In the Heart of the Wind Book 1 in the WindTorn Trilogy (13 page)

Virgil groaned. “That’s out of our jurisdiction. We can’t just traipse down to Florida, barge our way into Gabe’s father’s house and—”

“Why the hell not?” Edna Mae Menke demanded. “Where’s your balls, man?” She jabbed an arthritic finger into Virgil’s chest, ignoring the look of intense pain that flashed over his face. “I thought you were a friend of Gabriel’s.”

“I am, Miss Edna, but...” Virgil felt like a school boy as the old woman glared at him with true disgust.

“Then why aren’t you on your way to Florida?” She turned, surveying the room. “I was told the Vittetoe boy was to be here this morning. Where is
he?”

“On his way, Miss Edna,” Dean answered, swallowing heavily as the old woman’s eyes swung his way.

“I’ll wait,” she snapped and seated herself in the chair Dean had hastily vacated at her arrival. Folding her gloved hands over her purse, she sat perfectly straight and lady-like in the hard chair and glared across the desk at Virgil.

“Would you like—”

“I wish nothing, thank you.”

Virgil didn’t know whether to sit back down, keep standing, or leave the room on some pretext or another. He didn’t think the last option would sit too well with Mrs. Menke because the old woman’s eyes were locked on him, her annoyance with him plain behind the sparse white lashes. Slowly, almost apologetically, he sat down, dropped his eyes to his desk and fussed with the papers lying helter-skelter on top.

He could feel her eyes stabbing into him, but he couldn’t make himself look up. He’d been afraid of—a little bit in awe of—Edna Mae Menke all his life. The old lady had been his third-grade teacher before she’d married Joseph Menke, and six months later when Joe had been killed in a silo collapse, became wealthier than anyone in the state.

Dean looked at Milo. Milo looked at Virgil. Virgil pushed papers this way and that, rolled a pencil into his drawer, adjusted his lamp and was about to stack some envelopes in the out-basket when Edna Mae’s whip of a voice lashed out at him.

“Stop that piddling, Virgil Earl! You’re making me nervous.”

Instantly his hands came away from his desk, his face flooded with color and he looked sheepishly up at his old teacher. “Yes, ma’am,” he answered.

Edna Mae nodded, her eyes gleaming. A victorious smile twitched at her lips before she schooled her face once more into the harsh lines of command. With all the Kramer boys, she had had to be precise and no-nonsense. Virgil Earl had been no exception to that rule. Lucille Kramer had let the boys run wild and it had been up to teachers like herself to instill in them a sense of who was in charge. The good Lord knew their daddy, Karl, hadn’t.

Virgil felt like crying. Those frigid eyes were locked on his, making him feel the cold of the winter’s day worse than he had when he’d shoveled his walkway that morning. He could feel the hair at the back of his neck stirring as Miss Edna continued to glare at him. Idly, he wondered how she could just stare like that without ever blinking, then remembered he’d thought much the same thing when he’d been in school and wondered how the old biddy could see you doing something wrong even though her back was to you.

“Do you boys have something you need to be about?” Edna Mae asked, sweeping her disdainful glance to Dean and Milo. She almost smiled when the men replied “Yes, ma’am!” almost in unison. “Be off with you then!”

Virgil glared at his men as they hastily departed.

“We’re going to find him, Virgil Earl,” Miss Edna told him.

Virgil’s eyes fused with the old lady’s. “I hope so, Miss Edna.”

She nodded emphatically. “We will. I’ve no doubt in my mind of it at all.”

“Did you hear
about what happened to Gabe James?” Frank Wilder asked the man who was pumping gas into the Wilder’s station wagon. “He went and got himself abducted.”

“My old lady heard it down to the dress shop this morning,” the gas station attendant said, shaking his head. “What you reckon this here world is coming to, Mr. Wilder?”

