Читать книгу Royal Heir - Alice Sharpe, Alice Sharpe - Страница 8

As the dark shape of a man charged toward her, Julia swung Leo’s stuffed elephant by its trunk. She felt the impact as she hit something. A male voice swore. She kicked what she hoped was a leg, kicked hard, aiming for the side of the kneecap where it would do the most damage. If she connected.

She hit something. Her foot throbbed as a gun fired and someone ran over the top of her.

“Get off me!” she screamed, kicking and throwing punches, driven now by fear as well as anger.

Will’s voice reached her. “Are you hurt?” he yelled, all but lifting her to her feet.

“Get him!” she cried, pointing at the sliding glass door that led to the backyard where the dark figure of her attacker, highlighted against the light coming through the glass, struggled with the latch.

Will darted toward the door. Julia heard it slide open and the dark shape disappeared into her yard, Will on his heels.

She staggered to the door, flipping on the yard light just in time to see Will leap over the low fence in the back, still in pursuit. Both men disappeared into the merciless shadows of the neighbor’s yard.

She found other light switches and flipped them all on, illuminating every dark corner.

The gunshot had taken off a corner of a plaster wall and shattered a mirror. But not before it had torn through the elephant, almost severing its neck, ripping its blue fur, blasting out an eyeball. Stuffing, piled like snow drifts, littered the floor along with shards of glass from the mirror. Julia dropped the elephant—it was beyond saving. She swept the glass and stuffing against the floorboards where it wouldn’t be a hazard.

She would have to get Leo a new stuffed animal. The thought brought more tears to her eyes.

Moving from room to room, she found a pillow case missing from one of the pillows on her bed. Besides that, only a couple of open drawers drew her attention until it dawned on her that the few nice things she owned were gone.

A locket belonging to her mother. A silver frame around a picture of her sister. Her father’s modest coin collection. Her whole family, gone, and now the precious few mementoes she’d managed to hold on to after years of turmoil gone as well.

As were a few pieces of costume jewelry and the silver-plated ladle she’d received as a Christmas gift. From Nicole.

Julia picked up the cordless phone to call 911. She paused on the last digit, clicking the phone off, re-settling it on the charger base, glancing toward the door through which Will had disappeared.

What in the hell was going on?

What kind of burglar robs a house in a neighborhood like this one, settling on a few ornaments when the computer and stereo were worth far more?

“Tweakers,” her boss, George Abbot, called them. His brother was a cop and George enjoyed throwing out the lingo. He was referring to meth addicts, people who stole just to finance their next high. Petty crime, as a rule of thumb, nonviolent. That kind of break-in was common around here.

But the gun—

Julia plopped down on the inexpensive over-stuffed red chair she’d bought on deferred payments just hours before news of Nicole’s death had reached her. Stilling her trembling hands by sitting on them, she looked at the few other pieces of furniture, each chosen to complement the sunny-yellow paint of the walls.

This house was her castle. In daylight, sun streamed through the windows and pooled on the floors. After dark, it became a sanctuary, a place in which to retreat from the world. It was the reason she’d marched through the front door without thinking and almost gotten herself shot dead.

She’d left that morning intending to share her home with a tiny boy who needed her. She’d come home empty-handed, the child’s whereabouts unknown, his future in jeopardy, her haven violated.

And now his father was here, a dead man, only not dead. Where was Will?

When the phone rang, Julia popped to her feet. Her heart rate doubled. The kidnappers! It had to be.

“Hello?” she said, listening for some sound, a clicking, a whir, that would indicate the police had activated the tracing device. Of course, advanced technology no doubt precluded telltale sounds—

“Miss Sheridan? This is Detective Morris.”

Taking a deep breath, she said, “Detective Morris.”

“Sorry to alarm you,” he said. “Just calling to see if you made it home okay.”

“Well—”

“I want you to know we’ll have a police car patrolling your neighborhood tonight, starting at midnight. There are no new developments at the airport. Any word from the kidnappers? Any new developments we should know about?”

