In the Heart of the Wind Book 1 in the WindTorn Trilogy (14 page)

“A little nip here, a little snit there on the vocal chords,” another feminine voice put in and he remembered that voice with instant regret, “and you can even change the way a person’s voice sounds. Isn’t that right, Paddy?”

His throat was sore. Just to swallow saliva was an agony, too. He could feel something rubbing deep in his throat. Something painful and raw. He wondered if he screamed, how the sound would come out. In his mind, he called out Kristen’s name. In his mind, it sounded the same to him, but he knew if he ever said the name aloud again, it wouldn’t.

“Did you know Patrick has a marvelous oral surgeon working with him, James?” Bridget taunted. “It’s absolutely amazing what they can do with crowns to change the way a person looks.”

His gums ached. It hurt his throat to move his tongue, but he ran the tip of it against the back of his upper teeth. His central incisors were longer; the canines were a bit longer as well and one of them turned slightly outward; his tongue passed over a rigid metal framework at the base of his gums.

“I told them how I wanted you to look, Jamie,” Kristen said and giggled. “As Andrew said, anything would’ve been a real improvement. He said your voice will be husky, more masculine.” She touched his hand and innuendo filled her throaty voice. “I’ll like that.”

Bridget’s voice: “I’ll put the demerol through the IV.”

He felt the stinging spread of the demerol going through the vein of his right arm and groaned. They were going to keep him doped up to keep him manageable. He almost welcomed the insidious warmth of the drug as it began to blot out their hated voices.

“Papa will be here in the morning. He’ll stay until the bandages come off.” Andrew’s voice was like pouring salt into an open wound. “If he’s content with the way you look, there won’t be any more operations. If he isn’t...” He let the words hang in the air like the gleaming blade of a guillotine.

Words—taunting, malicious, and filled with years of built-up hatred and mistrust came at him from out of the darkness into which he was slipping. He heard them moving out of the room, laughing at him, congratulating one another on having brought him to ground at last. The last thing he heard before the blackness claimed him was Bridget’s sugary voice telling him to sleep well. The last thing he felt was a soft, gentle hand on his own, squeezing, striving to comfort.

But the comfort had come too little, too late. The wings of unconsciousness spread over James Gabriel Tremayne and he began to sink down into a labyrinth of hopelessness.

“I’m sorry, Jamie,” he heard Patrick whisper. “I am so very sorry.”

“We don’t have
the money or the resources,” Virgil had said, but Edna Mae had stood and told them she did.

“I’ve got more money than I’ll ever need or could spend in my limited lifetime. Joe and I had no children, and I was going to leave the money to Gabe and Annie anyway.”

There was a mumble of surprise through the crowd along with raised eyebrows and nodding heads from those who had suspected as much.

“Whatever it takes, however much it costs, I’ll underwrite the expense.” Edna Mae sat back down.

“But where do we start, Miss Edna?” Tom Bridges, the local fire marshal asked.

“Yeah, Miss Edna,” Horace McTaggert put in. He was one of four undertakers in Jasper County. “Do we hire private detectives to help us? Do we send out flyers? What?”

“We do all of that,” Kyle answered for the old lady. “Buck Privett has already offered to print up the posters. If each of us would take ten of them to interstate rest areas, truck stops, anywhere people might be traveling and have seen Gabe, it’ll help. If some of us can make calls to Florida, call people we know there, send them the posters, have ‘em put them up, that’ll help.”

“We’re gonna send ‘em to radio and TV stations down there, too,” Jake Mueller informed the crowd.

“Have any of you got people down in Florida or Georgia?” Virgil asked.

Two people, Melba Greer and Steve Fraust, raised their hands.

“Where do they live?”

“My brother lives in Panama City. That’s over in the Panhandle,” Melba explained. “I looked it up in the atlas and it’s not all that far from Pensacola.”

“My daughter lives in Ocala,” Steve said. “But that’s a long way down there.”

“Didn’t you say one of Gabe’s brothers lives in Orlando?” Mary Bernice Merrill asked. The black woman’s eyes were red from crying. She’d really cared for Gabe. If truth were told, maybe too much and not exactly in the proper way either.

