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Josie climbed up onto the first step, holding the railing to keep her balance. The lack of clean air was making her dizzy. She said, “You don’t have much more time to get what you want from Sandrine.”
He blinked, alertness returning to his face. Slowly, his head swiveled toward her. His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down in his throat as he swallowed twice. When he next spoke, his voice was scratchy. “Wait. How did you…you couldn’t…does Sandrine know that…”
Josie was in dangerous territory now. She had to be careful what she said so he didn’t realize that she was bluffing her way through getting information from him. “Sandrine doesn’t know anything. Neither does Alice.”
“Then how? How do you know why I’m here?”
“It’s my job, Brian. Or should I call you Bradley?”
FORTY-SIX
“How long?” he croaked. “How long have you known?”
Sweat beaded along Josie’s hairline. “Not that long.”
He reached into one of his coat pockets. Josie’s body tensed immediately. Her hand itched to reach for a service weapon she wasn’t carrying. Luckily for her, Brian was only fishing around for his broken vape pen. He held the pen in one of his gloved hands and stared down at it. “You didn’t tell Sandrine?”
“I thought, as her brother, you should have that honor.”
She could see the shock hit him like a punch. He flinched a little and curled his fingers around the vape pen. Josie looked back down the path they’d shoveled which was wider now that much of the snow out front of the main house was melting. No one had emerged from the rage room from what she could tell. They had some time, if she could stand being this close to the fire a bit longer. She said, “When did you find out that you had siblings?”
She deliberately used the plural, again bluffing her way to getting information from him. As they’d sat in the circle in the freezing rage room during Sandrine’s grounding exercise, some part of her mind had been trying to put more of the pieces together. She hadn’t had time to lay out all of those puzzle pieces and examine their edges to see just how they fit together, but she had a vague notion of the bigger picture they formed.
Brian watched her carefully now. Without taking his eyes off her, he turned the vape pen over in his hands. She saw the hesitation in his eyes, him trying to decide just how much to tell her. Finally, he said, “A few years ago. But I don’t understand, how could you possibly…?”
“You weren’t the only person not raised by his biological parents,” Josie pointed out.
He sighed. “Fucking Taryn.”
Josie reminded herself not to show any delight in having guessed correctly.
“She told you?” Brian asked.
“She told me that her mother had adopted her as an infant,” Josie said.
Like Brian, Taryn was also too old to be Sandrine’s biological child. Josie remembered Taryn and Sandrine clearing plates from the dining table in the main hall, how they had looked almost like twins. In fact, Taryn physically resembled Sandrine more than Brian. If they’d teamed up together for some common goal, it made sense that Taryn was also one of Sandrine’s siblings although Josie still couldn’t guess what they were after. She also still didn’t know where Nicola fit into things. Gretchen hadn’t been able to track down her true identity.
Brian switched the vape pen from one hand to another, muttering, “I can’t believe this.”
Nicola had never said she was adopted—though Taryn hadn’t either until the private conversation with Josie. Nicola didn’t bear much of a resemblance to the others. Josie thought she could see some resemblance between her and Sandrine—they had similar chins and more or less the same nose—but now Josie couldn’t be certain if the likeness was really there or if her mind was tricking her into seeing it because of her theories.
Was she following the evidence or trying to force the evidence to fit her theory?
Only one way to find out, said Mett’s ghost voice.You’ve come this far.
Why else would Nicola be on the retreat? Why go to the trouble of lying about her past trauma to ensure that she made it onto the retreat? Although it was possible she and Brian were a couple and just pretending to be married, Josie still would have expected to see more intimacy and closeness between them.
Josie pictured Sandrine, Brian, and Nicola seated in the rage room, their hands behind their necks. Their left hands. They were all left-handed, just like Taryn. In fact, now that Josie thought about it, she, Alice, and Meg were the only right-handed people at the retreat. It had been an issue while sitting for meals with the left-handers always bumping the right-handed eaters. Plus, most people Josie knew were right-handed. Mett’s voice floated through her mind again, a memory this time.Only about eight to ten percent of the world’s population is left-handed. They’d been working a stabbing case with two potential suspects. Forensics told them the perpetrator had been left-handed. Mettner had argued that they should question the left-handed suspect first and put the case to bed in no time at all. He’d been right. They’d gotten a confession within an hour.
What were the odds that of seven people on this retreat, four of them were left-handed?
Mettner had also told her left-handedness was hereditary.
She was sure that four half-siblings all being left-handed was extremely rare, but it was enough for Josie to take a chance on questioning Brian in that moment to see if her working theory was correct.
“When did the three of you find each other?”
Brian hung his head. “About five years ago. DNA testing and all that. One of those websites where you mail in your saliva, and they tell you your heritage, but you also have the option of making your profile public to see who you’re related to.”
