Running Scared (31 page)

“Neider giving you any more trouble?” Daegan asked him.

“Nope.” Jon frowned into his mug and blinked as if something was weighing on his mind. When he glanced up, his blue eyes were troubled. “Mom said you talked to Todd’s dad.”

“That’s right.”

Biting his lip, Jon scowled, but didn’t say anything.

“What’s on your mind?” Daegan prompted. He rested the heel of his boot on the brick pad that supported the blackened stove.

“I hate him.”

“I know.”

“I mean I really hate him.”

Daegan nodded, watching as Jon’s brow furrowed and his lips twisted into a knot.

“But Todd’s dad beats him.”

Daegan didn’t move.

Jon looked at the floor, avoiding Daegan’s stare. “I don’t mean that he gives him a swat, I mean that he hits him over and over again when Todd messes up.”

“Jesus.” Anger and disgust gnawed a hole in Daegan’s gut.

“He came back to school last week and in gym class I saw his legs; they were all bruised. Someone asked Todd what had happened and he said he’d fallen down the back steps and scraped himself.”

“But you don’t believe him.”

“Nah.” Jon swirled his Coke and the two cubes of ice clinked together. “I…um…well, you know that I sometimes can see things—not always, though, and sometimes I’m wrong, but usually if I get a clear vision…” His voice trailed off and he worried his lip while still rotating his cup nervously. “Anyway, I’ve touched Todd and seen into his mind, if that’s what you want to call it. He’s scared shitless…I mean scared to death of his old man after he’s had a few beers. Todd locks himself into his bedroom, but his dad comes in and hits him with a belt, over and over again, and Todd, he cries for his mother. She left a long time ago, married someone else, had some other kids and never calls or sees Todd.”

“Damn.” Daegan’s anger was white-hot. “No wonder the kid’s a mess. What about social services? If you’ve seen the bruises, then someone else has to have as well, a doctor or a teacher—what about the gym teacher?”

“He’s the football coach.” Jon’s eyes rose from his cup to meet Daegan’s. “He thinks everyone should be able to take a hit now and again. ‘Makes boys into men,’ he says, but it’s all a bunch of crap.”

“Does Todd know that you’ve seen what happens to him?”

“Oh, yeah. That’s why he hates me so much. He’s afraid I’ll tell, and well…” Jon shifted in his chair as if he’d like to crawl out of his skin. “Sometimes he makes me so mad I say the first thing that comes to my mind. I know he’ll stop picking on me or giving me a bad time if I bring up the fact that his old man beats him.”

“And you feel bad about it?”

“Sometimes. It makes the other kids laugh at him, and even though he deserves it—man, does he deserve it—I know what it feels like.” He took a long swallow from his drink, as if his throat was suddenly parched.

“So what do you think we should do?” Daegan asked, studying the boy.

“I don’t know, but I don’t want to get Todd into any more trouble, not now anyway.”

“What if he starts picking on you again?”

“Then I’ll have to beat him up myself,” Jon said with a cocky grin.

“You think that would be the answer?”

Jon offered him a one-sided smile that was so much like his own he could barely breathe. “The best one we’ve got.”

“Gotcha!” Adrenalin coursed through Neils VanHorn’s bloodstream. With a hoot, he slapped the itinerary onto the top of his metal desk and silently praised himself for being one helluva private detective. Sullivan was getting his money’s worth.

He took a pull on his beer and leaned back in his chair, balancing the bottle on his flat stomach. Perseverance, perseverance, perseverance! Ha! Take that, Beatrice, you snobby bitch.

Finally, he’d struck pay dirt and he could feel his wallet growing heavier by the second. Glancing again at the copy of Bibi’s itinerary, he wondered what she was up to.

Narrowing his eyes, he let the cold beer slide down his throat. Recently, about the time the old man started making noise about finding the kid, Beatrice had taken herself a little trip to San Francisco, where she’d met her doctor boyfriend for a fun-filled weekend. But on the way to the West Coast, she’d stopped in Helena, Montana—just a layover, but a strange one considering that there were plenty of nonstop flights coast to coast.

