In the Heart of the Wind Book 1 in the WindTorn Trilogy (53 page)

Liam’s eyes turned stormy, but he found he could not look away from James’ steady probe. “All I have to do is call out and Danny O. will—”

“Danny O.’s in the game room with Paddy by now.” He shook his head. “If Paddy did what I told him to, they’ve got the CD player on and the music is loud enough to drown out any sounds from up here.” He raised his hand to keep his father from speaking. “And the maids and the other guards are all in the kitchen having their supper. By the time they make it up the stairs, you’ll be dead and I’ll be gone.”

A shaft of betrayal ran the length of Liam Tremayne’s black heart. “You’ve enlisted your brother’s help in killing your own father?”

“Just as you enlisted Drew’s and Bridget’s in killing me.”

It was at that moment, the moment that his son stood up and looked down at him without a trace of pity or compassion, love or even like, that Liam Tremayne knew he was going to die. All the color drained from his face when he saw Jamie’s eyes go to the radio, run down the plug to the wall socket and back to him.

“You won’t,” Liam breathed, sweat breaking out on his face. “You can’t.”

“Yes, I can. And with the greatest of pleasures.”

Jamie reached for the radio and Liam moved, huddling in the corner of the tub, afraid to try to get out, afraid to call out, sure his son would not go through with what he was threatening.

“But why?” he asked, stalling for time, hoping someone would come to check on him, praying they would.

Jamie paused with his hand on the radio. “Why, Papa? Just stop and think about it and you’ll know.”

Liam’s words to Dr. Bruce Lassiter came back at him in a burst of guilt.

“What about electroshock therapy? I hear it’s effective.”

“You want him to feel it?” Lassiter had asked.

“Yes,” he had answered without hesitation.

Liam’s eyes slowly left the radio and returned to his son.

“It hurt, Papa. It hurt worse than anything you ever did to me when I was a boy.” His eyes welled with tears. “All I ever wanted was for you to love me.” His voice broke. “To want me as your son as much as you wanted Drew and Paddy.”

Liam saw a silver tear sliding down his son’s cheek and watched as Jamie shook his head in denial.

“But you never wanted me. You never loved me. All you ever wanted to do was hurt me.” His hand gripped the radio. “Why, Papa? What did I ever do to make you hate me like you do?”

Liam raised his chin. “You were born.”

Jamie’s body tensed. His breathing stilled as he stared into the unforgiving, hateful eyes of his father. He looked at the sneer on the old man’s lips, the look of utter loathing and contempt on the wrinkled face, and he sniffed, sucking up the weakness he was showing, swallowing the need to have his father ever reach out to him with anything other than hate, drying the tears of his vulnerability.

“Do it and get it over with,” his father commanded, “so I can be rid of the sight of you!”

Jamie pushed the radio into the tub.

Margaret wondered
at the sudden dimming of the light on her bedside table. It flickered a few times then resumed its normal brightness. She had been sitting up in bed reading a novel she could neither make head nor tails of and wasn’t interested in. Faintly she’d been hearing the strains of a Dorsey tune coming from the bathroom on the other side of the wall, but as she listened now, there was only silence. She laid the book beside her and cocked her ear.

There was no sound in the bathroom. None at all. A small worry nudged her and she threw back the covers and swung her legs over the side of the bed. Slipping into her satin mules, she picked up her silk robe and belted it around her. As she reached the door, she heard footsteps in the hall.

Jamie heard the door open behind him, turned, half-expecting to see his father stumbling after him, his finger rigid in death pointed accusingly at him. But what he saw was his mother’s face—older, sadder, more filled with pain and all the years she had lived with his father—staring at him in stunned surprise.

Margaret knew without any doubt whatsoever who this young man was. His face was a carbon copy of Liam’s at the same age—handsome, filled with determination, just a bit rakish and arrogant. On her youngest son, the face seemed even harder than it had when Liam was in his thirties.

For what seemed to him an eternity he stared into her face, memorizing every line, every wrinkle, every fold of flesh. Neither of them spoke. Neither moved. He saw her eyes shift to the closed bedroom door out of which he had come and saw the instant realization forming in her eyes at what she knew he’d done. As her eyes moved slowly back to him, he became aware of his ragged breathing, the ache in his heart, the guilt, the fear in her eyes, and he turned away, tears perilously close to forming in his own.

“Jamie?” she called to him, putting out her hand to her youngest son, the child she had cherished above the others.

He stopped, though he did not turn around. He closed his eyes for a second, no more, then headed for the stairs.

“Son?”

He forced himself to walk away from the one person in the world who could have given him the absolution he needed. The one person he knew would understand above all the rest. When she did not call out to him again, he kept moving, taking the stairs two at a time, his breath coming in gasping inhalations.

Danny O’Callahan met him at the foot of the stairs. Both men stopped, looking at one another with wary, cautious eyes until Danny O. looked to the top of the stairs and saw Margaret Tremayne standing there, her hands clutched at her waist.

“Let him go, Danny,” she sobbed.

Danny O.’s eyes shifted back to Jamie’s. The two men stared at one another and something passed between them that no one, not Margaret at the top of the stairs or Patrick in the middle of the entrance hall, could read. Mother and son saw both men nod then Jamie passed Danny O. on the stairs and headed for the front door.

“Jamie...” Patrick began, but Jamie ignored him as he reached for the door handle.

“You’d better stop him, Paddy, or he’ll never make it out of this compound alive,” Danny O. warned.

Patrick didn’t hesitate. He rushed to the door even as Jamie opened it. “Get the hell back in here,” he snarled, jerking Jamie around to face him. He grabbed Jamie’s arms and locked his gaze with his younger brother’s. “Every man out there is looking for you.”

“I don’t care.”

