Hidden Threat (37 page)

“
No, unfortunately. They forgot to hook up her machines or something, but she’s as good as dead as far as we’re concerned.”

“
So, what next?” Nina Hastings, dropping bread crumbs along the path she wanted her daughter to follow, smiled at her own manipulation.

“
Amanda comes home, we call the military, and they process the paperwork.”

“
How you going to do that without Dwyer’s signature?”

“
Oh, I’ve got that already.”

Nina raised a pencil-marked eyebrow. Had the warrior outdone the general? Melanie smiled. She had forged enough insurance checks to buy a new car, just a little bit at a time so no one would get alarmed. And, she had forged Zach’s signature on so many checks and documents that she had been able to, without concentrating, imitate his signature at will.

“
Practice makes perfect.” She showed her mother the document, which she had retrieved from Amanda’s room.

“
Gonna tell her that Dwyer signed it at the hospital?”

“
Yep. Went over there today, spoke with her briefly, and she agreed. Unfortunately, she fell unconscious after that, but thank God that we can move on.”

“
Gotcha.”

They turned their heads when they heard the car door slam in the driveway.

“
Let me handle this, Mama. I’ve got it under control.”

***

Amanda pulled into
her mother’s driveway after having left Jake’s house. She stopped the car and sighed heavily. She leaned over, pulling at her hair, banging her forehead on the upper leathered portion of the steering wheel.

“
What is wrong with me?” she screamed inside her nearly soundproof Mercedes. The advertisements championing the heavy doors and airtight fit were all true. An outside observer would see her moving her mouth, but be unable to hear anything unless they were directly beside the vehicle.

She pulled herself together and walked through the front door entryway, seeing Nina leaning against the doorjamb as if she were hanging out at the soda fountain, twirling a toothpick in her mouth. Next she saw her mother standing in the dining room. What were they thinking?

“
Hey, baby, how are you?” Nina Hastings was instantly upon her. While Melanie’s need was money, Nina’s was attention, manufactured or not.

“
Fine, Nina. I mean, not really. There’s some stuff that’s happened.”

“
Want to tell me what you’ve been up to?” her mother chirped from the dining room.

Yes, Melanie Garrett to Nina Hastings was daughter to mother as Goebbels was to Hitler. Who was more evil? Hard to tell. Each was capable of independently operating for her own purposes, but they were so much better together. The whole
was
greater than the sum of the parts.

She wasn’t sure when she had reached this conclusion, but Amanda stared at her mother and grandmother, debating with herself the course of action she had entertained on the drive back from Jake’s. Their visit had been brief, the electronic bracelet around his ankle a visible reminder of what they faced together. Nonetheless, her thinking had crystallized after their short conversation. It was all starting to make sense, and she had a plan.
The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

“
Well, Mom, you know it has just been one of those weeks. You-know-who is dead. Jake’s in jail. There’s a half million dollars out there for the taking. So, you know, cut me some slack, please.”

Melanie Garrett tapped her foot, covered in an Italian leather pump, then softened considerably. Be tough, then loving; keep her off balance. Never be predictable. These were her operating credos. Amanda was beginning to see through the smoke screen that was intentionally laid in front of her.

“
Speaking of the money, Amanda, we need to talk.”

Amanda held up her hands. “Mom, it has already been a long day. I know what you want me to do, and I will do it. The problem is that the original that was signed by you-know-who is still with Miss Dwyer.”

Melanie paused and decided to let Amanda continue. The copy she had made from the version Amanda kept in her lockbox was nearly perfect. Yet, the raised seal was not present; not that she couldn’t fix that in a hurry.

“
So, let me go see Dwyer tomorrow at the hospital, if she wakes up, and we’ll get this done.” Jake had received the news that Riley Dwyer was still alive and had passed that much on to Amanda. Amanda knew she needed to start taking responsibility for her actions—an alien concept to her—but she thought she might know how to begin.

“
I’m told she’s in a coma, almost died,” Nina said, speaking up for the first time.

“
Well, can we just deal with it tomorrow? I want that money just as much as anyone. I know it will do us some good. I’m on the team, so don’t sweat it.”

The two older women stared at their protégé.

“
Okay, then, but first I want you to take a drive with me,” her mother said.

“
Mom, please—”

“
Amanda, you’ve been out of it the past few days, both mentally and physically, and I need to show you something.”

Amanda recognized this as her “no negotiation” voice. Some days she was bewildered by the way her mother and grandmother would seem to be out of synch, one nice, the other mean as hell. She loved them, for sure, but at times she could swear that they were almost
working
her.

“
Amanda, why don’t you do what your mother says,” Nina urged sweetly. “You haven’t had much time with her, and I think this whole ordeal has been harder on both of you than either of you realize. If there were ever a good moment for some mother-daughter time, this is it.” Open the steam valve just a bit, release some pressure from the situation. She was a master.

Sighing, as if to vent, Amanda muttered, “All right, but I need to catch up with some schoolwork.”

CHAPTER 49

The Cliffs at Keowee, South Carolina

She found herself completely disconnected from reality as she sailed along in the passenger seat of her mother’s Mercedes, top down, on this beautiful spring day. Quickly she saw that they were on South Carolina Highway 11, and she knew intuitively that they were heading toward Lake Keowee. Her mother had been obsessed with buying a home in that area for years, as if it was what she lived for.

