He retreated from Bramwell but didn’t sit down, standing instead in the middle of the room, a thin stick of humanity primed and ready to go off. “You’re here for what you didn’t do, Harriet.”
“And what would that be, Lyle? Catch Mona’s killer? Because we both know I was never going to do that.”
Something flickered in his eyes. Something uneasy. Dark. “You didn’t tell me about Gilroy’s involvement with Mona, and wouldn’t have told me that Bramwell was in that damn car if I hadn’t insisted on accompanying you. That’s not the way it works, Harriet.”
“Neither is setting a dragon on me. She could have very easily have killed me, you know.”
He shrugged. “I would have sung you onto the evergreen fields had that happened, half-breed. I promise you.”
I snorted. “Thanks, but I’m not exactly comforted by that thought.”
“You should be. It’s more than I’ll do for these bastards.” He waved the gun in Bramwell and Gilroy’s direction, and both men stiffened. Although there was little sign of emotion on my father’s battered face, Gilroy’s façade had begun to crack.
“She’s going to testify that you paid her to inject Keale with Prevoron, setting him up to hit that helicopter, and thereby kill Frank Logan.”
“Frank Logan wasn’t in the helicopter,” he said calmly. “Besides, who are the courts going to believe? A lawyer with years of pro bono work behind him, or an ice dragon with a somewhat checkered past?”
“Frank Logan would have been on that helicopter had it not been for a fortunate last minute phone call. But Rebecca isn’t our only witness. We also have the testimony of the dealer you bought the Prevoron from.”
He smiled bitterly. “You always were too clever for your own good, Harriet.”
Which wasn’t an admission, not by a long shot. “Obviously not, because I have no idea why you’d go to such lengths to kill Logan. Or how Numar comes into it.”
“Numar was a blind lead. He was meant to do nothing more than be witness to the fact that Keale had been drinking heavily.”
“Which neither of them actually had. Rebecca seduced and knocked Numar out, then drip fed alcohol into his system.” It was another guess, but it was also the only real explanation for not only the amount of alcohol Numar had inside of him, but the inability of either man to remember the events of that night. Hell, for all we knew, Numar also had Prevoron in his system—Lyle had purchased two vials after all, and it would certainly explain Numar’s inexplicable ability to remember the precise time the woman he’d known as Mandy had left. “She did the same to Keale after you’d primed him with Prevoron.”
The darkness came back into Lyle’s eyes. A tremor ran down my spine. That darkness was capable of anything. Literally anything.
“Tell me, Harriet, how would you have felt if you’d come home one day and found your brother beaten and bloody?”
My gaze flickered to Bramwell. “Angry. No, furious.”
Lyle nodded. “I was so furious I was shaking. She lost the baby on the way to the hospital, and I couldn’t bear it, half-breed, I really couldn’t. Once she was out of danger, I made her tell me who’d done it.”
She lost the baby. He’d known. Despite all his statements to the contrary, he'd known she was pregnant. But it was the other part of that statement that caught my attention. He’d forced her to tell him. Had he used a bit more force than he’d intended?
“So why not confront Frank head on, or go to the police. Why make up some elaborate scheme to make them pay.”
The darkness shifted, swirled. Became haunted with pain. “Because it would have come to nothing. She didn’t want to press charges, and I couldn’t without her testimony. But I couldn’t let it go, either.”
“So, you hatched a scheme to drug a dragon and induce him to hit the helicopter Logan was supposed to be in, thereby making his death seem an accident. But why Keale?”
He walked across to the desk and pulled the office chair around to the front. The aim of his gun never strayed far Gilroy’s heart.
“It was simply a matter of convenience.” Lyle shrugged and sat down. “As you noted, it had to look like an accident, and no one would think to question the actions of a dragon with a history of drink flying as long as a troll’s arm.”
“No one except me.”
He sighed, and it held a sad note. “I kept trying to put you off, but you just wouldn’t listen. You shouldn’t have been so persistent, Harriet. I would have made sure he only got a couple of years.”
“If you’d gotten the dose of the Prevoron wrong, Lyle, it could have killed him.”
“But I didn’t get it wrong. I couldn’t, because an autopsy would have revealed its presence if I had.” He lit a cigarette and studied me over the end of it. “You’re awfully nosy all of a sudden, Harriet. Why?