“But we do,” his mother called from the stairs. She turned her eyes to Danny O’Callahan. “I don’t want that trunk up in my room, Danny. Would you and my son please bring it down. Patrick is going to take it back to wherever he got it and get a refund.”

“Mama...” Patrick began, but his mother’s chin was lifted in the air, her eyes burning.

“Do as you’re told, Patrick!”

Danny O. was already up the stairs. After taking one look at Jamie’s face and seeing the resignation written there, Patrick bounded up the stairs, unable to look his mother in the eye as he passed.

Jamie slowly lifted his eyes to his mother. He felt her eyes on him like a gentle touch, then she was gone, turning her back to him as though he were not there. He could hear her footsteps on the balcony as she headed for her room, away from the son who had made her a widow.

Cheech Giafaglione
listened with polite attention to the man on the other end of the phone. He had been expecting the call ever since the morning news of Liam Tremayne’s death had been broadcast on CNN. Now, as he sat writing down the figures the man on the phone was giving him, he nodded.

“I don’t believe that’s unreasonable under the circumstances, Patrick. Would you be wanting this figure in cash or commodities?”

“Cash, I believe,” Patrick told the Italian mobster. “My mother will be selling her home in Miami and moving to Orlando. Until that time, she’ll be needing the money to help settle her affairs. There’s also my niece, Jamie’s daughter, to consider. There’s the expense for the boarding school she attends now, and later there’ll be college expenses. You’ve put three daughters through college. You know how it can be.”

“I understand perfectly,” Cheech said. “Please convey my condolences to your mother on the loss of her husband and tell her she has nothing to worry about. The merger between our two consortia will make her a very wealthy woman.”

“Thank you, Don Carmine. Oh, and there is one more thing.”

“Yes?”

“It concerns Daniel O’Callahan. He was one of my father’s most—”

“I’m aware of who Danny O. is, Patrick.”

“Danny would like to stay on with the operation in Miami as would his brother Johnny, but I’m not so sure Johnny would work out.”

Cheech’s right brow rose. “What makes you say that?”

“He’s very upset about my father’s passing. He has some misguided notion my brother, James, killed our father and he intends to try to find him.”

“Have you heard from your brother, Patrick?”

“No, but I’m hoping he can get on with his life, Don Carmine. I think he’s been through more than his share of problems.”

Cheech Giafaglione tapped his pencil on the pad. “Do you happen to know where Johnny O. is at this moment, Patrick?”

“In Miami. At the mansion.”

“Well, I think someone should have a talk with Johnny O., don’t you? Try to change his mind about such silly notions as he’s got.”

“And if he won’t change his mind?”

Cheech Giafaglione laughed. “I’ve got a way with people, Patrick.”

Annie James
squinted her eyes through the windshield, reaching out to wipe away the fog. The wipers were slapping as hard as they could at the heavy rain lashing against the glass, but the sudden early summer storm made it nearly impossible to see the road. Even with her headlights slashing into the darkened night ahead of the car, cutting a swath through the steady silver-shot curtain of rain, she could see little beyond the front of the car. She’d already passed three cars abandoned on Highway 6, and another on the Rock Creek turnoff. It wasn’t a good night to be driving.

She was heading home to her house in Rock Creek. She’d spent the night before in her home for the first time in a long time. She’d spent nearly four months in the apartment in Des Moines and would have been forced to stay longer had the call not come from Patrick Tremayne to Virgil Kramer.

“You know my father’s dead?” the famous plastic surgeon had asked.

“I heard,” Annie was told Virgil had snarled into the phone.

“And the authorities believe there’s been foul play with my sister and brother. There’s no trace of their whereabouts.”

“Ain’t that a shame?” it was reported Virgil had said and laughed.

“And, of course, I have no idea where Jamie is.” There had been a slight pause. “But there’s no reason to believe anything’s happened to him.”

“There better not be!”

“The police in Miami believe all this has something to do with the takeover of our family business by the Giafaglione mob in New Jersey.”

“Is that a fact?”

“Yes, it is. So I suppose things should return to normal very quickly now.”

Annie cranked up the defroster so she could see through the windshield. She passed the Ahrens’ farm, s aw no lights, and wondered briefly if the storm had knocked out the electricity at Rock Creek. When she passed the Koontz place and saw no lights again, she sighed.

“Hope you like candlelight, Kibby,” she mumbled to her dog. The dog yipped in agreement and stood up, pressing her little nose to the foggy window of the passenger seat.

Up ahead in the flare of her headlights, Annie thought she saw something on the road. She clicked on her brights, but the steady slanting stream of pulsing water against the windshield blinded her and she turned them down, frowning as she leaned forward the better to see.

As she drew nearer, she could see it was a person—a man—walking with his hands thrust into his pockets, shoulders hunched against the wind. Annie caught just a glimpse of his white, blurred face through the rain-splashed windshield as he looked back over his shoulder at her. She jumped as Kibby started barking, her bushy little tail wagging like crazy.

“Damn it, Kib,” she snapped. “Stop that!”

But the Pomeranian continued to bark, yipping with excitement as her owner swung the car into the far left lane and passed the man. As soon as she had, Kibby bolted over the seat and jumped against the back windshield, whining as though she had lost her best friend.

“Cut it out,” Annie shouted, her guilt at having to leave someone walking out on such a vile night pricking at her conscience. “He’ll be all right.”

The little dog let out a low howl then jumped back over the seat and nuzzled her head under Annie’s arm to get her attention.

“I’m
not
going to pick him up, Kibby!”

“
Don’t you
ever
pick up hitchhikers,”
her mother had warned her time and time again. And so had Gabe and Kyle and every other man she’d ever known.
“It ain’t safe for a woman to pick up no stranger,”
Jake had cautioned.