He got out of bed and hobbled to the dresser for a fresh pair of underwear. She had his shorts nicely folded in the drawer, separate from his socks. How wifely, he thought with a sneer, angrily slamming the drawer.
The sudden noise sounded like a cannon blast in the still house, causing him to grimace. He paused to listen and was relieved when he heard the water in the shower still running.
He had a few more minutes to search for his pistol.
She was too smart to have disposed of it. If she didn't intend to use it on him although that was still a possibility, he thought grimly she would have kept it for protection. There could be vigilantes on the loose, beating the bushes in search of her. She wouldn't have wasted the weapon.
John looked through her drawers, trying not to upset the neat arrangements of her panties and bras. Finding nothing in the bureau, he returned to the bed and ran his hands between the mattress and box spring, although he didn't expect to find it there since that had been his original, unimaginative hiding place.
He searched the shelf at the top of the closet. He crawled along the floor, looking for loose planks under which she might have stashed his gun. The nightstand drawers were empty.
The water in the shower went off.
John plowed his hands through his hair in frustration and self-incrimination. What was he going to do? He had to make a decision. Quickly. Immediately.
His impression of Kendall Deaton Burnwood had proved correct she was a skilled liar. She had the gall and intelligence to carry out even the most audacious scheme, even if it meant consummating her bogus marriage to a man who was, in effect, her jailer.
Furthermore, she was a mother, afraid for her child's life as well as her own. To protect her child, she would go to extremes.
But even motherhood didn't justify her kidnapping a federal officer. She had broken more laws than he could think of right now. His duty was to deliver her to the proper authorities.
That's what he would do. By whatever means necessary.
He stepped into the hall. The bathroom door was slightly ajar. Trying not to make a sound, he slowly made his way to it and gave it a slight push. It silently swung open.
Kendall was standing at the basin. Her hair, recently towel dried, was radiating from her head in damp spikes. She was wearing only panties. One arm was raised above her head; she was applying dusting powder to her underarm.
She was humming, tunelessly and endearingly off-key.
He didn't allow himself a smile. He didn't allow himself a tender thought.
Jesus, could he go through with this?
It was smart. It was necessary. But it was going to be damn difficult, perhaps the most difficult duty of his career. Of both careers.
Although a thousand instincts tried to hold him back, he forced himself forward. He was afraid that she might catch a glimpse of him in the mirror, but she didn't, even when he was within a foot of her. Gradually he eased the crutch from beneath his arm and got a good grip on it. Then with his other hand he grasped her upper arm and spun her around.
Chapter 24
"What do you mean she's vanished?" Gibb Burnwood wasn't taking the news well. His voice was as murderous as his glare.
The Burnwoods' attorney remained unruffled. Seated with his spindly legs crossed at the knees and his long, narrow hands folded in his lap, Quincy Lamar was a study of southern elegance and composure.
He looked as though he had never broken a sweat in his life. His suit was impeccably tailored. The French cuffs of his shirt were speared with diamo nd-studded cuff links. His hair was oiled, his nails buffed.
His effeminate affectations turned Gibb's stomach. He would have had no tolerance for Lamar except that he was reputed to be a crackerjack trial lawyer, the cagiest, most corruptible criminal attorney money could buy. Some of the South's most crooked crooks owed their freedom to Quincy Lamar.
"How did she get away? When?" Gibb asked.
"As I understand it, she's been missing for more than two weeks."
"Two weeks!" Gibb thundered. "And word is just now reaching us? Why weren't we told before?"
"I see no call for you to shout at me, Mr. Burnwood. I've told you everything I know, as soon as I learned it myself."
Lamar's voice was as smooth as sipping whiskey. Like the intoxicant, his mellifluous voice seemed harmless. But it could sneak up on a jury or legal opponent and deliver a sound wallop.
"Mrs. Burnwood was taken into custody in Denver. She was being escorted back to South Carolina to appear as a material witness at your trial."
Matt spoke for the first time. "Too bad I divorced her. Then she couldn't be forced to testify against me."
