“What have we here?” Her mother stood.
Simon’s face was grim. “There’s a sheriff outside, ma’am. And this fella wanted to see you.”
“A sheriff you say?” Victoria lifted her eyebrows at the police chief. “I take it you can handle this sheriff?”
“Certainly.” He walked out of the room.
Mother tipped her head to her men. “Guard the door.”
They threw the man down and she glided over. “And who might you be?”
The man stood up, straightened his suit, and glared at her. “I’ve come for my money.”
Another laugh. “Oh, you’re the sniveling man who thinks he can blackmail me.”
“I don’tthink. I can. Don’t think for a second that I’m going to allow you to get away with this.”
Martha looked from her mother to the man. What else had the woman done? She couldn’t take any more—
“You killed your husband.”
The man’s snarled words left Martha glued to her chair.
“If you don’t want the authorities to know that, lady, you’ll pay up.”
Mother crossed her thin arms over her chest. “And who is going to believe you?”
“I’ve got a picture. Right here.” He tugged it out of his inner coat pocket. “Don’t worry, even if you destroy this one, there’s more.”
Martha jumped up, stomped over to the man, and grabbed the picture.
The old daguerreotype was of her father before he was scarred. And when she stared into the eyes, she sucked in a breath. It was true. The man in the picturewasn’tthe man who’d shown up when she was six. It wasn’t the man she’d grown up with. It wasn’t the man whose bedside she’d sat ...
Wait.
No.
It couldn’t be.
The picture shook in her hands. She slowly turned to face her mother. “You killed my real father... andreplacedhim with the man who’s been in this house all these years?”She took a step closer to the woman she now understood she’d never known. “And what? Whenhegot in your way, you shoved him down the stairs?” She pointed a finger at her mother’s face. “Am I next?”
The words seemed to slide right off her. “Don’t be melodramatic, my dear. You are my flesh and blood. I couldn’t kill you. Your father was bringing too much attention to himself. In our line of work, that can be disastrous. It’s taken all these years for me to bring my plan to fruition. While Cope and Marsh were obsessed with the competition, they didn’t realize there was another power in the paleontological field rising up.Me.”
“So you used him? You used me?” She crossed her arms over her chest needing some sort of barrier between the two of them.
“You are very talented, Martha, but it’s not time for you to shine yet. You’ll have your day, I promise. You can be in charge of every paleontological dig you’d like.”
The man pushed his way between them. “I don’t have time for your little family spat here. I want my money.”
The flash of silver should have warned Martha, but her mother was quick. In the blink of an eye, she was around Martha and had thrust the blade into their visitor.
“No!” Martha willed her frozen feet to move and shoved her mother aside as she lunged for the crumpling man. He might be here to blackmail her mother, but he didn’t deserve to die!
Shouting and more scuffling sounded out in the hallway.
Martha placed her hands over the man’s wound as blood poured out. She pressed his jacket over it, but she couldn’t stop the flow.
“Hold it right there!”
