Forgotten Secrets (28 page)

Thayne raised his hands in surrender and turned to Riley. “She’s McIlroy’s daughter, all right. She has the same features as the others.”

“Do you think she could be Bethany?” Riley asked.

“I hope so. Cheyenne was devastated we couldn’t save her.”

“Thayne, if this woman
is
Bethany, maybe we can get some answers. Maybe she knew Madison.”

Riley stood outside the small hospital room. She’d wanted to be there the moment the doctor finished examining the unknown patient, but Brian Anderson had asked for her specifically.

How could she say no to the boy who’d risked so much to save Sam and everyone else in that compound? He was a true hero.

She pushed open the door. The room didn’t have any amenities. Brian lay pale against the pillows. A social worker sat across the room, watching protectively.

Riley pulled a chair next to the bed. “Brian, you asked to see me?”

He rubbed at the sheets. “They told me you work for the FBI. That you stopped Adelaide from taking the others. I wanted to thank you.”

“We’re the ones who should be thanking you. Running away took a lot of courage. You saved so many.”

“Not enough.” He looked away. “Is Adelaide gone?”

“She’s going to be locked up for a long time.”

“That’s good. She hurt a lot of people.” His eyes glistened. “I wanted to tell you about a girl we named Hannah. Adelaide punished her. I think she’s dead. She didn’t like to eat, so she was very thin. She had long red hair. I didn’t want anyone to forget about her. Adelaide didn’t put her in the cemetery behind the house. I don’t know where she is.”

Riley flashed on the painfully slight body of the girl they’d discovered near the waterfall. “We found Hannah, I think. I’m sorry. She didn’t make it.”

Brian fisted the sheets. “I knew. I just kinda hoped I was wrong.”

With a nod, Riley pulled out her notebook. “We’ve been trying to find all of you for a long time. Can I ask you a couple of questions?”

He nodded. “I don’t know how many I can answer, though.”

“What do you know about Father?”

“He insisted he was our dad.” He snorted and rolled his eyes. “I didn’t believe him.”

She inhaled, working out a way to break the truth. “Brian, did your parents tell you anything unusual about you when you were small?”

“I was loud, and from an early age I talked a lot. Like weirdly talked a lot. Full sentences and big words kind of thing. I took apart the television when I was about four, I think. Why?”

“But they didn’t say anything about your birth?”

“Like what? I guess it was normal. I don’t exactly remember it.” He narrowed his eyes at her. “What are you not telling me?”

“David McIlroy . . . Father . . . when he was younger, he donated his sperm to several clinics to help women get pregnant.”

His expression grew guarded. “Sperm banks?”

She nodded, and he threw back his head onto the pillow and closed his eyes. “He
is
my biological father. Oh my God. He’s my real dad. That . . . It explains a lot.”

Riley wanted desperately to leave Brian to his thoughts, but she needed a clearer picture, especially since they might never be able to investigate the crime scene any further. “When you arrived, how many of you were there besides Father?”

“Four.”

“Was someone named Bethany one of them?”

“Yeah.”

“What do you know about her?”

He opened his eyes and stared up at the ceiling, unblinking. “She’s the only reason any of us are normal . . . and alive. She tried to make life bearable. When Father or Adelaide got mad, she’d intervene. Father loved her more than any of us. He would tell Adelaide that, and she’d get really angry. I think he liked it when she got jealous. That felt wrong, but I never saw anything . . . if you know what I mean.”

“I do.” He squirmed and glanced away, so she changed the subject. “Bethany took care of you all? She protected you?”

“Yeah. Is she OK?”

“We don’t know,” Riley said. “There’s a woman down the hall being interviewed.”

“It has to be Bethany,” Brian said, his voice rising to a panicked level. “We need her.”

“I promise I’ll let you know who we found as soon as I do. For now, can you help us with the other kids? I recognize some of them from their missing children’s reports, but others I don’t.”

“You need their real names?”

“If you remember any.”

He held out his hand for her notebook. “I know them all. First names mostly, but some I know their real last names.”

Riley smiled. “I knew you would. You’re clever.”

“Thanks to
Father
, I guess.” He shivered and peeked over at her, his face wreathed in disgust. “He’s really my dad?”

“Biologically only,” she reassured him. “You were taken from a family who really wanted you to be born.”

He grew thoughtful, and she kept silent, giving him time to digest what she’d told him.

Finally, he raised his head. “They didn’t show it. Father gave me a family who loves me.” He stared at the notebook and pen she’d given him. “If I tell you who everyone really is, they won’t be my family anymore.”

She didn’t know how to respond, but in the end, she didn’t have to say anything. He turned his attention to the notebook and started to write down all the names he could remember.

Brian’s memory was supernatural. He recalled dates, names, and places. It was better than anything they could have come up with on their own. Matching the kids to their families would take no time at all thanks to him.

After he wrote the last name, he nodded off. She didn’t blame him. His life had completely unraveled. Information in hand, she crossed the hall and opened the door to the new patient’s room, sliding inside toward the back.

Thayne stood beside the bed. He looked over his shoulder and quirked a brow at Riley, but she leaned back against the wall and shook her head. After Adelaide, she wanted to observe the woman, focus on any possibility of lies or deceit.

He nodded his understanding and refocused his attention on the patient.

The nurse stood over the woman. “Can you open your eyes, please? We need for you to wake up.”

The woman struggled to follow directions but finally managed to crack open her eyelids. She licked her lips. “Where am I?”

“In the hospital. You had an operation. Do you remember? Doctor Blackwood told me about your ordeal. The incision is healing well. We’ll be running some tests to see what caused your abdominal pain, but if Doctor Blackwood’s recovery is any indication, you’ll be well soon.”

“She made it out alive?” the woman whispered. “The doctor?”

