The Rich and the Dead (38 page)

C
AMILLA
? W
HAT ARE
you doing?” Dylan asked, sitting in his wheelchair with a stunned look on his face.

She opened her mouth, but she couldn't speak.

“Please, put the gun down,” he said in a calm, measured tone.

“I . . . I . . . ,” Lila stuttered, “I know.”

“Know what?” Dylan said. His eyes darted around the room.

“I know that your brother was the one who shot you.”

Dylan laughed nervously. “You've lost it, Camilla.”

But Lila stayed still, the gun pointed straight at him.

“I saw the blood after you got shot,” she said. “I know it was real. But you and your brother are real marksmen, right? So he shot you, but in a place where it wouldn't cause any real damage.”

“Are you suggesting I'm faking? That I've been faking paralysis for years?” He was shouting now. His hands gripped the arms of his wheelchair. He narrowed his eyes and clenched his jaw. “You're being crazy. Please, put the gun down.”

“I'm not suggesting it, Dylan,” she said, shaking her head as she went on. “Your friend Dr. Verma was in on it, too, wasn't he? That's why he's been your only physician. That was the only way to keep your secret. You bought his silence by putting him in charge of the hospital wing. And, when you walk again, he'll be the genius that fixed you.”

“Camilla, stop this. For your own good.” Dylan's voice was barely a whisper.

“Then you moved down here, hidden away on this big piece of land, able to live your life without anyone discovering your secret.”

“And why, exactly, would I have myself shot and fake years of paralysis? What would be the point of this elaborate plan?”

“Because you,” she said, the words sticking like knives in her throat, “because you killed those innocent people on Star Island that night. And you knew that no one would suspect you if they thought you were a paraplegic confined to a hospital bed.”

“Innocent!” Dylan said, with an indignant roar. “You think that I would murder twelve innocent victims for no reason? I guess you didn't know me at all.”

He moved his wheelchair toward her.

“Put the gun down,” he said.

“Stay back!” Her hands were shaking violently.

In a flash, Dylan sprang out of his wheelchair and lunged toward her, wrapping his arms around her legs and knocking her down. She felt her feet go out from under her and crashed hard to the floor. As her right hand collided with the floor, she accidentally squeezed the trigger, sending a stray bullet flying.

Dylan, who was on top of her, clutched his hand around her wrist and ferociously banged it on the wood floor until the white-hot pain caused her to drop the gun.

He picked up the rifle and trained it on Lila, who lay shaken and prostrate on the floor as her ex-lover hovered over her, a wildness in his eyes that she'd never seen before.

“Looks like I wasn't the only one telling lies. Or would you still like me to believe that you're who you say you are? Now, get up and sit in this chair.”

From all her years on the force, Lila knew that the best way to get out of a bad situation was to follow orders—at first.

She sat on the chair.

“I won't hurt you,” he said with a familiar tenderness in his voice. “But you have to tell me how you figured it out.”

Lila sat there silent. She was too stunned to speak.

“Tell me,” he said again, sternly. “Does anyone else know?”

“It was your pants,” Lila said finally.

Dylan, confused, looked down at his pants.

“Mud only splatters up like that if you're walking around in it, which you can't do if you're paralyzed. Then, there was the beer that I tasted on your breath when we kissed. I saw the bottle was set on a shelf that was too high for you to reach from a wheelchair. You must've been drinking it before I arrived because it was still cold when I got here.”

“That's absurd. I could've been using a walker outside, and someone could've put that beer up there for me. I may be isolated, but I don't exist out here without others.”

He sat on the windowsill, never letting his eyes or the mouth of the gun stray away from Lila.

“It wasn't just those things. It was your family crest. Those three birds up there.” Lila gestured toward the tapestry with her head, concerned that any sudden movement with her hands would be taken as a challenge. “I saw the same birds tattooed on the forearm of the man who shot you. Today I saw that your brother has the same tattoo.”

“I love my brother,” Dylan said with a wry smile. “But he's always been a bit sloppy.”

“But I still haven't figured out one major thing.”

“What?”

“Why you killed those people. I never pegged you as a cold-blooded murderer.”

Dylan shook his head sadly. “Just trust me when I say that each and every person I killed that night deserved to die. Their murders were a gift to the world.”

“How can you say that?” Lila asked, stunned.

He stood up, grabbed a chair, and placed it directly across from where Lila sat. He settled nervously onto the seat, with the gun resting on his knee.

“You don't have to look at me like that. I'm still the man you fell in love with.”

“The man I loved was a lie,” Lila said as she leaned as far away from him as she could.

“And it's becoming increasingly clear that Camilla Dayton is a lie, too. The woman I fell in love with would never be up here waving a gun around and piecing together crimes. So, let's call it even. Please,” he pleaded. “Let me tell you a story. And, at the end, I promise you'll understand.”

Lila said nothing. She sat still, waiting.

Dylan exhaled deeply. “I grew up in an incredibly wealthy family. But my parents and grandparents always stressed the importance of charitable work. My grandmother constantly spoke to my brother and me about the noblesse oblige of the wealthy. We were honor- and duty-bound to give back some of the incredible gifts that we were given.”

Lila broke eye contact with Dylan. A murderer talking to her about giving back? It was enough to make bile rise up in her throat. He saw the disdain in her face but continued anyway.

“So when Chase Haverford, whom I'd known for years, started talking to me about becoming part of the Janus Society, I couldn't have been more honored. No one was doing better work around the world. They were the world's premier philanthropic organization, bar none. Of course, the identities of the members were secret. I was stunned that someone I knew was part of this elite group, and when he said that I, too, could be a part of it, I jumped at the chance.”

“When was this?”