Oftentimes a person had to stop in Denver, Chicago, Minneapolis, even Dallas, but Helena, Montana? Never. Besides, Bibi had already stopped once in Chicago, where she’d changed planes, and rather than take the continuing service to Seattle, she’d opted for a smaller jet with a destination of Backwater, U.S.A. Two hours later she climbed aboard yet another plane, this one headed for her final destination of San Francisco. There had to be a reason she’d spent a few hours on the ground. Why?

To meet someone?

Who?

He picked up a legal pad with his notes scattered through half the pages and thumbed through the wrinkled sheets. He’d already checked and found that the only person who was remotely associated with Bibi or the Sullivan family who lived within a radius of five hundred miles of the airport was Daegan O’Rourke, Frank Sullivan’s bastard, the guy some people thought had killed his half cousin, Stuart.

So why would Bibi want to talk to O’Rourke?

What could they possibly have in common? O’Rourke was a juvenile delinquent turned into a goddamned cowboy, for Christ’s sake—a cowboy! From South Boston. If nothing else, O’Rourke had a sense of humor. Bibi was a fading Boston socialite, a rich divorcée intent on marrying an uptight doctor. As far as Neils knew, Bibi and Daegan had nothing to share except they were related to one of the meanest sons of bitches of all time—good old Frank Sullivan.

Born wealthy, Frank had spent his life feeling third in line while William was alive and then second best when his eldest brother had died. Insecure and mean, Frank Sullivan reminded Neils of a street tough, rather than a guy who’d been born with a silver spoon rammed down his gullet.

Why would Bibi fly halfway across the country to see O’Rourke?

He wrote Daegan’s name on the note pad and circled it over and over again, trying to come up with a reason. O’Rourke had been a private investigator himself; maybe Bibi had hired him to help her. With what? To check on her boyfriend? Nah! The timing was too coincidental and Neils didn’t put much stock in coincidence.

So what?

Did they share a secret?

Did he know about the kid?

He stopped drawing and concentrated so hard that his head began to pound. His other leads had dried up. He’d tried to locate Tyrell Clark’s staff but had come up empty-handed. Even the women who worked for him, Rinda DuBois and Kate Summers, were no longer anywhere near Boston. Rinda lived in the Florida Keys somewhere, still working for a lawyer, and she hadn’t seen or heard from either Tyrell or Kate for fifteen years. Kate Summers, well, he was still looking for that one. Her name was just too damned common, but he wasn’t giving up. She’d left Boston soon after the baby was born,
before
Tyrell’s death. Perhaps she and Tyrell were lovers, or maybe she knew about his illegal scams that the IRS was looking into, or…she left with a baby?

“Oh, hell, you’re really losing it, VanHorn,” he growled at the empty room, but he doodled around her name on the yellow paper. She might just know something, but he couldn’t find her or her family. Her father was dead, her alcoholic mother dead as well, an aunt and uncle in Des Moines acting as if she’d fallen off the face of the earth because of some vile thing she’d done as a teenager and her sister—hell, what was her name? Linda? Lori? No, Laura. That was it. Laura Rudisill Something or other. Neils hadn’t tried to get through to her because Kate, who had only worked for Tyrell Clark a little while, seemed like such a longshot to be involved in something of this magnitude. She was barely more than a receptionist. Would Clark have trusted her with the truth about Beatrice Sullivan’s baby? Or could she have stumbled upon it innocently—is that why she disappeared so completely when she left Boston? Or had she been, as Neils originally suspected, Clark’s girlfriend?

He’d given up on that angle for the time being because he had this interesting development with good ol’ Bibi and her infamous bastard cousin. He’d start with Daegan O’Rourke. He had his number somewhere…Flipping through the pages of his notebook, he found the scrap of information he needed, then decided against making a phone call. No, a visit would be better—harder for O’Rourke to avoid. Face to face, that’s how it was gonna be.

Neils dropped the pad back onto the table and swilled down the rest of his cold beer. He’d have to call his silent partner in all this—see how she took the news. She might even give him a little insight.

And O’Rourke, his story should be interesting.

Licking his lips, Neils glanced at his coffee-stained desk calendar and saw that it was only two days until the holiday. It seemed fitting somehow. “Happy Thanksgiving, O’Rourke!” Grinning, he looked through his window with the crack in one corner. “Get ready to spill your guts.”

