Promise Not To Tell(89)

But the conclusion was inescapable. If the two paintings had not been done for an old lover who had betrayed her, or a long-lost son, there was another possible explanation.

There was only one way to be certain. She started back out of the storage closet, intending to get to the phone in her handbag.

But the alley door opened abruptly, bringing with it a draft of cold, damp air and Jessica, who stared at Virginia with stricken eyes.

Startled, Virginia stopped in the middle of the back room.

“Jessica? What’s wrong?”

“I’m s-sorry,” Jessica whispered.

She stumbled forward a few steps. Not under her own free will, Virginia realized. Jessica had been pushed into the room.

Kate Delbridge came through the doorway. She was using both hands to grip a gun.

“Don’t move, either of you,” Kate said. She kicked the alley door closed.

She kept the barrel of the gun aimed at Jessica’s head, but she was wholly focused on Virginia.

“Everything went wrong because of you,” Kate said. “Every damn thing. But now you’re going to pay.”

CHAPTER 68

“Killing me won’t bring back your brother,” Virginia said. “Besides, I’m not the one who shot him. Josh Preston is responsible for Tucker’s death. Or haven’t you been paying attention to the news?”

Kate stilled. “You know?”

“That you and Tucker were fraternal twins? It occurred to me that there may have been two babies who were given up for adoption.”

“No one ever guessed,” Kate said. “Fraternal twins don’t look any more alike than other kinds of siblings. Tucker got the bastard’s looks. I got the brains.”

Virginia’s phone rang, the sound muffled because it was in her handbag.

“Ignore it,” Kate said through clenched teeth. “And just to be clear, Tucker and I were not given up for adoption. Rose Gilbert sold us in an off-the-books transaction. What’s more, she did the deal with two different couples. Tucker and I didn’t even know about each other until a couple of years ago.”

“How did you and Tucker find each other?”

“Shortly before she died, the woman who had raised Tucker told him the truth. She said there had been two babies offered for sale but she could only afford one. She had enough information to send Tucker in the right direction. He came looking for me after he learned the truth.”

“He wanted to know his sister.”

“No, he was just curious to see if I might be interested in going into business together. Figured he could trust family. He was already running low-level online cons. He taught me the tricks. We made a good team. Night Watch was going to be our big score.”

“You and Tucker were the ones doing the embezzling, weren’t you?”

“We took a lot of money out of that company and were getting ready to shut down the operation and move on. Josh Preston was getting too close.”

“Was he the person who tried to run you down with a car the night you met with Cabot and me?”

“No, that was Tucker, and he wasn’t aiming at me,” Kate said.

“He tried to murder Cabot. Make it look like a hit-and-run accident.”

“I told Tucker it was a risky idea, but he was right: if it had worked, it would have been an easy fix for at least one of our problems, so I agreed to go along with it. But Tucker screwed up, as usual. When I realized it had all gone wrong, I tried to point you at Laurel.”

“When did Rose Gilbert come back into your lives?”

“In December she contacted Tucker out of the blue and told him the truth about our parents,” Kate said. “Turns out dear Aunt Rose had kept track of us just in case we might prove useful someday.”

“She waited until your mother was dead before she got in touch?”

“She had no reason to contact us before Abigail Watkins died. She didn’t need us. But she knew that she was Watkins’s only legal heir, because, thanks to her, there was no record of Abigail having given birth or of the adoptions. Rose had no intention of becoming an innkeeper, but she rushed to Lost Island to take charge of the B and B because she figured she could make some money if she sold the place.”

“She found the diary,” Virginia said.

“That journal changed everything. Rose contacted us because she concluded that she needed help finding the missing money. Tucker and I agreed to get involved because it looked like there was a fortune out there somewhere and it belonged to us.”

“All you had to do was find it. But that’s where things got complicated, isn’t it?”

“We realized that Hannah Brewster knew what the key was and where it was hidden, but she was crazy. Rose was the one who came up with the idea of using Tucker to convince Brewster that Quinton Zane was still alive. Turns out Tucker looked a lot like the bastard back in the day. Brewster was panic-stricken when she saw him. She really did believe that Zane had come back from the dead. Rose and Tucker were sure they could control her, but they fucked up.”

“They went too far, didn’t they? Hannah jumped to her death rather than risk falling under Zane’s control.”

“I’m the one who realized that you were our only hope of finding the missing money,” Kate said. The gun shook a little in her hands. “According to the diary, your mother gave the key to you. But Abigail Watkins didn’t describe the key in her journal. We had no idea what we were looking for. And you, you stupid woman, didn’t even know you had it.”