Share No Secrets (45 page)

Adrienne snapped back to life as Drew stood and moved away from Miles, going toward the hotel. Adrienne fumbled with shaking fingers in her ridiculously tiny purse for her cell phone, which she immediately dropped. She stooped beside Miles, retrieving the phone. Just as she grabbed it, Miles opened his eyes. His stare was so intense, she froze. “Miles?” she said softly. “Miles, you’ll be all right I don’t know what happened, but—”

“Rachel,” he ground out, his face contorting with pain. “Rachel did all of it. I didn’t know at first … I was scared of her when I figured it out I hid at Kit’s and then I was running away like a coward …”

“Rachel?”
Adrienne gasped. Her mind shut down against the impossibility of what he was saying. “Miles, you’re delirious. You don’t know what you’re talking about. Save your breath. I’m calling for help—”

He grabbed her arm with a bloody hand. Instinctively, she tried to pull back, but he held her with remarkable strength. “She has Skye, Adrienne. Rachel has Skye inside the hotel and she’s going to kill her.”

“What are you
saying?”

Adrienne had been so absorbed with Miles that she hadn’t even heard Philip and Vicky drive up. But now Vicky stood behind her, reaching past her in an effort to grab Miles as Adrienne shouted again, “What are you saying about my daughter?”

Philip pulled Vicky back and Adrienne stood, placing her hands on Vicky’s shoulders. “He says Rachel has Skye inside.”

“And she’s going to
kill
her?” Vicky shrieked. “He’s crazy!”

“Philip, keep her off Miles,” Adrienne ordered. “I have to get into the hotel.”

Adrienne couldn’t understand how her voice emerged so strong and commanding when it felt as if everything inside her were quivering in absolute terror. What Miles had said
did
sound crazy, but if he was right …

She kicked off her spike-heeled shoes and ran into the hotel. The darkness of the lobby immediately blinded her. Drew called out to her. “I’m behind the registration desk. I just found the light switch. I hope the electricity is still on.”

“It is,” Adrienne said, remembering turning on the lights the morning she and Skye found Julianna. In a moment, the beautiful chandelier overhead bloomed to life, glowing on the Oriental rugs and elegant Queen Anne furnishings of the lobby. Drew dashed up the stairs toward the second floor. Adrienne followed, hearing Philip and Vicky pounding across the porch and through the double doors.

The injured Miles flashed briefly in Adrienne’s mind. In her fear for Skye, she hadn’t called 911 asking for an ambulance, but her daughter was more important to her.

She caught up with Drew on the stairs. He took her arm, pulling her along so she could keep up with him. When they reached the second floor, the scent of jasmine hit Adrienne like a splash of perfume. Tastefully muted ceiling lights burned under faceted crystal globes, but Adrienne could still see the flicker of candlelight spilling from one of the rooms—the room where Julianna had died.

“Drew,” she whimpered, pointing.

“I see it,” he said, just above a whisper. “Stop running. Approach the room slowly and
don’t
raise your voice when we get there. If Rachel has Skye, we don’t want to startle her. She may have a gun.”

“A
gun!”
Adrienne almost cried out, then caught herself. Drew had said to be quiet. Right now he seemed far more in control than she was. She felt more secure following his judgment than hers.

But no amount of good judgment could have prepared Adrienne for what she saw in Room
214
. Skye sat huddled on the floor, her face wet with tears, her eyes wide and terrified. Above her stood Rachel holding a gun, switching it back and forth between a frail, wild-haired Lottie and Lucas flynn, pointing an even larger revolver at the girl’s head.

Adrienne felt as if every bit of air had been sucked from her lungs. She held tightly to Drew’s arm, knowing he was all that kept her standing. She stared at the bizarre tableau, too frightened to say anything. Then, from behind her, Vicky moaned, “Oh, my God.”

Rachel looked at her mother. “Why didn’t you ever tell me the truth, Mom?”

“T-the truth?” Vicky faltered. “What truth?”

“That Philip Hamilton wasn’t my real father.”

She’s lost her mind, Adrienne thought. Rachel has gone completely over the edge. But Vicky began to cry and asked, “How did you find out?”

“Blood,” Rachel answered flatly. “When I had the car wreck two summers ago, I needed a transfusion. I found out you have type A blood and Dad has type O. I have AB. It’s not possible for parents with A and O blood to have a child with AB.”