Kyle looked at a paper in his hand. “Yeah, Patrick. He’s a surgeon.”

“I can send posters to Evelyn, then,” Steve suggested. “She works for a print shop. Maybe she can print up more posters and put them along the interstate.”

“The FBI will be putting up posters, too,” Virgil informed them. “They’ll be canvassing the areas around where Gabe’s people live—Savannah, Atlanta, Orlando, Miami, Pensacola. That’s a lot of territory, folks, but maybe someone, somewhere, has seen something.”

“What about this hospital you say they may be taking Gabe to?” Jack Kirchmeyer, one of the Jasper County tax appraisers, asked. “Do you have any notions about that?”

Virgil shrugged. “All we can be fairly sure of is they won’t put him back in one of the hospitals where he’s been before.”

“Why not?” someone in the front pew called out.

“Well, think about it, Jeff,” Kyle demanded. “If they want to hide him, they’re not likely to put him anywhere where he can be found easily. Chances are they’ll stick him in a private clinic under an assumed name and keep him so stoned on medication he won’t even know where he is.”

“I can get a list of all the clinics in Georgia, Florida and Alabama. Louisiana, too, if you want,” Dr. Al Striegel, Chief of Staff at Newton’s Skiff Memorial, offered.

“Do we really want these people to know we’re doing this?” Angela Bakerfield spoke up, coming to her feet at the back of the church. “I mean, shouldn’t we be rather circumspect about going around trying to find Mr. James?” Gabe had once fixed her washing machine for her.

“What are they gonna do, Angela?” Sarah Renbarger snapped. “Come here and kidnap us?”

“Angela’s got a point,” Edna Mae interrupted. “I think we should go about this is an organized way. They’ll expect the FBI to be brought in. You can bet they’ve already laid plans for that.”

“And they’ll be expecting Annie to hire detectives,” Kyle added.

“But won’t they just hide him that much more carefully if they get wind of an all-out effort to find him?” Angela insisted.

There was a buzz of concern and Virgil pounded his hand on the pulpit. “I don’t think any of us are gonna go out and speak to the media about this.”

“There’s media here tonight,” one of the women near the front snapped. Her eyes turned to a group of men sitting together.

“My paper isn’t going to put anything in it that might jeopardize our search for Gabriel,” the local newspaper owner shot back. “We wouldn’t do that.”

“Besides, how the heck are them folks in Florida gonna hear about what we do up here?” Herbert Graves, the county’s extension agent inquired.

“Do you really think them guys didn’t have no help snatching Gabe?” Milo Afton snarled. “You go broadcasting this all about and you can sure as hell kiss Gabe’s ass goodbye! I’ll be willing to bet the men who helped snatch him came from Des Moines, but Des Moines ain’t but fifty mile away.”

“So what you do,” Judge Terry Lampiere said, standing, “is make plans only a few people are involved in. You keep it tight, you keep it secret, and you use only help that Gabe’s folks will be expecting. You think up a plan, with folks who can be trusted, and you don’t deviate from that plan.”

“Who decides who can be trusted?” Delbert Merrill, Mary Bernice’s husband, asked.

“We decide by vote,” Edna Mae said. “Terrence is right. We need a core of individuals who’ll head up this operation, who at the drop of a hat, can take off to Florida or Georgia or wherever the hell it might be to bring our boy back!”

Applause shook the rafters until Virgil raised his hands, waited for quiet and pointed to a man who was standing.

“I don’t know what use it might be to you,” Melvin Vanderwoode, owner of a cartage company, said, “but I can put one of my semi trucks at your disposal. I can drive it, if need be.”

“I ain’t got all that much in the way of money or time to help,” Harry Burnside remarked. “But if you need a place to stay in Florida, I can get access through my company to a condo in Destin. That ain’t far from Pensacola.”

“My husband and I will help anyway we can,” Jennifer Warrington, one of the hospital nurses piped up. Her husband was one of the county’s physicians.

