Delusion in Death (In Death #35)(107)

“Too late. His name’s out. Commander, I’ve got to get on this.”

“Go. I’ll be there myself as soon as I can.”

“I’ve got her basic data,” Peabody said on the run. “She was reported killed in the attack where her daughter—now Audrey Hubbard—was abducted. Her remains were cremated, per her wishes, and as was more usual in those circumstances.”

“Cause of death,” Eve snapped as she shoved onto an elevator.

“Who ID’d the body?”

“It’s going to take longer to—”

“Gunshot to the face,” Teasdale stated, reading her PPC. “Both William and Gina MacMillon were identified by a neighbor, an Anna Blicks, who died of natural causes in 2048.”

“Face blown away. Your neighbor IDs by body type, hair, clothes, jewelry, and because you’re in the house, because who the f**k else would you be? Goddamn it. She started him up. That was the trigger. Not finding out about the grandfather, not initially. But the grandmother.”

“Why would she fake her own death?” Peabody demanded.

“Let me think. Let me think. Put extra guards on Callaway. Now!”

“Menzini might have arranged it,” Teasdale considered. “He wanted her and the child back, located her, killed someone in her place so no one would look for her.”

“No. No. Women didn’t matter that much. The kid—she’s his blood, and part of the new world order, part of the new beginning. But not the mother. She did it. She went home for something, under Menzini’s orders, had to convince her husband she was contrite—or she’d been brainwashed, abused. She’s terrified, and there’s this baby. He opens the door.”

“For all those months?” Teasdale began.

“Menzini needed someone on the outside, someone who could funnel him money, supplies, information. How the hell do I know, I wasn’t there. Isn’t that how it works—moles, sleepers, double f**king agents?”

She bulled off the elevator, tore toward EDD.

“In the lab, Dallas.” Fast on his feet, McNab passed her, led the way.

She spotted Feeney through the glass, pacing, his hair in wild silver and gray wires, and Callendar, her face grim in contrast to the sassy butt wiggle she performed in front of a swipe screen.

She didn’t see Roarke until she’d pushed through the doors behind McNab. He huddled at a comp station, working manually and by voice. The muttered Irish curses she caught meant he battled the work.

“I’m sorry, Lieutenant.” Callendar broke off the work and wiggle. “If I’d been faster—”

“Forget that. Run it through.”

“Once we broke the code, I took the journal entries. I was taking my time because … we had him. The first bit was just long, rambling bullshit about how he was special, different, important. It was just full of the E and the Go, and how now he knew why he’d always known it. Then he started talking about the grandmother. She set up a meeting, posing as a client, St. Regis Hotel bar. You should read it for yourself, Dallas.”

She ordered the segment on screen.

She was beautiful for a woman of her age. A strong face with piercing blue eyes. Her jewelry was understated, but good. I could see she was a woman of means and taste. She ordered a martini, and it suited her. I admit I found her fascinating even before I knew the truth. She kept her voice, strong like her face, low and intimate. I had to lean toward her to hear.

She asked me what I knew about my heritage. It seemed a strange question, but clients often ask strange questions, and she was picking up the tab. I told her of my grandfather—the war hero bit always impresses. How he and my grandmother had left England for America with my mother to start a new life.

Before I could begin on my parents—I always embellish there as they’re tedious, ordinary people in reality—she told me everything I knew was a lie.

She told me her name—Gina MacMillon—not the name she’d given me to arrange the meeting. I had some vague recollection of that name, but didn’t, right away, connect it to the woman I’d been told was my great-aunt who died in the Urbans.

She, this woman with the compelling eyes, told me she was my true grandmother. That my grandfather had been a great man. Not the soldier who’d done no more than follow the orders of other men, but a great man. A visionary, a leader, and a martyr.

I shouldn’t have believed her, but I did. It explained so much. She and this great man had worked together, fought together, had been lovers. The child they’d created, my mother, had been stolen, and she herself, taken and kept prisoner by her former husband. She’d tried to escape, many times, with the child. Eventually, her captor beat her, left her for dead. Though she tried to find her way back to the child, back to my grandfather, the world was in pieces. She learned the government had captured my grandfather, and she had no choice but to go into hiding.

With a new name and identity, she’d struggled to survive. Eventually she’d married, and well, and used the resources gained there to try to find the child stolen from her. Years of searching led her to me. She understood now the daughter was lost to her. Women were weak—most women—but her grandson, so like the man she’d loved, was found.

I asked what she wanted from me. Nothing, she claimed. Instead she had much to give me, to tell me, to teach me. In me she saw the potential and the power taken from her and my grandfather.