Page 109 of Final Approach
“You shouldn’t go looking in places you have no business snooping into.” His eyes darkened, and for a moment, she was glad she brought her gun. If he’d been willing to kill her mother, would he kill her too? She shoved the terrifying thought away. He glanced down, then back, the black look gone. “You want to know everything, I see.”
Did she? “I ... yes. Including what you did with the letter she left for me.”
“I burned it.”
Her heart squeezed. Had he really? Or was he lying again?
“I found the divorce papers,” he said. “About two months before that flight. One she wasn’t even supposed to be on. I didn’t think she’d have the guts to actually go see a lawyer and have papers drawn up, but she proved me wrong.” He shrugged. “I couldn’t let that happen.”
“So you planned ahijacking?” Who did that? Who plannedtwo? Her father, apparently.
He huffed. “It wasn’t supposed to go down that way. Yours went exactly like it was supposed to. Pretty much.”
“Mine?” He waved a hand as though everything was of no consequence and she let it go. It wouldn’t make any sense to belabor the point. “Tell me about Mom’s.”
He shook his head. “She wasn’t supposed to die. She wasneversupposed to die. None of them were. I was just losing control and needed her to come to her senses and realize that she was supposed to stay home with you kids and stop traipsing around the world on a stupid plane. When I found the divorce papers, I lost it. Started planning right then and there. I knew there would be a flight coming up and had everything ready so all I had to do was make a phone call. I came up with the perfect plan and found the right person to help me carry it through. It was just a matter of timing.” He swallowed hard. “Then two months later, we had that fight, sheleft the letter and took that last-minute flight”—he frowned—“and I made the call.”
Kristine gaped. Then snapped her mouth shut. “I ... I almost can’t even compute what I’m hearing. You loved Mom.” A pause. “Didn’t you?”
“Of course. Why do you think I was doing whatever it took to keep her home?”
“That’s ... that’s not love. That’s obsession or wanting to control, but that’s definitely not love.” She hesitated. “Do you even know what love is?”
He sighed and scrubbed a hand down his cheek. “Of course I do. I love you kids. Which is why I’m always checking up on you and making sure you stay safe. Doing whatever it takes to keep you that way!”
“But ... a hijacking!” She blinked, wondering if he was a psychopath. It almost sounded like it. Which meant she could be in some serious danger. She wanted to scoff at the thought but couldn’t. And she still had questions. “That was you in the Brown home, wasn’t it?”
He nodded. “I went looking for the money. He wasn’t supposed to say a word about being hired to do that job. Idiot. So, I wanted my money back. Couldn’t find it, though. Then you showed up and I had to get out of there before you...” He shrugged.
“Before I recognized you.” She fell silent and simply let her brain spin. “And the tattoo you told Marcus Brown to get? What was that?”
“Just a way to confuse things. Throw the investigation off.” He smiled. “And it worked.”
Kristine rubbed her eyes, thinking about how she was going to get away from him. She didn’t really see him letting her leave. Not with everything she knew. He could deny it, of course, but a simple investigation into him would most likely unearth the evidence needed to put him away for a long time.
“And I did love your mother,” he said. “Very much.”
Love her or want to control her? “Where did you meet Mom?” she asked.
“On a flight. You know that.”
“Exactly. Doing something she loved doing. Why would you want to take that away from her?”
“Because she was supposed to love me more!Usmore.”
Psychopath was becoming more of a possibility. Or at least antisocial personality disorder. “So you argued. And when you found the divorce papers, you decided to kill her. Along with all those innocent people on the plane with her.” She was going to puke.
“No. No, no, no. It wasn’t supposed to be like that. I don’t know what happened, but he was never supposed to get into the cockpit.”
“But he did. And the plane crashed. And they all died. Because of you.”
He narrowed his eyes. “No, not because of me. Because ofher. If she’d just done what I told her, none of that would have happened.”
Kristine froze as those words echoed in her mind. Where had she heard him say that before?
With Emily. In the hospital.
Now she knew the answer to her earlier question. He’d kill her without blinking.
