Chapter 78

CHAPTER 78

D EVINE WASN’T SURE WHAT WOULD await him when he met up with Glass. With Betsy missing, the man might actually try to murder him.

And maybe I deserve it.

He got off the elevator and ran the gauntlet of guards, all of whom looked like they wanted to punch Devine’s ticket permanently. Word no doubt had gotten around that Devine had lost the boss’s niece.

But did I lose the boss’s niece?

Glass was standing by the window. His clothes were rumpled, and if he’d had hair, Devine supposed that would have been in disarray, too. As he turned to Devine, the man looked like he’d aged a decade.

“Sit,” he said curtly.

Devine did so.

Glass took his time coming around to take a seat opposite him. “Tell me why I shouldn’t put a bullet in your brain right now, Devine.”

In response, Devine took out his phone, opened his photos, and tossed it across. “Take a trip down memory lane, Danny. Swipe from the right, last three pictures.”

Glass nimbly caught the phone, but didn’t seem inclined to look at the screen.

“The sooner we get this squared away, the sooner I can get Betsy back.”

“How are you going to do that?” barked Glass.

Devine flicked his gaze at the phone.

Glass looked down at the first photo on the screen.

Devine said, “The Glass family. Short mom, short dad, you at medium height, and your ‘sister’ an Amazon. And a redhead when all of you are dark. Swipe.”

Glass did so.

“Official certificate. Your parents adopted Alice when she was an infant. She’s not your sister by blood, but by adoption. Swipe.”

Glass’s shaky finger moved the screen to the last photo.

“Dwayne’s health record.” Devine paused. “He was incapable of fathering children. And yet there’s Betsy.”

Glass tossed back the phone, his eyes glistening.

Devine said, “I also found out that your family and Perry Rollins hail from the same town in Ohio. When Rollins first approached me, he told me that he wasn’t always from the Seattle area.”

“Stop, Devine.”

“In fact, he was living in the same neighborhood where Alice had moved to. This was after Alice married Dwayne, and they were living in the house she had been renting with a roommate. Dwayne was off looking for work when you came home on leave and visited her.”

“I said, stop.”

“That test on Dwayne was done over a year before Betsy was born. They’d obviously tried to conceive, even looked at IVF, but then they found out Dwayne was firing blanks.”

“Don’t go there,” Glass said grimly.

Devine sat back. “Rollins had already been arrested for being a Peeping Tom in that neighborhood. Took pictures of a woman in her bathroom naked.”

Glass looked up at him. “You don’t want to go there.”

Devine sat forward. “I don’t give a damn what happened between you and Alice, Danny. But if you’d been straight with me from the beginning, I wouldn’t have been spinning my damn wheels over Rollins’s murder. Did you have him taken out because he was trying to blackmail you?”

Glass didn’t answer. He just looked away, the crushing stress the man was under heavily stamped into every feature.

“Or did you have him killed because he was trying to sell your secret to someone else?”

Glass now looked up at him. He seemed drained of all fight, of all energy.

“I didn’t need to kill him, Devine, because someone already knew about my secret.”

“Who?”

“Dwayne Odom.”

A surprised Devine sat back. “You’re going to need to explain that.”

Glass glanced out the window. “Alice was technically my sister, but I was so much older and we weren’t related by blood.” He turned to Devine. “So it was just different.”

“Different how?” asked Devine sharply.

“I never did anything like what you’re probably thinking, Devine. I never, ever molested Alice. Never thought about it. But when I came back on leave years later, she wasn’t ten anymore. She was a woman. A beautiful one. That was one reason my mother and some friends got her out of the house. My father… Well, let’s just say he had no problem thinking of Alice as… not his daughter.”

“And?”

“And she married Dwayne while I was in the Army. They wanted to have a baby but…”

“… but Dwayne couldn’t. So why not adopt?”

“It wasn’t so easy at the time, I guess. And Alice… Alice wanted to carry the child. It was important to her.”

“You could have been a sperm donor,” suggested Devine.

“That was very expensive. And I didn’t have any money to help them with that.” He slowly shook his head. “Anyway, Alice wrote and asked me if I would… help… with her getting pregnant. She said it would mean a lot to her.”

“Okay,” Devine said awkwardly.

Glass glared at him and barked, “I know it all sounds weird as shit. But I would have done anything for her.”

“So…?”

“So I got leave and flew home. Dwayne was out of town looking for work. We… It was… well… not what I thought it would be. We were both… uncomfortable. But the important thing was she got pregnant.”

“And Perry Rollins got evidence of this? How?”

“I don’t know, Devine. I’d never heard of the guy until you mentioned him. Maybe he took pictures of us like he did to the lady in the bathroom. But I don’t know if he even knew who we were. Pics of two adults in bed? Not sure how valuable that would be. But you’re wrong about one thing—he never came around trying to blackmail me.”