“The doctor wasn’t supposed to tell you that,” Vicky said in a small, crushed voice. “He promised.”

Rachel gave her a rueful smile. “Oh, he kept his promise. But this bitchy nurse whose daughter I’d beaten a week earlier in the local tennis championship told me for spite. God, did she gloat!” Rachel’s smile faded. “But I knew before then. I think I’ve always known.”

She looked at Philip, who seemed turned to granite. “I always adored you, Daddy. But unless we were in public, you either ignored me or treated me like you couldn’t stand me. You could barely
look
at me. I tried so hard to please you. But I couldn’t—not with the good looks everyone said I had, not with good grades, not with my athletic achievements or all the other honors I got in school. Nothing seemed to matter. I was
so
hurt. I felt like nothing, worse than nothing.

“After I found out that because of the blood, I couldn’t be your biological daughter, I tried to tell myself I was adopted. But I’m good with research. It didn’t take long for me to realize I hadn’t been adopted. Mom had given birth to me, but I wasn’t
yours.
That’s why you didn’t love me. What I want to know now is exactly what happened. How did I come to be, Mom?”

“Rachel, I can’t … don’t do this to me,
please,”
Vicky wavered.

Rachel pointed the gun at her. “Don’t you dare stand there looking delicate and sickly and helpless. For once in your life, stand up and tell the truth. Tell me how you betrayed Dad with another man and gave birth to his child. Lucas Flynn’s child!”

Adrienne and Lucas locked stares. She couldn’t believe what she’d just heard until she saw the truth in his gray eyes. She barely felt Drew’s hand touch hers. He’s trying to comfort me, she thought distantly. Drew thinks I’m hurt. But I’m only surprised.

Adrienne tore her gaze away from Lucas’s and looked at Skye, huddled on the floor, her tears dried, her face desolate. Adrienne ached with the need to cuddle the girl in her arms, but she knew any movement on her part could be dangerous, so she simply tried to stand still and calm in the maelstrom that swirled around her.

“Tell me, Mother!” Rachel commanded again.

“All right!” Vicky sobbed. “All right. Just try to understand, Rachel. I love you. I always have.” Rachel glared at her, and Vicky drew a deep breath. “It was three years after Philip and I married. I’d already realized he didn’t love me. He was never mean to me. It would almost have been better if he had been. At least that would have meant he felt
something
about me. But there was nothing except this vague kindness, especially in public. I couldn’t stand it, Rachel. I was crushed because I loved him so much. I felt desperate for attention—for
love
—and there was Lucas. He was working on one of Philip’s campaigns back then. We were together a lot. We talked. I liked him immensely. And he
loved
me. I knew it even before he said it. And one night, when we’d both had a little too much to drink … well, you can guess the rest.”

“Oh, you were drunk,” Rachel said sarcastically. “Next you’ll tell me he raped you.”

“No. Nothing like that. Actually … well, I gave him the impression I wanted to leave Philip. I don’t know what got into me. I was just so angry, so hurt—”

“So
needy,
as always,” Rachel snapped.

“Yes. Lucas and I were together several times and then I told him I’d made a mistake. I knew I’d hurt him, but I just couldn’t leave Philip. The problem was that I realized too late. I was pregnant”

Rachel looked at her mother contemptuously. “You’d already deceived Dad by committing adultery. Couldn’t you pass me off as his child, too? Or were you too honorable?”

“No,” Vicky said weakly. “I wasn’t honorable even then. I told him I was pregnant I said, ‘Isn’t it wonderful? We’re going to have a child!’ And he gave me this cold, stony look and said, ‘I’m sterile. I’ve known for years.’ He didn’t get furious, he didn’t ask who the father was, he didn’t show one
trace
of emotion. He just walked out of the house. He came back two days later and said, ‘We’re going to pretend this baby is mine. I don’t want you to tell your mother, your sister,
anybody
that it isn’t And I don’t want to know who the father is. End of subject.'” Vicky laughed raggedly. “End of subject! Can you believe it? I couldn’t.”

“But you did what he said.” Rachel looked at Philip. “Why, Dad? Or should I say Philip? Why did you play out this act? And don’t lie to me now, not after all you’ve put me through. Tell me the truth or I will put a bullet in your head.”