She should tell him about her intruder…

Her gaze strayed to the glass door as Will Chastain made his way across her well-lit patio, a bag of some kind dangling from his right hand. Relieved to see him still in one piece, she took a deep breath. He looked up and their eyes met.

She said, “Nothing to report, Detective.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yes. Did Monsieur Pepin return to Washington?”

“We let him go a couple of hours ago. We know where to find him. He was very upset. He feels responsible.”

Don’t we all? Julia thought.

“You call if you need anything. We’ll monitor all your incoming calls.”

“I understand,” she said, replacing the receiver as Will let himself in the sliding glass door.

“He got away,” he said, crossing the floor in his socks. He pointed at the phone and added, “You called the cops?”

“No. They called me.” As a flicker of hope ignited his eyes, she added, “It was a routine call, nothing more.”

“I see. Did you tell them about…this?”

Her knees wobbled. Julia sat down again. Some of it was the culmination of the day’s events, some of it was the profound relief that Will had returned unharmed.

If he was Will Chastain. But even that automatic mental disqualifier felt feeble now. She’d started accepting him as who he said he was some time before. For better or worse, she’d bought into his story.

And now she coveted his presence. Disheveled and weathered though he was, he exuded confidence and something more.

Determination. That was it. Nothing was going to stop him. No one was going to keep him from Leo. What must it be like to be loved like that, wanted like that? It struck her that if Leo was ever going to return to her—to them—Will was going to have to be a part of it. And she wanted to be a part of it, too.

She said, “I didn’t mention any of…this.”

“Because?”

“I guess I thought we should talk about it first,” she said.

“Then let’s talk.”

“First tell me what happened out there,” she said, gesturing at the only other chair in the room. It was orange and armless, not really comfortable, chosen for its color and price tag rather than its function. That had seemed the way to decorate to Julia who, before decorating this house, had never even chosen a bedspread for herself.

He brought her the sack which she’d more or less forgotten about until he placed it in her hands. It was the pillowcase off her bed, a fact she’d registered when he’d come through the door with it dangling from his hand. In it, she found all her missing items.

Trinkets. Mementoes of a scratchy past, of people whose faces had faded in her mind.

Studying the bullet-sheared wall and the mess of stuffing and plaster and glass swept against the baseboard, Will whistled. “Thank the Lord our thief is a lousy shot or you’d be dead,” he said as he perched on the edge of the orange chair. There were bright smears of blood on the scarf still wrapped around his arm. There were also new streaks of mud on his pants and caked on his shoes. He looked absolutely exhausted.

At first Nicole had often commented on her husband’s good looks and his success as an architect. The comments had morphed, though, into how cruel he was. No specifics, just words like selfish and callous which Julia had always understood to mean he wasn’t giving Nicole everything she wanted.

He said, “I chased him through at least five backyards. Woke up every dog in the neighborhood. The guy had a limp, but he ran like hell. I think I would have caught him except that I slipped in some mud and he scampered over another fence. I heard a car door, but by the time I got to the fence and looked over, he was peeling away from the curb.”

Julia, proud that her kick had connected with the intruder’s leg, said, “Was the car the same—”

“As the one from the parking garage? I don’t know. It could have been. Same low profile, same general color but other than that…I just don’t know.”

“It has to be connected,” Julia said.

“Explain.”

“Well, just that so many odd and terrible things have happened today. First the blowout on the freeway—”

He sat forward, hands gripped together between his knees, eyes burning. “Yes. Tell me about that.”

She shrugged. “What’s to tell? The tire blew.”

“How fast were you driving?”

“Well, the freeway was crowded. I’d just slowed down to about fifty when the right front tire blew.”

“Which lane were you in?”

“Far left. It was hairy for a few minutes but I managed to get the car across three lanes to the shoulder. I was kind of shaken up. A guy behind me stopped. He insisted on taking off the old tire and putting on the spare. He wasn’t very proficient. And he was dressed in a suit. The drizzle made it nasty out there and I let him help me.”

