Garth unlocked the front door and walked into the living room. Hart stood by the windows, his back to him.

“Are you all right, boy?”

Hart didn’t turn; he continued staring out the window. “You can’t talk me out of it, so don’t even try.”

Garth pocketed his key. “If you’re so goddamn worried about this, then we need to talk about it before you do something you’ll regret. What good is it going to do anybody for you to tell the truth about what happened to Blake? It won’t bring him back. It won’t bring Enid back. All it’ll do is destroy us, both of us, you and me, boy.”

“Lying all these years has already destroyed me.”

Garth moved quietly across the room and stood directly behind his nephew, only a few feet separating them. He couldn’t let Hart tell Audrey and Wayne the truth. If he did…He won’t. You can talk him down, persuade him to do what you want him to do.

“You don’t want to hurt the people you love,” Garth said. “Think what it will do to Wayne if he knows. And Audrey…do you think she’ll ever be able to forgive you? You don’t want to lose her love, do you?”

“If Wayne knows the truth, maybe he’ll stop blaming all the wrong people.” Turning halfway around, he glared at Garth. “Audrey will understand. She’ll forgive me. She remembers how things were. We were just a couple of little kids. We trusted you.”

“You can still trust me. Haven’t I always taken care of you? Didn’t I take care of you and Audrey that day?” When Garth took a tentative step toward his nephew, Hart moved away from him, closer against the window.

“I called her,” Hart said.

“Called who?”

“Audrey.”

“What did you tell her?”

“I asked her to come here. She’s on her way now.”

“Damn it, boy, you can’t do this. If you won’t consider what will happen to you, at least think about me. This will ruin me. I’ve been a police officer all my life. I’ve done a lot of good for a lot of people. That has to count for something. If the truth comes out, I could go to prison for what I did. And you know what happens to cops when they’re locked up with the guys they put away.”

“You can’t talk me out of this.” Hart turned his back on Garth and faced the window. “I’ve made up my mind. I should be able to see Audrey from here when she drives up. She’ll be here soon. She’s never let me down.”

“Neither have I,” Garth told him.

“They won’t send you to prison. You only did what you thought was best for all of us, especially for Mama. They’ll understand.”

“Yeah, maybe you’re right. Maybe they will understand.” Garth slipped his hand inside his jacket and carefully eased his Smith & Wesson from the shoulder holster.

He loved Hart, loved him as if he were his own son. He’d spent the past twenty-five years taking care of his nephew, looking out for him, getting him out of trouble, helping him every way he knew how. And now the boy was going to betray him.

Hart wasn’t leaving him with any choice. He couldn’t allow him to tell anyone what had really happened to Blake.

Do what you have to do.

It would be easy enough to explain what happened. Hart was an alcoholic and a drug addict, a guy with severe emotional problems since childhood, a man tormented by his brother’s disappearance and his mother’s suicide. Finding out that Blake hadn’t been one of the Baby Blue toddlers had sent him over the edge.

I can say that I wasn’t surprised he took his own life, that I expected it for years, that I have lived in fear that it would happen eventually.

Garth crept up behind Hart and placed his left hand on Hart’s shoulder in a comforting gesture. “We’ll watch for Audrey together.”

“And we’ll tell her the truth together,” Hart said.

“That’s right. We’ll tell her the truth.” Garth brought the gun up slowly to Hart’s temple. When he pressed the muzzle against his nephew’s head, Hart lifted his hand and clutched Garth’s hand that held the pistol.

Garth pulled the trigger.

Hart gasped and gurgled; and then as he slumped downward, Garth supported his weight for a moment before stepping back and letting his nephew’s body fall to the floor. Not taking time to even look at Hart, he worked quickly. He had to make this look like a suicide, one that he had tried to prevent.

He had my gun. He pointed it at his head and said he couldn’t go on living. He confessed that he had killed Blake accidentally and that Enid had done something with Blake’s body in order to protect him. He said he thought she buried Blake in the backyard somewhere, weeks afterward, maybe even the day she killed herself. Oh, God, I tried to stop him. I grabbed him from behind and had my hand on the gun when he pulled the trigger. See, his blood is still on me.

Yes, that’s how he would explain Hart’s death. A suicide.

He’d barely had time to set up the scene before he heard a car door slam. He glanced out the window. Audrey was there.

Garth reached for the telephone, dialed 911, and said, “Help me, please. Send an ambulance immediately. My nephew just shot himself.”

The doorbell rang while Garth was making the call. He let it chime again and again. The door wasn’t locked. She would let herself into the house.

“Oh, God…” Garth hurried over to Hart, dropped to his knees, and cradled his nephew in his arms.

The front door opened. He looked up, put a stricken expression on his face, and cried out, “Oh, God, Audrey, he’s killed himself.”

She rushed toward them and stopped suddenly as she looked down at Hart. “No, no…”

“I tried to stop him,” Garth told her.

“We have to call for help,” she said.

“I’ve already called nine-one-one, but it’s too late. He’s gone, Audrey. We’ve lost him.”

“But why?” Audrey shook her head. “I don’t understand why he would kill himself. It doesn’t make any sense.”

