Page 136 of The Lie Maker

The sirens. They were getting so loud.

I knelt down by my father, put my hand to his neck, wondering whether I would feel a pulse.

“Dad?” I said.

His eyes fluttered open for a moment.

“Lana okay?” he asked.

“She’s good,” I said.

“I like her. She’s a pistol.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Save your strength. Help’s coming.” I paused. “I thought you had a plan. I thought maybe Gord was coming.”

“Give him my best.”

“Shh,” I said. “You’re going to be okay.”

“No, I’m not,” he said.

And then he shut his eyes, and he was gone.

Epilogue

Jack

There were two funerals.

One for my father. And one for my other father.

I was able to work out, later, that Earl had been coerced by Gwen and Cayden to assist in the search for Michael Donohue, and that had involved working behind my back, even planting a listening device in my apartment.

But in the end, Earl tried to do the right thing. He tried to save Lana, and gave his life in the attempt, so I had to find it in my heart to forgive him.

Gwen Frohm was arrested and charged with Lana’s kidnapping. That put her on ice while the authorities investigated all the other crimes she’d committed or instigated. The killings of retired judge Willard Bentley and Dr.Marie Sloan. The likely murder of my literary agent, Harry Breedlove. Although with Gwen’s henchman, Cayden, dead, all three of these homicides would be harder to pin down. But there was enough to make it unlikely the daughter of Galen Frohm would ever see the outside of a prison again.

The story—no surprise here—garnered national attention for a few days. Daughter of disgraced CEO who had people killed grows up to be disgraced CEO who had people killed. What’s not to love about a story like that? It had everything. As one of the players in this drama, I found myself invited to appear on Anderson Cooper’s show one night but took a pass. I wanted this to all blow over as soon as possible.

Gwen had hoped to score some points for not killing my father, and who knows, maybe she would at some point. The way it was explained to me from those who interviewed her, my father had invited—implored—her to do it. Had her put the gun to his chest and encouraged her to pull the trigger, but for some reason she could not bring herself to do it. She was as surprised as my father must have been when Cayden, with the last ounce of life he had in him, did the job himself.

I’d really thought Dad had a plan.

When I drove up to see Gord one day—he took it kind of hard when I broke the news to him—he denied that my father had asked for his assistance.

On that same trip, Lana and I cleared out Dad’s trailer and made arrangements to have it put up for sale. Inside we found autographed copies of the two books I’d written (in the name of Oscar Laidlaw, of course). That surprised me, as he’d never had me sign anything for him, in person. He would have had to make special orders from stores that had advertised having signed copies available.

Good ol’ Garth didn’t pursue any kidnapping charges against me. He even comped Lana and me tickets to see The Price.

The one I’m most worried about is Lana, although she’d tell you the one she’s most worried about is me.

She’s put up a brave front. She’s tough, no doubt about it, and she wrote a big piece about what happened for her paper, but then allowed herself to be talked into taking a couple of weeks off. She was not charged in Cayden’s death, and I can’t imagine what the social media outrage might have been like had she been. But that didn’t make her feel good about it. She’d done what she had to do. She’d gotten together a couple of times with her cop friend Florence, the one who, in the first place, had talked her into always keeping a few self-defense items on hand.

But underneath Lana’s tough exterior was someone walking a high wire. I had moved in with her since everything happened, as much for her as for myself. We needed each other right now, although there hadn’t been any talk lately about formalizing our arrangement. There was plenty of time for that.

We didn’t leave her apartment much. Ordered in a lot, watched planes taking off and landing at Logan. Watched movies. Comedies, mostly, thinking they would make us laugh. Didn’t work out that way.

But I believe we’re going to come through the other side of this. What I’m less sure of is when.