“It strikes me that you’re the kind of woman who changes her own tire,” Will said.

“Yes,” she said. She thought for a moment. “He was so insistent,” she said. “He had an accent I couldn’t place. I thought maybe it was a matter of honor for him. I asked him where he was from, but he didn’t seem to understand me. In the end it was just easier…or so I thought at first…but he was an absolute klutz and I was late and then Leo was gone—”

He was at her side. Taking her hands, he pulled her to her feet and wrapped his arms around her. She hadn’t known she was shaking until she felt his warm, solid embrace.

It was tempting to lean, tempting to give him her burdens. Tempting to depend on him. Taking a step away, she took a deep breath and did none of those things.

“What did the guy on the freeway look like?”

Biting her lip in concentration, she forced his image into her mind. “Medium build. Dark hair and eyes. A little bit of a tan which I noticed because you don’t see that very often in San Francisco in April. Dark suit.” She shrugged and added, “Kind of average.”

“Sounds pretty much like the guy who shot at you just now, doesn’t it?”

She nodded. It could have been the same man. Of course, her description was so vague it could have fit lots of people. Besides, it was dark and her shooter hadn’t spoken this time. She’d made all the racket.

“Show me your flat tire,” Will said.

She started to ask why and let it go. She couldn’t see what the tire would tell him, but she was beginning to trust his instincts. Taking a flashlight off the kitchen counter, she took him through the empty garage to the driveway where she’d parked the car and opened the trunk. Will took the flashlight from her and examined the tire. She’d been in such a hurry that she’d just thrown it in without cinching it down. The panic of the moments when she realized she was going to be late picking up Leo at the airport came rushing back.

“Look,” Will said, focusing the light on the tire. “See this hole? That’s the entry wound, so to speak. The shredded rubber on the opposite side is where it exited. If the traffic hadn’t slowed…if you’d been racing along at seventy you would have lost control for sure.”

She stared at the hole, refusing to believe what her eyes told her.

“Someone shot your tire,” he said.

The concrete beneath Julia’s feet seemed to rumble.

“That’s why the guy who stopped behind you didn’t want you fooling with the tire,” Will added. “You weren’t supposed to survive this attack.”

“But he must have known I’d see the tire later—”

“You’re forgetting the attempt to run you down in the parking garage and then the ‘burglar’ in your house, lying in wait for you with a gun—the tire would have disappeared, Julia.”

She stared at the hole, jumping when Will slammed the trunk. Looking up and down the empty street, he took her arm. “Go back in the house, please,” he said, his voice little more than a whisper. “First, leave me your keys so I can move the car into the garage. Lock all the doors. I’ll be in right after you.”

She did as he asked without argument.

An entry wound, Will had called it.

A place where a bullet had pierced the tire before exploding out the other side. Shot with the hope that the car would pile into others, causing a catastrophic wreck, killing who knew how many people. Killing her.

What in the world was going on?

A SLY SMILE played across Will’s lips as his attempt to hack into the company’s computer system went through without a hitch. He knew he owed his luck to Brian Wainwright’s tendency to procrastinate, a tendency that had driven Will crazy for years.

But not tonight.

“Thanks, Brian, you lazy SOB,” he whispered.

As he printed out his address book, he caught the sound of the running shower. Despite the late hour—it was closing in on midnight—Julia had announced her decision to bathe with a defiant look on her pretty face. He wasn’t sure to what he should attribute that look. His presence in her home? The intruder, the attempts on her life, the kidnapping of Leo?

The woman had had quite a day.

And she was taking him on faith. Worrisome.

He’d refused her attempts to bathe and bandage his arm. He couldn’t afford the time. It seemed as though they were standing still, that Leo was moving farther and farther away.

