“Why did he still leave it to me in his will?”
“He probably didn’t get around to changing his will before he died.”
“Why? Why would you want this stupid place?”
“Why do you think? Evidence, Bryce. This place is full of evidence.”
“But my father and the others are dead,” I said. “What good is any of the evidence now?”
“For putting your father and the others away? No good at all. But it has other uses. For example, you got your mother’s inheritance back, right?”
The gems now resided inside the safe at the guesthouse.
“You know about that?”
“I know pretty much everything your father has done over the decades. I’ve kept close tabs on him.”
I shook my head. “I’ll never understand you. Why didn’t you have him put away long ago? All of them?”
“It wasn’t that simple,” he said. “You know that. They had a lot of power, and Wendy had the most power of all. She’d threatened me with a fail-safe if anything happened to her and the other three—a fail-safe that turned out to be a hoax, but I didn’t know that at the time. She was a loaded gun, and I had to protect my family—especially my wife, who couldn’t protect herself.”
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’d heard it all before. I even understood it, for the most part.
“So you know about everything hidden here.”
“Not everything. Just what you’ve dug up so far.”
That rustling in the trees. I’d been sure we were being watched.
“I never thought it was you,” I said.
“It wasn’t actually me. I had Dominic and several others watching this place.”
That eerie feeling that I was being watched. Turned out it wasn’t just an eerie feeling. Never in a million years would I have thought it was my best friend’s supposedly dead father.
“Are you the ones who bugged our phones, as well?”
He shook his head. “As far as I know—and I keep apprised on all of my children and you—your homes and phones are not bugged.”
I sighed. “Ruby said she didn’t see any evidence of surveillance. I should have believed her.”
“Sometimes, the threat of being watched is worse than actually being surveilled. It’s a mindfuck, Bryce, and your father was the best at that.”
“My father’s dead,” I reminded him.
“He is, but in some ways, his legacy lives on.”
“Legacy?” I scoffed. “They broke up the ring, Brad. What’s left?”
“The mysterious phone calls you and Joe have been getting, for one thing.”
“They’re from Cade,” I said. “They have to be. Though it’s always a different number.”
“An easy tactic.”
I couldn’t help an eye roll. “Why are you here, Brad? Why didn’t you dig up this stuff yourself?”
“I had every intention of doing so. Just hadn’t gotten around to it. Believe it or not, faking your own death is kind of a full-time job.”