“He couldn’t live with the lies,” Garth said as he rose to his feet. “He confessed to me that he accidentally killed Blake and that Enid covered it up by pretending that Blake had disappeared. That’s why she killed herself. Because she knew one of her sons had killed the other one.”

Suddenly, Audrey’s mind went back twenty-five years, to that fateful day.

She didn’t understand why Hart was acting so weird.

“It’s my fault,” Hart said. “It’s all my fault.”

“What’s your fault?”

“Blake…my fault…all my fault.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. What about Blake? What’s your fault?”

“I was supposed to take care of him. If I’d done what I was supposed to do, then it wouldn’t have happened.”

“What happened? Why was Enid screaming? Why is Uncle Garth here?”

“Blake’s gone….

“What do you mean he’s gone?”

Ignoring her as if she weren’t there, Hart ran toward the nursery, lifted his fists, and beat on the closed door. “Mama…Mama…”

Audrey hurried to him and when she laid her hand on his shoulder, he turned and stared at her, his eyes filled with tears.

“Where is Blake? What happened to him?” she asked.

“Mama…She didn’t mean to. Uncle Garth said she didn’t mean to. We can’t tell anybody….”

Audrey backed away from Garth. “You’re lying.”

“What did you say?”

“I said you’re lying. Hart didn’t kill Blake. You know he didn’t. You were there that day. You know what really happened. If anyone killed Blake, it wasn’t Hart.”

“Are you remembering or just guessing?”

“A little of both.”

“You’re wrong, Audrey. I’m telling you that Hart killed himself because he’d been lying all these—”

“Stop saying that! Hart did not kill Blake. You know he didn’t. If anyone killed Blake that day, it was Enid. Oh, God, it was Enid, wasn’t it? And Hart knew the truth.” With realization bright in her eyes, Audrey shivered.

“I’m not going to let anybody ask you and Hart a lot of questions that will upset y’all. I’ll protect you, both of you. Just do what I tell you to do. Do you understand?”

She nodded. “Yes, Uncle Garth.”

“And if you need to talk to somebody about what happened today, you talk to me, okay?” He searched her eyes as if trying to decide whether or not she understood. “If you don’t do exactly what I tell you to do, I can’t protect you and Hart. We don’t want anybody thinking it was your fault, do we? If that were to happen, they would take you away, you and Hart, and there wouldn’t be anything I could do to stop them.”

Enid’s anguished screams and mournful weeping replayed itself over and over again in Audrey’s mind as she huddled near the fence in the back yard. Audrey squatted on her knees and curled up as small and tight as humanly possible, hoping no one could see her.

Blake was gone.

Uncle Garth said someone had stolen her baby brother.

But she knew that was a lie. No one had stolen Blake. He hadn’t been kidnapped.

“You knew the truth, didn’t you?” Audrey glared at Garth. “You’ve always known what really happened to Blake.”

“Yes, I’ve always known,” Garth admitted. “Enid didn’t mean to kill Blake. He woke from his nap crying. He had an ear infection, if you remember. She told him to stop crying, to go outside and find you or Hart. And when he wouldn’t leave her and clung to her, she shook him, and when he cried louder, she put her hands around his throat and strangled him.”

“Oh, Blake…Blake…” She swallowed a mouthful of tears. “Did—did Hart see what happened?”

“No.”

“Were you there when it happened?”

“I arrived afterward. I had stopped by to check on Enid. Wayne had asked me to run by on my lunch break because he was worried about her and he couldn’t get away to go home. He said since Blake had been sick and fretful, she’d been more on edge than usual. When I arrived, I found Enid sitting at the top of the stairs. She was holding Blake in her arms. I couldn’t help him. He was already dead. And before I could handle the situation, Hart came in the house to check on Blake.”

“We have to do what Uncle Garth tells us,” Hart said. “We have to!”

Audrey nodded. It was a sin to tell a lie. But if they just pretended they didn’t know what happened to Blake, they wouldn’t really be lying, would they?

“They’ll take Mama away and do horrible things to her.” Hart clutched Audrey’s hand. “And Uncle Garth said he didn’t know what they might do to you and me. We—we were supposed to be taking care of Blake. It’s my fault…it’s all my fault.”

“No,” Audrey told him. “It’s our fault.”

“We can never tell anybody. Promise me. Pinky swear.”

Audrey lifted her hand, curled her pinky finger, and held it out to her stepbrother. Hart wound his pinky finger around Audrey’s and they made a solemn oath to do what Uncle Garth had told them to do.

“Our baby brother Blake was kidnapped,” Audrey said.

“Somebody came into the house and stole him.”

Oh, God, she remembered! All the nightmares had been real. Fear for herself and Hart had forced her to submerge the truth deep into her subconscious. As a child, she had been forced to lie and that lie had eventually become her reality.

“You remember, don’t you?” Garth asked.

“Yes, I remember.”

“Everything?”

“Yes, everything. How could you have done that to us, to Hart and me? You scared us to death. You made us believe that if we told the truth, we’d be taken away and punished.”