But he hadn’t refused the offer of a ham sandwich and a glass of milk. After polishing off the last of both, he unwound Julia’s white wool scarf from his arm, glancing around what was to have been his son’s room. Julia hadn’t gotten too far on the decorating. Blue walls, a blue synthetic oriental-type rug, one side of the room taken up with a single bed, a desk and the computer equipment. A box against the other wall held a crib yet to be assembled. Another box held a high chair. She’d cleared off the top of a dresser and stacked disposable diapers and baby-related items like baby oil and wiping cloths, a brand-new package of pacifiers, bibs, swabs.

It jarred him to think that these things were meant for his son.

He dumped the scarf in the garbage. The bleeding had stopped. Of course, the sleeve of the suit and the shirt beneath were torn and stained. Along with his muddy pants and wacky hair, he must present quite an attractive package.

She walked into the room just as he lifted the paper from her printer.

“Did you find your aunt’s phone number?”

“Yes,” he said, turning to face her. No femme fatale outfit for Julia Sheridan, he saw. She had changed into gray sweatpants and a pink T-shirt, both on the baggy side. Her brown hair was wet and shiny, caught in a ponytail, her skin rosy. She looked sixteen. Way too young and innocent to be in the same room with him.

She handed him the phone, but he shook his head. “I don’t want the cops listening in,” he said as he folded the pages and stuck them in a pocket. “May I use your cell phone?”

She left the room without comment and he followed her into the kitchen. She’d started a pot of coffee and he poured himself a cup as she dug her cell phone from her handbag.

His aunt didn’t answer. He left a phone number but not his name. In fact, he didn’t identify himself at all, just urged her to return his call at the first opportunity, day or night.

“Does she have a cell phone? Is there another number you could call?”

“She has one but she doesn’t leave it on. Uses it to make calls but hates being a ‘slave’ to it. Besides, odds are at this time of the night she was there, listening to my message.”

“Why wouldn’t she answer you?”

“You’re forgetting the last news she had about me was that I perished in a boating accident. Even if she hears this message, she’ll be wary that it’s me. If she doesn’t call soon, I’ll call her back.”

They stood staring at each other for several moments as Will sipped the coffee without tasting it. It came to him that he was beginning to think of Julia as a woman, not just as Nicole’s little cousin or Leo’s surrogate mother. He was beginning to notice the shape of her body, the thrust of her breasts against her T-shirt, the softness of her lips in repose, the expressions that flashed across her face at breakneck speed.

He wanted to know more about her.

But first he wanted sleep. And a shower and clean clothes. And most of all, Leo safe in his arms.

She said, “I think you’d better start wondering who else would steal your son, Will. And I’d better start wondering who wants me dead.”

Will couldn’t answer either question, though he wondered if his past, swathed in a suffocating silence his aunt had always refused to break, could have played a part in Leo’s abduction. He couldn’t picture anyone wanting to kill Julia unless it was connected to Leo’s disappearance. Someone was afraid she could identify them. That’s what made sense.

A banging on the front door interrupted the silence that had descended after Julia’s last observations. A male voice called, “Julia? Julia, are you in there? Open up!”

“It’s a little late for callers,” Will said, glancing at the flower wall clock. It was after midnight now. He set aside his coffee mug.

“I forgot all about George,” she said, hurrying to answer the door. By the time Will rounded the corner, he found Julia engulfed in a tall man’s arms. She burst into tears.

Who the hell was George?

“I MEANT TO CALL you,” Julia said when she came up for air. Embarrassed by her tears and the emotional meltdown that had prompted them, she kept her gaze fastened on a wall somewhere between the two men. By then, George had steered her into the living room and Will had closed and locked the front door. “I kind of forgot,” she added.

“Damn it, Julia, what’s going on here?” George demanded. Nearing forty, George Abbot was not only Julia’s boss at Abbot Air Transport, but also her friend. They’d tried dating a while ago. They’d tried hard. But George had pointed out that anything special between a man and a woman shouldn’t take so much effort and they’d gone back to being friends. It had been a profound relief to Julia, who had to admit to herself that what George represented to her was a father figure, not a lover.

