In the Heart of the Wind Book 1 in the WindTorn Trilogy (49 page)

As the double steel doors opened, the air inside the parking garage hit the lawyer like a burst of arctic wind. He shivered, pursed his lips in annoyance, and began to fish in his pocket for his keys. Not finding them in his right pocket, he transferred his briefcase to that hand and searched his left pocket, grunting as his fingers closed around the key ring. He neither glanced to his right nor left as he strolled purposefully to his car.

Fitting his key into the door, he thought he heard a slight scuffling sound, but he paid scant attention. It didn’t take him long to shut the door behind him and thrust the key into the ignition. He tested the gear shift, put his feet on the brake and accelerator, and turned the key.

Nothing happened.

He tried again.

Nothing.

With a fierce scowl, Andrew tried once, twice more to crank his car, but there was nothing—no sound, no grinding at all.

“Son of a bitch,” he spat, slamming his free hand on the steering wheel. “Shit!” He popped the hood release, and opened his door.

He heard nothing but the dull thud that sent him spiraling into blackness.

Kyle shook his
head. “He hasn’t called me.” He looked Virgil in the eye. “Did you really think he would?”

Virgil’s eyes narrowed. “I thought he might.” He wondered about the look in Vittetoe’s eye. “He ain’t let nobody else hear from him either. Annie’s worried sick.”

“I would imagine so.”

“What’s the matter with you, Kyle?” Virgil finally asked. “You act like you got a bur up your ass.”

Kyle reached into the engine of his car and pulled up the oil dipstick. He wiped it on a rag in his hand, then poked the stick back into the engine.

“If Jamie wants us to know where he is, Virgil,” he said in a toneless voice, “I reckon he’ll call somebody he wants to talk to.” He drew the oil stick out again. Satisfied with the level, he replaced it and stepped back. “But I don’t suppose it’ll be me he’ll call.”

“Why the hell not?”

He slammed the hood and wiped his hands on the oil rag. “I’ve got work to do, Virgil.” He swung his eyes to the older man. “Don’t you?”

Virgil opened his mouth to speak, thought better of it, spun on his heel and stalked to his car. Ellen had already told him how things were with Kyle lately, and Gabe’s disappearance had only made Kyle’s behavior even more odd.

“You don’t think he’ll try to go back to Louisiana, do you?” Edna Mae had asked Virgil that morning. “To protect us?”

“Lord, I hope not,” Virgil had answered.

But it had been eight days and not one word on Gabe’s whereabouts. Virgil was beginning to have a feeling he didn’t like. He was beginning to think none of them would ever see Gabe James again.

Andrew woke up
with the headache from hell throbbing through his temples. He was aware of motion—bumping and something causing him to lurch upward. He opened his eyes, but saw only darkness, felt only cold and stale air assaulting his nostrils. He put up his hand, encountered cold metal and quickly withdrew it. Realization hit him like a brick squarely between the eyes and he howled in fury and began pounding on the metal above his head, kicking out at the metal beyond his feet.

Jamie heard the
sound coming from the trunk and smiled. He looked at the odometer and calculated he wasn’t far from his destination. He flipped on the CD player, slid in the disk, and leaned back comfortably in the seat as the war-like strains of Wagner came blaring at him from the speakers.

Andrew bellowed
with rage as the music throbbed from the panel behind him. He tried kicking as hard as he could at the trunk’s lock, but the latch held. A deep rut in the road caused his head to bounce painfully against the trunk’s floor and his teeth clicked together. He tasted blood and knew a fury so vile it made his heart ache.

“I’m going to see you in hell for this, whoever you are,” he yelled. “You messed with the wrong man this time!”

Another bump brought a grunt of surprised pain from him and he felt the car stopping. He listened, heard the door slam and braced himself, ready to lash out at whoever opened the trunk. When no one did, he stopped breathing, striving hard to make out what might be happening. When the voice came, shivers of dread crawled up Andrew’s spine.