"I'm sure she's not being forced," Lamar countered smoothly. He paused to flick an imaginary piece of lint off his sleeve. "Somewhere along the way Mrs. Burnwood eluded them and"
"Them? She overpowered and escaped from two U.S. marshals?"
Lamar glanced at Matt. "Do you wish me to continue? Or will you persist in interrupting?"
"I'm sorry," Matt said tightly.
The lawyer took his time before resuming. He shot Gibb a disparaging look that conveyed that he should have taught his son better manners. Gibb could easily have throttled the attorney, but he was as anxious as Matt to hear how Kendall had disappeared.
"One of the marshals was a woman," Lamar explained.
He told them about Kendall's ear infection, which had the necessitated taking the trip by car and spending several nights on the road.
He added an afterthought: "I suppose a female marshal was required to assure Mrs. Burnwood's protection and privacy while she attended to the baby."
Gibb and Matt looked at each other, then both shot from their chairs simultaneously. Gibb took pleasure in the lawyer's look of alarm when he grabbed him by his lavender necktie and hauled him out of his chair. "What did you say?"
The jail guard barged in, already reaching for the pistol in his hip holster. "Let him go!" he shouted at Gibb.
Gibb released Lamar, whose bony butt landed hard on the seat of the wooden chair. He stretched his neck as though to make certain that his head was still attached.
"Everything is fine," he told the guard as he patted his hair back into place. "My client just became a little overwrought.
It won't happen again."
The guard waited to make certain that the lawyer had the situation under control, then he backed out of the room and closed the door.
"Kendall has a baby?"
"Boy or girl? How old?"
Ignoring their questions, Lamar regarded Gibb with the unblinking menace of a reptile. "If you ever lay a hand on me again, I'll walk out of here, and you'll fry along with your fascist redneck friends. Do we have an understanding, Mr. Burnwood?"
His sibilant voice would have raised goosebumps on an ordinary man, but Gibb had always considered himself many notches above ordinary. He leaned across the table so far that his face came within inches of the lawyer's narrow nose.
"Don't threaten me, you cocksucking queer. I'm not impressed with your fancy suits and your slick hair and your silk neckties. And I hate this damn thing." He yanked the fresh carnation from Lamar's lapel and crushed it in his fist.
"I'd just as soon squash you as look at you. And right now you'd better tell me what I want to know about the baby my daughter-in-law has with her, or I'll tear your throat out with my bare hands and use it for fish bait. Do we have an understanding?"
Quincy Lamar, famous for reducing hostile witnesses to quivering blobs of jelly, was speechless. His eyes darted toward Matt, whose stony stare only underscored his father's threat.
The lawyer's prominent Adam's apple slid up and down to accommodate a dry swallow.
Finally, he continued his story. "Mrs. Burnwood has a baby boy." From his attache case he removed a copy of the child's birth certificate and passed it to them. "I presume the baby Is
"Mine," Matt said unequivocally after checking the date of birth. "He's mine!"
Gibb flung his arms around Matt and thumped him on the back. "I'm so proud for you, son. Lord have mercy, I finally have a grandson!" Their joyous celebration was short-lived, however. Gibb struck the table with his fist. "That bitch."
Matt turned to Lamar. "Listen here, I want my son. Do whatever's necessary for me to get him and keep him. I obtained a divorce not knowing she was pregnant. On top of trying to kill me, and deserting me, she has concealed the fact that I have a son. So it shouldn't be too difficult for me to get awarded exclusive custody."
Lamar cast a nervous glance at Gibb. "Be reasonable, Mr. Burnwood.
You've been indicted on several felony charges.
Shouldn't we concentrate on having you acquitted of these crimes before we undertake any other litigious action?"
"They can't prove that Dad and I were involved with killing that Li boy. Or with this newly trumped-up charge involving that Bama character."
" 'That Bama character' happened to be an FBI agent," the lawyer solemnly reminded him.