“Did the police—”

“Grill me like I was a common criminal? Yes, they did,” George said. “Who would impersonate me and pretend to be your fiancé? Where’d they get that? I think the cops are still watching me. There’s a patrol car in your neighborhood. I passed it coming in—”

“They’re just watching the house. It has nothing to do with you. I’m sorry I didn’t warn you—”

“Seems like you’ve been busy,” George said with a glance at Will.

“It’s been quite a night,” she agreed. Would Will introduce himself to George? And if he did, would they then have to try to explain how he got here, why he wasn’t dead? Would George feel honor-bound to tell the police—

“Good thing I had an alibi,” George added. “Been with Barbara all day. Her and her girls. Amber is on a basketball team. Tournament today. Just got home a little while ago and there were the cops, waiting for me.”

Julia refrained from apologizing again. George was perturbed. She didn’t blame him. Barbara was the new love of his life and he was crazy about her preteen daughters as well. It must have ruined his day to come home after a fun time of games and laughter to antagonistic questioning.

“Guess the important thing now is to find your cousin’s baby,” he said, some of his bluster dissipating. He was still eyeing Will with suspicion. He said, “You a cop?”

Julia didn’t see how anyone as savvy as George about police matters could mistake Will in his present condition for a cop.

You thought he was airport security, a little voice in her head whispered. Sometimes a person sees what they expect to see—

Will said, “Something like that. I’m here to help Julia.”

George’s nod was brisk. It looked as though the matter of Will’s identity was settled in his mind.

“I think I should try making that call,” Will added.

“The phone is on the counter.”

She listened to George describe his police interrogation with half an ear. With the other half, she listened as Will placed his call. When it was obvious he was speaking to someone, she stilled George with a hand and hurried to Will’s side.

“Honest, Aunt Fiona, it is me,” he was saying as his gaze met Julia’s. He turned the corner in the kitchen, placing himself out of view of the living room, sandwiching himself between the refrigerator and the sink. Julia followed. Lowering his voice, he said into the phone, “It was a terrible thing for me to do to you and I’m sorry. I’ll explain very soon, I promise. But right now I need to know if you have Leo.”

He listened for just a moment, his forehead wrinkling. “Why are you being so evasive?” he asked.

After a pause, he said, “I’d understand if you thought you should rescue him from Nicole’s relatives.” With this he glanced at Julia and shrugged. “What I mean is that you thought I was dead. I know you would want to protect the little guy.”

He listened for a few more seconds before switching to a calming voice. “I get the feeling you can’t talk right now. Are you okay?”

After a brief pause, he said, “I understand.” She must have reassured him though his expression didn’t look reassured. He added, “I’ll come see you soon—”

Now his eyes narrowed and his mouth formed a straight line. He said, “Polo,” waiting with what seemed suspended breath before snapping, “Fiona? Aunt Fiona?”

He folded Julia’s phone and looked at her. “Something is wrong,” he said.

“What do you mean, wrong?”

For the first time, Julia was aware that George had joined them in the kitchen and stood with his hands behind his back, listening.

Will seemed too distracted to notice or care. He said, “It’s a code she taught me eons ago. Nothing unique. She uses the name Marco in a sentence. I answer with Polo to let her know I’m on to her. We used to joke that if either one of us ever made a friend named Marco we’d have to come up with a new code.”

“What does the code mean?” George asked.

Will’s head snapped up and he met George’s gaze. “It means to stay away, that she’ll contact me when it’s safe.” Looking at Julia, he added, “Back when I was a kid, I knew it meant not to go home. To stay where I was until she came for me. Soon afterwards, I’d have a new name, a new house, a new school.”

“This is part of that odd upbringing you mentioned,” Julia said.

“Yes.”

Julia’s cell phone erupted. Will was still holding it. He flipped it open and glanced at the screen. “My aunt’s calling back,” he said, followed by a tap of a button and a soft, “Yes?” into the phone.

