Seductive Shadows (32 page)

I could help them matter.

There were bound to be consequences if I talked to the police about my role at the mansion. Maybe they wouldn’t believe me. Without true evidence, maybe they wouldn’t even listen. I couldn’t let that hinder me. I would also be incriminating my father, linking him to the mansion and accusing him of being a party to murder. He may not have committed the killings, but he was every bit as guilty for witnessing them and allowing them to happen. There was no way to avoid telling the authorities about him if I wanted the mansion to be taken down. And even if I didn’t flee the country, there was still a chance that I’d have to stay hidden for my own safety, that somehow I’d have to find protection without the Doctor’s help until everything had been taken care of.

And there was a chance that they would kill me for this. It was just as certain as if I stayed in the mansion and let them carry out my order. But that was no revelation.

Death could follow me no matter where I went.

***

I exited the train and moved my way through the station, finding the Doctor’s limo parked outside. I opened the back door and took a seat across from him. The words emerged before my lips even parted. “I’m not going.”

The driver was pulling away from the curb. I didn’t know if we were headed to Logan or some private airport; he had refused to give me any details. It didn’t matter. I wasn’t getting on any plane at any airport.

His brows rose, his cheeks reddening as his mouth popped open. “Yes, you are.”

“No, I’m not,” I said. “I’ve changed my mind. I’m going to the police instead.”

“You’re
what?
”

“I can’t walk away knowing more girls like me are going to be killed, that others are going to be snatched off the street and sacrificed for their flesh. They deserve to live.” Saying it out loud strengthened my resolve. “I’m stopping this.”

“You don’t understand what you’re saying.”

I nodded. “Yes, I do.”

“No,
you
don’t!
” he shouted. “You can’t go to the police, Charlie. They’re involved in this…you have no idea how deep it goes, either. Who the hell do you think Jay is?”

Jay was…a cop? Heat swept over my skin as though it was blasting through the vents, and my face flushed.

“And they’re not the only ones,” he continued. “The mansion has ties to city officials, state representatives…the names on the roster lead to the highest echelons, the who’s who. If word of this were to get out, it would likely be the biggest scandal New England has ever experienced.”

Victoria had said that the clients were the most influential, prestigious members of New England’s society. To me, Mr. Hunt could have been described that way. But I had never imagined the mansion was this significant, this far-reaching…that the men who came into my wing had so many connections, so much power.

“The police won’t believe you, Charlie; you have no proof of anything that happens there.
We’ve
made sure of that. And once they know who you are, they’ll kill you before you have the chance to tell someone of real importance. Trust me, you’re not going to be the whistleblower.”

“It doesn’t matter. I’m going to try to make someone listen.” I wasn’t sure now how that would happen. “I have to take the risk. I have to save them.”

And I had to save myself.

His jaw clenched. “And you’re willing to turn me in in order to do that—me, the father you finally found, after a lifetime of believing you didn’t have one? After losing your mother, the only family you had left? I would spend the rest of my life in prison without the possibility of parole. Do you understand that…do you even care?”

It nagged at me that he hadn’t mentioned this first. Maybe he was using it to scare me now, to win my sympathy.

I wasn’t sure I had any to offer him.

“You’d rather I let you keep helping those
murderers
? People who kill girls
just like your daughter?
People who would have killed
your daughter
if you hadn’t put the pieces together?” I felt my voice start to rise. I could hardly believe I had to convince him that what I wanted to do was the right thing, and that his keeping silent was part of the evil he’d been so reluctant to tell me about.

“You have no right to say that to me,” he said. His worry showed plainly.

“I have
every
right. During our sessions in the mansion, you talked to me about forgiveness, about mercy. You even lectured me on the subject.” I thought back to those discussions, his lessons, how I had practiced what he’d suggested. How it had helped me find forgiveness for Lilly. “It’s your turn to forgive…yourself.”

He was quiet for a while as he thought. “You’re asking me to turn myself in? You want me to risk everything to fix this…horrific, impossible situation?”

He made it sound so distant, so academic.