“I did what I had to do to protect my sister,” Garth said. “I told Hart why we could never tell anyone what really happened. When he agreed, I had him walk his mother back upstairs and stay with her while I carried Blake’s body into the basement. I temporarily buried him at the bottom of the freezer. I managed to completely cover him with frozen food.”

“How could you have—?”

“I didn’t leave him there. A few weeks later, Enid and I took his body and buried him in the backyard and planted a rose bush on top of his grave.”

“And all these years, Blake has been in the backyard, under the rose bush?”

“Yes.”

“And you let Daddy believe, made us all believe that Blake had been kidnapped.”

“It was best that way. Someone had already abducted three other toddlers, so I simply suggested to Wayne that the same thing had happened to Blake, that he was probably one of the Baby Blue toddlers.”

“How could you have done that? To Daddy and Hart…and to me?”

“I’m sorry, Audrey. I’m really very sorry.”

Garth might well have been sorry for what had happened, for what he’d done to protect Enid, but she realized that he was saying he was sorry because he knew that he couldn’t allow her to live now that she knew the truth. Garth intended to kill her, just as he had killed Hart. With fake bravado, she stood up and faced the man she had called uncle for most of her life. A man she had trusted. A man her stepbrother had trusted.

“If you kill me, how will you explain it—two dead bodies? My father will—”

“Wayne is a fool. He’ll believe whatever I tell him.” Garth smirked, a wicked, frightening look in his eyes that told Audrey he had snapped. “You and I realized Hart intended to shoot himself. You got to him first and the two of you struggled. The gun went off. When he realized he had killed you, he shot himself in the head and I couldn’t stop him, even though I tried.”

“You think you have it all figured out, don’t you?” Audrey knew that she couldn’t expect help from anyone, that she was on her own, as she always had been. Only she could stop Garth from killing her.

As if sensing her intention to either flee or attack, Garth dropped down and reached for the gun lying beside Hart’s body. Audrey dove forward, hit the floor with a painful thud, and while gasping for air, she grabbed Garth’s hand as he clutched the 9mm.

Garth might be over fifty and not quite the man he had once been, but he was larger and stronger than she was. Unless she could find some advantage over his brute strength, there was no way she could take the gun away from him. Their struggle ended quickly, despite Audrey giving it everything she had. He wrestled the pistol away from her grasp, slammed the grip against her head, and jerked his hand back and into the air. Pain shot through the side of her head as blood seeped out of the burning gash and trickled down into her eye.

Suddenly she felt the muzzle against her belly. Acting purely on survival instinct, she head-butted Garth in the nose. When he yelped and jerked back, she reached down and grabbed his gun hand with both of her hands. Before he regained his equilibrium, Audrey found an unknown strength born of desperation and fear. She managed to turn the pistol away from her belly for only a second, but a second was all she needed. Garth pulled the trigger just as she gained momentary control. The weapon fired. The bullet went straight up and grazed Garth’s shoulder and then sliced through his cheek. Moaning in pain, he shoved Audrey away from him as blood seeped through his shirt and jacket and dripped from the hole in his cheek.

Clearly disoriented, Garth stared at her as he rose to his feet and staggered backward. He aimed the gun at her where she lay on the floor.

By God, he might kill her, but she wasn’t going to just lie there and do nothing. She struggled to stand and somehow managed to get up on her feet, fully intending to go down fighting.

Behind her the front door flew open. She kept her gaze on Garth’s hand as she lunged toward him. Gunfire exploded in her ears as the bullets zipped past her. Garth grunted and clutched at thin air as bullet after bullet entered his body. Suddenly a big arm circled her waist and threw her face-down onto the floor before the man who covered her with his body aimed and fired one final time; but only after Garth had pulled the trigger of his own weapon one final time.

Audrey could barely breathe. The man lying on top of her was big and heavy, his own breathing ragged.

“Are you all right?” J.D. asked her in a hoarse, throaty voice.

“I—I think so.”

He rose up and off her, grabbed her forearms, and dragged her to her feet. She swayed. Dizzy and slightly disoriented, she slumped against J.D. He slid one hand around her waist and used the other to holster his gun. And then he wrapped both arms around her and held her so tightly that she thought he was going to break her in two.

Holding on to J.D. for dear life, she turned her head and looked at Garth’s bloody, bullet-riddled body lying on the floor, his 9mm still in his hand, held in a tight death grip. She jerked her head back around and buried her face against J.D.’s chest. As she shuddered uncontrollably, he kept her secure in his arms.

She lifted her head and looked up at J.D. “He killed Hart and he was going to kill me. If you hadn’t shown up when you did…” The trembling began again.

He stroked her back, soothing her. “You’re safe. He can’t hurt you.”

“I have to tell you…Garth…Garth killed Hart because…because…” She felt as if she couldn’t breathe.

“You can tell me later. For now, don’t talk, honey. Don’t do anything except let me take care of you.”

In the distance, Audrey heard the wail of sirens. The police would be there soon. And an ambulance. Garth had called 911 after he killed Hart.

“Oh God, oh God!” She clung to J.D. as the reality of what had happened replayed itself in her mind.

Hart was dead. Garth had killed him.

Garth was dead. J.D. had killed him to save her.