Kacey snapped back. “Trust me, I’m not here about your company. I’m here for these women,” she said, motioning toward the pictures on his desk. “What you’re telling me is that you’re not their father. You’re not related to any of them.”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying,” he responded emphatically, but a guarded look had slipped across his face, a trace of quickly hidden deceit. Though he stared at her as if she’d gone stark raving mad, there was something more, something darker in his gaze. “I don’t know what you think you know.”
Though he readily claimed a son and now her as his children, he wouldn’t associate himself with the women who’d been killed. As if he didn’t believe he was related to them.
Had she been mistaken? He didn’t have any brothers; she’d checked. And his only other sibling had been a sister who had died in her twenties, so if not him . . . then ... ?
She glanced to the medical diplomas on his wall, noticed that he’d graduated forty years earlier.
And then, like a ton of bricks, it hit her, the elusive notion that had been nagging at her since last night’s nightmare: he didn’t know about these women, because he didn’t realize he might have fathered them.
What had JC, her husband, bragged about to her years before?
“I should have been a sperm donor, like those other med students. I could have made a fortune. Women are looking for men like me. I could still do it. I’ve got the pedigree, the intellect, the IQ . . . and athleticism and looks to boot.”
Kacey heard his voice in her head as if he were speaking to her now. And Gerald Johnson, nearing seventy, was a strong, strapping man. . . .
“I’m not related to these women,” he insisted, but she could hear the faintest trace of uncertainty in his voice.
“You weren’t a sperm donor around thirty-five or forty years ago, maybe when you were in medical school?”
“That’s ridiculous! Just because these women slightly resemble each other—”
“Not just slightly,” she interrupted. “And not just each other. This one”—with one finger she pushed the picture of Jocelyn Wallis closer to him—“looks enough like me that when she was brought into the ER, several of my associates thought something had happened to me. Look at them!” She slid the other pictures closer to him. “I’ve seen pictures of your family. There is an incredible, uncanny resemblance.”
A muscle worked in his jaw as he stared at one picture, then the next. He even went so far as to pull a pair of reading glasses from his pocket to study the images. Finally, as if disgusted, he tossed the glasses onto his desk. His lips were pulled into a serious knot. “So why are you here, Acacia? To confirm that I could have fathered these women because of something I did in my youth?”
“So, you were a sperm donor.”
“You are fabricating some kind of conspiracy theory that someone is killing people—women—who resemble each other and who might have been conceived through artificial insemination? And you’re looking at me as the sperm donor?” He was incredulous.
“Someone tried to kill me,” Kacey said. “A long time ago. Not rape me. Not rob me, but kill me. I thought it was a random act until just r
ecently,” she admitted. “Now, I’m not so sure. Just yesterday I found out my house is bugged. With listening devices and who knows what else? Meanwhile, women who look like me are having accidents. Deadly accidents that, at second look, aren’t really accidents at all. Both Shelly Bonaventure and Jocelyn Wallis have connections to Helena. I figure that if I go there, I’ll find a fertility clinic where they were all conceived, and probably there are records for Elle as well. She was just born somewhere else.” She leaned across the desk. “How many more will I find, Gerald? Five? Ten? A hundred? Five—”
“This is crazy,” he snapped. The color in his face rose and turned his cheeks livid red. “There’s no serial killer who’s intent on killing children conceived at a certain clinic!”
“Only those fathered by you,” she said with renewed certainty.
“That’s even crazier.”
She didn’t have an answer for him, but she was convinced she was on the right track. Yet she had to hear it from him. “What’s the name of this clinic?” she asked. “I’m going to find out, one way or another. You may as well just save me some time, before whoever is behind this kills me.”
“You weren’t conceived by artificial insemination. Trust me on this.”
“Doesn’t make me safe.
“When I compare my DNA to any of these women,” she said, fanning her hand over the pictures, “I’m going to bet that the test results will prove we’re related on the paternal side and—”
“Enough!” It was his turn to stand. Nearly six-one, he had half a foot on her, allowing him to look down his strong, straight nose into her eyes. “I was a sperm donor in my youth. Yes. But I have no proof that any of these victims were my progeny. I think your theory is outlandish. More than that, it’s slanderous. I met you today because I thought it was high time I acknowledged you, but I clearly was mistaken.”
“Don’t you even care to find out about these women?”
“No. I do not. Now, if you’re done with your mad accusations, I have work to do. Important work. Not only does this plant employ a lot of people in the area, but our products, many of which I developed myself, save lives.”
“And you could save a few more if you helped me locate other women whom you might have fathered.”
He was already reaching for the phone. “I think we’re done here.”