“I’m asking you to do the right thing, and I’m hoping you will. There is only one way I’ll ever be safe; you know this. You know they aren’t just going to accept that I’ve
disappeared
.” His eyes told me I was right. “They’ll never stop searching, never stop hunting me…your daughter.”

I had finally gotten through. “This is insanity,” he said.

“It is,” I agreed. “And I’m going to make it stop.”

His face was total concern, and I knew it wasn’t just for his own well-being. “What are you going to do while all of whatever happens…happens? You can’t go to your apartment.”

“I’ll stay with—“

He wasn’t finished. “Or Cameron’s, or even Dallas’s. They’ll find you. They’ll find them.”

I wasn’t going to let it deter me.

“I guess I’ll just have to figure that out.”

The Doctor stared, almost as though he were looking through me, dissecting and analyzing what lived beneath my skin. His gaze never shifted; his folded arms and crossed legs never moved. The silence thickened around us, turning the air even hotter; an agonizing tick pulsed in my head. Was he testing my patience…or did he think I was bluffing? My past had been filled with uncomfortable situations; his quiet glaring wasn’t going to change my mind or make me reconsider. My life was worthless if I ran.

“What’s it going to be?” I asked.

Without warning, he reached for the phone that hung next to his seat. His eyes were still fixed on me. “Roberto, there’s been a change of plans. We’re going to the apartment.” He paused. “No—the other apartment.” The limo slowed down, then turned around entirely. The Doctor stabbed the air with his index finger. “Not a word from you. I need time to think.”

I gave him the silence he’d requested. I turned toward the window instead, watching the city through the dark tint. I assumed that by
the apartment
he meant someplace he owned…and it sounded as though he had more than one. I wasn’t surprised. It was obvious from his art collecting and his limousine that he had money. Being part owner of the mansion and part of the black market organ trade must have paid well. The latter made me sick. With all of Lilly’s horrible behaviors, it was difficult enough sometimes to know that I was related to her by blood. Now I had to come to terms with having a man like this as a father.

The Doctor’s tension was visible; he sat upright and taut, eyes closed, grinding his teeth as much as his hands. Then he covered his face with his palms and leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. He rubbed his temples and ran his fingers through his hair. I had ruined his plans with this. He was prepared to drop me off at the plane and return to life at the mansion as he knew it. I would have been nothing more than a footnote in his life story. But my change of heart wouldn’t allow that. Even if I didn’t get very far with the police, his name would still be brought up in association with the mansion, and my safety would still be at risk. It was clear that both mattered to him. I couldn’t figure out why.

Hadn’t he considered that something like this might happen once he’d told me the truth, that there was a chance I might not just go along with his escape plan…that I might alert the authorities instead, and try to bring about some sort of justice for what happened in the mansion?

That I might somehow try to stop
them?

The limo slowed again, almost to a crawl as we pulled up to a high-rise. We were in Downtown Crossing, the commercial section of Boston. The architecture of this building was more modern, more glass-encrusted than the others that surrounded it. The thick metal gate squealed as it opened. We drove beneath it, entering an underground parking garage. The Doctor hadn’t uttered a word since he’d ended his call with Roberto. He remained silent as we exited the limo and stepped into the elevator. He pressed his thumb on a pad, some type of fingerprint scanner, and pushed the button marked
Penthouse
. I watched each number light above the door, counting the floors as we glided upward. Twenty-two stories later, there still hadn’t been a sound from him.

The elevator opened directly into the condo, like the one in Cameron’s apartment. The similarities ended there. His environment was cold and masculine. Clinical, even. Chill air blasted through the vents, matching the frigid ambiance of the whole space. It lacked the feel of a woman, the smell of a real home. A rounded wall of windows formed the backdrop that let in darkness rather than light; every surface was steel, or the color of stone, of midnight sky. His counters were bare; his sink was empty. There were no personal artifacts, no pictures or magazines, no books or briefcase anywhere to be seen. There wasn’t even a computer.

“Sit down,” he said, pointing at the circular sectionals in one of the sitting areas.