Philip barely paused before saying in a stiff, dry voice, “I had planned a career in politics since I was a child. I couldn’t expect to further my aims by divorcing my pregnant wife. There would have been a scandal. It would have been the end.”

“Not if there hadn’t been a child at all,” Rachel said. “If you were determined not to divorce Mom, why didn’t you insist she get an abortion? She would have done what you wanted, no matter how she felt about getting rid of an unborn child.”

“Abortion has always been abhorrent to me.”

“Since when?” Rachel asked disdainfully. “As I recall, you’ve always been pro-choice, although as a stalwart Republican you never broadcast your views on that subject”

Another pause before Philip said, “Considering abortion in the abstract is different than the reality of your own wife having one. I did not want to put your mother through it.”

Rachel’s eyes narrowed and a sardonic smile formed on her face. “You’re very convincing when you lie to the public, Dad, but not to me. I can tell when you’re lying. Now, because I intend to keep everyone in this room until questions are answered to my satisfaction, why don’t you try telling the truth?”

The silence in the room seemed to swell until Adrienne thought she would scream. Didn’t Philip realize that Rachel was on the edge, capable of anything, even of shooting him? Why wouldn’t he answer? What would happen if he refused to answer? She closed her eyes and felt Drew’s grip on her hand tighten. She clung to his hand as if he were the only thing in the world that could save all of them. Including Skye.

“Answer her, Philip,” Drew finally said, his voice steely. “If you don’t answer and keep putting all these people at risk, I swear I’ll choke you to death before Rachel has a chance to shoot you.”

“Shut up, Delaney,” Philip said, seething. “This is none of your business.”

“Answer her!” Lucas commanded.

Philip looked at him with naked hatred. “You son of a bitch. I gave you a job. I was good to you. I had no idea—”

“It doesn’t matter now,” Lucas said coldly. “Just tell Rachel what she wants to know.”

Adrienne could feel Philip breathing hard behind her. He’d probably never felt so cornered and powerless in his whole life. “All right, Rachel. If you want the truth, you’ll get it. I’m not going into specifics, but when I was fourteen, I got an injury. A very private injury inflicted by none other than Great-aunt Octavia. I’d broken a Ming vase. It wasn’t the first time she’d beaten me with her cane, but it was the worst. I never said anything about it, or about any of the other beatings, because I was ashamed of what an old woman could do to me. I also had nowhere else to go. My parents were dead. There were no other close relatives. She filled my head with stories about the horrors of foster homes and orphanages.” His head tipped down slightly. Adrienne wasn’t sure, but she thought she saw a look of remembered terror on his face. But in a moment he looked up again, his face expressionless. “Later, when the pain in my groin wouldn’t go away, I got worried and went to the doctor. I made an excuse for the injury. He wanted to test me, and I let him. That’s when I discovered I was sterile.”

His reverence for the imperious, cruel-eyed Octavia had always mystified Adrienne. Now she realized that what Philip had felt wasn’t reverence—it was fear. And he’d been in the old harridan’s care since he was six.

“I was ashamed of being sterile,” he went on. “I kept hoping some miracle would happen. But after your mother and I had been married for three years, she still wasn’t pregnant So I knew it was true. And I also knew that other people would begin wondering what the problem was. They might think Vicky was barren, but what if they suspected the problem lay with me? What if they thought I wasn’t a
man?”

Good God, Adrienne thought. Octavia must have planted that idea in his mind. She must have made him doubt his manliness and proving it had become an obsession with him.

“So when Vicky told me she was pregnant, I knew the baby wasn’t mine. My first impulse was to get rid of it But I went away and thought about it for a couple of days. And I decided that this was the way to save my reputation. People would think there was nothing wrong with me. After all, I had a child, didn’t I? My marriage would stay intact and I would have a child. I’d be the perfect political candidate—the man with a spotless reputation. A family man.”

Rachel looked at him incredulously. “You accepted me because you thought it was good for your
career?”

“Yes,” Philip said simply. “It made perfect sense.”

“Dear Lord,” Vicky whispered. “Even I didn’t know your true reason for wanting to keep the baby. Without one, you were afraid people would think you weren’t a
real
man, a
virile
man?”

“Well, you didn’t think it was because I cared about the kid, did you?” Philip asked viciously.