Vicki Pettersson - The Given

Seeing her shake, Ray smiled and leaned on the edge of his desk, towel gaping. “She’s dead. What else is there to say?”

Kit lifted the article about her father, holding it at eye-level in order to study Ray as he studied it. “This was my father, Ray. He was murdered the same day he took a call at your dad’s house, fourteen years ago. Pretty amazing coincidence, huh?”

“They happen,” he said unconvincingly.

Except that Ray had this article sitting in his office now, fourteen years later.

Ray looked at her for a long while, and finally said, “I know, okay? I was there.”

Kit’s heart thumped. “Was Barbara?”

“Yup. Me, dear ol’ dad, his bitch wife, and her cousin.” He scoffed. “One big happy family.”

“Back up.” Kit shook her head. “Cousin?”

“Yeah, you didn’t know about her, did you?” He shrugged one shoulder, caught her looking, then rolled them both. Flexing. “Granted, she was quieter than Barbara. Plus she disappeared after the hullabaloo in 1960.”

“Mary Margaret’s kidnapping,” Kit murmured. And that was the tie to Grif.

Ray nodded absently, but frowned as he cast his mind back in the past. “They were cut from the same cloth, though. Cousins, grifters, chip hustlers, whores. Those two trick-rolled so many men they probably lost count. It’s why they came to Vegas in the fifties, you know. At least if my mother was to be believed.”

“Theresa knew them?”

“Knew ’em, and saw right through ’em.” And another puzzle piece snapped into place. Ray shook his head, and for a moment his gaze grew faraway. “My old man shoulda listened to her.”

“Did you know them, Ray? I mean, back in the fifties?” He was only seven at the time, but there was a chance . . .

He looked at her and then stood, amusement brightening his face. “Of course. Barbara’s cousin was Gina Alessi. She was Mary Margaret’s nanny.”

Kit opened her mouth, but nothing came out. She tried again, but managed only a head shake. Ray, enjoying himself now, chuckled as he circled the desk and took a seat. He leaned back in his chair and waited for her to recover. Fortunately, the third time was a charm. “I . . . I’m at a loss.”

“Because you’re a reporter. That’s your problem, see? You have to stick to the facts, cold and hard, black and white, right?” He waited for her nod. “But this is a story of emotion, and emotions make a bigger mess of things than facts. So the unsubstantiated fact is, those girls were after money and power, and in those days that meant the Family.”

And in those days that meant the DiMartinos.

“So Gina gets a job as the family nanny, and she was actually all right, you know? I think she woulda gone straight, or at least tried, if she wasn’t unduly influenced, if you know what I mean.”

“By Barbara.”

He inclined his head, mouth turning down. “She was a summer visitor at first. Just a girlfriend to keep Gina company while she watched over all of us kids. It was ’fifty-two that first time, Barbara was only sixteen. Fresh-faced, wide-eyed. It’s amazing how much deviousness a pretty face can hide.”

He looked at Kit, drawing out his pause, and she lifted one slim eyebrow. “Insinuating something, Ray?”

“Not at all,” he lied, but the cunning smile slipped away as he continued. “Anyway, over the next three years, Barbara keeps visiting, and she gets a taste for the life, you know? The power and money that come along with being a part of the DiMartino dynasty. We used to catch her trying on my mother’s things—her furs, her costume jewelry.”

Her husband, Kit decided, watching the way Ray’s eyes clouded over. Because Barbara had eventually married Sal . . . and Gina—the longtime nanny and Barbara’s cousin —was the link.

It was the smoking gun that Grif and she had been searching for. She couldn’t wait to tell him.

“So what happened?”

Huffing, Ray rocked in his seat. “You think they’re going to tell a seven-year-old anything? I don’t see Barbara again after ’fifty-five or so. Then Mary Margaret gets kidnapped a few years later in revenge for stolen jewels. Old man Shaw rescues her, then he gets knocked off. That’s when Gina disappears. Barbara comes back, though. After my mother died.”

Back in ’sixty-one, then, Kit thought. Back for the one thing she really wanted. Sal DiMartino.

“So fast-forward thirty-seven years,” Kit prodded.

Ray nodded. “And Gina shows up at my dad’s place out of the blue. Whatever she says has Barbara both hopping mad and running scared. And if you didn’t notice, Barbara doesn’t scare easily. The police get called because some do-gooder heard a ‘domestic disturbance’ and that’s when your dad shows up. His partner takes on Barbara. Your dad gets Gina.”

Kit’s instinct kicked in again, and she wrapped her fingers more tightly around the .22, trying to both work out what Ray was hiding and keep him talking. “What did Gina say to my father that was worth killing him for, Ray?”

“She tells him that Barbara isn’t who she seems. That she took on the name of an infant who’d died back in ’forty, one named Barbara McCoy.”

Kit blinked. “You mean . . .”

“Barbara didn’t get remarried again after my father died, she hadn’t gone from DiMartino to McCoy, she went back to being Barbara McCoy.”

The truth hit Kit hard enough to make her gasp. And hope, too. Now she and Grif had a name to work with. Barbara had been around when Grif was killed in 1960.

It wasn’t everything Kit had come here for, but it was a start. She blinked at Ray, who was still watching her closely.

“So why’d you tell Grif that you never spoke to Barbara anymore?”

“Hand to God, I hadn’t spoken to her since the day my father died.”

“Yet you called her after Grif and I came to see you.” She wasn’t sure of it, but how else would Barbara know? Why else would she return?

“Some reporter comes poking around, asking to see my dad’s files? Why wouldn’t I?” Ray scowled. “Didn’t matter, though. All she cared about was Griffin Shaw. Wanted to know when he’d gotten back in town, what he wanted, who he was with.” He jerked his head at Kit. “She went crazy when I told her about you. That you two were a couple. I tried to tell her that it was a different Griffin Shaw, younger, the grandson, but she didn’t believe me. She Googled you, pulled up all your articles. Your photos. She became . . . obsessed.”

You’re not like the other girls, are you . . .

But Barbara had already known all about Kit when they first met.

“I asked her why she cared so much,” Ray said, shrugging one naked shoulder, “but she just said not to talk to you. That Griffin Shaw had some sort of sway over women, a magnetism that made them do what he wanted. Whatever the hell that means.”

Kit knew exactly what that meant. But how did Barbara?

“What else?”

“Nothing else. I gave Barbara your contact information,” Ray said. “She took it from there.”

The only sound in the office was the hum of the heater and Kit’s own thoughts, screaming, Liar.

“Then why’d you call her last Saturday, Ray? You asked if ‘it was done.’ ”

It was another gut instinct, but her gut was rarely wrong. “Were you asking about me? Was I the one who was supposed to die up in that suite?”

Ray leaned forward, staring intently like he was about to tell her something that would change her life. He waited until Kit leaned forward, too.

“Honey,” he finally said, dark gaze unblinking. “You’re still the one who is supposed to die.”

And he rose with a sawed-off shotgun primed in his hands.