Читать книгу Royal Heir - Alice Sharpe, Alice Sharpe - Страница 7

Julia absorbed this latest shock for a moment before mumbling, “Are you saying that the late William Chastain wasn’t Leo’s father?”

“No. I’m telling you that I am William Chastain.”

“He’s dead,” Julia said.

“Well, no.”

“Nicole called me the week before she died and told me he was killed when his boat blew up.”

“And his body?”

“Between the explosion and the river currents, what body?”

“Exactly. I know it’s hard for you to believe, but I didn’t die on the river. I escaped.”

Julia shook her head. “Preposterous. Why would Nicole say you were dead if you weren’t?”

“Because she didn’t know I wasn’t.”

Julia shook her head again. “This is crazy—”

“I know it sounds nuts. But I can explain.”

“So do it.”

“Not here.”

She stared at him.

“Listen, Leo has big blue eyes and fuzzy reddish hair, like his mother. Like she had. He has a little mark on the back of his neck, a birthmark. You’re Julia Sheridan, Nicole’s cousin. You’ve just known Nicole a couple of years. I believe she took advantage of your generosity by calling on you to watch Leo when she flew down here to party with her pals. Am I close?”

“Close,” Julia said. “Trouble is, the people who took Leo knew all about me, too.”

“Then ask me something unique about Nicole.”

Julia rubbed her temples. Would this confusion never stop? She looked into his eyes and once again resisted the pull to trust him, to take him at face value. She said, “Why don’t you just show me some identification?”

He smiled again, but this time the thought crossed her mind that the gesture was fueled by frustration. “I don’t have any identification,” he said. “My wallet was in my suit jacket when my boat blew up. I wasn’t wearing it at the time.”

“Of course you weren’t,” she said.

He waved aside her sarcasm. “If I understood what was happening in there with the lawyer, the kidnappers produced all sorts of fake documents, right? If I was one of them, don’t you think I’d at least have made myself a nice official-looking Washington state driver’s license?”

He had a point.

“Look at me,” he added.

She did as he asked and for the first time, she noticed the details that she’d been too preoccupied to notice before.

“What happened to you?” she said. “Why are you wearing someone else’s clothes? What happened to your forehead and cheeks? When’s the last time you slept?”

“The clothes belong to some poor guy who left his car unlocked and his dry cleaning in the backseat.”

“You stole a suit?”

“I just wish he’d been a taller man,” he said and they both glanced down at the pant legs, which were too short. The sleeves were, too.

“What about those marks on your face? And your hair…?”

“The marks are leftover burns from the boat explosion. The hair got burned, too. Not too bad, but it frizzled off in spots.”

Julia suppressed a sigh. Things just kept getting more and more bizarre.

“After the crash, I managed to swim to shore. I had a friend with an old cabin cruiser in a small marina. He’s out of town. I jimmied the lock on his boat and hunkered down to figure things out.”

“Why? Why not just go home?”

“Because my home blew up. I wasn’t living with Nicole by then. And I suspected she might have had a hand in trying to kill me.”

“Why would you—”

“Later. Right now, you’re the one in danger. Someone tried to run you down a few minutes ago. It doesn’t fit with what I think happened to Leo, but maybe there are two different agendas at work or maybe your boyfriend went postal—”

“Don’t be absurd.”

“You think he’s too stable? You never know—”

“I don’t have a boyfriend.”

He rubbed the back of his neck with his hand, wincing as the muscle in his upper arm flexed. “Do you think we could get out of here and go somewhere a little less…open?” he said.

“I need to go home. I need to be there to answer the phone.”

“Why?”

“The police think someone will call with a ransom—”

“No,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“If my suspicions are right, Leo is in no danger of being hurt. There’ll never be a ransom call. The danger will be that he’ll all but disappear off the face of the earth. We have to move fast.”

She studied his eyes for a second then swore under her breath. She wanted to believe him. She wanted Leo to be safe, but how? “I don’t understand. You know who kidnapped him?”