"Whatever he was, we had nothing to do with shooting him in the head and burying him somewhere out there in the woods. No one has produced a body, so they're not even sure he's dead. The bum wandered out of town, same as he wandered in."
"What of Michael Li's disappearance from the jail?"
"Obviously he escaped. His body hasn't materialized either, and it won't. He's not about to resurface if he did, he'd have to face rape charges. So he's lying low, while Dad and I are being accused of two murders that never took place."
"Then how do you account for the story Mrs. Burnwood has told the authorities?" Lamar asked.
"She got lost in the woods, became hysterical, and hallucinated. At the same time, she seized an opportunity to get vengeance on me for my affair with Lottie Lynam."
Gibb clenched his jaw. It was a conditioned reflex every time Matt mentioned Lottie's name. Almost to the day that Matt had resumed his affair with her, Gibb had known about it. He found it incomprehensible that his son, who was so obedient and tractable in every other area of his life, had such a weakness for that red-haired tramp.
Gibb hadn't liked it, but, to keep peace in the family, he had turned a blind eye to the affair. Lottie was married, after all. Nothing too disastrous could come of the affair such as an accidental baby. Years ago he had seen to it that there would be no unwanted pregnancy.
When Gibb had gotten wind of sixteen-year-old Matt's secret infatuation with Lottie, he had paid a call on her father.
He had agreed with Gibb that it was up to them to see that those crazy kids didn't get into trouble. For seventy-five dollars, the old man had promised to slip a pill into Lottie's milk.
It was a safe narcotic, Gibb had assured him; it had come straight from the doctor himself.
The pill had produced Lottie's cramps, which the same doctor diagnosed as appendicitis. The doctor's bribe had cost Gibb another two hundred dollars, plus the cost of the operation to remove Lottie's perfectly healthy appendix and ligate her fallopian tubes. For under a thousand dollars, Gibb had guaranteed that Lottie wouldn't produce a bastard Burnwood.
To this day, he believed it was the best money he'd ever spent.
As long as the affair didn't interfere with Matt's marrying and producing a legitimate son and heir, Gibb had figured there was no real harm in his seeing Lottie when her drunkard husband was out of town.
But he did not want their affair to become public knowledge. Matt Burnwood, heir apparent to the leadership of the Brotherhood, had no business carrying a torch for a white trash slut. It would be bad for their image. If Matt was allowed leeway with the strict code of the Brotherhood, others would begin asking for exceptions to the rules. Consanguinity with low-lifes or other races was the primary, number-one taboo.
That's why Gibb hated knowing that his son's affair would be exposed during the trial. Keeping it under wraps was out of the question. Quincy Lamar had even suggested that Matt use Lottie as an alibi for the night Michael Li mysteriously disappeared from the county jail, never to be seen or heard from again.
If Mrs. Lynam swore under oath that Matt was with her that night, it might help sway a teetering jury. Lamar advised Matt to confess to the lesser of the two crimes. Adultery was a sin, but it wasn't punishable by death. Not in America, anyway.
Matt and Gibb had discussed this option but hadn't yet reached a decision. Gibb wanted to hold out for as long as possible before formally linking Matt to the woman. Their affair wasn't his son's greatest achievement, but if it became public, that's what people would remember most about him.
The flip side to that argument was that the sum total of their defense consisted of denials. Gibb knew that it would be foolish not to exploit every avenue of defense, no matter how unsavory. Learning that he had a grandson added a new dimension to the situation. Priorities had shifted. The focus had changed. Perhaps the hard line he had taken against using Lottie Lynam should be reevaluated.
Although his thoughts had been sidetracked, Gibb had been following the argument between Matt and their attorney. Their verbal volleys were g etting them nowhere. Finally, Gibb spoke up, his voice overriding theirs.
"What my son is telling you, Mr. Lamar, is that we want the baby returned to us. He's rightfully ours. And we want him."
"Precisely," Matt agreed.
Lamar held up both hands, palms forward, as though to ward off an attack. "I tell you this for your own good, gentle men. You're clinging to an unrealistic hope."