“She did, and she’s fine,” Thayne said as he moved to where the nurse had stood. “Hi.” He flashed his badge and introduced himself. “I need to ask you some questions. Can we start with your name?”

“Bethany.” She grimaced and closed her eyes. “As long as I don’t have to open my eyes or sit up.”

The wince could be from the light, but it could also be an involuntary reaction to seeing a law enforcement officer in her room eager to question her.

Although Brian had insisted Bethany was the real deal, Riley had her doubts. Bethany had lived with McIlroy for a long time. As far as Brian knew, she hadn’t tried to escape. That made Riley suspicious.

Bethany pressed her hand against her head and winced. “The last thing I remember was an explosion and rocks raining down on me. I wasn’t fast enough to get out. I thought I was dead.”

Thayne asked the nurse to dim the light. “That better?”

Bethany nodded.

“You’re a miracle around here,” he said.

She groaned as if in pain. “The children? Are they safe?”

“We’re fairly certain we got them all. They’re staying here until we find their parents.”

“And Adelaide?”

Riley noted a touch of fear in the question.

“She’s in jail.”

A ragged sigh escaped her. “You figured her out.”

“Our FBI behavioral analyst noticed something wasn’t quite right in the relationship between her and the children.”

“Poor Adelaide.”

That sentiment caught Riley’s attention. Why would Bethany pity the woman who’d so obviously terrorized them?

“She wanted a family so badly . . . relished the role of mother hen, but she didn’t know how to be a mother.” She cracked her eyes open. “Be careful. There’s something wrong with her.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know. Adelaide kept begging for a real family, so Father tracked down his biological children from a series of sperm donations he made to put himself through school at Cal Tech. I believed her act for a long, long time, but then she slowly started to lose her grip on reality and our punishments became severe. And then deadly. Even Father disapproved, wondering if she’d become too unstable. Your FBI agent must be very good at her job to see past Adelaide’s pretense.”

“You’re not the only one who was fooled. Most of us fell for Adelaide’s act. Even Doctor Blackwood. She didn’t realize until it was almost too late that someone was poisoning you both. Based on what our team found, it appears Adelaide had become adept at causing copper toxicity. Do you know anything about a local ranch owner she may have had a problem with? Their name is—”

“Riverton,” Bethany finished. “She had her reasons, twisted though they were.”

“Really? We saw the grave, but we don’t understand the connection. Can you help us?”

“Father was a Riverton. The black sheep, I guess. He was cut out of the will. I don’t know why. He resented the entire family and believed he deserved to own the ranch. That’s why he settled in those mountains. I can’t tell you how many times he tried to buy the ranch. They weren’t selling, so he was biding his time until he could arrange to claim or buy the land. Adelaide believed they would never sell, so she took matters into her own hands. She hated Calvin Riverton Senior. I tried to talk her out of doing anything rash, but she insisted he had to disappear. She thought she’d fixed Father’s problem, but then one of the sons—Brett, I think—came home from college to run the business, and the cycle started all over. She made friends with one of the ranch hands, but he got suspicious, so she killed him. That was six months ago. Then she forced Ian to hack into the Rivertons’ cameras so she could find pictures that could be used against them. I told Father she’d gone too far, and he was starting to agree with me. Finally.”

She closed her eyes and let out a huge sigh. The interview was taking a toll on her, but Thayne pressed on.

“You became her enemy,” he said.

She nodded with a small grimace. “Adelaide wanted us to be sisters. And in the beginning, I was so scared, I tried. She was my lifeline . . . and then they took others. Something changed; something inside her went wrong. She insisted on the perfect family. If any of the new members didn’t follow the rules or tried to escape, she just got rid of them.”

A tear slid down Bethany’s cheek. Her reactions weren’t fake. She cared deeply for the children, just like Brian had said.

Thayne leaned forward. “We saw sixteen graves in the cemetery behind your house. Were they all children except Riverton?”

Bethany moved, trying to find a more comfortable position, but winced instead. “Father chose those with talent who he believed weren’t living up to their full potential. Even at sixteen, Ian is a brilliant engineer. He designs security cameras for one of Riverton’s companies. Delilah is a violin prodigy. Edith was a computer wiz. She was punished last summer.”

Eyes wet with tears, Bethany looked away. “I’ve lost so many of them. You have no idea how many times I wanted to leave, especially when I got older, but I stayed because someone had to protect the children. Adelaide kept getting angrier, and Father lost his ability to control her. I saved as many lives as I could from her anger. Not enough, though. Never enough.”

They were so alike. Riley would’ve felt exactly the same way. She
did
feel the same way. But nothing that happened was Bethany’s fault.

The words rang in Riley’s ears. She’d heard them before. For the first time she might have begun to believe them.

Bethany yawned, struggling to keep her eyes open. She was clearly getting tired, and the nurse mouthed they had five more minutes before she would kick them all out.

Thayne cleared his throat. “I have just a few more quick questions and then I’ll leave you to get some rest. Do you know the real identities of the children, especially those who didn’t make it? We’d like to bring closure to their families.”

“Father knows.”

“Father died of a gunshot wound about thirty minutes ago. Adelaide shot him.”

Shock flickered over Bethany’s face, and her eyelids dropped as if they were too heavy to keep open anymore. “Dead?” Her voice sounded incredulous. “He’s dead?”

“Yes.”

“I should be happy.” Confusion colored her cheeks. “I am, but . . .”

“It’ll take time to process.” A smile full of compassion touched his face. “No one here expects you to be doing cartwheels.” He looked down at his notes. “We’re in the process of contacting the families. We can do the same for you. Do you remember your real name?”

Her eyes downcast, she gripped the sheets. “What does it matter? I’m not who I was supposed to be. How can I be? I was raised by a madman.”