When did the falls grow so cold?
Robert wondered as he reached for his gloves. Snow hadn’t seemed to bother him this much when he was younger; ice and sleet were mere inconveniences, not such deep annoyances, and certainly not so bone chilling. Sighing, he reached for his hat. The driver was already warming the car when the phone rang.

“It’s a Mr. VanHorn,” his butler, Royce, said with a lift of a questioning brow.

Robert’s heart nearly stopped. Maybe there was news. “I’ll take it in the den,” he said and felt his hands begin to sweat. Each time VanHorn called with a report, Robert’s spirits soared and he experienced the same sense of anticipation he used to feel whenever he’d won a particularly challenging or expensive case, or the first time he’d called a new young woman to add to his string of mistresses.

“Yes?”

“Good news.” Neils VanHorn’s voice was smug, and Robert, still holding the receiver to his ear, sank into his desk chair.

“What?”

“I think I’m close.”

Disappointment choked off his premature euphoria.

“You think?”

“Let me be more specific. I’m in some podunk town in Montana. And believe me, I’m freezin’ my ass off here.”

“What’s in Montana?” he hardly dared to ask. “My grandson?”

He thought he heard a soft chuckle. “It’s not quite that easy, but Daegan O’Rourke owns a spread up in the foothills of the mountains—”

“O’Rourke? What’s he got to do with this?”

“That’s what I’m trying to find out.” Robert listened as VanHorn filled him in on Bibi’s recent trip to San Francisco, and with each word he felt a mixture of elation and dread. O’Rourke had always been bad news, never good. If it weren’t for Frank’s bastard, Stuart would be alive today…Oh, Stuart, why, why, why? The old familiar emptiness caused him to hang his head. He felt like a husk of the man he was supposed to become, the man who had stepped into his dead brother’s shoes oh so willingly dozens of years before. What would William have done? he wondered as VanHorn prattled on. In these last few weeks, ever since his doctor’s prognosis, he’d thought about William more than he should have and realized what a great disservice he’d done to his older brother.

“…I’m not certain why they’re in cahoots, but I’m going to find out.”

“Wait a minute. Beatrice and O’Rourke?” he repeated, his wandering attention back on track. “What could they possibly have in common?”

“That’s what I intend to find out. I’ll call ya as soon as I know anything.” With that, the phone clicked and he was gone.

For the first time since he’d decided to find his grandson, Robert sensed a coming doom, a reckoning that he hadn’t expected. It caused ice to form in the marrow of his bones, but he slid his arthritic fingers into the smooth leather of his gloves. He’d weathered storms before, personal tragedies that had nearly ripped his heart out. Whatever VanHorn uncovered, he and the family would be able to withstand the shock, but he couldn’t help thinking of Pandora unlocking her box and releasing chaos.

“Stand firm,” he muttered to himself as he made his way to the garage. “Stay the course.” He passed by a crucifix mounted near the back door. Crossing himself with the deft moves of one whose sixty-odd years were blessed by the church, he tasted the bitterness of hypocrisy on his tongue and heard the vague and discordant ring of ruin in his ears.

“Where’s Daddy?” Wade’s eager eyes, as blue as her own, stared into Alicia’s. At eight he was tall for his age, blond, and incredibly bright.

That s a good question,
Alicia thought. “He’s going to meet us at Grandma and Grandpa’s house.” Leaning on one knee, she adjusted his bow tie, made sure it was straight under his chin, then eyed his suitcoat, sweater, slacks, and shirt. Perfect. Such a little prince. Starched and pressed, his dress shoes shined to an impossible gloss. God, he was cute. She was thankful for all of Wade’s attributes because she never wanted to go through the hell of pregnancy again. It had taken a year of diet, exercise, and appointments with the right plastic surgeons to return her body to its normal size four.

“How come he doesn’t live here anymore?”

“He, does, honey, but his work in Washington keeps him there a lot. He’ll be here for the whole weekend.” She smiled, pretending not to grit her teeth, pretending that Wade’s father was a faithful husband and loving daddy. It didn’t matter anyway. Her marriage to Bryan had been a sham from the beginning, and she’d gotten what she wanted out of it, a son. A perfect, brilliant son who was her whole life, a son who would someday be in charge of all the Sullivan holdings. A son far superior to Stuart or Collin or anyone else. So Bryan could screw his brains out with his little secretary and she didn’t give a damn.

