Murder Game (GhostWalkers, #7)(76)

“But . . . ,” Kadan prompted. Don Meadows was circling the subject, hoping it would be enough without disclosing his ties to Whitney. Kadan wasn’t about to let him get away with it.

Meadows sighed heavily and stroked Sharon’s limp hand. “Long before Sharon’s father would take a chance on me, I worked for Peter. He had a huge research center and I was given my own department. I had visions of maybe becoming partners with him one day and showing Sharon’s family that we didn’t need them. Peter and I took a business trip to Europe. I was twenty-six. Sharon was ill and couldn’t come with me.” He shook his head, his expression rippling with pain. “Her health is very fragile.”

Kadan nodded. He already knew what was coming.

“I don’t know what happened.” Don rubbed at the lines in his brow. “I think about it all the time. I was drinking and there was this girl. She couldn’t have been more than fifteen.” He looked up at Kadan, pain in his eyes. “Thirteen. She was thirteen.” He shook his head again. “I don’t remember much about that night. Only that I must have gone crazy. The sex wasn’t consensual. I know because I’ve seen the videotape a hundred times and it’s ugly. It’s damned ugly to know that you’re capable of something like that when it’s so repugnant to you.”

There was bitterness in his voice, even self-loathing. Don brought his wife’s hand to his mouth. “Peter cleaned up the mess—his money, of course—and we came home. He swore no one would ever know.”

“And you trusted him? You weren’t suspicious that he might have had something to do with you acting so out of character?”

“I had to trust him. He was my friend. It didn’t occur to me until a long time after, and by then, I had so much to lose. Sharon couldn’t have children. She knew I wanted them. I was afraid if she found out I’d not only cheated on her, but that I was capable of rape, of animal brutality, she’d leave me. She’d think I married her for her money. There was a part of me that wanted the money and I had forced a child. God!” He dropped his head into his hands. “You have no idea what it feels like to know a monster lives inside of you.”

“Have you ever done it since?”

Don’s head jerked up, eyes flashing with anger—with denial. “No! I’d shoot myself first if I ever had such an inclination. I don’t know what happened that night, but I saw myself. It was me raping that child. The video wasn’t tampered with.”

“But someone set the camera up in the first place.”

Don nodded. “Yeah. But I didn’t know there was a video until five years later.”

“When Whitney brought Tansy to you. She’s your biological daughter, isn’t she?”

Don swallowed hard and ducked his head again, shaking it from side to side. “Whitney called me into his private lab and brought Tansy out. You should have seen her. All white hair and those eyes. She had the same mouth her mother had. I knew she was mine the moment I laid eyes on her. Whitney showed me the tape. And he had tapes of the girl in what looked like a hospital during her pregnancy. She sold the baby to Whitney. Later, he claimed she died in a car accident, and maybe she did; I searched for her, but couldn’t find her.”

“And Whitney had Tansy for five years.”

Don nodded. “He’d enhanced her psychic abilities. Apparently the girl, her mother, was psychic and Peter wanted to see what he could do with the baby. She wasn’t the only one he had. He told me they were orphans he’d collected, unwanted children. He had nurses for them and said he was getting rid of them, adopting them out. He told me I could take Tansy on the condition he continued to be her doctor so he could see her progression.”

“And you balked.”

“Hell yes. The son of a bitch. He had my daughter. He’d set me up. And when he produced the video, I realized he had to have been the one behind the camera, that all those years earlier, he’d been a party to what I’d done.” He sighed heavily and leaned back against the headboard, still stroking Sharon’s hand. “He wasn’t always a madman. I saw the signs, but didn’t want to. He was my friend and I didn’t have too many of them.”

“And he opened doors for you,” Kadan wasn’t going to let him off the hook. Don Meadows was an intelligent man. He also was ambitious. He wanted the respect, contacts, and money that came from his association with Whitney.

“I can’t deny that.”

“So he came to you with his proposal. He wanted you to adopt your own daughter. And if you didn’t play ball with him, he was going to destroy the life you’d so carefully built.”

“He would show the video to Sharon and her family. He said he’d go public with it. That video is sick,” Don said. “It would have destroyed all of us.”

“And the other children he had in his laboratory. He was experimenting on them and you knew it.”

“He was adopting them out. They all had problems, just as Tansy did. He promised he’d give anyone who took them enough money to take care of their special needs.”

“And you wanted to believe that.”

“I had to believe it, for my own sanity. She was my daughter. My own child. I wanted her living with us any way I could get her. And I knew Sharon would take a damaged child, no matter how bad she was. Sharon desperately wanted children.”