Deadlock (FBI Thriller #24)(95)

She shook her head, held the package tighter.

“Give it to me, Rebekah.”

She shook her head again. “No.”

He moved fast, pulled the package out of her arms, and stepped back. He walked quickly to the marquetry table, picked a pair of scissors out of the drawer, and began cutting the bubble wrap, peeling it away. He said without looking up, “There’s no need to get hysterical, Rebekah. We’re only going to see what your dad sent you.”

He lifted a plaster of paris bust of her father from its nest of padding, held it up to the light. “A bust of your father? Wait, I see now. The poem said the key is in his head.”

Rebekah said quietly, “The bust is mine, Rich, not yours. Don’t smash it.”

“That’s exactly what we need to do.”

“Rich, no!”

He slammed the bust against the marble apron in front of the fireplace. It shattered loud as a gunshot, spewing up shards of plaster.

Rebekah cried out, dropped to her knees, and began to pick through the plaster pieces. He saw the key first, leaned down, and grabbed it. “The key was in the old man’s head. How very fitting. Without the poem, we would never have known it was there, and the bust might have stayed whole forever.” He left her there, on her knees, her father’s bust in pieces around her.

Slowly, Rebekah got to her feet. She watched him examine the key under a table lamp. He looked up, saw her, and smiled. “It’s a small brass key, common, nothing on it, no indication what it’s to, maybe a safe-deposit key, but there’s no ID, no serial numbers.” Still smiling, he carried the key to where she stood stiff, so angry she had no words. “Do you know what this key is to, Rebekah?”

She could make out two tiny wavy lines along the curved top of the key, one red, the other blue, barely visible to the naked eye. She felt her heart leap. She knew, yes, she knew exactly where those bearer bonds were hidden. She looked up at her husband, kept her voice calm, submissive. “It is what you see, Rich, a plain little brass key. I have no idea what it opens.”

“Another secret inside a secret? That’s a lot like him. Will they ever stop?” He paused a moment, studied her face, studied the key again. He said slowly, “But I don’t believe you, Rebekah.”

And suddenly she knew, knew it in her heart. “When did Gemma first talk to you, Rich, ask for your help? At the funeral?”

“What? Are you accusing me of something now? What’s wrong with you, Rebekah?”

She looked up into his face. She saw impatience, calculation. She said slowly, “You and I talked much more about my father and his stories after he died. I thought you were being thoughtful and supportive, because I was grieving for him. I’ve been quite an idiot, haven’t I? Gemma knew I would never tell her, but she knew you from way back in the nineties when you interned for my father. Did she see you as a kindred spirit, smart enough, sly enough, to help her find that money without my even knowing about it? Is that what you did to me, Rich?”

He fanned his hands in front of him, a gesture meant to reassure. “Whatever Gemma did, sweetheart, you mustn’t ever doubt I love you. I asked you to marry me because I wanted you in my life forever, and I still do.”

“You can’t hide talking with her, Rich. There’ll be phone records, emails.”

“I’m not going to hide anything, Rebekah. Yes, Gemma did call me, told me about what one of the private duty nurses had told her about this poem you’d recited to your dad. Listen to me, Rebekah, Gemma knew you would never talk to her about it, and she doubted you’d say the poem again to anyone. And yes, she assured me a great deal of money was at stake. She didn’t know how much, but she thought it was immense. Believe me, I thought long and hard about what to do, and in the end I decided it was in everyone’s interest to find that money. It’s meant for you, Rebekah, all of it.”

She said dispassionately, “The séance with Zoltan, that would have been Gemma’s idea. But I remember how supportive you were when Zoltan asked to see me. I was expecting you to resist my going, but you didn’t; you encouraged me. You knew, didn’t you? You knew Gemma hired Zoltan to try to manipulate me into believing I was speaking to my dead father, in her ridiculous living room.”

“You never spoke of the poem, and Gemma believed Zoltan could convince anyone of anything. I saw no harm in it, though I warned her you have no belief in the occult, mediums in particular.”

“Zoltan didn’t believe I’d return, but I told you that, Rich, that same night. And the very next day, those two men tried to kidnap me. Was it you who hired those men so they could force me to tell them?”

He looked appalled, angry. “Listen to me, that’s crazy. I love you. I’m your husband. I never hired anyone to kidnap you. I had nothing to do with that. I knew nothing about it, and after I found out what happened, I called Gemma. She denied it. All right, I didn’t believe her. But you can believe this. I told her if anything like that ever happened again, I’d tell you everything. You’re my wife. I protected you.”

“You said you didn’t believe her, yet you still didn’t tell me?”

He said nothing. Rebekah looked at the face of the man she thought she loved, and now that face was someone else entirely, a stranger, a lying stranger.

“And then Zoltan was attacked, after the FBI was onto her. Which of you arranged for her to be shot?”