In the Heart of the Wind Book 1 in the WindTorn Trilogy (6 page)

A cold chill ran down Annie’s spine. “You know him?”

“I’ve had the police beat a long time, Miss Cummings. I get to know all the cops on the force. But when a man makes as much noise as Agent Tremayne did, you get to know him even better. He was a good cop and that’s something some people down here sure as hell didn’t like.”

Annie bit down on her lower lip, her eyes swinging from side to side as she thought. “You said you didn’t want to see him locked up. Is he wanted for something he did down there?” She had to know. Was Gabe a cop who’d gone bad? Who’d been ‘on the take,’ as they called it?

“It’s more like something he
didn’t
do, Miss Cummings. You can bet Tremayne has already sent his goon squad to Iowa to correct that problem.”

Her heart pounding like mad, Annie stood up slowly. “What did he do, Miss Johannsen? I’ve got to know.”

“Listen, Miss Cummings, if that’s your real name and I’m inclined to think it probably isn’t, Tremayne was a good guy. He was a good cop until he got messed up with Kristen Connors. I tried to warn him about that trashy little bitch, but he wouldn’t listen. When do men in love
ever
listen?” There was a snort of disgust before the newswoman continued.

“He didn’t even know who the little tart was until I told him, but it didn’t seem to make any difference with him. Anyway, he kept seeing her until he went and put one in her oven. Know what I mean?” Joan Johannsen didn’t give Annie time to answer. “Her Daddy went ballistic when he found out his only child was, shall we say, in the family way? He put a contract out on Tremayne.”

The air around Annie wavered. “Contract? You mean a—”

“A mob hit, sweetie,” the newswoman clarified. “Kristen Connors’ Daddy is Griffin Connors, one of the Irish mob bosses down here on the Gulf Coast. You don’t knock up the daughter of a man like Griffin Connors without paying dearly for it. Chances are, if that hit had ever been made, they’d have buried James Gabriel Tremayne with less than the equipment he’d been born with, if you get my drift. It wouldn’t have been a quick hit, either.

“But then Connors found out a few things himself and the contract was canceled. Of course, there were other incentives that made him change his mind, too. By that time, Connors’ daughter and her lover were hitched.” There was a chuckle on the other end of the line. “Along with finding out who his daughter’s lover really was, that took the starch out of Connors’ sails, I can tell you.”

Annie’s world jerked to a stop. “You mean Agent Tremayne was married to this woman?”

“Was?” Johannsen chuckled. “There isn’t any ‘was,’ sweetie. Tremayne’s still married to the bitch!”

Even before he
pulled into his driveway, Gabe knew Annie wasn’t home. He automatically looked at his watch and marked the time.
Five o’clock.
Long past time for her to have come in from school, if that was where she’d been. Although classes were out for the holidays, today had been a work day for the teachers, but Annie had been sick. Or so she’d claimed.

Easing the car into his side of the two-car garage, he sat with his engine idling, his mind in gear, wondering, worrying, a niggling fear beginning to intrude into his orderly world.
Where the hell had she gone?
And, with that niggling fear turning to instant concern, what had she found out?

He switched off the car, but sat with his hands and forearms braced on the steering wheel, staring at the large clock on the far wall. Five minutes past five. He turned his head to the empty stall beside him where her black car should have been.

“Where are you, Annie?” he whispered. He sat back in the seat, his hands gripping the wheel. Closing his eyes, he could feel the insidious cold creeping into his soul. Something was wrong. Very wrong. He could feel it. Could almost smell it. Letting out a long breath, he opened the car door and got out.

For a long moment he stood staring out the door of the bay, watching the occasional fat snowflake drifting down, the white speck of it illuminated by the streetlight across the way.

“Damn it!” he finally spat in frustration and walked around the car to slam his fist at the button which lowered the garage door. The machinery clicked into place and the door began lowering with a grating whine. The neighbor’s dog howled in answer. Gabe swung open the storm door and poked his house key into the lock. When he had the door unlocked, he reached into the breakfast room to switch on the light and froze, his fingers on the light switch.