“I have my suspicions.”

“Then tell me. Tell the cops or the FBI. Why are we standing here talking—”

“Because I’m not going to tell anyone anything until I use a phone and make certain.”

“I have a cell phone—”

“It’s not that easy. Finding the right number is going to take a little work.”

“Listen,” she said, turning again to the car, “it’s been a long day and I’m tired of your riddles. I’m going home.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” he said.

Bristling, Julia whirled to face him. “What do you mean by that?”

“I mean someone just tried to mow you down.”

“So you say.”

“Your house might be the next place they try.”

She swallowed a jolt of fear. Her house was her refuge. The thought someone might breach it—

“Go to a friend’s house for the night,” he said.

“I can’t. I have to be there if the kidnappers call.”

“But—”

“I can’t bet on your suspicions even if I understood them, which I don’t. I’m going home.”

“Then I’ll go with you.”

“Hold on,” she said. If this man was Nicole’s husband, he was turning out to be just as infuriating as her cousin had always insisted he was. Julia didn’t have the time or energy for any more verbal sparring. Time was passing, Leo was gone…

She added, “I don’t want you to come to my house. If you follow me, I’ll drive straight to the police station—”

“I can’t follow anyone right now,” he said. “I hitchhiked down here when I read that Leo was being sent to you. I was lucky to make it to the airport on time. Come on, Julia, think. There must be something about Nicole that wouldn’t make its way onto a fact sheet and would convince you I was married to her. Some habit, some gesture. Like the way she flipped that mane of hair. The way her eyes could turn you to stone when she was unhappy with you. The obsession with red underwear, the mole on her left thigh, the way she flossed three times a day. Something.”

His description of Nicole was right on the mark. But anyone meticulous enough to dig up George Abbot’s name could dig up all these things as well. On the other hand, she realized she was beginning to give up. If he wasn’t William Chastain, who was he and what did he want with her?

“Okay, I’ll play along,” she said, searching her memory for some obscure detail of Nicole’s life. “I know. Tell me what kind of diet she started after Christmas.”

He looked startled by her question. “I was living on my boat by then. I saw her when I came to see Leo and she did as much to make that next to impossible as she could.

“Besides, she was always on a diet. Wait, we met for lunch in January. She complained she’d gained half a pound over the holidays. Half a pound. I didn’t even know they made home scales that measured down to half a pound. Let’s see. She settled on some kind of seaweed algae smoothie. It looked like bilgewater. Smelled like it, too.”

“It did smell like bilgewater,” Julia said.

“Well?”

“You’re William Chastain?”

“Call me Will. Only Nicole insisted on calling me William.”

“Nicole told me a lot…well, about you.”

“None of it good, right?”

“No, not much.”

His voice softened. “Things were good at the beginning, but you didn’t know her then. By the time you discovered she existed, things had gone sour. My fault as much as hers.”

It was decision time. Julia, trusting her gut instinct, said, “Okay.”

“Does that mean you’ll take me along?”

“Yes. But I’m warning you, I know how to defend myself.”

This time his smile reached his eyes. “I don’t doubt it for a minute,” he said.

WILL CLOSED his eyes. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept without visions of exploding boats tearing him from sleep. Days, maybe. His eyes felt gritty, as though he’d been caught in a sandstorm. His arm throbbed where the car had thumped him. His hip no doubt sported a black-and-blue mark the size of a salad plate.

And he was hungry. For the first time in days, he was hungry.

“When’s the last time you saw Nicole?” he asked. They were just exiting the freeway, Julia driving fast. He found her impatience reassuring.

She didn’t answer.

He’d been thinking about Julia ever since he’d learned his child was to be given to her, handed over by Nicole’s directive. He’d tried to recall what Nicole had said about her cousin. “Mousy and shy” were the terms Nicole had most often used when describing Julia.

