Page 61 of Ground Truth

Hedinger cocked his head, narrowed his eyes, and stared, as if he were a human lie detector. After a while, he said, “Okay. Maybe you’re right. Let’s say Greta died that night the way you’ve described. Why does her sister believe otherwise?”

“Hanna’s crazy. Guilt? Drugs? Hallucinations?” Brand said, dredging up his own fear-based anger for emphasis. “How should I know?”

Hedinger chuckled like a rabid hyena before he demanded, “Why are you concerned that Hanna Campbell could be right about her sister?”

“I’m not reallyconcerned, exactly.” Brand took a few deep breaths. “You know this already, too. Greta found out about my first wife, Ella Belle. I don’t know how she figured it out, but she did.”

“Figured out what?” Hedinger asked coldly.

“That the home invasion was a setup. That I’d sold Ella Belle’s heart,” Brand replied. “To you.”

“Go on.” Hedinger’s stare was unwavering.

“We were arguing. In the heat of it, she called me a cold-blooded killer.”

Hedinger’s lips pressed into a hard line, but he didn’t interrupt.

“Greta said she’d go to the police. She said my license to practice medicine would be revoked. She said I’d go to prison at the very least,” Brand whispered. “She’d discovered that the heart recipient had died soon afterward. That made Greta wild. Uncontrollable. She came at me with a knife. What was I supposed to do?”

“So you panicked,” Hedinger stated flatly. “Decided to kill her and leave the country.”

Brand stared into space. “Greta was a mean and vicious woman. She’d have done everything she threatened and more if she could.”

“You should have told me this at the time. It would have been easier just to eliminate Greta in a provable way,” Hedinger said without sympathy. “Now we’ve got a situation that could ruin everything you’ve built here.”

“Only if Greta really is alive. And how could she be?I watched her drown.” Brand sounded truly desperate now, even to his own ears.

Hedinger allowed the silence to linger for a while before he asked, “All of this bothers you too much. You don’t truly believe Greta is dead. Which means you have more than mere doubts. Tell me.”

Brand lifted his head, guilt fairly oozing from his pores. He looked straight at Hedinger and confessed. “There was a royal wedding a few weeks ago in London.”

He described what he’d seen. “Afterward, I scoured the internet until I found the footage of the crowd and the child and the balloon. I downloaded the video and watched it many times.”

Brand could describe the woman in vivid detail, but they both knew what Greta looked like.

Hedinger didn’t interrupt until Brand finished his confession. After a few moments of thinking, Hedinger said, “Look, it’s not likely to be her, is it? You saw Greta drown. She’s been gone for years. If she were planning to resurface and make trouble for you, she’d have done it already.”

Brand felt the knot in his belly loosen slightly.

“But I can understand why both you and her sister want to confirm. Give me the video. I’ll look into it,” Hedinger said.

Relief flooded Brand’s body, relaxing his muscles and leaving him wrung out. He felt as though he might pour like liquid mercury onto the ground. “How will you do it?”

“Leave it to me. I’ve got resources. I’ll let you know what we find out.”

“What if it turns out the womanisactually Greta? Will you kill her?” Brand asked because he couldn’t stop himself.

He wanted Greta dead. He’d wanted her dead four years ago, and he still did.

Hedinger gave him a level stare. “Let’s cross that bridge if we come to it, shall we?”

-

Chapter 31

Houston

Flint and Drake had returned to Houston on a nonstop commercial flight. After a meal and some sleep, they joined Scarlett in one of her conference rooms at Scarlett Investigations. Gaspar participated remotely from Miami.

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