“How you doing in there, Drew? Are you comfortable?”

“James,” he breathed, feeling the dread give way to primal rage. His eyes narrowed and his hands clenched into fists. “Get me out of here, you bastard!”

He kicked at the trunk lock.

“Can’t do it,” his brother told him. “I’m afraid you’re going to have to stay where you are.”

“Papa will have your balls for this! Open this trunk now!” His last word was cut off as the floor of the trunk lurched and tipped downward. “What the...?”

“You know, Drew, you and Bridget tried your best to hide me in that clinic in Metarie. I know you were only doing what Papa wanted you to, but you know me—I’m one for holding a grudge.”

The car lurched once more and the trunk tilted further. Andrew slid forward, his head and neck pressing against the trunk’s lid. For the first time, he became aware of the movement around him, the sound, and his eyes bulged in his head. He opened his mouth, but no sound came.

“You tried to bury me alive in that place, Drew. You never wanted me to leave.” There was a long pause, then chilling laughter. “I’m going to show you what it feels like to be buried alive!”

There was a sucking sound all around him, now. A wet sound. The car was tilting further downward. A vile odor, like rotting vegetation and mud assailed Andrew’s nostrils and he knew in a heartbeat of pure primal terror exactly where he was.

“No,” he whispered, his voice a tiny squeak of sound. “Please, God, no.”

J
amie stepped back
from the quicksand bog, walked to an old cypress tree and sat down, his back to the damp bark. He listened to the sound of his brother’s fists and feet against the trunk, grinned at the screams that began soon after the tail lights and bumper of the car sank beneath the pebbly surface of the quagmire, the mud oozing at the trunk. He tilted the bottle of beer to his lips and drank.

“Help!”

Jamie shook his head. There wasn’t anyone within thirty miles and he certainly had no intention of helping.

“Help me! Please, James! Please, James!”

He held the bottle of cold beer up in toast as the trunk of the expensive German car became totally submerged. Even if he had wanted to help his brother, it was too late now.

“J...A...M...E...S!!”

“Have a safe trip, Drew. Don’t get bogged down worrying about where you’ll end up.”

With a final lunge, the entire bulk of the car disappeared.

“You’re more woman
than I can handle, Bridie,” Dr. Allen Fedler told his mistress. Slanting his lips across the flesh of her mouth, he kissed her a deep, penetrating goodbye, then put her firmly from him. “I’ve got to go. Rachel will be pacing the floor by now.”

Dr. Fedler, one of Savannah’s leading orthopedic surgeons, climbed out of the antique sleigh bed and reached for his undershorts.

Bridget Tremayne Casey stretched luxuriously on the mint-green satin sheets and watched her lover of nine years dress. Her hooded eyes ran up his slim flanks, over the taut belly with its thick pelt of crisp black hair, to the heavily muscled chest, enjoying the rippling muscles as he drew on his shirt. She laughed playfully.

Fedler turned and cocked a brow at her. “You find me amusing, Doctor?”

Bridget shook her head. “Jewish men aren’t supposed to be muscular, Al.”

“Oh?” he asked, his brow lifting further beneath the thick black curls of his forehead. “And just how are Jewish men supposed to look?”

She shrugged. “Pale and thin and esthetic.” She stretched her arms over her heads until the coral tips of her breasts lifted as high as they could on her chest. She saw his eyes go hungrily to her and she smiled. “And without such devastating libidos.”

Allen laughed. “Catholic men do not hold the monopoly on lust, dear woman.” He stepped into his trousers, stuffed in his shirt and pulled up his zipper. “Nor are all of them brawny stevedores and strapping firemen.” He reached for his suit coat.

“Lock the door behind you when you leave, darling,” she said, growing bored with the conversation. She turned over and tucked her pillow beneath her head.

“You’re not going home?” he asked as he slid his feet into his loafers.

She had closed her eyes. “He’s not expecting me for hours yet.” A brief thought of her husband crossed her mind and she mentally shrugged it away.