He sneaked a look at Julia’s profile. No, she wasn’t flashy like Nicole. It didn’t look as though she spent a lot of time pouting or posturing, either. She came across as a loner. From the first moment he’d spied her in the airport, he’d recognized in her the same aura of isolation he carried inside himself.

Mousy? No. Her brown hair was windblown but luxuriant, her dark eyes intelligent, her tall frame athletic but curvy. She wore her blue jeans like a second skin, and the suppleness of the sable leather jacket set off her hair and eyes while mimicking the smooth texture of her skin.

His hand drifted to the bandage on his arm—her white scarf—ruined now by his blood. Well, no wonder Nicole wrote her cousin off as little more than a babysitter for those times when Leo became an inconvenience. His wife had been a tad egotistical. She seldom picked up on nuances, either, and wouldn’t have differentiated shyness from restraint.

“Two weeks before you were reported dead,” Julia said.

It took him a second to realize she was answering his question.

“Nicole called to ask me if she could leave Leo with me for a weekend. But I was working and I said no.”

Her voice choked up on the last word. He was beginning to understand that Leo’s plight was personal to her. He hadn’t understood how close she’d become to his son.

Okay. Nicole had wanted a weekend free. Out of town, out of state, for that matter. A lover’s tryst with a man whose face and position were too well known to stay close to home while romancing a woman other than his wife? Would Nicole’s chief of police boyfriend come along or would they have met somewhere? He said, “Did she ever bring any friends to your house when she brought Leo over?”

“Friends?”

“Men,” he said.

She darted him a glance and then turned her concentration back to the road. “No,” she said.

“Does it surprise you to hear she had a boyfriend?”

“No,” she said, not looking at him this time. “Tell me why you pretended you were dead and why you let Leo leave Washington.”

He had known this was coming. He’d prepared a few lies. But now, sitting in the dark car, too tired to dissimilate, he chose the truth. “I’m pretty sure Nicole set up my supposed accident. I got a call from a woman claiming to have compromising pictures of my wife and her husband. She said she’d hired a private eye to get them. Told me they were mine for the taking.”

“Why didn’t the woman use them herself?”

“She said she was afraid of her husband. Claimed he was the chief of police. She told me to meet her at a restaurant across the river. The fastest way there was on my boat so I took it. Only someone who knew me well would know that’s what I would do.”

“Nicole, for instance.”

“Of the people interested in our small world of problems, only Nicole. Anyway, I was living on the boat by then so all my papers, everything I valued besides my son, were aboard.”

“And it exploded?”

“It was hit by another boat going like a bat out of hell. I got off in the nick of time. The newspaper the next day said that human remains were found were are being tested for DNA to see which boater they belong to, me or the nameless other guy. Contrary to what television leads us to believe, the testing can take a while. A small speedboat was reported stolen from a nearby marina. Recovered wreckage confirmed that it was the boat that hit mine.”

“But you don’t think it was an accident?”

“No.”

“Why?”

He thought for a moment. “It came right at me. I turned on every light and still it came. The next day I called the chief of police’s house. A servant informed me that the chief’s wife was in the hospital following childbirth complications. Had been for several days. Hard to picture her calling me from a hospital bed, then sneaking out to rendezvous at a restaurant across the river. I don’t doubt the affair. I just doubt the pictures and the setup.”

“So you determined Nicole must have been behind it?”

“Who else? I didn’t want her or the boyfriend to know they weren’t successful. A man in that position has serious clout. I’m just an architect, a relative unknown. I thought if I was declared dead, I could uncover some kind of evidence that would prove Nicole and her lover guilty of attempted murder. Then I could use that proof to gain custody of Leo.”

“But before all that could happen, Nicole drove off the side of the highway and crashed into a tree.”

“Yes. With Leo in the car. It’s a miracle he wasn’t hurt. By the time I found out she was dead, Leo was in protective custody. How could I prove who I was without sounding like a nutcase? How could I tell the authorities my story, including the chief’s part in it without endangering my chances of ever recovering my boy?