He listened for a moment before snapping, “Who’s this?” He lowered the phone, once again clicking it shut.

“Whoever it was hung up without identifying themselves.”

“It wasn’t your aunt?”

“Why would she have called without speaking? It was her number, but it was someone else on the phone. Someone was with her, I’m sure of it. She must have caller ID now. When she refused to tell them who it was, they called to check for themselves. I have to get back to Washington.”

He pushed the phone into Julia’s hands.

“But your aunt’s code to stay where you are—”

“I’m not a child anymore,” he said. “I don’t stay when I’m told to. I have an awful feeling she’s in jeopardy and that it’s tied to Leo.”

“What about calling the police where she is? Someone might be able to go check—”

“No. You don’t know my aunt. No cops. I have to go.”

She caught his arm. “You can’t walk, Will. I’ll drive you back to the airport.”

He looked self-conscious as he said, “A ride to the interstate will suffice.”

Of course. He didn’t have any money. How could she have overlooked something as familiar as being broke?

“You can take my car,” she said, digging in her purse for a credit card that wasn’t up to its limit. “Use this for gas money. I can’t leave here and go with you. If the kidnappers call I have to be here.”

“They won’t call,” Will insisted. “Don’t you understand? This is tied up with my aunt, maybe back to my deep dark past, hell, I don’t know. But it isn’t some garden-variety kidnapper wanting a few bucks. You need to go somewhere safe. To a motel or something.” Pausing a second he added, “Or come with me.”

She wanted to go. The intensity of that want all but drowned her. Yet how did she abandon her post? She knew Leo’s best chance was his father. No one loved him as much, no one needed him as much—

Except her.

They’d both forgotten about George again. He shifted his weight and brought his hands from behind his back. He held what was left of the blue elephant.

“You’re not a cop, are you?” he said.

Will swore before grumbling, “This is not my day for fooling anyone.”

“You’re connected to the little boy?”

“He’s my son.”

“Julia thought you were dead.”

“I know. I don’t have to time to explain—”

George held up both hands, the elephant dangling, bleeding stuffing. “Hell, I don’t want an explanation. Even I can see something terrible is going on here.” Reaching in his pocket, he extracted a ring of keys and took one off. “Take my truck, the both of you. I’ll stay here. Take your cell phone, Julia, and I’ll let you know when and if a ransom call comes.”

“George, I can’t—”

“Your car won’t make it to Washington, we both know that. Wait, I have a better idea. Drive the truck to the field and take the Skyhawk. It’s all fueled up and ready to go.”

“That’s your personal plane, George. It’s brand-new. I couldn’t—”

“You’ll have it back before I can miss it,” he said. “Besides, all the others are tied up with business tomorrow. Go ahead, take it. You’ll be there in a few hours that way.”

Now Will protested. “You don’t know a thing about me.”

“No. But I do know Julia. And I trust her. Judging from the bullet lodged in the molding in the living room, she’s in danger. So are your aunt and your kid. Look, I don’t want to lose my best pilot.” His gaze lingering on Will’s torn, bloodied sleeve, he added, “When you get to my office, take a few minutes and go upstairs. There’s a shower up there and clean clothes. We’re about the same size, help yourself to what you need.”

“I’ll repay you,” Will said. “When I get my life back. When I find my son—”

“Good. Fuel’s expensive. Just take care of Julia.”

“You can count on it.”

“We can take my car—” Julia began, but Will stilled her with a glance. “You don’t have a spare. We can’t chance getting stuck out on the road. Take George’s truck. Leave his key on his desk. Let’s go.”

The two men shook hands. Their pact seemed to relegate Julia to the role of damsel in distress. A flicker of annoyance fizzled in a cold wave of rational thought. Face it, they were more or less right about her. Someone was trying to kill her and she didn’t have the faintest idea how to protect herself. From a mugger? Sure. But from a gun, fired from far away or a car aimed at her in an intersection? No way.