Dr. Richard Warrington stood next to his wife. “I’ve got vacation time coming if you need me to go down there. If they’ve doped Gabe up like you think they have, and you’re able to find him, you’ll need a doctor you can trust to look after him.”

“What about...”

Long into the evening, the people of Jasper County, Iowa, made their plans to find Gabe. Those gathered wrote down the names of people they thought would be of the most help in finding him. The names with the majority of votes were compiled and twelve people were chosen to be on the rescue team. Other than Virgil Kramer, Kyle Vittetoe, and Edna Mae Menke, no one else in the church that night knew precisely who was on the list.

And it was to be kept that way.

“A vigilante group
of country rednecks?” Griffin Connors laughed at the report the next morning. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

“No, sir,” the man from Des Moines reported. “My brother was there. They chose a dozen people to head up what they’re calling ‘Operation Snowbird.’”

The news made Griffin Connors laugh so hard his eyes watered. “Now I’ve heard everything! I can’t wait to tell old man Tremayne his son has got the Iowa Dirty Dozen on his trail.”

“You’re not taking it seriously then, sir?”

“Hell, no,” Connors growled. “And Tremayne won’t either!”

“Is there anything you want me to do from this end?”

“No,” Connors said with another laugh. “Let them look for the little bastard all they want. Gabe James doesn’t even exist anymore. There’s no way in hell they’ll ever find him.”

“I could send some surveillance pictures of who my brother thinks may be on this so-called rescue team. Just to be on the safe side, sir.”

“Oh, all right,” Connors agreed, more to get the man off the line than from any actual interest. “Send them addressed to me personally. And Gotlieb?”

“Yes, sir?”

“Don’t be bandying this about, okay? It’s too stupid to have anyone hearing about it.”

“Whatever you say, Mr. Connors.”

At 8:45 a.m. Central
Standard Time, Alex Gotlieb, one of a score of mid-level lieutenants in the Adolph Baumann organization and a paid informant for Griffin Connors, was traveling too fast for conditions, slid onto a patch of ice, lost control of his vehicle and rolled his 1973 classic automobile into a ditch on Interstate 80 just outside Altoona, Iowa. The car, along with Gotlieb, burst into flames and was totally engulfed before rescuers arrived on the scene.

Everything in the mobster’s car, including a still-wet assortment of glossy 8 by 10 black-and-white photos, was burned to a crisp.

At 11:53 a.m. Eastern
Standard Time, Griffin Connors was gunned down in front of his Gulf Breeze, Florida home as he climbed into the passenger side of the candy-red sports car that belonged to his current mistress, LaVonda Deanne. His bodyguards, Shamus Flannery and Harve O’Malley, returned fire and were cut down from the twin blasts of machine guns.

There were no survivors.

Shortly before 2 p.m.
Central Standard Time, Liam Tremayne pulled his daughter-in-law into his arms and patted her heaving shoulders. “It’s going to be all right, Kristen Marie,” he soothed. “I’ll find out who killed your Daddy. I promise you I will. You’re family, child, and we’ll take good care of you, won’t we, Bridie?”

Bridget Tremayne Casey nodded, her face cold and hard with a vengeful smile. “Indeed we will, Papa.” Her eyes fused with her father’s. “Indeed we will.”

“I’ll have some papers drawn up, Drew. You’ll take care of this, won’t you? And we’ll handle everything your father was doing until you’re able to do it yourself. Is that all right with you, Kristen?”

The grieving woman nodded miserably as she clung to Liam.

“Okay, then. Drew, get started on those papers so Kristen won’t have to worry about someone taking over her father’s business in this time of trouble.” Liam kissed his daughter-in-law on the top of her head. “Now you go with Bridie, sweetheart, and she’ll give you something to calm you down, won’t you, Bridie?”

“I certainly will, Papa. Come along, Krissy.” She took the younger woman by the shoulders and pulled her to her side. “We’re going to take very good care of you.”

Kristen glanced up at Andrew as she passed and reached out a hand to him. When he took it, pressing it lightly between his own, his face a study in compassion, a small smile flickered over Kristen Marie’s face.