Page 46 of Dan

“Finley Xavier.”

His eyes bugged out of his head as he shook his head back and forth.

“Oh, yeah, buddy. You and me are gonna have a conversation.”

“It’s not me! It was Yancy. She wanted me to do those treatments on her. She was the one who wanted all the information. I just happened to have the equipment.”

“You could have said no. You could have said, a professional doesn’t do shit like that,” snarled Dan.

“You obviously don’t know my sister.”

“Your sister?” frowned Gaspar. “Are you fucking with me right now? Yancy Baker Xavier is your sister?”

“Yes. She’s my sister. Half-sister really, but there are so many of us we can’t keep count anymore. Please, I can’t breathe,” he gasped. Dan loosened his grip, shoving the man back into the foyer. To the left was a large library, and he shoved him in that direction, then into an overstuffed chair.

“Baker was your father?” asked Nine.

“Yes. He was my father and about a dozen other kids’ father. I didn’t want to work with Yancy, but she gave me this sad story of her daughter’s behavior. I examined her and thought she was correct. I didn’t realize that she’d drugged her every time she came here.”

“Bullshit,” said Eric. “You’re a fucking doctor. You should have known. It was your responsibility to know.”

“As I said, you obviously don’t know Yancy that well. I was given this house by my father before he died. I was the first child. His first son, but my mother was just a German immigrant who cleaned his house for him. He couldn’t possibly marry her. So, he gave her this house in my name, ensuring that my mother would never own property.”

“Why?” asked Dan.

“Because he was a sick, twisted man. You should know that already. Yancy is just like him. She wanted anything and everything that was in her daughter’s head.”

“And you decided the best course of action would be shock therapy?” frowned Gaspar.

“What? No. No, I never gave her shock therapy. She was drugged when she came in, as I said. Her mother gave the suggestion to her that she was undergoing shock therapy and implanted words and ideas that made her think that. No, I never did that to her. What I did was bad enough.

“Finley is brilliant. Truly brilliant. Anything that she developed was going to be successful and earn millions. But her parents had her believing that something was wrong with her. Until she went to work for GAM. She thrived there and learned that she wasn’t alone in the way she thought about things or looked at the world.”

“That’s when they bought GAM,” said Dan. Gunderson nodded.

“If you knew the crazy ideas they planted in that poor girl’s head, you’d understand why she was confused. All to get to G.R.I.P., which I have to assume is some of you.” They said nothing, just staring at the man.

“Right, well, they had her trying to figure out a way to send a missile at someone’s DNA or to send it via photo ID,” he shook his head. “I honestly think she could have done any of it if she’d really wanted to. Finley is much stronger than her parents believe she is. She fought the drugs. She fought any suggestive therapy. All of it.”

“Yet you continued,” said Eric.

“I did. Until two months ago. I refused when they decided to kidnap her and send her to that hellhole in Mexico.”

“So, you weren’t a part of that?” asked Dan.

“No. I refused to be a part of that. They hired an actor to play the ‘boss’ of the operation. All they wanted was for her to give up the codes on the flood system she was working on and the codes to all the dams and things. She outsmarted them all.” He grinned to himself, shaking his head. “She’s a wonderful young woman, and I damn sure should have done better to protect her as her uncle.”

“Why didn’t you?” said Dan, starting toward the man. Eric gripped his arm, staring down at Gunderson’s hands. Gunderson looked up at Eric with a sad smile.

“See, even family isn’t able to avoid their crazy. I didn’t have a husband or wife for them to use as they’ve done with other half-siblings. They decided to poison me. Mercury, to be exact. I don’t have much time, and I’m okay with that. I’ve donated the mansion to Whidbey Island upon my death. There’s no one else.”

“What did they do with the other half-siblings?” asked Gaspar.

“Stole from them, tortured them, swindled them. You name it. Yancy and Zach were always the two with the craziest minds. I worried when they married and had Finley that something could be wrong with her. But she’s perfect.”

“She damn sure is,” said Dan.

“You love her,” said Gunderson, nodding at him. “That’s good. She needs someone to let her know how special she really is. Make sure she knows that I didn’t do that shock therapy on her. It wasn’t real. It probably felt real, but it wasn’t.”

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