keep him busy. She took a step forward, pushing Vera behind her.
“Yeah, for me, I guess—according to his journal—but my grandparents weren’t going to let him take me. I was hiding around the corner at the top of the stairs, and I heard him tell my grandfather that he’d finally gotten clean. He’d been on a long bender after my mother died, and that he’d come back for me. My grandparents didn’t believe him because he reeked of whiskey. They refused to let him take me. They fought, and we left. Then the next day it was in the newspapers that they were both found dead.”
“But where did you go? What happened? Why couldn’t the authorities locate you when they were searching for heirs to this estate?”
“Because my father was a crazy old man, and he changed my name so they couldn’t track me and implicate him in their deaths. As far as anyone knew, he’d never returned here. But he never got over my mother’s death. He hated me, and every time he looked at me he told me how much I looked like her, and he hated me more for it. Then, when I finally had enough of his abuse when I was sixteen, I took off and changed my name again, and never looked back.”
“Did he report you as missing?”
“Yeah, and when they couldn’t find me, I was presumed dead.”
“How did you find out about this house and the sale for back taxes, then?”
“I had started a lucrative property investment business, of sorts, in Seattle. It was the perfect location for supplying high-end property to out-of-country buyers and flipping it for them.”
“Laundering money through real estate, in other words.”
“Call it what you want, it kept me in the green for a number of years. Then I heard my father’s house on Bainbridge Island was coming up for sale. I did a bit of nosing around and found out he’d died leaving no heir.”
“He thought you were dead, too?”
“I’d been dead to him my whole life. I never understood why he even took me from my grandparents’ house—this house!” A large blue vein throbbed at his temple. “It wasn’t until I read his journal and realized my mother died because of my grandfather that I knew. My father thought he was saving me, but what he did was destroy me. He never got over believing I was to blame for her death.”
“But you were just a baby and had nothing to do with it.”
“He never believed that.”
“But he must have at some point because he came back for you.” Addie’s eyes pleaded for him to understand. “He must have wanted you.”
“He only wanted to punish me, and he never stopped until the day I hit back and ran from his home. I never went back until I learned he’d died. As a real-estate agent, it was easy enough to get access, so I went in and took anything and everything I felt that old codger owed me for stealing my life.” Tension emanated from his body, his voice raw with hatred. “I found a box of his journals, and let’s just say they made for some rather eye-opening reading.”
“Is that when you found out about this house?”
“Yes, and being in the industry, I could check around and discovered it was going up for auction, and I started to percolate my plan. After all, this is my family home, the one I was deprived of my entire life. Now it’s going back into the hands of a Gallagher. A legacy my father deprived me of when I was too young to have a say.” Art toyed with the umbrella in his hand. He clicked the knife attachment back up into the shaft.
Addie inched toward him. If she was going to make a run for help, this was her opening, but Vera bolted past her, an unearthly sound gurgling from her throat.
Vera’s fists flew wildly in the air as she ran at Art, screaming, “I thought you loved me!”
Art wrapped the crook of the handle around her neck and yanked her ear to his lips. “Stop squirming, my dear. You’ll only make it worse.”
“What’s going on?” she whimpered. “I still don’t understand any of this.”
“It’s easy. You were my ticket into this town. Are you really so naive as to believe our meeting on that cruise was accidental?” His question was met with silence. “Has it dawned on you yet that you were part of my plan from the very