Chapter 31
“You should be lying down,” Tean said. “What if he cracked a vertebra?”
Jem shook his head. He was upright, but only barely, and he stood with one shoulder canted.
He was breathing again, which was the main thing.
There had been a moment after he’d hit the floor when his face had gone white—a combination of disorientation and lack of oxygen and the sympathetic nervous system trying to go into overdrive—and he didn’t look much better now.
Tean tried to help him walk as they made their way down the hall, but Jem shook him off. He paused next to the alcove with the ice machine long enough to drop the key card. The poor woman inside was still cleaning up their mess.
“Let’s go back to our room,” Tean said.
Jem shook his head.
At the elevator, he jabbed the down button.
“How much does it hurt?” Tean asked.
Jem didn’t answer.
“Is it your shoulder?” Tean asked. “Take off your coat.”
But when he reached for Jem, the blond man held up a warning hand. He didn’t say anything. He just stood there, holding up his hand and breathing through his nose.
Tean gave up on the coat.
They rode down the elevator in silence.
When they got to the lobby, Jem started for the exit.
“Where are we going?” Tean asked.
“To talk to her.”
“Okay.” Jem’s stride was shorter than usual, clipped on one side. Color was leaching from his face except for two red spots that burned behind his beard. Tean tried not to, but he couldn’t help asking, “Why?”
“Because she might know if Gerald noticed the missing money. She might know how Gerald and Stephen met. She might know something about Stephen that isn’t pure fucking bullshit.
I don’t know, Tean, there are still two children who are missing.
Maybe she has an idea about what happened to them.
How does that sound? Is that okay with you? ”
“Yes.” Tean was surprised by how small his voice was. “Of course.”
Jem cut his next step short. He stood there, still dropping his shoulder, sweat glistening on his forehead. His mouth moved like he might say something. And then he started walking again.
Outside, the sound of their steps was brittle, and on the pistes, the wind picked up loose snow and carried it, so that Tean could almost fool himself into thinking he heard sand striking a tent.
The cold cut through their coats, but he only noticed it in a clinical way.
He followed Jem along the covered walkways.
The sun gave the illusion that the day must be warming, but in the blue wash of shadow, Tean felt no sign of it.
When they stepped into the chalet, the sudden silence closed around them like a noose. The interior was dark except for glimmers of light that made their way in around the edges of the curtains. The coffee smelled burned now.
“Hello?” Jem called as he followed the short entryway. “Anybody home?”
Movement and the clip of steps made Tean glance up to the loft.
Brigitte was letting herself out of the bedroom that Maeve and Milo had been using.
When she saw them, something flickered on her expression, and it reminded Tean of Jem—of the way he looked sometimes when he was on high alert.
When he was playing one of his games. When he wasn’t Jem at all, because he was someone else.
“What happened?” she said, hurrying to the short staircase that led down to the main area. “Something happened.”
Not, Tean thought, Did you find them?
“We ran into Stephen,” Jem said. He tried to straighten his stooped posture, but a grimace tightened his face, and he sagged down again. “We need to talk.”
“Are you okay? You’re hurt. What did he do to you?”
Jem shook his head, but by then, Brigitte was fussing over him, easing him out of his coat, making small sounds of commiseration, asking questions, pressing Jem into one of the chairs.
“You can barely stand up,” she said as she hurried to the kitchenette. And then, to Tean, “Why’d you let him walk all the way over here?”
Tean opened his mouth, but Jem answered, “We needed to talk to you.”
“You should be lying down.” Brigitte pulled an ice pack from the freezer. “Gerald’s knee,” she said as though that were an explanation. “You could have called me, sweetheart. I would have come to you.”
Even in the chalet’s darkened interior, the deepening color in Jem’s cheeks was unmistakable.
Somewhere inside Tean, an alarm began to ring.
“Sit here.” Brigitte pressed on Jem’s good shoulder like she was making sure he wouldn’t do anything silly like try to get up.
The ice pack, now wrapped in a towel, she pressed against his other shoulder.
“Do you need anything? Gerald has some hydrocodone he takes when his knee bothers him. Let me get you one of those.”
“No,” Tean said.
“That would be great,” Jem said.
“Plain Tylenol would be better.” Tean tried to catch Jem’s eye. “Or ibuprofen.”
Brigitte started down the hall, and Jem called after her, “Whatever you think is best.”
She came back with a prescription vial in one hand. “I think you should take a Vicodin, darling. You’re obviously in pain.”
“Jem,” Tean began.
