A Father's Desperate Rescue (Man on a Mission 5)

He thought about the best way to put it. “Part of me wanted him locked away forever. I could forgive him for trying to kill me—I’d killed his son, and in his mind I deserved to die. But I can never forgive him for trying to kill Bree, when all she did was tell the truth on the witness stand.”

“But you didn’t attend his parole hearing to give a victim impact statement.” At the look of surprise he couldn’t help but show, she explained, “We have something similar here in Hong Kong—we were a British colony for a long time, remember.” Then she said, “But you didn’t go. Why?”

“Because by that time I’d become a father,” he said simply, as if that said it all.

A glimmer of a smile returned to her face. “I see.” And somehow he knew she did see. That she understood it hadn’t been fear of the potentially negative publicity something like that would bring, but rather unexpected compassion for the man who’d loved his son so much he’d been driven to take the law into his own hands, to exact his own brand of justice. A father’s justice. The same kind of justice Dirk was envisioning now.

“After Blackwood’s trial, Bree and I headed for California. I legally changed my name from Derek Summers—the name I was born with—to Dirk DeWinter. Not just to leave behind the stigma that still attached to the name, but because my agent, Marty Devens, recommended it. Bree suggested Dirk. My agent suggested DeWinter. Said it was ‘euphonious.’” He laughed abruptly. “I didn’t even know what that word meant back then. He had to explain it to me.”

Then Dirk shifted gears. “So now you know why Terrell Blackwood wants me dead,” he said. “Now explain to me what you said earlier about Vanessa.”

“Inconsistencies in her story,” she said promptly. “Didn’t you spot them?”

“Not sure exactly what you mean.”

“Several things. First, there was the fact Chet was knocked out and the girls were chloroformed, but neither was done to Vanessa. Bound with duct tape, yes, but that’s all.”

“Yeah. She didn’t have an answer for that when you questioned her.”

“Second, she said she thought it was room service with lunch when the doorbell rang.”

Dirk snapped his fingers. “Right. If it was room service, why wouldn’t they have used the butler’s entrance and not the front door?”

Mei-li said softly, “That wasn’t actually what I meant, but that’s another inconsistency. They’re starting to pile up.”

Dirk frowned. “Then what did you mean?”

“She said the girls were in their bedroom taking their afternoon nap when the kidnappers arrived. But lunch would have arrived before their nap, not during it, so those two statements she made contradict each other—if she was expecting room service, the girls wouldn’t be napping. And if the girls were napping, she couldn’t have been expecting lunch to be delivered. Anyway, didn’t you notice the little tea table in front of the window? One of the chairs was knocked over...the way it might be if the girls were snatched in the middle of their lunch...not from their bedroom.”

“Is that important? Where they were when they were taken?”

“Maybe. Maybe not. But I don’t like inconsistencies in stories. Vanessa told one lie for sure, possibly two or three. We don’t know why she lied—I’ve had people lie to me for the damnedest reasons, even my own clients.”

“I’m not lying,” Dirk was quick to interject.

“I didn’t say you were, just that some clients do. Sometimes it’s a misguided effort to make themselves seem more heroic than they are. Sometimes it’s because they’re ashamed to admit something, or they don’t see it as relevant to the case. So Vanessa isn’t necessarily lying because she’s involved—her lies could have a perfectly reasonable explanation. But until we know for sure...”

* * *

No, Dirk’s not lying, Mei-li mused as she followed him back upstairs to the Spring Moon Restaurant. Academy Award–winning actor or not, she didn’t think he was acting when he’d told her the story he’d just recounted. But he’s not telling the whole truth, either. She wasn’t unduly perturbed—not about this. As she’d told Dirk, her clients often withheld information from her. But she had the basic facts behind the kidnapping now, understood the motivation of the man who’d engineered it—and that perturbed her.