“In the end, I decided it would be best to let Leo come to you. It would give me time to reestablish my identity before approaching you. But I had to make sure he got here safe and sound and that you were…capable…of watching him.” He paused for a second. The truth was that he’d been afraid Julia was a carbon copy of Nicole. He’d had to make sure she was willing to take on a child for even a few weeks, as well as be responsible enough not to do him harm. He added, “I thought if you were halfway reasonable, I could talk to you about this and we could work something out.”

His voice trailed off. He didn’t know what else to say. Everything so far made him sound like an idiot.

“That’s why you were at the airport? Just to watch me take custody of Leo?”

“Yes.”

Her voice took on an impatient tone as she added, “Then did you see the imposter? The woman pretending to be me? A tall man in a gray raincoat?”

He shook his head. “I was late. I got there after you. I recognized Nicole’s lawyer so I had to stay out of his line of vision. The panic on your face when you turned to catch me staring at you just about tore my gut open.”

She cast him a quick glance. Even in the dim light, he caught the sparkle in her eyes that suggested pooling tears.

Julia’s hand strayed to her face where he presumed she brushed away the tears. Damn, her raw emotions touched him more than he liked. She was a grown-up. Her past and her problems were not his concern.

“Where do you think Leo is?” she asked at last.

“I think he’s with my aunt,” he said.

This earned him a longer glance, which she jerked away only because she needed to watch the road. As she guided the car around a corner, she almost whispered, “Why would your aunt steal your son in such an elaborate ruse?”

“Fiona Chastain is sophisticated and wealthy and she hated Nicole’s guts. The feeling was mutual.”

“So that’s why I was chosen as guardian and not your aunt.”

“I can’t imagine the words the two of them must have exchanged after my supposed death. I’m betting Aunt Fiona caught wind of Nicole’s decision to provide for Leo in the event of her death and over-reacted. She’s got lots of connections. I think she put this elaborate hoax into operation as soon as she learned she’d been bypassed as Leo’s guardian. I checked the airline schedules. There was a flight leaving for Spokane just minutes after you think you spotted Leo and his abductors in the elevator. My aunt happens to have relocated to Spokane.”

“But I would have been happy to share Leo with your aunt,” Julia said. “I would have loved knowing he had more family—”

“My aunt wouldn’t see things that way,” he said. Picking the next words with care, he added, “She’s very…controlling.”

“What did you mean that he was in no danger except for disappearing?”

“Fiona has the means and knowledge to disappear at will. If she goes underground with Leo, I don’t know how I’ll ever find him again.”

He could tell she thought he was overstating things. He didn’t blame her. He added, “I know this, Julia, because that’s how she raised me.”

“Moving you, hiding you—”

“Yes.”

“Nicole told me you were orphaned.”

“Father disappeared before birth, identity and location unknown. Mom died after giving birth. Her sister, Aunt Fiona, stepped in and took me. She was a fierce parent.”

“Who would never hurt you.”

“She thinks I’m dead, remember? I should have contacted her, but I didn’t trust her not to say something to Nicole. In retrospect, it was cruel on my part to do this to her.”

“Then the thing in the parking garage,” Julia said, her glance taking in his bandaged arm this time, “had to be an accident.”

“No. I don’t think so. I don’t know what that was about, but there was a calculated air about the whole thing. It wasn’t until the car revved up and headed straight for you that I realized I’d been aware of an idling engine for some time.”

“Just a moment. Your aunt tried to run me down?”

“No, of course not. That’s what I mean about things not making sense.”

“You can say that again,” she said, making another turn.

“Fiona wouldn’t have done any of this herself. She would have arranged it. Maybe one of her minions got creative.”

This remark was met with silence.

