“Who is this?”
“Benjamin Zwick.”
22
I caught my breath. Ofcourse. His voice held the same assertiveness, the samearroganceit had in the interviews he had given when the scandal first broke.
“Why is Benjamin Zwick calling me?” I asked, repeating his name into the phone for the sake of Edward, who shot me a worried glance and mouthedspeakerphone,which I quickly turned on.
“Because”—Zwick’s voice filled the car—“I’ve been trying to reach Grace Emory, and I can’t get through. You’re her friend, right?”
My hackles rose. I wasn’t about to say anything to a man who had gone after a fifteen-year-old boy in such a loud and vengeful way. “You’re on opposite sides of a criminal case. Isn’t it unethical for you to be calling her?”
“This is personal.”
“Maybe she doesn’t want to talk to you.”
“Yeah, well, that’s obvious, only something’s come up. Trust me. She’ll want to hear what I have to say.”
“What something?” I asked and felt the same gut check I just had with Grace. These two calls were related. I waited to hear how.
After a moment’s silence, he said, “Are you the same friend who was at her house the night all this broke and was then at the courthouse with her and her son?”
Edward nodded. And I agreed. Zwick wouldn’t tell me anything unless I confirmed it. Besides, those pictures and tapes had already gone public. Anyone in town could confirm my identity. Michael Shanahan certainly had, which made my talking with this man risky. But how could I not, after talking with Chris and Grace? This wasn’t about legalities. It was about two people’s lives.
That said, I didn’t trust Ben Zwick as far as I could throw him, which was a Momism of the first order, but was totally apt. In a voice making that clear, I said, “Yes. I’m her friend. What something has come up?”
“I’m getting calls from a woman who says she has a story.”
There. The common thread. Coincidence? No way.
“She claims,” Zwick went on, “that she worked in Grace’s home way back and knew her when Chris was born. Do you know where Grace lived before she came to Devon?”
“Excuse me,” I burst out, because, in that split second, my own distrust of the press trumped my worry for Grace, “what reason inhellwould I have to tell you that?”
My vehemence didn’t faze him. “Because this woman says that if I don’t buy her story, she’ll sell it to someone else, and I’m not sure you want her doing that. At least, I know Grace personally.”
“Well, now, that was a big help two weeks ago, wasn’t it,” I remarked.
“Long story there, Ms. Reid, but this is different. I’m not the victim in this one. Grace is.”
“Victim, how?”
“The caller wouldn’t give details, just mentioned things like yelling and hitting, none of which would be anything new if she hadn’t also mentioned kidnapping.”
My mind went blank for an instant, before bursting into full color withthreads of past conversations.Evil,Grace had called her ex. She had talked about fearing for her life and, just yesterday, about changing her name. And then, about Chris,we left when he was two, so he doesn’t remember how bad the guy is.Given that Devon was a past-free zone, that Grace changed her look nearly as often as most people changed their sheets, and that she lived in a house that was hidden in an out-of-the-way place and had multiple locks on its door, kidnapping wasn’t beyond the pale.
Victim? Perpetrator?What?If I was the betting type, I knew where I would put my money, though the thought of it was terrifying.
To his credit, Zwick didn’t waste time gloating over my silence. “Look,” he said, “I like Grace. Seriously. I did not know that her son was the one behind the hacking until it was too late to pull it back, but this one isn’t about Chris. It’s about her. I don’t know where she came from or what she did, but if someone has a story that’s worth the kind of money I was quoted, it may be something Grace wants to control.”
“You mean, sell it to you first?” I asked, cynical to the core just then.
“I mean,” he came back, sounding irritated, “containit. Keep it from coming out at all.”
“Why would you do that? Whatever you pay a source is peanuts compared to what you’d get for writing it.”
“I won’t write the story.”
