In the Heart of the Wind Book 1 in the WindTorn Trilogy (16 page)

“You have to realize something, Agent Sadler,” the newswoman had told him. “There wasn’t any love lost between Jamie and his father. The old man used to beat him, you know? Jamie didn’t tell me that, but he didn’t have to. I lived through it myself and you can read the signs in someone else. Tremayne kicked his son out of the house when he was eighteen is what Kristen told me when Jamie came up missing in 1986.

“I went to interview her and the girl was pretty shaken up. She thought the worst had happened and she feared it wasn’t her Daddy who’d done it, but Jamie’s. She really didn’t expect to ever see her husband again. They’d only been married a week when he disappeared.”

“Did he ever see his daughter?”

“No. By the time Kristen had the baby, Jamie was in that clinic in Augusta. That’s the last I heard of him until that Cummings girl called here.”

Agent Sadler closed his eyes and leaned his head on his chair. He, like Virgil Kramer and Kyle Vittetoe, knew James Tremayne’s family had him.

He just had to find out where.

Edna Mae sighed
as she rubbed the small of her back. She, Kyle and Virgil had been going over the list of clinics in Georgia, Florida, and Alabama all morning. Her head was aching, her eyes were blurry, and the arthritis in her spine was beginning to make a nuisance of itself.

“Why don’t we take a break, Miss Edna,” Virgil suggested as he stood up from the table at which they’d been sitting for well over three hours. “I’ll send Dean to get us some lunch.” He saw her nod her agreement and walked to the door to speak to his deputy.

“You know something, Virgil Earl?” the old woman said, “I feel like we’re missing something really important here.” She’d picked up one of the lists. “It’s almost like there’s a common denominator we’re overlooking.”

“Like what, Miss Edna?” Kyle asked, looking at her.

Edna Mae shook her head. “I don’t know, son, but it seems like I should.” She lifted her hands. “I just have a gut feeling there’s something vital we’re missing.”

“Well, all these clinics have a few things in common,” Kyle stated. “They’re all privately owned and operated, they’re mostly outside large cities, and they’re all federally inspected.”

“And everyone of them is being checked out by the FBI,” Virgil added. “But Sadler seems to think Tremayne will have put Gabe in a place that won’t be so easily checked into. He knows they won’t be using Gabe’s real name.”

“Patient confidentiality,” Kyle put in. “You can’t make a clinic open its records on who’s being treated without a court order, and even then its got to be a damned tight order or the clinics lawyers will eat you alive. Sadler’s been lucky so far he hasn’t run up against some hotshot shrink with more money than conscience.”

A flash of inspiration flew through Edna Mae’s mind and she turned to Kyle. “Is there a list of charges or fees for those clinics of yours?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Kyle answered. He shifted through the stack of papers before him and looked down the list. “They are basically about the same. Expensive as hell.”

“What’re you thinking, Miss Edna?” Virgil asked, watching the spark grow in the old lady’s eyes.

“Well now, Virgil Earl,” Edna Mae said, “if you were a man as wealthy as Liam Tremayne, and had as much influence, would you care about how much it was going to cost to hide a son you considered to be an embarrassment?”

Virgil’s eyes narrowed. “No, probably not.”

“And would you be likely to put him in a place where the FBI could just waltz in and look around with any ease?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Would you put him somewhere close by where you could see him if you were of a mind to? Where you could be sure of where he was?”

Kyle glanced at Virgil. “Yes, he would.”

“Then let’s concentrate on clinics near Miami,” Virgil answered. He walked to the table and rummaged through the lists until he found the one for the southern portion of Florida.

“No, he wouldn’t have put Gabe that close to home,” Edna Mae told them.

“Orlando? Savannah?” Kyle asked.

“Atlanta,” Virgil said. “Somewhere near that lawyer brother of his.”

Edna Mae shook her head. “Not in any of those places, but in a place where all of them could get to easily, yet far enough away so the FBI wouldn’t necessarily think to look there.”