“Come on, the driver is waiting,” she said, smoothing a stubborn cowlick in Wade’s hair. “We’re going to have a good time and Daddy will be there.” If he wasn’t, if that son of a bitch disappointed his son again, then she’d just have to get rid of him. He wasn’t going to hurt Wade. No one was.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Bibi said as she tossed back the rest of her champagne and left her fluted glass on a wicker table. She was trapped, cornered by Collin, who had torn himself away from his reed-thin and wary wife to confront her in the sunroom of his parents’ home.

Dusk crowded into the room, and outside, through a hundred panes of glass, the snow blanketing the flagstone veranda and Maureen’s once-lush gardens had melted only to refreeze as the sun set. Patches of grass speared through the white mantle, and icicles, looking like the jagged teeth of a huge crystal beast, hung from the eaves and dripped ever so slowly as the hours ticked by. The first beams of pale moonlight bounced off the ice crystals that had formed over the fountains and bird baths and gave a silver sheen to the darkened room.

Bibi shivered, wishing she could leave, but Collin, her once-precious savior, now stood leaning against the door, barricading it with his slim body. He seemed to have lost weight in the past few weeks, his skin appeared paler than normal, and his eyes had sunken deep into his head, as if he were in the throes of some kind of fever. Bibi had chalked up his declining appearance to the divorce that was whispered about between family members.

Alicia had told Bibi weeks ago that Collin’s marriage was on the rocks, that Carrie was demanding a divorce and that Frank was fit to be tied that his son was even considering breaking the union. There was even scuttlebutt about Collin being written out of the will, but Bibi dismissed that bit of news as malicious gossip or misplaced optimism on Alicia’s part.

“Don’t play dumb with me, Bibi,” Collin warned, glaring at her with intense eyes. “It’s not your style, and even if it was, I can read you like a book.”

“Can you?”

“Christ, yes!” He closed his eyes a second, leaned his head against the aging panels of the door. He seemed tormented, his face a mask of pain as he sighed. “Look, I know what you’re trying to do here, and—”

“I’m not
doing
anything,” she said, wishing she hadn’t left her cigarettes in her purse in the kitchen. God, she needed a smoke.

Muttering a curse under his breath, he stared at the edge of a Persian carpet, then raised his eyes to meet her gaze. “I know about the baby.”

“That’s hardly earth-shattering news, Collin. Everyone in the family knows now. VanHorn and my father have seen to it.”

“Yes,” he admitted, his lips curling in on themselves as if he were in deep concentration. “But no one else knows who the father is.”

Involuntarily, she started. Collin knew? Oh, God. Fear congealed in her heart.

“Everyone bought your lie, Bibi, until now. Until VanHorn started nosing around and discovered that there was no Roy Panaker. Now the family’s guessing—who was Bibi sleeping with?”

His nostrils flared as if he smelled something foul, and the drip of the icicles seemed louder in the ensuing silence.

“Wha—what are you talking about?”

Collin’s patience was obviously worn thin. “I know the real reason you don’t want the boy found. It isn’t just because of Kyle and your intentions of marrying again. Nope.” Shaking his head, he pierced her with his cold blue gaze. “This goes deeper, doesn’t it?”

Her insides crumbled. How had he known? Oh, God, her world was falling apart and she didn’t even have a goddamned cigarette.

“I’m surprised you didn’t tell me, you know.” Hands flat against the door, hips pressed into the varnished panels, he stared at her in awe. “I—I could have helped.”

So here was the old Collin she remembered, the hero of her girlhood, the boy who had gotten his suit pants wet in Grandma’s creek and taken a beating for it. “I couldn’t tell anyone,” she whispered, knowing that even now, she had to protect her secret.

“But it was my responsibility. Bibi. You shouldn’t have borne all this shame alone.”

“Your what?” Again she felt as if she was missing something—something vital.

“I know when the baby was born and about the time he was conceived. Oh, Christ—” He rolled his eyes skyward.

“This is hard, but I guess it has to be said.” Stiffening his spine, he said, “You don’t have to pretend, at least not with me. I know the boy is mine.”

“Yours?” she whispered, disbelieving. Not only was the world starting to spin off course but a loud roar began to thunder in her ears. “You think he’s yours?”

