”
“It’s not rocket science, kid.”
It wasn’t even model rocket science.
How had her mother fallen in with these idiots?
Paula said, “I’ve got everything ready for Nick when he gets out. We’ll get some art for the walls, find the right furniture. Nick has such a great eye. I wouldn’t presume to choose those things without him.”
Andy remembered the institutional blandness inside of Paula’s house. Twenty years in prison, at least a decade on the outside, and she was still waiting for Clayton Morrow to tell her what to do.
She asked, “Did Nick put you up to this?” She remembered something Paula had said. “That’s why you haven’t killed me, right? Because I’m his daughter.”
She grinned. “I guess you’re not as stupid as you look.”
Andy heard a cell phone vibrating.
Paula searched the bags and found the broken burner phone. She winked at Andy before answering. “What is it, Dumb Bitch?” Her eyebrows went up. “Porter Motel. I know you’re familiar. Room 310.”
Andy watched her close the phone. “She’s on her way?”
“She’s here. Guess she used some of those Queller billions to charter a flight.” Paula stood up. She adjusted the gun in her waistband. “We’re in Valparaiso, Indiana. I figured you’d want to see where you were born.”
Andy had already chewed her tongue raw. She started on her cheek.
“Dumb Bitch was too good to be thrown into the general prison population. Edwin wrangled her a stay in the Porter County jail. She was in solitary the whole time, but so fucking what? Beats worrying some bitch is gonna shiv you in the back because you said her ass was big.”
Andy’s brain couldn’t handle all the information at once. She said, “What about—”
Paula took off her scarf and shoved it deep into Andy’s mouth.
“Sorry, kid, but I can’t be distracted by your bullshit.” She got on her knees and released the handcuff from the base of the table. “Put your right arm underneath.”
Andy stretched both arms toward the base, and Paula ratcheted down the cuffs.
“Uhn,” Andy tried. The scarf was shoved too far down her throat. She tried to work it out with her tongue.
“If your mom does what she’s supposed to do, you’ll be fine.” Paula took a spool of clothesline out of the bag. She bound Andy’s ankles to the chair leg. “Just in case you get any ideas.”
Andy started to cough. The more she struggled to push out the scarf, the deeper it went.
“You know your dead uncle tried to hang himself with this stuff once?” She reached into the plastic bag again. She found a pair of scissors. She used her teeth to break them out of the packaging. “No, I guess you don’t know. Left a scar on his neck, here—” she used the tip of the scissors to point to her neck, just below a smattering of dark moles.
Andy hoped she had skin cancer.
“Jasper saved him that time.” Paula cut the end of the clothesline. “Andy was always needing saving. Weird that your mom calls you by his name.”
Laura didn’t like to call Andy by her dead brother’s name. She winced every time she used anything other than Andrea.
Paula checked the handcuffs again, then the knots, to make sure they were secure. “All right. I’m gonna pee.” She stuck the scissors into her back pocket. “Don’t do anything stupid.”
Andy waited until the bathroom door shut, then she looked for something stupid to do. The burner phone was still on the table. Her hands were out of the question, but maybe she could use her head. She tried to inch the chair forward but the burning was so intense that vomit spilled up her throat.
The scarf pushed it back down.
Fuck.
Andy let her eyes scan the room from floor to ceiling. Ice bucket and plastic cups on the desk under the TV. Water bottles. Trash can. Andy wrapped her fingers around the base of the table. She tested the weight as much as she could. Too heavy. And also, she had a bullet inside her body. Even if she managed to bite back the pain and lift the table, she would fall flat on her face because her ankles were tied to the chair.
The toilet flushed. The sink faucet ran. Paula came out with a towel in her hands. She tossed it onto the desk. Instead of addressing Andy, she sat down on the edge of the bed and watched television.
Andy let her forehead rest on the table. She closed her eyes. She felt a groan vibrate inside of her throat. It was too much. All of it was just too damn much.
Mike was a US marshal.
Her mother was in the witness protection program.
Her birth father was a murderous cult leader.
Edwin Van Wees was dead.
Clara Bellamy—
Andy could still clearly hear the smack that had cut off Clara’s scream.
The click-click-click-click of the revolver’s cylinder.
The ballerina and the lawyer had taken care of Andy for the first two years of her life, and she had not remembered one detail about them.
There was a sound in the hallway.
Andy’s heart jumped. She raised her head.
Two knocks rattled the door, then there was a pause, then another knock.
Paula snorted. “Your mom thinks she’s being sneaky getting here sooner than she said.” She turned off the TV. She pressed her finger to her lips as if Andy was capable of anything but silence.
The revolver was in Paula’s hand by the time she opened the door.
Mom.
Andy started to cry. She couldn’t help it. The relief was so overwhelming that she felt like her heart was going to explode.
Their eyes met.
Laura shook her head once, but Andy didn’t know why.
Don’t do anything?
This is the end?
Paula jammed the gun in Laura’s face. “Move it. Hurry.”
Laura leaned heavily on an aluminum cane as she walked into the room. Her coat was wrapped around her shoulders. Her face was drawn. She looked frail, like a woman twice her age. She asked Andy, “Are you okay?”
Andy nodded, alarmed by her mother’s fragile appearance. She’d had almost a week to recover from her injuries. Was she sick again? Did she get an infection from the wound in her leg, the knife cut in her hand?
“Where are they?” Paula pressed the muzzle of the gun to the back of Laura’s head. “The files. Where are they?”
Laura kept her gaze locked with Andy’s. It was like a laser beam between them. Andy could remember the same look passing between them when the nurses were wheeling Laura into surgery, off to radiation therapy, into the chemo ward.
This was her mother. This woman, this stranger, had always been Andy’s mother.
“Come on,” Paula said. “Where—”
Laura shrugged her right shoulder, letting the coat slip to the floor. Her left arm was in a sling instead of strapped to her waist. A packet of file folders was tucked inside. The splint from the hospital was gone. She was wearing an Ace bandage that ballooned around her hand. Her swollen fingers curled from the opening like a cat’s tongue.
Paula snatched away the files and opened them on the desk under the TV. The gun stayed trained on Laura while she thumbed through the pages. Paula’s head swiveled back and forth like she was afraid Laura would pounce. “Is this all of them?”
“It’s enough.” Laura still would not look away from Andy.