“Very well. Do you know the value of a secret? I don’t mean some juicy tidbit known by a handful of insiders and gossiped about over drinks, but a real secret that would cause ruin if it were revealed. Do you know its value? Being the only one to know it. Just you and the person who fears it. Such a secret places that person’s life in your hands. They will do anything for you to keep it a little longer. Anything.” She stretched the word out to stress the implications. “It grants one absolute power over their lives. But only if you, and only you, know the truth.”

“So you waited all this time. Kept his secret. Just to ruin him now?”

“Is that the limit of your imagination, Mr. Vaughn? That I waited ten years to snatch his life’s ambition from him? Is that what you think you saw in Atlanta? Oh, you are a small-minded boy. I did what I’ve always done. What Benjamin was always too arrogant to admit he needed. I protected him.”

“Protected him?”

“What do you think a secret like this getting out would do to the president of the United States? It would be the end of him; the end of his presidency. And what do you think he would have done to ensure I kept his secret? Anything. I didn’t keep his secret to ruin him. Please. I kept Benjamin’s secret so that he would achieve his destiny.”

“And his presidency would have belonged to you.”

“To my family,” Calista corrected. “You asked why I sent you after the man who took Suzanne’s photograph. I thought Terrance Musgrove closed that door long ago; I was mistaken. The photograph meant that there was someone else who knew the secret. If it were ever uncovered, my hold on Benjamin would have been erased. And I had sacrificed far too much to allow it.”

“My father.”

“Yes.”

“Kirby Tate. Terrance Musgrove. Billy Casper.”

“And Jenn Charles and Daniel Hendricks and Gibson Vaughn, had things gone to plan.”

George Abe, Michael Rilling, Gibson added silently to the list.

“Does Catherine know who she really is? That she’s ten, not eight?”

“She has her suspicions, but I’ll leave that to you.”

“What have you told her?”

“Only that her time here at Colline is at an end.”

He shook his head. “You talk about the decline of your family. Lady, you are the decline of your family.” He held up the gun. “This belonged to Billy Casper. He would have wanted you to have it.”

“Ah. When we met, you didn’t strike me as an ironist.”

“When you get sent looking for a missing girl who wasn’t missing . . . well, you pick it up quick.”

“You intend to kill me?”

“No, I intend for you to follow Benjamin’s example.”

“Why on earth would I do that?”