Chapter 24
Chapter Twenty-Four
“Monsters can be everywhere. Sometimes, they can even be right in front of you. And you don’t even see them because they’re wearing the masks of loved ones. I think those might just be the worst monsters of all.”
– Emerson Marlowe
“Hello, Mother.”
“Emerson, darling!” Her mother came across the luxury suite on a quick glide.
Effortless. Graceful. After all, she’d once been a prima ballerina.
She air-kissed Emerson’s right cheek. Then her left.
“How wonderful to see you! I was planning to leave town tomorrow, heading up to D.C., and your timing is perfect.” She beamed at Emerson even as she pulled her forward into the hotel suite.
“You’ve come to your senses? Decided to leave this awful experiment behind? ”
“Not exactly.” She’d been standing in the open doorway of the presidential suite. Her mother’s eager pull had taken her over the threshold and allowed Gray to move in behind her. “I didn’t come alone.”
Her mother immediately dropped her hold on Emerson. Her head jerked toward Gray. “ Agent Stone.” An arctic greeting.
“Hello, Senator Marlowe. Mind if we have a moment of your time?” he drawled.
“I’m never too busy for my daughter.” She sniffed. Turned away from the door. Motioned for them to follow her.
She was on the top floor of the ritzy hotel.
A high-rise in downtown Atlanta. Gray had needed to flash his FBI credentials in order to get access to her secure floor.
Emerson had gone to the door first once they actually arrived at the suite because she’d known her mother would look through the peephole before allowing anyone inside.
Emerson had understood that her mother would open the door for her. No hesitation.
“Where’s Owen?” Emerson asked as they entered the glamorous sitting room. She’d expected him to be there, waiting.
“Oh, he’s out taking care of some business. Running a few errands.” A wave of her hand. Casual. Her fingers skimmed over her pearl necklace before Maxine sat on the plush, white couch. “What is this meeting about?” She patted the cushion next to her. “Emerson, sit.”
She did not. Emerson remained standing. Her gaze swept the room. To the right, a white door was closed. The bedroom door? Slowly, her stare returned to her mother. “Nathaniel Hadaway was arrested tonight.”
Surprise flashed on Maxine’s face. Surprise and a hint of worry. “For what?”
“Breaking into my condo. Destroying property. Turns out, he’s been stalking me for quite some time.”
Maxine’s hand covered her mouth. A brief expression of deliberate shock before her fingers dropped. “I am stunned. Horrified. Your own lover…?”
Yes, like that didn’t make her stomach churn.
But her mother seemed to rally quickly as she noted, “Well, you did pick him. We all make mistakes with our partners.” A telling glance at Gray and a bit too much emphasis on partners.
“Yes,” Emerson agreed. “We do.”
Gray was right at her side. “We know who ordered Nathaniel to terrorize Emerson.”
“Ordered?” Maxine frowned.
“Nathaniel was on your payroll,” Gray continued in a voice that seethed with tension and fury. “You funded his research. You wanted him to keep tabs on Emerson and report back to you. Just like you wanted Rylan Tate to tell you everything that’s happening at the Bureau.”
Maxine reached for her pearls. “Rylan? The name doesn’t ring a bell.”
“It should. Right before he was hauled away in an ambulance tonight, he was talking plenty about you and how you paid him to give every secret he could discover to you ,” Gray snapped.
Her hand fisted around the pearls. “What ambulance?”
“It was a big night,” Emerson revealed. Big and exhausting, and it wasn’t even close to being over. “Rylan was shot.” Multiple times. “Nathaniel tried to attack Gray with a knife. Nathaniel confessed that he really enjoyed the stalking job he’d been hired to do on me…”
Maxine paled.
“And he liked it so much, in fact, that he was planning to kill Gray. Then I suspect he would have killed me. He loved being immersed in the criminal world. Wanted to see what it was like to actually take a life.”
“Emerson!” Maxine leapt to her feet. “I had no idea— he planned to kill you? ” She seemed genuinely shocked. And her hand still fisted around the pearls.
“He was told how to terrify me.” Emerson was surprised her voice came out so steady. “He was given the alarm code to my home—an alarm system that Owen installed. Nathaniel was told to break mirrors. To write messages. He was told my schedule, so he’d know when to follow me. Exactly where to go.”
Maxine shook her head. “Emerson…”
“Nathaniel was intent on hurting me, but he couldn’t have been the person who sliced my neck when I was seventeen.
He wasn’t even in the country back then.
That attacker had to be someone else. And, the more I thought about it, I realized that Nathaniel couldn’t have been the one who broke into my dorm in college.
