In the Heart of the Wind Book 1 in the WindTorn Trilogy (10 page)

 Of all his children, she alone had taken the time to learn the old language, and she sang the ancient songs of his parent’s homeland with a crystal-clear soprano that could bring tears to the eyes of those who listened.

Intelligent?
Oh, yes, he thought, nodding. Bridie, of all his offspring, had what it took to take over the business when the time came. Not that the woman would ever be given the chance to grip the reins of the Tremayne Group in her slim, elegant hands. But she would do well, better even than Andrew, and Liam understood that. He’d thought Vassar might well make the girl snobbish, ashamed of her shanty Irish roots, but it hadn’t. If anything, that Ivy League education had instilled a deep sense of family honor in the girl, allowing her to see beyond the way the Tremayne money had been made to the possibilities of the way it could be spent to change the world.

Dedicated?
Bridie was dedicated. Dedicated and determined. One of the first women to graduate from Harvard medical school, she had come away with a degree in behavioral science, setting up her practice of psychiatry in Savannah among the poor, wanting to make a difference with the victims of domestic violence and sexual abuse. She had labored long and hard hours to make a name for herself in the realms of psychoanalysis and many of her papers had been published in the American Medical Association Journal. Her name was well-known in psychiatric circles for her innovative techniques for treating children scarred by incest had been applauded by her peers when she had won several prestigious awards for her work.

President of the Altar Society at St. Anthony’s; on the Board of Directors at Savannah General Hospital; also an Eucharistic Minister at her church, as well as President of the CCD program, Bridie and her husband, Michael, President of the First Security Bank of Savannah and Chairman of the Board of the Connors Corporation, had three daughters and two sons to keep them occupied when not at work.

“Occupied!” Liam chuckled, thinking of the twin boys, Liam and Leon, who had just served their first Mass that past Sunday. Standing there, angelic-looking in their altar boy robes, Liam had seen the wicked twinkle in the boys’ eyes as they had caught him watching them. His namesake, the older of the two by three minutes, had dared to wink at his grandfather.

“Did you say something, dear?” Liam’s wife, Margaret asked.

Liam turned his head and looked at his wife of fifty-two years. “I was just thinking about little Liam.”

Margaret sighed. “He’s been grounded, Bridget told me this morning. Father didn’t appreciate his little joke, I’m afraid.”

“I would think not,” Liam agreed, hiding his smile behind a sip of his expensive bourbon. That audacious wink little Liam had given his grandsire should have been a warning of what was to come, but Liam had no way of knowing what it meant until he’d seen the horrified expression on Father Wellmeyer’s face when a tiny tree frog had hopped across the altar table to land in the chalice of communion wine.

“You can’t blame Michael for blistering his backside,” Margaret commented, as if sensing her husband’s condoning of the affair.

“No, of course, not,” Liam assured her. But silently Liam had applauded his namesake’s audacity. The boy had spunk and Liam admired that in a child.

Long after his wife had retired for the night, Liam sat out in the soft Miami night, turning his face up to the brilliant globe of a full moon that shone its creamy yellow light down on Biscayne Bay. His thoughts were of his family, especially his sixteen grandchildren.

Sixteen.

A deep frown slid over Liam’s face. He wasn’t as fond of his youngest grandchild as he was of the others. Of course, that had to do with the child’s parents more than the child itself. Not that the child had had any more control over her parents than Liam had had over the child’s father. His frown deepened.

Liam hated his youngest son. He hated him so completely, so thoroughly, he found it intolerable to even look at the young man’s picture Margaret insisted still be kept on the mantle alongside his siblings. Everything about his youngest son offended Liam from the color of his hair to the color of his eyes to the shade of his skin. There was nothing, not one single trait, in the man Liam could find acceptable. The common thread that linked him with his other children was missing, had unraveled, with the youngest. As far as Liam Tremayne was concerned, the boy was no longer a part of the family for he had disowned him many years before.

“Insufferable little ingrate,” Liam hissed from between clenched teeth.

From the time his youngest child had been old enough to walk, until the hot July morning Liam had physically thrown him out of the family home, there had been violent battles between them. Often the vocal skirmishes between father and son had found expression in actual physical violence, the father enforcing lessons upon the son; lessons in obedience that had left emotional, as well as tangible, scars on the boy.

No one in the family would have ever admitted that Liam abused the boy, emotionally, as well as, physically. No one would have dared to even suggest such a thing. But that had been the case. The child seemed to bring out the worst in Liam Tremayne’s nature. And when it was discussed amongst the others, they had all agreed that the boy had, indeed, brought it all on himself with his attitude.

“Why don’t you love me?” the boy had once asked his father and the other children had held their breath for the answer.

“Because you’re a loser,” Liam had shouted at him. “You’re not good in school, you haven’t been picked for any of the teams, and you’re a trouble maker, always in the principal’s office. That’s why I’m sending you to military school. Maybe they can make a man out of you!”

“You’re sending me there to get rid of me,” the boy had cried, garnering for himself a vicious backhand across his mouth. Liam’s heavy signet ring had torn open his chin and left a scar below his lip.

“And I can’t wait until you’re gone,” Liam had screamed at the bleeding child.

Yes, Liam thought. The boy had been a loser all his life. He had never excelled in anything—anything that mattered at any rate. His grades, even after military school, were low, unacceptable. Liam wondered at the boy’s intelligence level and even had him tested.

“There’s nothing wrong with your son that a firm hand wouldn’t cure!” The sociologist had confirmed what Liam already knew.

His youngest son had just been born a loser.

