Page 117 of The Lie Maker

Gwen smiled. “It took a long time to put together.”

Lana thought through what the plan must have entailed.

“You wanted to draw him in, gain his confidence, wait for him to ask for your help to find his father. You thought Jack might have some clues as to where he might be. Conned him into thinking his father was in danger to make finding him more urgent. If he showed up, Jack would turn him straight over to you. You made him think someone wanting revenge was hunting for him. Except the someone was you.”

“His father was the one I couldn’t find. The others were easy.”

Others?

“And what a small world it is,” Gwen said, “that you have been looking into those. Cayden tells me you wrote about them.”

The judge? The doctor?

“Why...”

“Enough,” Gwen said, and took a breath. “This is the last time I’m going to ask you. Who did that plate belong to? Where did Jack go?”

“I really... I really don’t know.”

Gwen sighed, looked at Cayden, and nodded.

He went over to a drawer, opened it, and brought out an orange-and-black-handled garden pruner. Its beak-shaped blades would cut through a thick twig as easily as they would a rubber band.

“No, please,” Lana said fearfully, wondering how he intended to use the device. “I’m telling you the truth. For all I know, Jack’s on his way back. He still thinks you work for the government. I won’t tell him anything! I won’t tell him about this! Just let me go. I’ll talk to him, okay?”

Cayden approached with the pruner.

What the hell was he going to do? Cut out her tongue? Snip off an earlobe?

“No, no, please!”

When he came around behind her and grabbed hold of her right hand, his intentions became more clear. She wiggled her fingers wildly, trying to thwart his efforts to get the cutting tool around the base of her thumb.

Gwen glared at her. “Last chance,” she said.

Cayden squeezed her right wrist hard, immobilizing it, and got the pruner in position. She felt the tiny metal jaws grip.

“Do it,” Gwen said.

“NOOOOO!!!!”

A phone started ringing. Gwen raised a finger, a signal for Cayden to stop.

“It’s her cell,” Gwen said.

Cayden picked the phone back up from the table, looked at the screen, and said, “Guess who.”

Sixty-Two

The rage had simmered for years. But it was her father’s death, and the way it happened, that brought it all to a boil for Gwen Frohm.

Up until the age of eleven, she’d had a more or less traditional childhood, so long as you overlooked the fact that her millionaire father sometimes had people murdered. Gwen was an only child, the sole object of her mother and father’s attention. Dare one say, somewhat spoiled. They lived in a house big enough for the von Trapps, with rooms to spare. And there was the summer place in the Berkshires.

She loved her time there. The family retreat was as spacious and beautiful as the home in Boston, but what it had over Boston was a stable, and horses. A couple of times every summer Gwen’s parents would let her take a friend for a week, and they would spend almost all their time in the stables, feeding and grooming the animals when they weren’t riding them. It was the most wonderful time.

It all ended so abruptly.

Galen Frohm was arrested. He wasn’t taken off to jail right away. His lawyers won him release on bail while they prepared for trial. At first, he gave his daughter, who was old enough to understand what was happening and its implications, reasons for optimism. He was innocent, he told her. The charges were all trumped up by his competitors in the motel and fast food industries. His lawyers would find a way to get him out of this.