“Two thousand five. I had just turned twenty-two. I think about that time a lot. I'd give anything to go back and stop myself from saying yes to Chase's offer. My life, even our lives together, could've been so different. Better.”

Our lives?
Lila thought in shock. But she smiled at him, cautiously. If he still believed in the fiction of their love, she would play along. It might keep her from getting killed.

“I told Chase I was interested. But I didn't hear back from him about it for a couple years. When we had that first conversation, Chase said I could never mention that he was a member of the Janus Society. So when nothing came of it, I dropped the whole thing from my mind and never raised the issue with him again.”

“Did it make you angry that you never became a member?” Lila asked, wondering if Dylan had had the murderous reaction to rejection that she'd suspected of Alexei.

“I did become a member. But it took about two years. During that period all of these people came out of the woodwork to befriend me. I gained many intensely close friends at that time. Little did I know, each and every one of them was a member of the Janus Society. They were secretly vetting me to see if I was up to snuff.”

Lila was listening attentively to Dylan. None of it was making any sense to her.

“Once I got in the club, and found out what was really at the heart of it, I desperately wanted out. But it was too late. Once you're part of the society, you're in it for life.”

He sighed. “It was my first meeting. Two thousand seven. New Year's Eve. The secretiveness surrounding those meetings is mind-blowing. Always a different location that we would find out literally thirty minutes before we were supposed to be there. None of us could tell anyone where we were going. Most of the members are major corporate heavyweights, and most have families. Disappearing for even an evening is a big deal for all of us. Disappearing for New Year's Eve is half the fun. At first, I found the whole cloak-and-dagger routine exciting.”

He paused and stood up. Keeping the gun pointed at Lila, he walked to the shelf and grabbed the beer. “None of this is easy for me to say, Camilla. But it's important that you understand. You of all people.”

She nodded, anxious for him to continue.

“When I arrived, I was assigned to kill someone. A complete stranger.”

“What?” Lila asked. She was sure she hadn't heard him right.

“See that reaction you're having? That's exactly how I felt. They expected me to kill? Me? I couldn't believe it. Then Chase took me aside and explained that it wasn't a random murder. The person I was eliminating was an enemy of one of the Janus Society members. And now that I was in this society, any enemy of my fellow society members was an enemy of mine.”

“But why did Chase think you could murder someone?”

“The thing is,” Dylan said, with a hint of shame creeping into his voice, “it wasn't that far-fetched an idea.” He took a long swig of beer.

“Why?”

“I was constantly getting into trouble. A lot of bar fights when I was younger. I was stupid, fearless. Violence wasn't something that ever frightened me. It's part of the reason I think Chase approached me. He recognized that there was a darkness in me before I realized it myself.”

“How did he know you wouldn't run to the cops?”

“Simple. I knew they'd kill me. And Chase told me that anyone I killed always deserved it. And so I did as I was told. I didn't know what else to do.”

“How many people did you murder? For the club, I mean.”

“Only one,” Dylan said quietly. Then he paused and looked out the window. The sun was beginning to set. “Well, two, actually.”

“Who were they?” she asked.

“I've really missed you, Camilla,” he said, crossing the room toward her. He put his hand on her cheek. “I wish today had gone differently.”

Lila didn't flinch. “Tell me who they were,” she said again.

Dylan sat back in a chair opposite her and looked up at the ceiling. Lila eyed the gun.

“To explain that, I'll have to start at the beginning of the club itself.” He stood up again and walked to his desk, where he poured a glass of scotch from a crystal decanter into a glass.

“The club was founded by Chase's great-grandfather, a little after the turn of the twentieth century. Chase said the idea came to him when he and his fellow robber barons were sitting around discussing how life would be better if certain people could be gotten rid of. Of course, no one wanted to kill their enemies themselves. And hit men could never be truly trusted. They were always ready to sell out their employers to a higher bidder. The risk of being caught was too great. Then one of the robber barons came up with the idea of killing each other's enemies. That way each of them would have an airtight alibi for the murder of the person he was connected to. At first it seemed like a joke, but the more they considered it, the more they liked the idea. It just needed rules and structure. And so, the Janus Society was born.”

Lila began to understand. “You're saying that the Janus Society is a murderers' club?”

“That's one way to put it. Have you ever seen images of the Roman god Janus? He's almost always shown as having two faces, just like the society's two faces. Only one was ever shown to the world.” Dylan shook his head and stared off into the distance before continuing. “In two thousand seven, I killed Javier's mark, a Bolivian drug kingpin who was encroaching on Javier's gun-running business. That was my first hit. I could swallow that. The man was a sadist who left bodies in his wake.”

Lila could tell that recounting this was taxing for Dylan. He began to look gray.

“But Chase said that, at the next meeting, I'd have to offer a name of my own. When I protested, he assured me that my life depended on it. I can't tell you how much I agonized over this. I contemplated running away, but I knew they'd find me. For a few months, I thought I'd kill myself, but I couldn't follow through. I wasn't as brave as I thought. Finally, I decided who I would have killed.

“It would be my father.”

“Your father?” Lila was shocked
. If he's capable of that level of cruelty, he's capable of anything,
she thought.

“I see how you're looking at me,” Dylan hurried to say. “But, again, I can explain.”

“There's no way to explain killing your own father.”

“He was a very sick man!” Dylan protested. “No one knew other than our immediate family, but my dad was in the advanced stages of Alzheimer's. He could've lived a bit longer, but his mind was gone. And he was such a proud man that I knew he'd rather be dead than be so dependent on others. In a way, the father I knew was already long dead.”

“So you had him murdered?”

“I had no choice.”

“There's always a choice.”

“I don't expect you to understand. But you're right. I did make another choice that night, when I killed those twelve people on Star Island.”

“What made you finally do it?”

“They asked something of me that I could not do.”

“Worse than killing your father?”