Jennifer’s son. The same color as Wallace’s in his youth.
It was possible. Jennifer supposed that little bitch could be Wallace’s daughter.
If she was, and she’d lived while Jennifer’s daughter hadn’t…a rage like no other threatened to erupt.
It was hard to determine how many babies Wallace had made on his collection of whores through the years.
Or even when he’d started.
Or how many of them had survived the condition that had killed their Elizabeth. It had taken her a long time to get over blaming him for the genes he hadn’t known he’d possessed back then. She hoped to high heaven the man had used condoms with each of his whores. She suspected he hadn’t.
It probably would be in her best interest to get tested for sexually transmitted diseases again. She’d done so anonymously a few times before, just to be on the safe side. Using protection might not have ever occurred to him.
Jennifer wasn’t blind; the only thing Wallace had had going for him the last decade or so had been cold, hard cash. It certainly hadn’t been his brains.
Wallace was only moderately good looking. Mostly because she’d pushed him to take care of himself and had always made certain that his clothing was high-end and appropriate for their station in life.
Most of their money, she had made with her real estate.
She understood—she knew what it was like to be dirt poor, to wonder where the money for the water bill was going to come from. Worse. Not having running water at all. Having to use a damned bucket in a closet for the basic nastiness of life.
She’d vowed the moment she’d first held Reggie—her son would never know that hell.
She would never forget how that felt. Never again would she live like that.
Or how it had felt when Wallace had first looked at her. He’d been handsome and strong and working at the hospital when she’d taken her younger brother there after Joey had OD’d.
Wallace had rescued her that day. He hadn’t called the cops and had driven her and her twelve-year-old brother back to their neighborhood in a car that was only two years old.
She’d never been in a car that new in her entire twenty years.
Jennifer had felt so out of place in a car.
He’d come by daily to check on her brother, to keep him from making the same mistake twice. He’d saved Joey that day.
Wallace had rescued her from the life of poverty she had been a captive of.
Now he had ruined everything. It was hard for her to get past that.
All because of that little fucking whore Izadora MacNamara.
If he was going to kill some bitch, he should have done it quietly. Strangled her and drop her in the reservoir or something else, like that woman who’d recently been floating in the Value Reservoir.
Not shoot her on damned video.
Izadora MacNamara must have done something to cause Wallace to go off the deep end like that.
Jennifer suspected she knew what it was.
Blackmail. It was the only answer.
There was only one thing in Wallace’s past that she could think of that would warrant what he had done.
Jennifer had to find the answers. Sitting next to Reggie’s bed while he recovered gave her time to think of how to do that.
As the storms outside the hospital built, she worked on her laptop. She had a lot of messes to clean up before the TSP started digging too deeply.
She sent another text to those idiots who Dennis Lee had sworn by. To see if they’d been successful on what she’d told them to do. They knew who was the boss now that Dennis Lee was gone.
She’d used them for side jobs, such as leaning on reluctant buyers, since long before what had happened with Dennis Lee and Carl.
Someone had to pay their checks now that their source of funds was dead. She’d made it very clear that it was going to be her.
Or she’d spill everything.
She’d hacked his passwords and duplicated the keys to his hidden offices more than a half-dozen years ago.
Dennis Lee had taught her well, after all.
They surely had been able to do a simple job on her orders.
Get rid of that nurse. Period. Kill her, drop her body down one of the old mines that populated the area, and send her uncle a note where to find what was left of her. Along with a warning to keep his nose out of things he had no business digging in. Or else it would be the