Dave Schmitz leaned out the window of his pickup truck as he waited for his mother to come out of the convenience store. “It was on the ten o’clock news on all three Des Moines stations last night and in the paper this morning. Word is spreading faster than a twister coming up Tornado Alley.”

“I liked that boy,” an old farmer remarked as he paid for his purchase at the feed and seed store. “Always polite, he was.”

“He’s Patricia Anne Cummings’ husband, isn’t he?” one of the ladies at the beauty parlor asked her hairdresser.

Scratching his head, the veterinarian had looked at the dairyman. “Used to bring their cat in before the old tom had to be put down. I remember Gabe crying like a baby when I handed him the box I’d put the cat in. He was a tender-hearted man.”

“Just ain’t right,” the mechanic told his customer. “Gabe James was a nice man. If he was a dope head, don’t you think we’d have known it around here?”

“Can you imagine his own family wanting to lock him up in an insane asylum?” a cable installer asked his dispatcher.

“He wasn’t anymore strung out on dope than Dan Quayle is,” the manager of Taco John’s told his assistant manager.

“Lord, I hope they find him,” the florist told her best friend over the phone. “This is just about killing Annie.”

“So what if they weren’t married?” one of the teachers at the high school snapped. “Have you heard about his other wife?”

“Did you hear what happened to him down in Florida?”

“I remember him coming to the hospital to see Kyle Vittetoe,” a nurse told her patient. “He was so upset. Poor baby. You could just tell it was tearing him up to see Kyle all black and brown like that.”

“And now we know why.”

“His Pa is a gangster, no less!”

“Something ought to be done!”

“I wish I could find the men what took Gabe James!”

“Poor Annie! Can you imagine what this is doing to her?”

By the time Kyle Vitettoe arrived at Virgil’s office, the town was boiling mad.

Annie lay perfectly
still in her lonely, cold, melancholy bed. Her eyes were turned to the spot where Gabe had lain beside her for two years. She touched his pillow, drew it to her and inhaled the scent of him. Tears fell heedlessly down her cheeks. For the first time in those two years, she had slept alone. The night had been long, filled with memories and worries, and fears of never seeing Gabe again. The night had stolen from her all the tears she had thought she could no longer shed.

And the night had given her a cold feeling in the pit of her stomach that Gabe was in terrible, terrible trouble. She could sense his pain like a sentient life crying out to her.

“I love you, baby,” she cried into his pillow. “I love you so much.”

Alinor Mueller heard her neighbor through the bedroom door. The older lady wondered if she should go in, speak to Annie, try to comfort her.

“I want to be here when he comes home,” she’d said.

Nothing either of them could say would change Annie’s mind, so Alinor had decided to spend the night in the young couple’s guest room so Annie wouldn’t be left alone. Throughout the night, she had heard soft, muffled crying between short periods of utter silence. It had torn at Alinor’s heart, but Annie’s refusal even to get out of bed the next morning had stabbed right through Alinor’s soul.

“Now, Gabe wouldn’t want you acting this way, Annie,” she’d admonished her charge. “You need to get up and bathe. Get dressed. Eat some breakfast. Maybe we could take a walk down by the creek.”

Annie had shaken her head, turned her face into her pillow and closed her eyes. And Alinor had wondered if she should call Doc Nathan to come see to her young neighbor.

“Just let her deal with it in her own good time, Nora,” Jake had cautioned his wife. “She’s gonna have to come to grips with this herself.”

So Alinor had stayed—would stay—until Annie was strong enough to be on her own.

If she ever would.

Kyle put a
hand on Edna Mae Menke’s shoulder. “What is it you’re suggesting, Miss Edna?”

“I’m saying we call a town meeting,” Edna Mae told him and Virgil. “There are a lot of people out there who’d help if we gave them the chance.”

“But what can any of us do that the FBI isn’t doing already, Miss Edna?” Virgil asked. “We don’t have the money and resources the federal government does.”

