She took only one step more. Her final breath raked her lungs in a sharp gasp in response to movement in the darkness. There was a flash, and then there was nothing.
Chapter Thirty-Three Now
“He never admitted anything directly,” Greg says. “When he talked about her death, it was always that the night she died was the worst moment of his life. It was the night his heart and soul were ripped from him.”
I try not to gag.
“That’s disgusting,” Dean rants. “He talks about his heart and soul like they matter after he sent men to kill a woman for not returning his obsession. She thought he was dead, and he still felt the need to scrub her from the planet for the unforgivable sin of not falling into the arms of a monster who obsessed over her, stalked her, raped her, stalked her some more, and tried to kidnap her daughter.”
“It doesn’t make sense,” I say.
“No, it doesn’t,” he says. “People killing the ones they say they love never does.”
“No, Dean, it doesn’t make sense that he would have killed her. Or sent people to kill her. He was completely obsessed with her. He believed he had some sort of otherworldly link to her, that they were bound to each other. I’ve heard of people killing those who don’t return their love so no one else could have them, but I don’t think that’s what happened here. Look at the way he killed these men. He’s the only one who could be responsible for these two men’s deaths. They were a part of Leviathan, which means he really did own them. They died two years after my mother did. They were running from him for that long, but they never did anything about the tattoos on their backs.”
“They were still loyal to him,” he realizes.
“Exactly,” I nod. “They were dedicated, even in their absolute terror. They ran because they made the most grievous error anyone in his life could. They took away the object of his full and complete devotion, the woman he believed he would one day have a family with, the woman he believed was the mother of his child.”
“And he let them run,” Greg mutters. “It was part of his torture. He would have been able to find them. There’s no way they could avoid his detection for that long. He let them linger so they would have to be afraid.”
“Then what happened?” Dean asks.
I don’t realize I’m pacing until I stop. My mind ticks through every detail I know about my mother’s death, which isn’t anywhere near as much as I have ever wanted.
“The most reliable information I have about my mother’s death is that she died in the house in Florida. Her cause of death is listed as homicidal violence. There’s conflicting information. Her death certificate is from Vermont, even though I know now she died in Florida,” I say.
“Your father was already well-respected in the CIA then,” Greg points out. “He was known to the Bureau. It would never be openly discussed, of course, but they can make things like that happen. There just had to be a reason.”
“The rescues,” I say. “That has to have something to do with it. They didn’t want anyone being able to trace where she actually was.”
“Why?” Dean asks.
I shake my head. “I have no idea.” I draw in a breath and let it out slowly. “She was shot. The evidence always suggested there were two assailants. But how did they know she was there?”
“What do you mean?” Greg asks.
“My parents were always extremely careful when we moved from place to place. We never had listed phone numbers, and our mail went to P.O. Boxes. Our location was never publicly known. It’s another one of those things I always assumed had to do with my father being in the CIA, but now I realize it was probably more likely about my mother. She had to keep as low a profile as possible, so she didn’t get burned as part of the rescue organization. Obviously, Jonah was dogged about tracking her. He didn’t just scrape the surface and find out basic things, he managed to locate us and know where we were at a time when both my parents were making great efforts to conceal our location.”
“Exactly,” Dean nods. “They knew where she was.”
“No,” I say. “They knew where she wasn’t. My mother was traveling that night. That’s been part of the investigation into her death from the very beginning. She was supposed to be on a plane, but she was at the house after that plane was supposed to have taken off. If Jonah was so meticulous that he was able to track her down, then he knew she was traveling. He would know she wasn’t supposed to be at the house.”
I shake my head, starting to pace again. “Those two men stayed devoted to him right until the end. They went to that hotel knowing he was there, knowing how angry he was at them, just because they wouldn’t defy him. These aren’t men who would betray their leader by killing the one person in the world who meant everything to him.”
“But you just said they did kill her,” Greg points out.
“They did,” I confirm, meeting his eyes. “But not on purpose. Jonah punished these men savagely. If