“The ones in Alabama then,” Kyle said.

“A very expensive clinic, and maybe one that might well be owned by someone with underworld connections,” Edna Mae corrected.

“Sadler could look into that.” Virgil placed his hands on the table and looked up at the old woman. “You’re thinking he’s not in these three states we’ve been reviewing.”

The old woman eased into one of the straight back chairs, wincing a little as the pain in her spine intensified. She breathed out slowly and looked at the two men.

“If I were Liam Tremayne, I’d hide Gabe in a place that wasn’t all that far away by plane, yet outside the normal areas the police will be searching. They can’t investigate every clinic in the nation, but they can look into those which meet certain criteria.”

“Such as being real expensive,” Virgil repeated.

“And out of the way,” Kyle added.

“And with certain illegal connections.” Edna Mae took the map they had been using to pinpoint the clinics. She put her finger on Pensacola and then westward. “We haven’t even looked into Mississippi, Louisiana or Texas. I don’t think they’d go further north than Atlanta either.” Her finger traveled from Mississippi to Louisiana and stopped. She looked up.

“New Orleans,” she stated with conviction. “My old bones tell me the boy is somewhere near New Orleans.”

“Why is that, Miss Edna?” Virgil inquired. “Do those old bones tell you why they think he’s there?”

Edna Mae stared at the boot-shape of the state. “New Orleans is about equal distance for all of them—Bridget in Savannah; Andrew in Atlanta; Patrick in Orlando; the old man in Miami.” She looked at the men. “It’s not a place Gabe’s ever been that any of us know about. He’s not connected to it in any way.”

“But his brother is,” Kyle answered. He reached into his satchel. He pulled out a file and handed a paper to Edna Mae. “Patrick Tremayne has a satellite clinic in New Orleans.”

Looking over the report on Gabe’s brother, Edna Mae felt her conviction slipping. It didn’t seem possible they’d put Gabe near where one of his siblings could easily be investigated. She looked up at the men.

“Maybe I’m wrong.”

“And maybe you aren’t,” Kyle told her. “It won’t hurt to check.” He glanced at Virgil. “I’ll call Sadler and see if he’ll look into it.”

At twenty minutes
past five that afternoon, Agent Mark Sadler called Kyle Vittetoe at his home. Ellen Vittetoe informed the FBI agent that her brother wasn’t home, but she took the message he had called to give Kyle.

“Tell him there are nine clinics that fit the criteria he gave me this morning. I’m having the Louisiana Bureau looking into them. Out of the nine, there are just three that look like they might have mob connections. They are The...”

Snow flitted softly
past Annie’s bedroom window as she sat in the window seat and watched the dying day. The soft gray light filtered through the barren branches of the walnut trees and left pale shadows on the snow-dusted ground.

“Where are you, Gabe?” she asked the silence. “How are you, my darling?”

Her heart was aching; her heart was breaking; and the quietness around her only underscored the loneliness eating away the fabric of her composure. She had been trying desperately to hold on to her sanity, to keep her anger in check, but the fury inside her, the fear, was building to a crescendo and she dreaded every passing minute that she would run screaming, mindless and unfixable, through the gathering night.

“I will find you,” she told the last flickering shard of light as it faded from sight. “If it takes the rest of my life, I’ll find you and bring you home, Gabriel.”

Annie knew she had to.

Or silently lose her mind.

Her eyes went to the phone beside her bed.

Nurse Angela Palmer
adjusted the pillow under her new patient’s head. She carefully checked his vital signs, checked the drip on the IV bag, checked the urine output, satisfied herself everything was as it should be with the man in 158. She filled out his chart, made note he was mumbling incoherently in his sleep, and left the room to get the injection his doctor had ordered for him.

In the hall, she passed a middle-aged gentleman, sharply dressed, debonair, and immaculately groomed. She smiled at him and felt a chill go through her heart as he seemed to look right through her.

“Which room is Jim Sinclair’s?” he asked her in a voice as cold as the morgue lockup.