Edna Mae’s eyes glittered dangerously. “Call the damned town meeting, Virgil. Put the word out that anyone interested in helping us find Gabe James should be there. Maybe someone will have some notions the FBI hasn’t even thought of yet.”

“Attention, shoppers!
There’ll be a town meeting at Sacred Heart Church this evening at seven p.m. to discuss...”

“This just in to the station. A town meeting to be held at Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Newton...”

“Rose Ann? Sarah. Have you heard about the meeting tonight?”

“What time is that meeting supposed to be?”

“Are you going to be there?”

“Damned right, I am!”

“Can I ride with you?”

Whether out of concern, curiosity or chance, the church was filled to overflowing by 6:45 p.m. that night. As a soft snow filtered down through the black walnut trees and the dump trucks geared up to sand the county roads, a large majority of Jasper County residents were crammed into the pews of the Catholic church. When Sheriff Virgil Kramer began to speak, you could have heard a pin drop.

At 7:45 p.m.
Eastern
Standard Time, Liam Tremayne listened for a moment, murmured a reply, then pressed his finger down on the phone’s cut off button. He called to his personal assistant as he began to punch in a long distance telephone number.

“Bring the car around, Tory. I’ll be leaving for New Orleans now.”

“It’s over?” Griffin Connors asked when Liam identified himself.

“For now,” came the short reply.

“Is there any reason I should fly up there?”

“None that I can foresee,” Liam answered, hating the smug sound of the other man’s voice. “If anything of importance happens, I’m sure Kristen will inform you.”

“Well, then, I’ll just leave it in your capable hands,” Griffin replied.

When he hung up, Liam glared his hatred at the phone and the man to whom he’d been speaking. Finally making up his mind about what he wanted to do about Griffin Connors, and the problem the bastard represented, Liam smiled.

It was a deadly smile.

His face hurt
.

His eyes hurt.

His mouth hurt.

His throat hurt worst of all.

He knew what they’d done to him. Had known what they’d planned before it had ever happened, but the realization of it as he woke in the sterile confines of his hospital room cut through James Gabriel Tremayne’s heart like a well-sharpened scalpel, slicing through his defenses, excising his carefully constructed world. If he could have, he would have cried, but considering what they’d done to him, it was probably just as well he couldn’t.

He was helpless against them. Powerless now to change or alter the machinations his father had set into motion. He couldn’t lift his hands to plead with them to leave him alone because his wrists were strapped down to the bed. He couldn’t see the damage they’d done because his eyes were taped shut and thick gauze was wrapped securely around his head. He couldn’t speak because they had seen to that, too. All he could do was lie in the darkness, in the horrible silence, and feel the weight of his terror pressing down on him. Endure the tragic loss that had once been his life.

“It’ll be an improvement.” There was a sneer of masculine laughter. “But then anything would have to be an improvement.”

Even after all this time, after all these years, Gabe recognized that arrogant, dispassionate voice. He tried to say the name. Couldn’t. Felt that if he could, it would somehow make the pain less permanent.

“Do you want something for the pain?” Another voice from his past.

He tried to shake his head, to deny the question Patrick had asked.

“It doesn’t really matter what he wants, does it? Give him 100 milligrams of demerol.”

He recognized that voice, too. A coldness like the depths of the Arctic flowed through his very soul. He could imagine the frigid green eyes gazing down at him with contempt; could hear the hate in his sister’s words.

“Just in case you’re wondering,” she said. “Paddy has done a rather remarkable job on you, James.” Her laughter was like a shattering chime ringing through his bruised mind. “Once the bandages come off, your own mother won’t recognize you!”

“It’s fascinating what can be done with plastic surgery today,” Andrew commented dryly. “With special intraocular lenses, you can change a person’s eye color from, say, brown to black.”

His eyes hurt so badly, like there were pins sticking into them. Even worse than when he had first began wearing those contact lenses years ago. He tried moving them beneath his taped lids and gasped with utter agony.