I smiled, though it held little humor. “We both know there’s only one person who’s going to walk out of this room alive, Lyle. I just want some answers before you sing me onto the fields.”
“Then why come here in the first place if you were aware of what I intended? You are many things, but you are not the suicidal type.”
I snorted softly. “I live in hope that you’ll do the right thing, Lyle. Even now.”
He nodded and took a drag of his cigarette. “I wouldn’t hold your breath waiting for that, Harriet.”
I wasn’t. Not any more. “Then tell me about Frank. He wasn’t involved with Mona. Killing him because he beat her up seems a bit excessive, especially considering she was blackmailing James.”
“And me,” Gilroy said coldly.
Lyle glanced his way and, just for an instant, his finger hovered over the gun’s trigger. I tensed, then heaved a silent sigh of relief when Lyle relaxed.
I glanced at Gilroy. Sweat had broken out across his forehead. He knew how close he’d come.
“Frank had to die because he didn’t just beat her. He raped her. Apparently she tried to sing him into submission, and it had the opposite effect.”
Which could very easily happen if the man called was in a highly emotional state such as anger. Mona must have been terrified to have even attempted it.
I studied him for a moment, then frowned. Something in what he’d said didn’t sit right. Or maybe it was simply the way he seemed to be looking inwards rather than outwards, at us. Seeing something in his mind, not his immediate surrounds. Yet I had no doubt he’d react—and violently—if one of us so much as twitched.
“Mona told you this?”
“Yes. And he took the missing memory card. It had both James and Gilroy on it, she said.” He blew smoke toward the ceiling. “He had to die, you see that, don’t you?”
No, I didn’t, and the mere fact Lyle saw it that way showed how far he had slipped. Once upon a time he would have been happy with busting Frank Logan’s butt through the legal system, because if Frank had raped Mona in a fit of rage, there would have been DNA evidence.
“But why set Gilroy up for it?”
Lyle shrugged. “You heard what he said about her. He had as little respect for her as Frank did.”
“So you set him up to take the fall for the murder, only it hasn’t quite worked out that way, has it?”
He smiled and shook his head. “Ah, Harriet, you have more brains in your head than these two put together.”
“Neither Bramwell nor Gilroy has access to the information you and I have, Lyle.”
“Perhaps.” He stubbed the cigarette out on the edge of the desk.
Bramwell’s eyes narrowed, but he didn’t say anything. My father wasn’t stupid, despite Lyle’s comments to the contrary.
“Meaning?” Gilroy snapped. “If we are to meet our end tonight, then we also deserve a full explanation.”
“Did I ask you to speak?” Lyle said, then, before I could react, lowered the gun and shot him.
The bullet tore through Gilroy’s knee cap, spraying blood and bone everywhere, before it smashed into the wall behind him. Gilroy went down screaming.
No one came running and, after a moment, I realized why. The shot had been close to silent. There must be a silencer on the gun, meaning no one else inside the house would have heard it.
Kaij and his team outside would, of course, and I had my fingers crossed that they wouldn’t react immediately. Not yet, not until I’d gotten all the answers.
Bramwell rose abruptly. Lyle immediately leveled the gun on his heart and he stopped. “Do not move, brother dearest, or you will be next.”
“This is insane-”
“Perhaps,” Lyle agreed. “But nevertheless, you will sit.”
I shifted fractionally, and the gun’s barrel jerked in response. I suddenly realized Lyle was waiting to be jumped—that he expected it, wanted it. Perhaps, somewhere in the shadows of madness he thought he could claim self defense and walk away a free man.
I cast a warning look at my father. For once, he seemed to understand exactly what I was saying, even if I used no words.
Maybe I should not speak at him more often.
“What about Mona?” I asked, as calmly as I could.
His gaze flicked to me. “What about her?”
“Didn’t this whole mess start out with trying to find her murderer? What happened to that idea?”
He didn’t immediately answer, just pulled out another cigarette and lit it. He sucked on it for several minutes, blowing the smoke toward the ceiling. I wondered what he was thinking. If he was thinking.
“Frank killed her,” he said eventually.
“No,” I said. “He didn’t. You said yourself that he beat and raped her, but she was alive when Frank left her. She went to the hospital, remember, and that’s where she lost the baby.”
“Then it must have been one of these two. We both know they’re capable of it.”