“From the night in the pool house—”

“No!”

“No?” It was his turn to be stunned. “But—” Consternation darkened his features. “Then whose?”

“I’ve told everyone. Roy—”

“Bullshit, Bibi! I was there.”

“Do you remember anything about that night?” she asked. Did he really believe that he and she had…?

“Yes. Hell, I’ve lived with it all this time.” He shoved both hands through his hair and finally straightened away from the door, as if he knew that his words were strong enough to hold her prisoner now. He no longer had to resort to physically restraining her. Unnerved, he sank into a Queen Anne chair near a wicker and glass table. “God, Bibi, I’m sorry. Stu and I—”

“Were shits, I know.” She didn’t need to be reminded of her humiliation at their hands.

“But it’s more than that.” Dropping his head into his palms, he sat still, as if he couldn’t move, as if life had ceased to go on. “I would have done anything he asked, you know, and when he suggested that you and I…well, go at it so that he could watch, I argued with him.”

“But still you went along,” she said, the old pain climbing up her throat and threatening to choke her. She couldn’t hide the condemnation in her voice, the anger that knotted her stomach. “Did you have any idea that I was in love with you?”

His shoulders slumped farther.

“Did you?”

“Yes,” he said in the smallest of whispers, his voice tortured.

“And still you used me.”

“For him. I know it doesn’t explain things, but you don’t understand how much I wanted to please him.”

“Even if you hurt me?”

Raising his head finally, he stared at her with agonized eyes. “Believe me, I never wanted to cause you any kind of pain. In my own way I did love you, it…it just wasn’t what you wanted it to be. Eventually, I agreed.”

“Because Stuart thought it would be a good idea.” Her stomach curdled.

“Stu—he liked to watch.” Collin blinked hard.

“So you performed like some trained puppy?” She started backing away, furious with him, with herself. Her hands coiled into fists, and her fingernails dug into the heels of her hands. “You spineless bastard, I don’t believe—”

“You don’t understand. I loved him, Bibi. And not the same way I cared about you. I mean I
really
loved him—would have done anything,
anything
he asked.”

“That’s not love, that’s sick,” she whispered, hardly believing what she was hearing, silently praying that he would stop, but Collin seemed, after over fifteen years, to need her forgiveness. “When he died, a part of me died with him. I just wanted him to love me back.”

“Oh, God.” Revulsion spit through her as the full impact of what he was saying hit her in the gut. Suddenly every disjointed piece of her youth, of her friendship with Stuart and Collin, fell neatly into place. Her exclusion hadn’t been just an adolescent macho thing—it had been sexual as well. Stu and Collin had been lovers and they’d let her think, encouraged her to believe, that she could…Bile climbed up her throat and she nearly wretched. Oh, sweet Jesus, no!

“Just like you wanted me to love you,” Collin explained.

“Don’t. I don’t want to hear this,” she said, backing away. She died inside remembering how much she loved him, how she’d always believed deep in her heart that if they hadn’t been cousins, that there would have been a chance with him. Why hadn’t she known? And with Stuart. How they must have laughed at her naive and simple attempts at seducing Collin!

“That was the reason I couldn’t perform at first,” he went on, as if unburdening himself to a priest while she was still reeling from the magnitude of his secret. “Until I saw Stu standing in the hallway watching us as he drank—”

“Lurking, you mean,” she cried, nearly hysterical. In her mind’s eye she was back in the darkened pool room, hot and anxious for Collin to love her, knowing something wasn’t right. She relived all the humiliation, all the pain, all the sick, perverted embarrassment. “Stuart was lurking like a damned voyeur, getting his jollies by watching his sister try and seduce her cousin—his lover.”

“We were never lovers,” Collin admitted and tears starred his lashes. “He could never take it that far—never allow me to touch him. He wanted to, he was tempted just as he was with everything that was outside of what his father considered acceptable, but he couldn’t even kiss me.” Collin, as if inescapably weary, sagged in the chair. His voice shook with emotion. “He was, without a doubt, the love of my life.”

“And so, to please him, you agreed to fuck me,” she spit, repelled by the callousness, the pure vile malice, of their plan.

He nodded miserably. “I would have done anything.”

“Even screw a woman.” Wrapping her arms around her middle, as if to defend herself, she started to cry.