Page 50 of Bad Blood
I came out of the memory in time to register the man’s introduction. “Kane Darby,” he said, holding out a hand to Agent Sterling. “I’m a local physician, and as you’ve probably gathered, my father is not beloved in these parts.”
Kane. My brain latched on to the name. I heard my mom saying it. I saw her standing in the moonlight, her hand woven through his.
“You were asking about Mason Kyle?” Kane continued, so even and calm that I knew he had a natural bedside manner. “We were childhood playmates, though we had little contact after his parents’ murder.”
I should have looked at Lia for some indication of whether or not Kane Darby was telling the truth. I should have thrown myself into profiling the man.
But I didn’t.
I couldn’t.
Feeling like the walls were closing in, I pushed past Lia, past Michael, past Dean, the world blurring until I made it out the door.
My mother had never been the type of woman to fall head over heels. She’d gotten involved with my father when she was a teenager, longing to escape her abusive father’s household. But when she’d found out she was pregnant, she’d run, not just from her father, but also from mine.
All I could think, as Dean followed me outside—Lia, Michael, and Sloane on his heels—was that Kane Darby had held my mother’s hand. He’d danced with her in the moonlight.
He’d made her smile.
Your mama always did have an eye for good-looking men. Ree’s words echoed in my head.Then again, she also had an eye for trouble.
I tried to remember something,anythingelse about my mother’s relationship with the cult leader’s son, but came up empty. My time in Gaither was a black hole.
Viewing that memory loss with a profiler’s eye, I asked the obvious question.What is my subconscious trying so hard to forget?
I crossed the street. Vaguely, I was aware that the others stuck close to me, that Agent Starmans had reappeared and was trailing a discreet distance behind us.
“I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that Kane Darby has daddy issues.” Michael did me the favor of not commenting onmyemotions. “The good doctor really was as calm as he seemed—right up until the point where he mentioned his father.”
“What about Mason Kyle?” I asked. “What did Kane Darby feel when he heard Nightshade’s name?”
“Sometimes one emotion can mask another.” Michael paused. “What I got off the good doctor was a combination of anger, guilt, and dread. Whatever else might have been buried underneath, that particular cocktail of emotions is something Kane Darby has felt before. Those three emotions are intertwined for him, and when they arrive, they arrive all at once.”
“Anger that someone else has all of the power and you have none.” Lia strolled ahead of the rest of us, turning to walk backward, light on her toes. “Guilt, because you’ve been conditioned to believe that there is no greater sin than disloyal thoughts.” She turned back around. “And dread,” she finished softly, her face hidden from view, “because you know, deep down, that you will be punished.”
You’re not talking about Kane Darby.
“In other words,” Michael translated, acting as if Lia hadn’t just shown us a glimpse of her deepest scars, “the good doctor has daddy issues.”
Like Lia, Kane Darby had been raised in a cult. Based on the fact that he’d spoken negatively about his father, I assumed that, like Lia, he’d gotten out.
But you didn’t leave town. You didn’t cut all ties. You didn’t start anew.
“Kane Darby and my mother were involved,” I admitted. Lia had been honest. The least I owed the group was the same. “I don’t remember much, but from what I’ve been able to piece together…” I closed my eyes, picturing the look on my mother’s face, my throat tightening around the words. “She might have loved him.”
There was a beat of silence, and then Sloane picked up the conversational slack. “Counting the bellman at the front desk and various casual encounters, we’ve spoken with a dozen Gaither citizens in the past three hours. And of everyone we’ve spoken to or observed, there’s only one person we’ve identified as having a close relationship of some sort with both Nightshade and Cassie’s mother.”
Kane Darby. I willed myself to remember something else about him, any interaction I’d had with him as a child, no matter how small.
“Darby the younger would have been all of ten years old when Nightshade’s parents were murdered,” Dean commented.
“And I was nine,” Lia countered lightly, “when I killed a man dead. Children are capable of horrible things, Dean. You know that.”
Sometimes, I thought, seeing the world through Lia’s eyes,you have to become the monster to survive.
I thought of Laurel, held captive alongside my mother; of Kane Darby, growing up under his father’s thumb; of Nightshade, whose parents had been murdered in their own home. And then I thought about the holes in my own memory, how much of what I’d thought I knew about my own childhood had turned out to be a lie.
“We need more info on Kane Darby,” I said, my stomach flipping as a plan solidified in my mind. “And I think I know how to get it.”
