Blood Always Tells, Hilary Davidson [good book club books .txt] 📗

ghost had hands, they were wrapped around her windpipe. Dominique was sure that, should she get another word out of her mouth, a squeak would escape with it.

“You think I’m paranoid, don’t you?” Gary asked. “But part of me is starting to wonder if she had anything to do with that time I was kidnapped.”

“What?” Now she was confused. For a moment, she thought Gary actually knew something, but he wasn’t making much sense.

“You know, in Mexico?” Gary continued. “I told you that story. I know I did.”

“Sure. I remember.”

“I’ve had a lot of time to think about it,” Gary said. “All the signs point back to her.”

“The signs?” Was he toying with her? Dominique was on edge as it was. She could feel her face flushing. The last thing she needed was this complication. But Gary didn’t seem to register her reaction. He was too busy staring at the screen of his phone.

“I mean, look at the situation,” Gary said. “I go down to Acapulco to be a special guest at a boxing tournament. It gets canceled at the last minute. Then these three guys grab me at my hotel and hold me for ransom.”

“Three guys? I thought you said there were four?”

“There were four. Three guys grabbed me in my room. A fourth guy was driving the van.” His mouth twisted to one side, tasting bitterness. Dominique couldn’t read how much of that came from his memory of what had happened. “It wasn’t some kind of random kidnapping. They knew who I was. Doesn’t that reek of a setup to you?”

“I guess, when you put it like that.” Her words were halting, but Gary didn’t seem to notice that, either.

“Trin set me up. She wanted me to die down in Mexico.”

“But… didn’t she end up paying the ransom, Gary? I mean, why would she do that if she wanted you dead?”

“Are you kidding? She never paid one red cent.” Gary was usually sarcastic and cool, but his temper, which rarely flared in front of Dominique, was rising to a boil. “Her father finally coughed up the cash, after four days. To be fair to him, that was probably when he first heard I’d been abducted. If it had been up to Trin, I’d have been left for dead.” He lifted his eyes from the screen and turned his gaze on Dominique. “You know she wants me dead, don’t you?”

“That sounds extreme. She could get rid of you in other ways.”

Gary scowled at her. “What does that mean?” His tone was annoyed, but he yawned, stretching the last word out of his mouth.

“Well, that agreement you signed with her family… you can’t leave, but she could kick you out, right?”

“She can pull all kinds of crap to make my life a total hell, but she can’t do that.”

Dominique just stared at him. She knew he was lying. Maybe Gary realized that, because he kept talking.

“Her father wanted to make sure”—Gary yawned again— “that she couldn’t ditch her husband. She has to be married, or else she’s completely disinherited. He was a really sexist old coot. It’s complicated. I think Trin believed getting a divorce would be possible after he died, but it’s just as hard.” He took another drink. “I went over everything with Tom, and—”

“Your buddy Tom isn’t much of a lawyer.”

“Hey, he’s my friend as well as my lawyer. And it’s not like I can show anyone else the agreement.”

“You showed it to me,” Dominique said.

“Yeah, I did,” he admitted. “It was”—he yawned again—“important you understand the real situation.”

He sounded drowsy yet lucid. That put him in the sweet spot she’d been hoping for. “Hold on. I’ll be right back,” she said, grabbing her weekend bag and starting out of the living room. She needed a minute to get her things in order so she could do what she needed to, before Gary conked out.

“You know I love you, right?”

Gary’s words stopped her dead.

“What?” she demanded. She turned her head so she could see him over her shoulder.

Gary was watching her. “You heard me.”

The drug had done something stranger than Dominique expected. Her friend Sabrina, whom the muscle relaxant had been prescribed for, said it was like truth serum. Gary had never voiced an “I love you” before. He was too cool, too much of a player.

Dominique bolted upstairs, putting distance between them before her brain exploded from stress. Restless legs, her Nana used to say. Runs in the family. Just like your mama. She shoved that thought away. Her mama was the last person in the world she wanted to think about, especially right then. She raced to the bedroom at the back of the house, intending to drop her bag on the bed and extract the video recorder. But there was no bed in the room. There was nothing at all. The beautiful antique French furniture was gone.

She stared around the empty chamber. The walls were still covered in a rich blue silk. There were a couple of dark spots high up, near the ceiling, where a mirror and a painting by William Holman Hunt had once had pride of place. They had vanished, along with everything else. All that remained were the photographs of Trin.

That was what had been different downstairs, Dominique realized. Most of the furniture was gone. The house had always been choked with precious things, so many glittering, gilded objects crammed into each room that they seemed as unspectacular as weeds. There had been a speedy redecoration after Trin’s father died, but those alterations were mostly about what hung on the walls: the mounted stag heads had come down, and so had the photographs of Trin’s father and her three brothers. Up went The Many Moods of Trin, as Gary called it, a series of photos displaying his bone-thin wife awkwardly posing in couture. Losing the taxidermied animals seemed right to Dominique, but the family pictures were another matter. Whether the images of a quartet of dead men bothered Trin, she