The King's Deception

A man.

Who stopped, turned, and aimed his gun.

Antrim dove to the floor.

But no bullet came his way.

He sprang to his feet and saw the shooter flee out the exit doors.

He rushed ahead and pushed the bronze portal open.

Darkness had rolled in.

Rain continued to wash down.

He caught sight of the man, beyond the steps that led from the church, trotting away toward Fleet Street.

Six

Gary Malone had been wrestled from the bridge and forced back into the Mercedes. His hands had been tied behind his back, his head covered with a wool mask.

He was afraid. Who wouldn’t be? But he was even more concerned about his dad and what may have happened in that garage. He never should have run, but he’d followed his father’s order. He should have ignored Ian and stayed close by. Instead, Ian leaped off that bridge. Sure, he’d been told to jump, too. But what sane person would have done that? Norse tried and failed, the man, in his wet clothes, cursing all the way during the drive in the car.

Ian Dunne had guts, that he’d give him.

But so did he.

Yesterday he was home packing, his mind in turmoil. Two weeks ago his mother told him that the man he’d called dad all of his life was not his natural father. She’d explained what happened before he was born — an affair, a pregnancy — confessing to her mistake and apologizing. At first he’d accepted it and decided, what did it matter? His father was his father. But he quickly began to question that decision.

It did matter.

Who was he? Where did he come from? Where did he belong? With his mother, as a Malone? Or with someone else?

He had no idea.

But he wanted to know.

He didn’t have to return to school for another ten days, and was looking forward to a Thanksgiving holiday in Copenhagen, thousands of miles from Georgia. He had to get away.

At least for a while.

A swarm of bitter feelings had settled inside him that he was finding increasingly hard to control. He’d always been respectful, obeying his mother, not making any trouble, but her lies were weighing on him. She told him all the time to tell the truth.

So why hadn’t she?

“You ready?” his mother asked him before they’d left for the airport. “You’re off to England, I hear.”

His dad had explained they were going to make a stop in London and drop a boy named Ian Dunne off with the police, then catch a connecting plane for Copenhagen. He noticed her red, watery eyes. “You been crying?”

She nodded. “I don’t like it when you go. I miss you.”

“It’s just for the week.”

“I hope that’s all.”

He knew what she meant, a reference to their conversation from last week when, for the first time, he’d said he might want to live somewhere else.

She bit her lip. “We can work this through, Gary.”

“Tell me who my birth father is.”

She shook her head. “I can’t.”

“No. You won’t. There’s a difference.”

“I promised myself I would never have him part of our life. I made a mistake being with him, but not a mistake in having you.”

He’d heard that explanation before, but was finding it difficult to separate the two. Both were based on lies.

“You knowing who that man is will change nothing,” she said, her voice cracking.

“But I want to know. You lied to me all of my life. You knew the truth but told no one, not even Dad. I know he did bad things, too. There were other women. You told me. But he didn’t lie to me.”

His mother started crying. She was a lawyer who represented people in court. He’d watched her try a case once and saw firsthand how tough and smart she could be. He thought he might like to be a lawyer one day, too.