Angela Palmer pointed to 158. “Are you a relative?” she asked, intending to tell the man it was well past visiting hours, but the glare he aimed her way told her the gentleman would not have cared.

“Has he awakened yet?” the man asked, glancing at the room’s door.

“No, sir, but he seems to be coming around. I’m about to give him a shot that will let him sleep until morning. Dr. Lassiter—”

“The shot can wait. His father is on his way in to see him.”

“But visiting hours are...”

Angela Palmer was stunned as the man gripped her arm in a bruising clutch that made her cry out in surprise and pain.

“Mr. Sinclair can see his son whenever he has a mind to, nurse,” the man grated. “If you have problems with that, I suggest you call Dr. Lassiter.”

“No problem,” Angela answered, her eyes watering from the grip on her arm. She rubbed her flesh when the man took his hand away.

“As soon as Mr. Sinclair arrives, show him to his son’s room and see we aren’t disturbed.” His pale brown eyes bored into her. “Are we clear on that, nurse?”

Angela nodded. “Yes, sir.” She watched as the dapperly-dressed gentleman entered room 158 and closed the door behind him. She became aware of her rapidly beating heart and heavy breathing. She should be used to the people who occasionally came through the clinic, but she wasn’t. Sometimes they scared her.

Tonight was no exception.

“It’s Danny,
Jamie. Johnny’s brother. Are you awake?”

A voice came to him from far, far away out of the darkness and the antiseptic smell that enveloped his existence. He felt rough hands on his shoulder, gripping him, shaking just enough to make his face throb with more pain and he groaned, pushing the sound up from the very depths of his soul.

“The old man’s coming to see you.”

He wished whoever it was would leave him alone. He wanted to sink back into the merciful oblivion from which he had only recently come. The darkness was just beyond his grasp, taunting him, hovering about him like a waiting bird of prey, lurking there to trip him up if he could but reach out to it. He tried, but the insistent voice speaking to him from the light of consciousness would not allow him to.

“He’ll want you wide awake, Jamie,” the voice hissed. “You’d better quit that moaning.”

Was he moaning? James wondered. He supposed he was. Pain made you moan and the Lord knew he had enough of that. His cheekbones ached; his jaw felt as though someone had taken a sledgehammer to it. His lower lip seem to have a life of its own and his eyes were still an agony unto themselves. He worked the spittle down his throat, not feeling the intensity of pain that had been there earlier, but still feeling the grating rawness that was a vivid reminder of what Patrick had done to him.

Patrick?

The memory of what had happened rushed up through James Tremayne like a speeding locomotive. He gasped, instant memory flooding his battered mind and he came fully awake, his aches and pains with him.

“Is he awake?”

He knew that voice. Profound fear settled on him like a heavy mantle of freezing snow. Beneath the chill, his body flooded with sweat and he began to tremble.

“I think so, Mr. Tremayne, but I’m not sure.”

Daniel reached down to shake him once more and an agony of bursting fire shot through Jamie’s face. His fingers clutched at the sheet beneath them, digging into the crisp material as though his life depended upon their hold. A shudder ran through him and yet he tried to remain perfectly still, hoping if he could, the men would leave him alone.

“He’s awake,” that hated voice sneered. “You can leave us, Danny.”

Jamie heard the door close, knew he was alone in the room with the beast from the very deepest part of hell. A chair scraped across the floor and its cushion deflated as his visitor sat. He waited, dreading the voice, but there was only silence and the soft breathing that wasn’t his own.

Liam Tremayne braced his elbows on the chair arms and steepled his fingers, rested his chin on the tips and stared at his son. The bandages across the young man’s eyes kept James from seeing him. He had a wild urge to rip off the bandages, to look into those now-black eyes and see the fear he knew he’d put there. He desperately wanted to see the terror, the knowledge that James had lost, in his son’s altered eyes. He wanted to see the dismay, the dread, the hopelessness as it registered. His hands itched to do it, but his common sense told him his actions might upset Patrick’s delicate surgery.