Justice noticed Tex never said “if.”
THE PRESENT
FEBRUARY
Western State Mental Hospital
Staunton, Virginia
Axalia Anderson’slaser-sharp attention focused on a press conference playing in a continuous loop on a local news station. She huddled in a worn-out armchair that reeked of urine and vomit in the day room at this hellhole she and her brother were committed to where they pretended to be mute. She and Axis quickly learned that their quiet cooperation convinced the psychiatrist assigned to them that they weren’t beyond all hope as he’d been led to believe by their nemesis Dr. Trey McAdams.
Horrible, horrible wretch of a man.
Soon, soon, soon, she sang to herself. Soon, soon, soon.
Bad things happen here.
When she told Axis that an orderly groped her after he’d given her medication that he mistakenly assumed cast her into a catatonic state, said orderly was found dead of an overdose.
Bad things happen here.
Whoever said that art therapy was good for mental health patients had never met Jinks. Driven to the point of madness by the art teacher’s one blue and one green eye, he took a sharpened pencil and stabbed it right through that bothersome blue eye. People with violent tendencies should never be allowed to read Edgar A. Poe. Now there wasn’t an art teacher. Patients were provided with paper, fingerpaint, and blunted crayons but no pencils.
Bad things happen here.
Axalia’s scattered thoughts focused again on the lean, well-toned brunette standing next to the woman they kept addressing as “Madam Secretary.”
“Mama, Mama, Mama’s back. Born again. Like a sculpture coming to life. Soon. Soon. Soon.”
After all, bad things happen here.
THE PRESENT
FEBRUARY 24
Laguna Beach, California
Four daysbefore Justice and his friends and fellow officers were scheduled to report for Secret Service duty, the news hit him.
“You were right, Justice,” Tex informed him in a brisk tone.
Justice dropped into his office chair at the station. “Jesus. Go on.”
“When I ran Julia Washburn’s DNA through the system, I got a hit. She’s a match for a pair of murder victims—Felipe and Julio Escobar, cousins. Without a doubt, Julio is her bio dad. And comparative samples from the Anderson siblings prove she’s related to them. Lola Anderson was her bio mom.”
“My God. So, what’s the history there?”
“Julio Escobar was the eldest son of General Jorge Escobar, currently the head of a drug cartel in Mexico. At some point, he defied his father and left the organization, presumably after he met Lola in the States. They married young and kept a low profile in Miami. Some of this is speculation, but I believeGeneral Escobar sent Felipe to find them because it’s been proven that shots fired from his gun killed Julio. I also believe that Lola killed Felipe and escaped Miami. According to police reports, the gun used to kill Felipe Escobar was found in a trash can at a service station in the Everglades. Ballistics confirmed that slugs removed from his body match the firearm. Then, she popped up in Chicago as Lola Evans where she met Axel Anderson.”
Justice frowned. “Julia Washburn is a DEA agent. How did this not come up? Didn’t anyone think to run her DNA?”
“If they did, they kept it quiet, given who adopted her.”
“Brendan McAdams, my brother-in-law?”
“Maybe. I couldn’t say for sure.”
“Do you think Barbara knows the truth?”