“It’s at least a place to start,” he said as they turned yet another corner. Though it had stopped raining and a full moon bathed the streets, he knew he’d never find his way out of this maze of streets and look-alike houses without help. He pushed aside the thought of leaving. First he had to make sure Julia’s house was safe for her to return to, and then he’d contact his aunt and figure out transportation—

She said, “The police—”

“The police aren’t going to be able to solve this situation,” he said. “They’ll wait for a ransom call that will never come. They’ll appeal to the public. My son’s photo will end up on a milk carton if they still do that. If I want Leo back, I’m going to have to get him myself.”

As she made another turn, her voice turned thoughtful. “I’m going to go about this the traditional way,” she said. “I’m going to rely on the cops and wait for a call. I can’t take the chance that I’ll let Leo down again, that I won’t be there when the right time occurs.”

He sneaked another look at her. Was it possible she’d forgotten that Leo no longer needed her as a guardian, at least for the long term, that his father was alive and well and sitting in the seat next to her?

Or did she still not believe he was who he said he was?

Or maybe she’d just written him off. God Almighty, she wouldn’t try to take Leo away from him, would she? Claim he was unbalanced or that his wacky aunt had undue influence?

That aunt of his. She’d been his salvation and his cross to bear, as touchy as a rattlesnake, as crafty as a third-world despot.

Irritated with Julia’s obstinacy, he looked out the window. The neighborhood through which they traveled wasn’t ritzy. Lawns looked sparse. The moonlight revealed too many abandoned toys littering driveways and front yards. Lots of cars, most older than the compact in which he rode, which had to be entering its teens. Compared to the lakeside community he’d been working on before his supposed death, this place looked like a slum. Even his and Nicole’s high-rise condo looked classy in comparison. It was hard to picture Nicole even visiting such modest surroundings.

But more to the point, how could Julia believe anyone would stage such an intricate kidnapping to gain custody of Leo just to ransom him back to a woman who drove an old car and lived in a very modest house? The certainty his aunt was behind this doubled.

Julia pulled her aging sedan into the driveway of a small square house. The wash of headlights revealed well-tended plants and no accumulated junk. Other than that, it looked very much like every other house on the block.

“Home,” she said with a touch of anxiety he realized he’d planted. She was nervous. Good. Might keep her on her toes.

Okay, he shouldn’t have accompanied Julia home. Now he was stuck out here with a phone tapped by the police. But he couldn’t let her return to a house that could be booby-trapped when she wouldn’t be in this mess if it weren’t for him. He’d check out the house, figure out his next step, warn her about locking up and disappear into the night.

Easier said than done, but he’d do it just the same. The most important thing was to get Leo back.

Clothes and ID weren’t the only things he’d lost when his boat exploded. Also gone were his laptop, cell phone and address book, all of which held his aunt’s unlisted number. He’d never bothered to memorize her number. Why bother when it was always handy? A man doesn’t expect to have his whole life blown apart.

“Do you have a computer?” he asked.

“Yes.”

She was soon out of the car, pulling the blue stuffed animal from the back where he’d tossed it when he got in the passenger seat. Maybe he could use her computer to access the address book on his computer at work. Of course, since the architectural firm of Wainwright and Co. thought he was dead, they may well have terminated his access…He’d have to see.

And he’d also have to talk Julia Sheridan out of her car.

Reenergized with a plan of action, he got out of the car and followed Julia up the front walk toward her door. She should have left lights burning for her return, but then he recalled she hadn’t expected to get back after dark.

He was about to step in front of her when he noticed a faint line of light stripping the long vertical edge of the door. He glanced to his left, through what appeared to be her kitchen window.

He pulled Julia back against his chest, moving backward.

“Hey—” she gasped before he slapped a hand over her mouth. Loosening his grip, he leaned forward until his lips brushed her ear. “Your front door is ajar. There’s a light bobbing around in there,” he whispered. “Someone with a flashlight.”

To his absolute amazement, she tore herself free and stormed toward her unlocked door, ripping it open and charging inside before he could stop her.

Raised voices reached him as he crossed the threshold in her wake.

A moment later, a gunshot thundered through the house.