He kept his attention on Rose because he knew there were more answers locked inside the woman. “How in green hell did you get the watch? It’s worth a fortune. I can’t imagine Kelbrook giving it to you as a souvenir.”
Rose sighed. “When I told him that I was pregnant, he was furious and ordered me to get rid of the baby. I refused, but I gave him my word that if he paid my price, I would never contact him again.”
“What was your price?” Alice asked.
“He agreed to buy the hotel for me and give me the watch. I wanted something personal of his that I would someday be able to give to my child. The timepiece was nothing to Dunstan. He took it off and threw it at me as if it were a cheap trinket.”
“You kept your end of the bargain,” Alice said gently.
“Yes.” Rose clenched both hands very tightly in her lap. “When Travis turned thirteen, I realized that he had not only inherited my apothecary talent, he had developed a second one from his father.”
More tears trickled down her cheeks. Alice silently handed her a fresh napkin.
“Poole was a double?” Owen pressed.
Rose sniffed and used the napkin to blot her eyes. “He was a high-rez mirror as well as a mid-level apothecary. Dunstan is also a double. A strat and a mirror.”
“Did you know Kelbrook was a double?” Owen asked.
Rose sniffed. “Not at first. Like all mirrors, he’s very good at making sure you only see what he wants you to see, but when you get to know a mirror well, it becomes difficult for them to hide the truth. Eventually he admitted that he was a double, but like most doubles, he preferred to keep a low profile.”
“Especially,” Owen said, “if the second talent is one that is closely associated with liars, con artists, and leaders of cults. People are nervous around strong talents of any kind, but nobody trusts mirrors.”
“Because you can’t,” Rose said. “Kelbrook was so good that even after he admitted he was a mirror he managed to convince me that he loved me. To tell you the truth, it broke my heart to realize that Travis had inherited that aspect of his father’s talent. I did my best to make him understand that he shouldn’t use it to manipulate people. I pushed him to develop his apothecary talent instead. I was so happy when he went into the academic world. I told myself he had matured and become a decent young man. I wanted to believe that was due to my influence.”
“How did you and Kelbrook reconnect after all the years apart?” Alice asked.
“About a year ago he contacted me out of the blue and said he wanted to acknowledge Travis as a Kelbrook and give him a stake in the company.I knew there would be a catch, but as I said, Dunstan is a very powerful mirror.”
“And you wanted to believe him,” Alice said.
“I told myself that I could not turn down the offer and deprive Travis of his rightful inheritance. For his part, Travis was thrilled to learn the truth about his father. Dunstan invited him to the Kelbrook family compound. My son was dazzled.”
“All Travis had to do to be acknowledged as a true Kelbrook was convince me to marry him and spend one night here at the hotel,” Alice said.
Rose got a desperate expression. “I swear, I believed every word Dunstan said about you—that his brother had left the shares to you in an act of revenge. He said the shares belonged in the family and he would see to it that they went to Travis because Traviswasfamily. A blood relative. Dunstan claimed he couldn’t acknowledge him as a son, but he promised to add him to the family tree as a cousin.”
“All you and Travis had to do was agree to the plan,” Owen said.
Rose nodded. “Ten months ago, when I got that call from Dunstan telling me that you had murdered Travis, I think I went mad. For a while I fantasized about killing you, Ms. Radstone. But Dunstan and Twitchell convinced me that being locked up indefinitely in a para-psych hospital for the criminally insane was a harsher punishment than death.”
“So when Kelbrook or Twitchell called to tell you that I had escaped, you were willing to help them grab me again,” Alice said.
“When I found out that you were not suffering in a locked ward as I had believed all these months, I was furious. I jumped at the chance to help Kelbrook and Twitchell catch you and put you back where you belonged. They set up a scheme to lure you here and make sure you disappeared back into Serenity Gardens. All I had to do was get out of the way. Again.”
“Let’s talk about the first kidnapping,” Owen said. “You must have been told that they would need a body to make it look like Alice had gone insane on her wedding night. Who did you think would get killed?”
Rose looked shocked. “No one. I mean, no one who wasn’t already dead. They said the body would be that of a drifter from the county morgue. I believed them because I knew Dunstan had the power and the connections to arrange that sort of thing.”
“But they murdered Travis instead, because they assumed he would be a problem after the wedding,” Owen said. “He would have been in the ideal position to make endless demands on Kelbrook. As Alice’s husband, he not only controlled her inheritance, he also knew about the plot to keep her locked away at Serenity Gardens.”
“When I saw the video it all became clear,” Rose whispered.
“You set up your own revenge scheme,” Alice said. “You needed me as bait to lure Kelbrook out of his fortress. You hired Sykes Security to grab me.”
“Sykes had people watching you inside the Amber Palace.” Rose looked at the snoozing Sebastian. “After the dust bunny hit the jackpot on a machine, Sykes came up with the idea of buying an inexpensive necklace with a locator crystal on it and making sure that it got to you with the message that it was for the dust bunny.”
“Everyone knows dust bunnies love sparkly things,” Alice said.