“Well, just be sure and lock your car doors before you pull out of the garage,” he admonished. “We’re too far out in the country for you to be careless.”

Bridget opened one eye and peeked at him from the sweep of her titian hair. “Do you worry about me, Al?”

He nodded, serious now. “Yes, Bridie, I do.” He leaned over the bed and kissed her cheek, patted her naked hip and straightened. “Wednesday?”

She nodded, her eyes closed again. She listened as he let himself out of the cabin’s kitchen door and into the garage, heard the double stall door on the opener begin to rise with a rumble as the screw mechanism turned. In a moment, she heard his sports car roar to life and smiled at the elegant whine that was the engine engaging in reverse. The garage door started down as the sports car backed out of the long driveway, then settled with a hollow clank as the door met the concrete slab of the garage. Bridie turned over on her belly and sighed as the smooth coolness of the sheets kissed her nude body.

What woke her she would never know, but her eyes came open with a snap and she flipped onto her back, fear and alarm prying her eyes wide open as she stared up into the face of James Gabriel Tremayne. Her mouth dropped open.

“What...what are you doing here?” she managed to ask as she became totally aware of her nudity. Hastily grabbing the sheet, she jerked it over her.

Jamie smiled down at her. He sat on the edge of the bed and his smile widened as Bridget moved quickly away from him.

“Now you aren’t afraid of me are you, Bridie? Me? Little James?” He clucked his tongue. “Your slow-witted baby brother?”

“Get out of here,” she snarled, some of her courage coming back to her. She lifted her hand and pointed at the door. “Now!”

“I don’t think so, Bridie.” The smile on his face slowly faded. “At least not until I do what I came to do.”

A horrible sensation of impending doom flitted through Bridie’s head. The look on her hated brother’s face wasn’t quite sane. There was something in his eyes she had never seen before, but it was something she’d seen many times in some of her patients who were borderline psychotic. She edged further away from him on the bed.

Staring into those dark eyes, eyes that somehow looked far more lethal than they should have, she decided to use her medical expertise to try to reason with him, but she never got the chance. His soft, deadly voice stopped her cold.

“I’m going to kill you, Bridie,” he said in a conversational tone.

She stared at him. “You’re insane.”

His smile returned to his firm lips, but not to the cold, cold eyes that regarded her with intense lethality.

His voice was a mere sigh. “I’m what you made me, Bridget.”

She lunged, trying to get off the bed and away from him, to put distance between them, but the moment her feet hit the floor, she found her long hair in his firm grip. He jerked her back. She yelped and screamed with the agony as he yanked her around. Her hands came up, her fingers curled into vicious claws as she struck for his face. With a grunt of satisfaction she saw his left cheek open up with the twin furrows from her second and third fingers.

She had only a moment’s gratification before his right hand came over his left shoulder to deliver a brutal backhanded blow.He hit her with enough force to snap her head around and loosen two of her front teeth. She tasted thick, hot, coppery blood flooding down her throat and knew he’d broken her nose as well. His blow stunned her, made her see stars and before she could attack him again, he dragged her hands over her head wrapping the silken belt of her robe around her wrists. He straddled her hips as she bucked, trying to free herself from his hold, her feet drumming against the mattress, but despite her yells and venomous threats, he managed to thrust the end of the belt through one of the intricate swirls on the bed’s headboard and secured it.

“You bastard,” she screamed before she drew a mouthful of blood and spittle and spat into his face. His reaction made her blood run cold.

For an instant, the dark flames glowing in his eyes flared red-hot as he rose on his knees and fished in the back pocket of his jeans. When he drew out a capped syringe and stuck the cap between his teeth, Bridget knew there would be no escaping the retribution.

“What’s the matter, Bridie?” he taunted as he pulled the cap off with his teeth. His eyes left hers and went to the tip of the needle. A small spurt of liquid shot from the top before his eyes slowly lowered to hers. “Don’t you like needles?”