Flanking the entry door from the garage into the breakfast room were two windows, covered with mini-blinds to block out the unpleasant view into the garage, but always left half-open unless the James’ had company coming. The glare of the overhead garage door opener light shone into the house, and along with it, Gabe could see on the floor of the breakfast room the unmistakable shadow of someone standing just to the right of the door. Not even giving himself time to think, Gabe leapt back from the opened door, slamming the storm door shut, and slapped his hand on the garage door button, all in one motion. Scampering around the front end of the car as fast as he could, he slipped on the cold concrete floor, reaching out with a desperate hand to keep himself from falling on the garage floor, clutching at the car’s side mirror.

“Get him!”

The man’s voice was like a dagger thrusting into Gabe’s exposed back. It sent a shiver of pure terror racing down his spine. He heard the storm door squeal open, heard running footsteps even as he dropped under the slowly opening garage door, folding his elbows in, squeezing his legs tightly together, and rolled over and over out into the frigid air.

His shoulder hit hard on the concrete driveway as he came down, but the pain didn’t register as he scrambled to his feet, the soles of his sneakers skidding on the ice-coated driveway. With his legs pumping, digging deep furrows into the now-rapidly layering snow, he darted into the darkness of the winter’s night, cutting a path toward the woods at the far end of the lake.

Griffin Connors
smiled into the phone. “Iowa?”

Andrew Tremayne chuckled. “Thelast exit to nowhere.”

Toying with his letter opener, Connors glanced up at his daughter. “They’ve found him.”

Kristen Connors-Tremayne nodded. “Tell them not to hurt him, Daddy.”

Connors nodded and swung around in his chair so his only daughter could not see the look on his face. “Did you hear that, Andrew? My daughter doesn’t want your men to hurt her husband.”

From the other end of the line, Tremayne chuckled again. “You may tell Kristen I gave my men explicit instructions there was to be no overt use of violence unless we could bring him in in no other fashion.”

Connors sighed. “Well then, let’s hope he has better sense than to put up a fight.”

“Daddy...” Kristen began. She blinked as her father spun around and fixed her with a stern look.

“Your husband is in deep trouble, Kristen Marie. Andrew’s men aren’t going to gun him down like the dog he is, but they will use whatever force they deem necessary to bring him back.” He tossed the letter opened to the desk top in annoyance.

Her green eyes flashing, Kristen Tremayne leaned over her father’s desk and fused her own hard look with his. “If they harm one hair on his head, you’ll wish they hadn’t, Daddy. Is that clear?”

Connors shrugged. “It’s up to him, Kristen, how he’s treated. Not us.”

“There’s one other thing, Griff,” Tremayne injected. He lowered his voice. “Can she hear me?”

“No.” Connors eyed his daughter.

“It seems there’s another woman involved here,” Tremayne reported.

“The one who called asking for the information?”

“Yes.”

“Spit it out, Andrew,” Connors snarled, sensing trouble. “How deeply involved is he with this woman?” He saw his daughter stiffen, saw her green eyes harden.

“About as deep as you can get, Griff,” Tremayne explained. “He married the slut.”

Griffin Connors’ sat forward in his chair, hunching over the phone. “Repeat that.”

Tremayne let out a ragged breath. “He married the woman in Iowa about two years ago.”

Kristen Connors watched the play of emotions crossing her father’s face and knew the instant his fury became full blown. The black Irish eyes flashed with rage and the thick lips pulled back over snarling teeth. She watched in fascination as a vein began to throb in his temple. She could see the fingers of his left hand which held the phone turning white with the force of his grip.

“There’s no mistake?” he growled.

“None. I’ll have a copy of the marriage license in my possession within the next forty-eight hours,” Tremayne answered.

For a long moment, Griffin Connors sat clutching the phone in his meaty palm, his eyes on his daughter’s strained face. When at last he spoke, his voice was neutral, under control, his face a carefully blank canvas.