“He did find out about you two at some point, and when you became who you are, he figured the pictures could be valuable.”

“How do you know for sure he found out about us?”

“Because he said some seemingly crazy words to me right before he died that now make sense.”

“What words?”

“Cuckoo and gas .”

Glass shook his head. “Not following?”

“Try cuckolded and Glass .”

The man sat back, realization spreading over his features.

“Rollins clearly knew that Alice and Dwayne were married and living together. He didn’t know who you were but caught you in bed with Mrs. Odom. Before he could do anything with it, I think he was arrested for taking photos of the woman and went to prison for a while. When he got out the Odoms had long since moved.”

“Whatever,” Glass said dismissively, clearly losing interest in this subject.

“You said Dwayne knew about what had happened with you and Alice? How?”

“Alice told him. He knew he wasn’t the father, obviously, but I don’t think he ever imagined that I would be the one. And he wasn’t happy about it when he found out. Probably the reason why he hated my guts. But… the dumbass made a big mistake.”

Devine sat forward again, something dawning on him. “The people who bought them the car and trailer home. He sold your secret to them ?”

Glass nodded.

“Who were they?”

“The same ones you’re after. They were looking for extra dirt to keep me in line and found a willing source in old Dwayne.”

It all seemed to click in Devine’s brain. “So 12/24/65 paid off Dwayne to get your secret. But how would they even have known he knew something like that about you?”

“I think Dwayne actually went out and shopped what he knew. These people, who were on the lookout for anything having to do with me, for obvious reasons, found out. And paid him off.”

Devine thought this through. “Okay, then later they found out Rollins was trying to sell the same secret and they took him out. Otherwise their hold over you would be diluted.”

“ That’s another reason why I haven’t committed to cooperating with the feds, even with them dropping the RICO case.”

Devine said, “You don’t want Betsy to know that you’re her father?”

Glass looked up at him, tears now sliding down his cheeks. “She loved Dwayne. He was her real father, not me. And if she finds out that ‘Uncle Danny’ slept with her mom, my sister , even if she was adopted? She’ll hate my guts. I can survive a lot, Devine. And I have.” He shook his head. “But I can’t survive that.”

“But why would they kill Dwayne and Alice if they had already paid them off?”

“Dwayne, like I said, made a big mistake.”

“Which was?”

“He told me he was going to go public with the truth of my fathering Betsy. To make sure she and I would never have a relationship. These people found out and offered him a shitload of money to lure him to Ricketts. Then they killed him. And Alice. I’m not sure how it was done, though.”

“They were poisoned by a chemist turned waitress at the restaurant where they had lunch. She was part of 12/24. But how could they know they would stop there to eat?”

“They were told to eat there by someone before the meeting with the two men. They said they would leave a message at the restaurant telling Dwayne where to meet the men with the money.”

“If you knew all this, why didn’t you stop it?” demanded Devine.

Glass retorted, “Because I didn’t know before! I only found out after .”

“From whom?”

“I got somebody on the inside with these people. She told me.”

“ She? Let me guess—Mercedes King?”

Glass looked surprised. “How’d you know?”

“She’s ex-CIA and is obviously hedging her bets by playing both sides. I’ve been told that Ricketts is the mother ship for 12/24/65, but I’d like some corroboration on that.”

Glass gave him a sideways glance that showed more than a glint of dread. “There are actually about a half dozen ‘mother ships’ around the country that I know of, and Ricketts is one of them.”

“Right now I’m only concerned with the one in Ricketts.”

“Why?”

“Because I think they have Betsy there.”

“Are you sure?” Glass said sharply.

“I’m not sure of anything, Danny. But it makes the most sense. They control that town. They take her somewhere else, even by private plane, or another country, it gives someone who’s not on their payroll an opportunity to see something and say something.”

Glass stood. “Then we need to go and get her.”

“No, I need to go and get her. It was my job to protect her. It’s my job to get her back. And they have every incentive to kill you, Danny. So you need to stay on the sidelines behind a wall of federal lawmen.”

Glass bellowed, “Why should I trust you, Devine? You let them take Betsy.”

“Think back to that battlefield outside Baghdad. You got the commendation. And you earned it. But you saw what I did there. You know what I’m capable of, don’t you?”

The men did a stare-down for a long moment before Glass plopped back in the chair.

“And we have to make sure you’re around to testify and save the country.”

Glass eyed him. “What, you think it’s my penance? To save the good old U.S. of A.?” he said scornfully.

“Everybody has a penance that needs to be paid, Danny.”

“Even you?”

“Even me.”

“Is that why you got out of the Army early? Was that your penance?”

“Let’s just agree that it was,” said Devine. “But if you’re keeping score, and I know you are, saving the good old U.S. of A. isn’t a bad way to go out.”