Liam Tremayne didn’t like to lose. And he didn’t like losers. He was a competitive man, thriving on the contest between himself and others, gleefully crushing those who were ill-prepared to come up against him, and demolishing the careers of those who would dare to challenge his authority. His intellect was no match for lesser men and his bulldozing concept of winning at all costs had utterly destroyed many opponents who weren’t quick enough, intelligent enough, or were lacking the necessary ruthlessness with which Liam Tremayne played and won his games.

But with his youngest child, he had finally lost the battle of wits that had raged for eighteen years between them. That knowledge drove deep in Liam Tremayne’s gut and had festered there, suppurating, oozing hate throughout the man’s body, dissolving whatever parental care and concern he might have once had for the boy. And rather than do what he had feared he eventually would, he had simply disowned his son, kicking him out on his own, refusing even to acknowledge the young man’s existence after he was gone.

“But, Liam, why?” his wife had cried, her eyes red from still more tears she had shed over their youngest offspring. Her son had just graduated from military school that past spring and was already enrolled in Georgia Southwestern, a college Liam considered beneath contempt, but the only one the boy could get into.

“If he stays in this house one hour longer, Maggie, I’ll strangle him and be done with it. Is that what you will see happen?”

“But what will he do?” she’d sobbed, clutching at her husband’s arm. “How will he live?”

“That’s his problem, Maggie.” Liam had been adamant in his decision. “It’ll do him good to have to fend for himself for a change. He’s always had everything given to him on a silver platter and has always,
always,
thrown it right back in our faces. He says he detests where the money comes from that has fed and clothed and tried to educate him all these years. Let him feed and clothe himself and see how well he does!”

“He’s just a boy, Liam.”

“He’ll grow up soon enough.”

And so the boy had left with only the clothes on his back and thirty dollars—money his mother had managed to slip to him—in the pockets of his torn jeans. That had been twenty-one years ago, Liam remembered. And for most of that time, the Tremaynes had lost track of their son. It wasn’t until Liam received an angry phone call from one of his associates seven years earlier that he found out where his youngest son was living.

And what a dishonorable man he had become.

“With all due respect, Liam,” the man on the other end of the phone had said in a tense voice, “I understand he is one of your sons, but it’s a matter of honor. I know there’s no love lost between you and the boy. You do understand, don’t you? Out of respect for you and your family, I’ll see to it that it’s quick and clean. He won’t be made to suffer.”

A hard frost of fury had hardened Liam’s eyes as he listened to the speaker. “And you understand, of course, that even though I am not on friendly terms with him, he is still flesh and blood of my beloved wife. Should anything happen to him, I would be obliged to make it right for his mother—like unto like, an eye for an eye.”

He had listened to the silence at the other end for a moment then he had lowered his voice to a friendly, commanding tone. “I can see advantages to this, though.”

“Advantages?” the shocked voice from across the miles had gasped. “I don’t see how—”

“I’m speaking of family ties—business mergers, if you will,” Liam had interrupted. “Things which can not necessarily be bought, but which might have, say, a rather substantial gift attached to them?”

Again the silence had been telling. Finally, “How much of a gift are we speaking of?”

Liam had smiled. “I’d think one million would satisfy, don’t you?”

The silence had not lasted as long, but the voice at the other end of the phone was no less chilly. “And what of the other matter? As much as I detest what has happened to my family, I can live with it. The money will ease the dishonor, but my business is suffering even more because of your son’s goddamned interference.”

The pencil Liam had been holding in his hand snapped in two at the reminder of just how low his son had sunk. “I have such shame at hearing of what he’s doing. My wife and I have somehow failed to instill in him the proper values. What can I say to you? How can I apologize for his lack of respect?”

“No one holds you responsible, Liam,” the other man had hastened to say. “We know where the fault lies in this.”

“Let me handle it,” Liam had asked. “Let me set things right. I have ways of dealing with my son.”

“You give me your word of honor this will be taken care of as soon as possible? There are others involved in this who don’t know you for the magnanimous man you are.”

Grinding his teeth with sheer fury, Liam had forced sincerity into his words. “Within the next four to six days. Out-of-state arrangements will need to be made for what I have in mind to be effective. We don’t want anything traced back to you or me. But I can promise you, after I am through disciplining him, you’ll have no more trouble with him.”

“All right. I’ll leave it up to you.”

“Fine,” Liam agreed in a friendly tone. “And I look forward to doing business with you.”

Sitting in the warm Miami air, going over in his mind what Andrew had told him only that morning, hearing again the phone call from Mike Cronin confirming James Gabriel had at last been caught, Liam bitterly regretted having stopped his son’s murder that night nearly eight years earlier. Now, once more, his youngest son was proving to be a problem that would have to be dealt with.

This time, it would be once and for all.

Virgil stepped to
the phone and took the receiver from Kyle. “Yeah.” He listened, his brows furrowing. “When was that?”

He leaned back against the wall and reached up with his free hand to pinch the bridge of his nose, pushing up his tortoise shell glasses. “Well, now, that’s a fine kettle of fish, ain’t it? No, I’ll call ‘em back when I get in. Just tell ‘em I’ll handle it from this end. Yeah. Yeah. All right.”

He hung up the phone and swung his eyes to Kyle, who was regarding him with anxious eyes.

“Did you find out something?” Kyle asked.

There was a long, drawn-out sigh from the sheriff. “It seems there’s a warrant out for Gabe after all.”

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Kyle scoffed. “I don’t believe it!”

“We ran his fingerprints through the system just in case, even though we had no wants or warrants on him, and we got a teletype from Atlanta saying there was a warrant on a guy with those fingerprints. The name on the warrant is for James Gabriel Tremayne.”

Annie heard the name and looked at Alinor and Jake; Alinor touched Annie’s hand.

Virgil came to sit once more on the sofa and his kindly eyes were grave as he spoke to Annie. “Patricia Anne, do you know what ‘involuntary hospitalization’ means?”