“It seems,” he began, speaking to Kristen, “your husband has once more proved to be the bastard I knew him to be before you married him, Kristen Marie. Apparently, while he was on the run, he managed to ally himself with some woman in Iowa.”

“He’s been living with this woman?” she asked in as steady a voice as she could manage.

Connors smiled. “The son-of-a-bitch married the woman, Kristen Marie,” he told his daughter, relishing the stunned look of surprise on his child’s face, the shock of betrayal.

“Married her?” Her voice was a mere whisper. “But he’s already married.”

“Apparently he forgot,” Connors said in a dry voice. He lifted a thick black brow in challenge.

“What do you want done about the woman out there, Griff?” Tremayne inquired as the silence on the other end of the line played out.

Griffin Connors watched his daughter’s face infuse with color before she turned her back on him.

“I’m going to put you on hold a moment, Andrew,” Connors said, leaning forward to push the button on the phone. He sat the receiver in its cradle and stood, looking at his daughter. “Do you still want him brought in unharmed?”

Kristen turned to her father. “It’s not his fault.”

Griffin Connors stared at his daughter, disbelief rampant in his thick Irish brogue. “And just whose fault do you think it is?”

Her head came up. “The bitch who trapped him into marrying her, of course!”

Connor stared at his daughter. “Then do you want me to have Andrew’s men solve that problem?”

“Tell them to leave her alone.”

“Hell, Kristen! The woman has been cohabiting with your husband and you don’t care?” her father shouted. “Have you no honor?”

“Of course, I care!” Kristen shouted back. “But think about it, Daddy! If he lov...” She couldn’t say the word. “If he married the bitch, then he’s attached to her. We can use that to our advantage.”

Connors snorted in disgust. “How do you propose to do that?”

Kristen replied, “If he thinks she might be harmed, he’s likely to do as he’s told, don’t you think? If he knows we can reach out whenever we want and wipe that whore off the face of the earth, don’t you think he’ll bend over backwards to see that we won’t?”

Griffin looked at his daughter in a new light. Had the girl finally developed a backbone where Tremayne was concerned? Had it taken having Tremayne’s affections claimed by another woman to make Kristen Marie see what she had to do to help rectify a messy situation?

“As soon as we get him back here, he’s going to be locked up, Kristen,” Connors reminded her.

Kristen nodded. “I know, Daddy. I’d have it no other way. I love him, but he has to be punished for what he did.”

Father and daughter stared at one another. Some kind of deep understanding passed between parent and child. Connors picked up his phone once more.

“Andrew? About the woman out there in Iowa...”

Annie switched
on her turn signal as the van behind her moved in too close for safety on the slick road. The turn into her neighborhood was a good two hundred feet away, but she wanted the van riding her bumper to back off before she began to brake for her turn. Looking  in the rear view mirror, she saw the dark expanse of the van’s windshield fading behind her and relaxed. As she took her turn, the van sped up, hurrying on toward the gravel section of road just west of Annie’s turn.

“You’d better slow down, mister,” she commented as the van’s tail lights disappeared over the hill.

Never in Patricia Anne Cummings’ life—she could no longer think of herself as Patricia Anne Cummings James—had she ever felt so depressed. Neither had she ever known the kind of desperate hurt she was experiencing, and had been experiencing, all day as she sat in Leland Kassinger’s office. Shock had given way first to stunned realization which had then turned to anger, to a sense of betrayal greater than she had ever known, and finally to the numbness of acceptance. Over and over again, she heard Joan Johannsen’s words plowing furrows of unremitting hurt through a mind already seeded with grief.

“He’s been married to Kristen Marie for almost seven years. They have a daughter, Melissa, who just turned six. She’s the apple of her granddaddy’s eye.”

Seven years, the words kept echoing, sprouting seedlings of disbelief and deception in Annie’s wounded heart.
Seven years.
The seedlings dug deep into the soil of Annie’s being, the roots spreading out, squeezing the life from her. And she’d watered that vicious crop with more tears than she had ever cried in her life. Idly, she wondered what kind of harvest would be culled from the things she’d learned that day about the man she loved.