“Do you live here?” I asked, sitting carefully on the couch closest to me. The cushions resisted me; it felt as though no one had ever sat on it. The pillow I rested my arm on was just as stiff.

He sat in a chair across from me. “I don’t, no.” His back remained as rigid as it had been in the limo. “But this is one of my apartments.”

“Why are we here, then?”

“Because they won’t find us here.”

I didn’t own a watch, and the Doctor had destroyed my phone before I’d gotten in his limo. I guessed the time to be close to three in the morning. My anxious brain wouldn’t let me yawn.

“How are you so sure?” I asked.

He laughed at that. It was the first time that something even remotely cheerful had come from his mouth since I’d been in his company. “You’re the first person who has dared to question me in the last ten years.”

I didn’t laugh.

“Yes, I’m sure,” he said. “I wouldn’t have brought you here if I didn’t think so. This apartment isn’t held under my name…it has a state-of-the-art alarm system wired directly to a private security company under my employ, and it’s equipped with a fail-safe panic room.” He smiled, though it held more sadness than relief. “When you’re in this line of work, collaborating with people of this character, you can never be too careful. Or too safe.”

I might have been reading too much into his words.

“Does this mean you’ve made a decision?”

“I need more time to think before anything is decided, and you’re going to allow me that. But before I leave you to consider everything you’ve told me, I need to know something, Charlie.” He leaned forward and folded his hands over his knees. “Aside from the obvious reasons, what’s my motivation here? Why should I come clean?”

“Because…” I halted. Nothing came.

His laugher interrupted me again. This time it was humorless, a bleak, sarcastic noise. “I shouldn’t have to tell you, but your answer will need to be
extremely
persuasive for me to entertain a request like this. That I’ve even allowed myself to be sidetracked by your presumptuous demands should tell you something about how I feel about you.”

He outspoke me. It was no contest. I was much better communicating with pigment and canvas, with my body, than I was with words. It hadn’t seemed to matter much in the past, but suddenly it was crucial. I almost felt as though I was putting my life up for sale.

In a way, I guess he was doing the same.

There was a chance he could spend the rest of his life working at the mansion without being discovered, that his conscience would never override his clinical nature. And yet I was asking him to give up everything he had built outside of those gates, too. He would spend the rest of his life in prison. But that seemed more than fair when considering the number of deaths he’d been involved in, the amount of suffering he’d been responsible for. The decision was much easier for me; I was one of the victims. I wouldn’t be moving from the cage of the mansion to a real cage, with real bars and no freedom ever again. Was that too much to expect from him?

I didn’t think it was.

Without the Doctor’s help, I wasn’t sure anyone would believe me. My costume was bare skin and a mask; there was no way I’d be able to wear a listening device or a recording wire inside the mansion. But I couldn’t allow myself to ignore how horrific this whole operation was. I felt the truth within me; I had been one of those girls. My life was on the line either way.

And I was his daughter. I didn’t know what could be more convincing than that.

I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. “Do you have family?”

He didn’t answer, and his face didn’t waver. I took his silence as a no.

“Don’t you
want
family? Because I know I do. It’s something I’ve always wanted, something I’ve yearned for, even more so now that Lilly is gone. If you were to do this—to come clean—it would be something we could be to each other: family.” It went even deeper than that. “It could be, in some small way, a resurrection of all the girls you’ve pronounced dead over the years, all the lives you’ve let them take so casually, so carelessly. And I could have the life you once said I was so deserving of.” His face was still stoic. I couldn’t believe what I’d said hadn’t been enough for him. I needed something deeper, something more personal. “I know you want to become a better person, to transcend what you’ve done at the mansion, for
them.
You told me that during our sessions, whenever you compared your life to mine. But haven’t you been searching for someone to give that life meaning, someone you can finally care about…and love? Someone who’ll love you in return?” I was speaking for myself now, as much as for him. “I want to be that person—the one to love you, to care for you. The one you love back.” I felt the tears fall. “I want you to be my dad.”