“What it comes down to is a lie. One elegant, crafty lie. Told so convincingly that no one questioned it. Maybe I was a sweet kid like you say, and, yeah, what I am now isn’t anything I’m proud of. But I know the lie from the truth now. And I’m here because you’re caught up in the same lie. And it’s done to you what it did to me. Caused you to make decisions and arrange your life around it. So when you’re told the truth—that your daughter was pregnant, that she ran away because she was scared—you can’t hear it. But that is the truth of the lie. And it leads to one question. Who is the father?”

“Get out!” Grace screamed.

Denise stepped between them. “Trust me, you do not want the Secret Service to come in here.”

“I knew it had to be something like this,” Grace choked through a torrent of tears. “Another sick attempt to humiliate my family. Is your grievance with my husband really so important to you? Suzanne adored you, Gibson. You would really ruin her reputation just to hurt him?”

“Is everything all right in there?” a man’s voice asked.

It got quiet in the suite. Denise raised an eyebrow at him—What’s it going to be?

“I’m going,” Gibson said.

“Yes, we’re fine, John. Thank you,” Grace called out to the Secret Service agent on the other side of the door.

She held out the book to him, but he shook his head.

“It’s yours. You should keep it.”

“Is it even genuine?”

“You know it is.”

Grace flipped the pages carelessly, holding the book at arm’s length, as if it were bleeding. Then she stopped, breath caught on a jagged thorn, her hand trembling as it flattened out the pages.

“Grace?” Denise asked. “What is it?”

Grace, pale as old wheat, looked up at them.

“My favorite color is blue.”

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

Tinsley crouched in the bathroom and let the air-conditioning vent whisper truth to him. He’d been there a long time. Silent and still. Eyes closed. Listening to the room next door.

After the interruption in Charlottesville, it had taken some effort to track them down. They weren’t fools. Once they knew they were being pursued, they had done an admirable job of covering their tracks. It wasn’t until Atlanta that he’d picked up the scent again.

Calista Dauplaise was very unhappy. Understandable. The altercation at the lake house had been a bad business. Tinsley agreed wholeheartedly. Certainly, it was her prerogative to bring in a second team, but if she didn’t see fit to include him in those plans, then he could not be held responsible when the overlap led to inevitable confusion.

She had not seen it that way.