Or who terrorized me in med school. He was far away in those instances.
Gray checked. We double-checked . Nathaniel is making my life hell now, but someone else had to do it before. ” Just saying the words hurt so much.
She’d been terrorized for so long.
Gray’s arm brushed against her. She pulled in a breath. Steadied herself.
“Someone else had to do it before.” Emerson was amazed that her voice came out so level.
“Someone who wanted me to be afraid. Someone who wanted me controlled. Someone who wanted me always looking for threats. Being paranoid. Telling others that I was being hunted… hunted .” She nodded.
“That’s what you told me that my father used to say, remember? That he felt hunted. ”
“Your father was a-a disturbed individual, Emerson. Deeply disturbed.”
Her hands curled into fists. Her nails bit into her palms. “But what if he wasn’t?”
Maxine’s lips quivered. “What?”
“She said…” Gray’s voice. Angry. “ What if he wasn’t?
What if someone was playing fucking mind games with him?
Making her father believe he was seeing things that weren’t there?
Pushing him to the edge? Making his own family members doubt him?
So that when he died, there wouldn’t be so many questions.
So that a murder could look just like a suicide. ”
Maxine’s hand jerked. The strand of pearls snapped.
Some flew into the air. Some hit the floor.
Rolled. Maxine shook her head. Over and over and over.
“No, no, no. That’s not what happened.” Then her head whipped toward the door on the right.
The closed, white door. The bedroom door.
“Tell them!” Maxine’s voice rose. “ Tell them that’s not what happened ! ”
Gray tensed, and from the corner of her eye, Emerson saw him pull out his gun.
The bedroom door opened. Slowly. Creaking.
Owen Porter stood there, clad in a white robe. Hair wet. Face grim. Sad. He stared straight at Maxine. “I’m sorry.”
Maxine fell. Her knees seemed to give way, and she hit the floor.
Emerson and Gray had known that Owen was in the suite. After all, her mother’s lover was always close.
“He was in the way.” Owen remained in the open doorway. “You said a divorce wasn’t possible back then, that it would cause a scandal if our affair was discovered. It was an easy way out for you. I planned it all perfectly.”
This man had killed her father. “He never had schizophrenia, did he?”
Owen’s head slowly angled toward her, like a snake, following prey. “You saw the files on him. Read reports from shrinks.”
Yes, she’d read them. Over and over. Always, with terror in her heart.
What if I’m like him? That fear had haunted her for so many years.
And all along, Owen had known the truth.
I never needed to fear that fate. But she had needed to fear the man pretending to be a protector for her and her mother.
“With the right pressure, those files can be faked. I’m sure you knew how to apply the right pressure. ”
The lines on Owen’s face deepened.
“You kept me afraid all of these years. You knew I feared turning out just like him…and you had someone terrorize me. You set the scene so I would question my own sanity.” She shook her head. “How many times? How many people?”
“Emerson…”
Maxine began to cry.
“Your mother wanted you close,” Owen explained with a voice that cracked. “I was just trying to—to control the situation.”
Rage built inside of Emerson. Battling with her grief. “You wanted to control me.”
Once more, Gray’s arm brushed against her. “Who the fuck cut Emerson’s throat when she was seventeen?”
A gasp escaped her mother. Her tear-streaked face turned to Emerson, then back to Owen.
“He’s long dead,” Owen assured them. “Some crazed protestor who wanted Maxine to change her vote in the senate. I eliminated him the day after the attack. No one will ever find his remains.”
Nausea rolled inside of her. All of these years… Owen had pretended to care. To be—to be family. And he’d made her doubt her own sanity. Made her so afraid.
“Emerson…” Her mother’s weak whisper. “I didn’t know. I didn’t know! ”
Owen advanced. His attention was on the senator. “I love you,” he told Maxine. “I did all of this for you. You wanted your husband gone. I made him go. You wanted your daughter close, so I kept her controlled. You wanted?—”
“Hey, asshole!” Gray called out.
Owen jerked. His head snapped toward Gray.
“You don’t control shit,” Gray informed him. “Now put your fucking hands up because you’re under arrest for murder. Multiple damn murders.”
That was when the rest of the FBI agents swarmed. They rushed into the suite because Emerson and Gray had been wearing wires. They’d just caught every bit of the former SEAL’s confession.
Owen was shoved to the floor. Cuffed.
Her mother kept crying. Begging Emerson to forgive her. Saying that she hadn’t known. That she couldn’t have known. And Emerson…
Owen looked up at her.
“Go to hell,” she told him because that bastard had killed her father.
He would pay.