“I hurt my shoulder,” Jem said. He held out his hand, accepted a pill, and dry-swallowed it. Then he closed his eyes and leaned back, adjusting the ice pack between his shoulder and the chair.
Brigitte watched him, her hands folded at her waist. As though she’d reached some sort of conclusion, she said, “You really do look terrible, Jeremiah. Should I call someone?”
Jem gave a weary shake of his head, but he said, “Did you know Stephen was stealing from you and Gerald?”
“What? But that’s impossible.”
Shock. Disbelief. A hint of rising outrage as the possibility of the impossible began to surface. It was perfect. It would have been perfect. If Tean hadn’t heard a version of it the third time he found a reserve of McDonald’s hash browns stashed at the back of the refrigerator.
The alarm in Tean’s head got louder.
“You didn’t know?” Jem asked. His eyes flicked open. His body was still loose, almost boneless in the chair.
“Of course not. Are you sure? Stephen’s such a wonderful young man. He helps Gerald with everything.”
“That’s how he’s managed to do it, we think,” Jem said. “Charging people different amounts. Funneling the money through a separate bank account so he could take his cut.”
The bank account.
Tean took out his phone and opened the browser. He searched for Utah’s LLC registry.
“I can’t believe this,” Brigitte was saying. “Stephen’s practically family.”
“How well do you know him?”
“He’s worked with Gerald for over a year.”
“But what about you?”
“I don’t know. I thought I knew him. We talked quite a bit. He was always over at the house to help Gerald with something.”
“Did you ever talk to him when Gerald wasn’t around?”
The pause was artful—just long enough to be believable. “I don’t think so. Why?”
“What was the nature of your relationship with Stephen?” Tean asked as he clicked through the registry. He kept Brigitte in the corner of his eye.
“He was Gerald’s personal assistant.”
“I’m asking about your relationship with him.”
“That’s all. I knew him through Gerald.”
“But what about—”
“Tean,” Jem said.
“—after you met him? Was there another element to your relationship with him?”
“Tean,” Jem said again, more loudly this time.
“I don’t know what you mean,” Brigitte said.
Tean glanced up. “Was there a romantic aspect to your relationship with Stephen?”
“Of course not. That’s impossible.”
“Because several people mentioned that you and Stephen spent a lot of time together while Gerald was busy working.”
“That’s not true.”
“So, they’re all mistaken?”
“Let it go,” Jem said.
“I don’t know if they’re mistaken or if they’re lying.” Brigitte took a few steps sideways and put the sofa between her and Tean. “But there wasn’t anything romantic about my relationship with Stephen. I told you he’s like family. He’s young enough to be my son.”
“For many women, that might be an argument in his favor.”
“Yeah, we’re done with this,” Jem said to Tean. To Brigitte, he said, “Do you know how Stephen and Gerald met?”
“Stephen was one of Gerald’s missionaries. Gerald counseled him with his struggle with, well, you know. And when Gerald wanted to help more young men, he reached out to Stephen.”
“That’s impossible,” Tean said, “because Stephen didn’t speak Spanish. How could he not speak Spanish after spending two years in Argentina?”
“I don’t know,” Brigitte said. “That was all before Gerald and I married. He was a mission president with Lynn, his first wife.”
“But you can see how it doesn’t make any sense for Stephen to claim to have served a mission in Argentina but not speak any Spanish?”
“I don’t know what you’re asking me. I don’t speak Spanish. It’s not like I ever asked him.”
With a warning look for Tean, Jem said, “Did Gerald ever say anything about Stephen? Or was Stephen the one who told that story about the mission?”
“You know—” She tapped her lips. “It might have been Stephen. I remember Gerald introducing me to Stephen when he hired him. But I don’t remember who told me that Stephen had been one of his missionaries. I think you’re right, my love. I think it must have been Stephen.”
“But why would Gerald go along with it?” Tean asked. “He would have known Stephen was lying.”
“Maybe he didn’t know,” Jem said.
Tean forced himself to take a deep breath. His phone, forgotten in his hand, timed out, and the screen went dark. “Jem, I think maybe I should be the one to ask Brigitte these questions.”
In answer, Jem turned back to his mom and said, “We know Stephen was working with someone else. Not only because Stephen couldn’t have killed Tafton; somebody else was getting a cut of the money that was coming in.”
Thoughts started to flash on like a string of Christmas lights, one after another.
Somebody who was involved in the conversion therapy group.
Somebody Stephen trusted.
Somebody who needed a nest egg in case things got bad.