“Go on, please,” Alice insisted.
He inhaled. “You were with a babysitter, but you heard Lynn cry out when she was struck. You ran into the den. She was bleeding from her ear, and—”
“She was terrified to have me in the same room with him, and she told me to run and hide,” Alice finished.
“It was another true memory. Maybe the earliest one you’ve had,” Dylan said quietly. “I was wrong to tell you that it never happened.”
“Why didn’t she speak up?” Alice blurted out suddenly. “Why didn’t Lynn tell the police when I was kidnapped that Kehoe might be responsible? He was, by the way,” she added quickly. “Kehoe admitted to it out there by the bluff, that he hired Cunningham and Stout.”
Dylan froze. “He did?”
“Oh, he did all right. But why didn’t Lynn say anything after the kidnapping? Was she afraid of Alan finding out about her affair with Kehoe?”
“No. I don’t think anything would have stopped Lynn from exposing her infidelity if she thought it’d help in bringing you home to her.”
“Why, then? Why didn’t she say anything about Kehoe?” she asked, frustrated and angry with a woman of whom she only possessed the smallest glimpses, and yet with whom she shared the most elemental of bonds.
Dylan cupped her shoulder, grounding her swell of helpless fury. “He’d hit her in a fit of rage when she presented him with proof that you weren’t his child. Maybe he’d hit her before, and she was ashamed of it. I don’t know. She never specifically said that in her journals. I got the impression from her writing that their original relationship was sexually intense at its best, volatile at its worst. They argued a lot; Kehoe wanted her to leave Alan, and Lynn refused.
“But the main reason I think she didn’t say anything is that she didn’t believe Kehoe could be capable of kidnapping a child. Like it or not, she believed herself in love with him for a brief time in her life. She didn’t believe he’d make you the target of his fury at being rejected by her. She might have worried he’d hurt her if pushed, and that you might be harmed if you were in the vicinity. The two of you were together almost all the time. But I don’t think she ever believed he’d plan and plot exclusively against you, let alone try to kidnap and murder you. Her journals indicate that she never knew a side to his character that was that dark.”
Because Lynn had been unable to see it, Alice had been forced to. It was an uncharitable thought to have about a woman who had suffered so much . . . about a woman who was her biological mother. Alice knew this. She scrunched her eyelids tight. The action pulled on her facial abrasions. She immediately opened her burning eyes.
“Lynn knew the truth about him,” she said. “At the end, she did. Kehoe told me by the bluff that he couldn’t let it happen. He couldn’t watch while the rich king and the beautiful queen and the little princess lived out their idyllic dream in the castle. He actually said something like that,” she said in a hoarse voice, disgusted at the memory. She dabbed carefully at the corner of her eyes.
“He probably hated you enough for what you symbolized after he realized you weren’t his,” Dylan said after a pause, caressing her shoulder. “But beyond that, he knew that by depriving Alan and Lynn of you, he guaranteed their misery.”
She inhaled and shuddered, holding the tissue to the corner of her eye to stanch the flow of tears. They made her cuts burn. “Why didn’t you tell me she jumped off the bluff?”
“I’m sorry,” he said gruffly. “You never asked how she died. I was trying to follow Sidney’s advice and tell you things only when you seemed ready. I suspected you must know, deep down, that she’d died tragically, given the circumstances. I thought you’d even caught hints of it from that damn ghost story the kids tell. But even though I thought you might suspect, you never asked.” She looked up at him. He looked as miserable as she felt.
“He was there with her. Kehoe. When she fell.”
“What? Did he—”
“No, he didn’t push her. Or at least that’s what he said. But he did kill her.”
“What do you mean?”
Her lip curled at the memory. Things were starting to fall into place in her head. “What a fucking bastard,” she whispered. “He knew that rumors were flying around that I was probably dead at that point. You told me after Jim Stout confessed, that the police and FBI were convinced I was dead. That’s when he confronted Lynn out by the bluff, when she was so full of dread and grief, vulnerable because of what the FBI suspected.”
“She sunk into a severe depression after you were taken. She believed she was being punished for her infidelity. It was in her journals.”
“That’s when Kehoe told her everything, when she was at her weakest,” Alice said. She shut her burning eyelids. She wanted to weep full-out, but her body wasn’t providing her with enough energy to grieve so forcefully. “He told her that he knew for a fact that Addie was dead,” she paused, suppressing a sob, “because he’d been the one to hire and give the order to the kidnappers. And then he didn’t stop Lynn from going over the bluff once she’d heard that news.
“He was going to throw me over that bluff last night. He said he’d join me, and we’d be broken and bloody together. It was like it was happening all over again for him, what happened with Lynn. He said he wished he’d committed suicide with her, so that they could have been together. That’s how warped and twisted he was. He kept acting like he hated her more than anything, and in the next second, he talked about her like she was perfection itself. He planned to commit suicide after he killed me, I think. He knew you were suspicious of him, and that he might be under fire if the kidnapping investigation started full force again because I’d come back. He already was jealous and hateful of you because of your relationship with Alan,” she said, looking at Dylan.
“He despised the idea of you and me being together happily, controlling Durand Enterprises, especially after all he’d been through to cancel Lynn and Alan’s happiness. That’s why he told me the other night at the bonfire that he wasn’t going to let it happen again. He wouldn’t watch me ride off with you into the sunset.” She gave a bitter laugh and it mixed with a restrained sob. “Instead, he wanted to see me end up in the same place as Lynn, and you in the same place as Alan. He said something about dying satisfied of your misery when you saw me on those rocks. The fact that he was considering committing suicide last night must mean he’d given up on disguising his hatred and obsession . . . his sickness anymore.”
“Jesus.” Alice glanced up. Dylan’s rigid features broke briefly. He pressed his lips to her temple. She sensed his fierce misery. She reached with her bandaged hand and touched his shoulder, absorbing the shudder of emotion that went through his powerful body.
“Do you want me to talk to the FBI and police now?” she asked him weakly after a moment.
He straightened and shook his head.
“No?” she asked.
“Rest now,” he said, his gaze running over her face. She hated to think of what he saw when he looked at her. “You can barely keep your eyes open. I’ll fill them in on what you told me, so the officers and agents aren’t complete blank slates when they interview you. It should make it a little easier for you. If you feel up to it after you rest and your testing later, you can talk to them then.”