Lisa Jackson - Born To Die

“And Mom?”

“She got what she always wanted out of the deal. A child.” Gerald’s gaze held hers. “It worked out.”

“Did it?” Her stomach soured as she thought of all the lies that were her life. “What about my dad?” she said. “The one who raised me?”

Gerald’s lips flattened a little, and some of his equanimity seeped away. “What? Are you coming to me now because he’s gone? You’re looking for a new father figure? Or, maybe it isn’t even that altruistic. Perhaps you’re looking for something else?”

“I don’t know what you’re getting at,” she said, though she did, and it was pissing her off.

“Look around.” He gestured grandly.

“Get this straight, Mr. Johnson. I don’t want anything from you but the truth. People are dying, and I think you have the answer.”

“Dying? Good Lord, you’re as melodramatic as your mother.”

“Maybe. But it doesn’t alter the facts.” She stood up, unable to sit in front of him like a sycophant.

Deep furrows cleft his brow. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Let’s start with Shelly Bonaventure.”

“Who? The… actress? What about her?”

“You don’t know her?”

“Of course I don’t. Why would I? The only reason I know about her is that my daughter Clarissa reads those tabloids and the like.”

“She was born in Helena.”

“All right.”

She felt herself falter inside a little. Could she be mistaken? He seemed genuinely at a loss. “Did you know Jocelyn Wallis?”

“Jocelyn who? I have no idea what you’re talking about!” Then something sparked. “Wait a minute. I read something about a woman who died recently. She fell while jogging?”

“Or was pushed. I don’t know the details,” Kacey admitted. “Only that her death is being investigated, maybe caused by foul play.”

“What does this have to do with me?”

“It’s because of the resemblance. See. .” She pulled the pictures of the two women she’d mentioned from her briefcase and slid them across the desk, faceup. “These two, and Elle Alexander, who was a patient of mine.” She found Elle’s photo and slid it across as well. “I guess Mom didn’t mention this when she called?”

“She said that you were on some mission, but I was busy, didn’t pay attention to her ramblings.”

“Maybe you should have.”

“I assumed she meant you were looking for me to come out and claim you.”

“That’s not it at all.”

“I don’t know these women. Never met any of them.”

“I think they could be related to me.”

“What? These women?” He looked down at the photos again. “Through me?” He let out a short bark of a laugh, as if he expected some dark, macabre punch line. His skin reddened. “Is this some kind of shakedown?”

But there was something he wasn’t saying. She saw it in his eyes, a lie he was trying to disguise. There was more here; she just wasn’t sure what.

“Are you trying to punish me?” he demanded.

“Punish you.”

“For not acknowledging you like I did with Robert.” He said it as if it was a cold, hard fact, one they both understood.

Kacey blinked. “Who’s Robert?”

“You know.”

“I don’t.”

They stared at each other, and he seemed to be sizing her up again before he clarified, “My son? Robert Lindley? That’s what this is really about, right?”

A chill, as cold as the bottom of the sea, settled at the base of her spine. What the devil was he talking about?

When she didn’t respond, he prodded, “Janet’s boy.”

“I’m sorry. Who’s Janet?”

His lips twisted a bit. “You didn’t do all of your homework, did you? Robert’s a few years older than you, and I. . claimed him, once Janet and her husband split up.”

How had she missed this?

“He works for the company, too, like the others. He’s in research and development. Great technical mind.”

So there was another half sibling in the mix. Her life as an only child seemed suddenly distant.

“When your mother called, I thought you wanted in, to be a part of the family, get whatever it is you think is your fair share of the company.”

Kacey snapped back. “Trust me, I’m not here about your company. I’m here for these women,” she said, motioning toward the pictures on his desk. “What you’re telling me is that you’re not their father. You’re not related to any of them.”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying,” he responded emphatically, but a guarded look had slipped across his face, a trace of quickly hidden deceit. Though he stared at her as if she’d gone stark raving mad, there was something more, something darker in his gaze. “I don’t know what you think you know.”

Though he readily claimed a son and now her as his children, he wouldn’t associate himself with the women who’d been killed. As if he didn’t believe he was related to them.

Had she been mistaken? He didn’t have any brothers; she’d checked. And his only other sibling had been a sister who had died in her twenties, so if not him. . then…?

She glanced to the medical diplomas on his wall, noticed that he’d graduated forty years earlier.

And then, like a ton of bricks, it hit her, the elusive notion that had been nagging at her since last night’s nightmare: he didn’t know about these women, because he didn’t realize he might have fathered them.

What had JC, her husband, bragged about to her years before?

“I should have been a sperm donor, like those other med students. I could have made a fortune. Women are looking for men like me. I could still do it. I’ve got the pedigree, the intellect, the IQ. . and athleticism and looks to boot.”

Kacey heard his voice in her head as if he were speaking to her now. And Gerald Johnson, nearing seventy, was a strong, strapping man. .

“I’m not related to these women,” he insisted, but she could hear the faintest trace of uncertainty in his voice.

“You weren’t a sperm donor around thirty-five or forty years ago, maybe when you were in medical school?”

“That’s ridiculous! Just because these women slightly resemble each other—”

“Not just slightly,” she interrupted. “And not just each other. This one”—with one finger she pushed the picture of Jocelyn Wallis closer to him—“looks enough like me that when she was brought into the ER, several of my associates thought something had happened to me. Look at them!” She slid the other pictures closer to him. “I’ve seen pictures of your family. There is an incredible, uncanny resemblance.”

A muscle worked in his jaw as he stared at one picture, then the next. He even went so far as to pull a pair of reading glasses from his pocket to study the images. Finally, as if disgusted, he tossed the glasses onto his desk. His lips were pulled into a serious knot. “So why are you here, Acacia? To confirm that I could have fathered these women because of something I did in my youth?”

“So, you were a sperm donor.”

“You are fabricating some kind of conspiracy theory that someone is killing people — women — who resemble each other and who might have been conceived through artificial insemination? And you’re looking at me as the sperm donor?” He was incredulous.

“Someone tried to kill me,” Kacey said. “A long time ago. Not rape me. Not rob me, but kill me. I thought it was a random act until just recently,” she admitted. “Now, I’m not so sure. Just yesterday I found out my house is bugged. With listening devices and who knows what else? Meanwhile, women who look like me are having accidents. Deadly accidents that, at second look, aren’t really accidents at all. Both Shelly Bonaventure and Jocelyn Wallis have connections to Helena. I figure that if I go there, I’ll find a fertility clinic where they were all conceived, and probably there are records for Elle as well. She was just born somewhere else.” She leaned across the desk. “How many more will I find, Gerald? Five? Ten? A hundred? Five—”