Identity

Ninety minutes later, still dazed, Morgan walked into Crafty Arts. A half dozen customers browsed while Sue rang up a sale.

“Hey there, Morgan. Your mom and gram just went up to the office.”

“Thanks.”

She made her way up, found them both at the computer and her grandmother hovering over Audrey’s shoulder.

“I think interest in, Mom, rather than experience in. We can train—Morgan!”

Audrey clasped her hands under her chin. “Were the earrings lucky?”

“As lucky as it gets. I’m hired.”

“Of course.” Olivia said it with a shrug, but her eyes shined as Audrey leaped up to grab Morgan and bounce. “The Jamesons aren’t idiots.”

“I start training tomorrow, and I’ll work on a probationary basis for three months. After which? Automatic raise in salary. Jesus, they offered more than I was making at the Round, with benefits. And, and, oh God, I’ll manage a team of twenty-three, including back of the house.”

“We have to celebrate,” Audrey declared. “We’ll take you out to dinner.”

Morgan followed impulse. “I’m going to make pork chops.”

Audrey blinked. “You’re going to cook?”

“It’s Nina’s mother’s recipe. I made it once, I can do it again. I’m going to make pork chops and her spicy potatoes,” she repeated, because it would close out an ugly memory. “And we’ll use the good china and stemware. That’s how I want to celebrate.”

She drew back. “Thank you, Gram, for opening the door. Thank you both for the lucky earrings I may never take off. I’m going to the store, then making dinner.”

She gave them both a squeeze.

“If it tastes horrible? Lie.”





Chapter Eight



The depth of stupidity, laced with gullibility, in the human race never failed to amaze him.

And delight him.

After all, without those lovely weaknesses, how would he live his life in the style he deserved?

Gavin Rozwell had learned early on the female of the species offered almost endless opportunities to exploit and manipulate. The method, of course, depended on the mark. For some, it only required good looks.

He had those, and had been assured of it all his life.

Others? Add charm—and he could sprinkle it on, pile it on, shovel it out as the mark and situation called for.

He had that talent.

Then again, some liked the rough stuff and no problem. But he kept the rough on the easy side. Until the end.

There were those who fell for the lone wolf, the brooder, the poet, the laid back, or the tightly wound.

He had a million personas he could wear like a bespoke suit.

Sob stories provided openings for certain types. Try the recent widower, or the cuckolded husband.

The trick? Be who the target wanted you to be.

And he excelled at it.

Again, he’d learned from an early age, watching his own mother fall for line after line. She’d truly believed people held inside them a core of good—no matter how deeply buried.

Nobody, according to good old Mom, was purely bad, not through and through. And in her world evil hadn’t existed.

God made the world, after all, and God was good.

She’d believed—no matter how often she’d been knocked flat—kindness triumphed.

His mother, the saint.

His mother, the idiot.

She’d considered him a gift—her handsome, clever little boy. Sure, his father had knocked her around on the rare occasions he’d paid any attention at all. Then came the excuses, from her—never him. He had a hard day, he gets upset, I shouldn’t have said anything.

And when he’d dumped them, taking even the money she’d tucked away under her cheap, serviceable white bras and panties, she’d made excuses.

He loves us too much to stay.

So he—her gift—saw weakness, a woman’s weakness, ripe for mining.

For her, he became the loving, devoted son while she worked menial jobs for assholes who barely paid her enough to make rent. A simple clutch of dandelions or a heart cut out of construction paper ensured she waited on him, hand and foot.

And either didn’t notice, or never mentioned, the five or ten bucks he’d take out of the coffee can she kept tucked in the kitchen cabinet.

He did well in school. He had a good brain, comported himself with absolute politeness. And used the trust he’d carefully built to run short cons on students and teachers alike.

He had a knack for computers and, honing it, destroyed his eighth-grade history teacher’s life.

Bastard gave him a B-minus!

The hacking proved remarkably simple once he got going. Loading up Mr. Stockman’s home computer with child porn had presented a challenge he’d accepted.

Stockman lost his job, his wife, and his children and did six years in a federal pen.

There’s your B-minus, asshole.

His speech as valedictorian at his high school graduation brought his mother—and others—to tears. He accepted a scholarship to Michigan State. Though he’d had several colleges to choose from, he’d claimed he needed to stay close to home, near his mother in Detroit, so he could drive back regularly to help her.

He did so, faithfully, waiting until the spring of his second semester to make her his first kill.

A shock! A tragedy! The senseless murder of a forty-one-year-old woman during a break-in of her rattrap of a rental house while her only son, her loving and devoted son, slept ninety miles away at college.

Her nineteen-year-old son, who’d broken to pieces at her funeral. And at nineteen, of age, clear of any risk of foster homes or legal guardians, he’d tasted freedom.

He cashed in her life insurance policy, one he’d convinced her to take out—only fifteen dollars a month for peace of mind—and Gavin Rozwell, a natural-born psychopath, hit the road.

He thrived.

For a while he just traveled, lived high. But the insurance money couldn’t last forever.

He ran simple cons for a while, and that proved fun and profitable. Then he moved to identity theft, and that brought more profit and satisfaction.

But it lacked a genuine thrill. No big kick. No wild buzz.

So while he traveled, he planned, he plotted, and found his true calling.

He knew he killed his mother over and over with the termination of each mark. He’d aced his psyche courses, after all. But so what? He enjoyed it, each time, every time. Ending them, looking into their shocked eyes when he choked the life from them, brought back the moment of looking into his mother’s.

Who said you can’t go home again?

And it served as the culmination of the thrill, the pleasure of taking everything they valued first, just the way his father had taken everything his mother had valued.

Well, except for him, of course.

Now, on a lovely spring morning, going by Oliver Salk, he sat on the terrace of his hotel suite in Maui, taking in the air, the view while he sipped his second cup of coffee.

In the twelve years since he’d murdered his mother, he’d lived well, lived high. The quarter-million term policy had given him the means and the opportunity to pursue the lifestyle he’d been born for.