Her hair whipping in the Cabriolet’s slipstream, she tried to use the time to sort out the colliding emotions, thoughts, and actions of the last week. She had just a few days until her eighteenth birthday and her emancipation as an adult. Memories of her father, long forgotten or erased or suppressed, she wasn’t sure which, had come crashing back into her life with the force of a battering ram against a secured medieval castle door.

They traveled mostly in silence, her mother appearing lost in thought as well. Amanda’s infrequent glance was a mere turn of the eyes as she rested her head against her hand, elbow propped against the passenger door. Her jade and copper flecked eyes carried a scorn deep within that somehow she could not control.

In short, she was going out of her mind trapped in the car with her mother. She’d had momentum. She’d had an idea and the energy to follow through, which was now being stifled by her mother’s banal diversion.

Keeping me off balance
.

The thought circled through her mind like a hawk seeking purchase atop a mountain peak. Bad thoughts about her mother did not come to her naturally, if ever. The same held true for her grandmother. Speaking of which . . .

“
Mom, I thought Nina was sick.”

“
Doctor released her. She is sick, but they need to do more tests, and you know how expensive those damn hospitals can be.”

“
She looked fine to me.”

There comes a time in every young woman’s life where she begins to see herself apart from how she was raised. More to the point, she begins to analyze the rearing process. She begins to transform from girl to gatherer. It is mostly an instinctual progression, natural that is, as she begins to intuit that one day she will have children of her own; and thus she is moved to review her own upbringing.

What had she missed? A week ago, she would have blithely responded to herself, if she had even thought of the question, with a straightforward, “Nothing.” Her father’s will, which caused her to examine at least a portion of her relationship with him, had put a chink in the armor that her mother and grandmother had wrapped around her.

Her mother eyed her, causing the car to awkwardly negotiate a tight corner as they rolled through the countryside.

“
Don’t get smart with me, Amanda. I’m trying here. The least you could do is meet me half way.”

Amanda looked at her mother with a full turn of her head. She wanted to say something, but she refrained.

Suddenly the car pulled over into a gravel section beside the highway. For a brief moment, Amanda thought her mother was stopping to scold her, not wanting to perform two challenging tasks simultaneously.

“
There.” Her mother nodded with her head past the passenger side of the car. Amanda looked to her right and saw the long driveway and split-rail fence framing the perfectly tended lawn that fed at least a quarter mile up to the beautiful Jeffersonian mansion.

Jefferson. Monticello. The memory was immediate and visible. Her father had taken her to Charlottesville when she was nine. They had toured Thomas Jefferson’s home, with the perpetual motion calendar, the vineyards, and the beautiful rotunda. She remembered it so vividly that she began shaking.

“
What’s going on, Amanda?”

Her mother’s voice was shrill, fingernails on a blackboard, against the serene images of her walking hand in hand with her father through Jefferson’s immaculately designed boxwood hedgerows and vineyards. She remembered him putting her on his shoulders so she could see over the rows of grapes and their symmetrical beauty.

“
Amanda!”

She had begun crying. “Nothing, Mom. It’s beautiful. I think it’s beautiful, and I’m just so happy for you, because I know that with the five hundred thousand dollars we’ll be able to afford this house.”

Amanda felt her mother’s icy eyes upon her, cold and hard, but quickly giving way to warmth and love.

“
I’m just happy for us, you know, Mom.”

Her mother reached across the polished mahogany gear shift and hugged Amanda, awkward as it was. “I knew you’d understand.”

“
Of course I understand, Mama. Why do you think I’m going through all this bullshit?”

“
Well, I don’t like that word, but I do like your attitude.”

“
We’re a team, Mom. The three musketeers, remember?”

“
All for one . . .”

“
And one for all.”

“
I just need you to be really sure, you know, committed here on this one.”

“
I’ll be there for you, Mom.”

They had remained
silent the entire trip back. Cycling through Amanda’s mind were the images of the African children from the photos, lost and forgotten in a world that cared more about Tiffany jewelry than human suffering. The thirty-minute drive back to the house gave her time to process her thoughts. Still dominant was her disbelief that her father had been dead for less than two weeks, yet her mother had already picked out a million-dollar home.

Pulling into the driveway of the house, Amanda decided to ask her mother a question. “Can we really afford that house, Mom?”

“
Well, if we all pitch in, we can. We already have a buyer for our house here.”

“
Really, when did this happen?”

“
Well, homes around here sell quickly premarket. We’ll get about four hundred thousand for it. Plus, with your five hundred thousand, we’ll be able to take out a three-hundred-thousand-dollar mortgage.”

“
What’s Nina doing?”

“
All her money is tied up in long-term CDs. She’d pay a huge penalty right now if she cashed out, but she’ll be there for us, as always.”

“
Well, I’m glad all of this is working out for us.”

Her mother smiled warmly and placed her hand on Amanda’s shoulder. “Why don’t you head on up to your room and we’ll talk more about this later.”

Amanda walked mindlessly up to her room, passing through the foyer. Nina still stood against the doorjamb as if she’d never moved. She lifted a hand in the direction of her grandmother, as if to say Hi.

As she closed and locked her door, she heard Nina say, “So, how’d it go?”

Setting down her book bag next to her computer, she logged on and changed all of her security passwords and defaults. Likewise, she changed her screen saver from “No Dad” to “Good to Go,” which scrolled slowly across the monitor during periods of inactivity.

She began to feel her energy return. Something was stirring inside her. A magnetic pull, as if from far away, was directing her. She closed her eyes and saw the image of her father in his army uniform, weapon at his side, crooked grin and bright eyes smiling at her.