Читать книгу Egan Cassidy's Kid - BEVERLY BARTON, Beverly Barton - Страница 10

“Don’t eat so fast,” Maggie Douglas scolded. “We aren’t running late this morning. We have plenty of time to get you to school early for your student council meeting.”

“I’m hungry, Mama,” Bent replied, his mouth half-full of cereal. “Is my grilled cheese sandwich ready, yet?”

Using a metal spatula, Maggie sliced the sandwich in two, then lifted it from the electric skillet and laid it on her son’s plate. For the past six months the boy had been eating her out of house and home. No matter how much he ate, he remained famished. She smiled, remembering how her father had teased her brother when he’d gone through his ravenous period at about the same age Bent was now.

Maggie wanted to ruffle her son’s hair, the way she’d done when he was younger. But another change that had occurred in the past few months was Bent’s obsession with his hair and clothes. He wore his silky black hair in the latest style: short, moussed and sticking straight up. And his baggy jeans and oversize shirt looked as if they’d been purchased at a secondhand store, despite their hefty price tags.

Bent lifted a sandwich half and stuck it into his mouth. His gaze met Maggie’s just as she rolled her eyes heavenward. He munched on the grilled cheese, swallowed and then washed it all down with a large glass of orange juice.

Bent wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Go ahead and ask me.”

“Ask you what?”

“Ask me if my legs are hollow.” Laughing, Bent shoved back his chair and stood. “You know you said Grandfather used to tell Uncle Bentley that he ate so much his legs had to be hollow.”

“I don’t need to ask you. I’ve come to the conclusion that all teenage boys have hollow legs and sometimes—” she reached up and pecked the top of his head “—hollow noggins, too.”

“Ah, gee, Mama, don’t start that again. Just because I want to go to Florida with the guys this summer doesn’t mean I’m stupid.”

Maggie looked up at her six-foot son and a shudder rippled along her nerve endings. Dear Lord, the older he got, the more he resembled his father. And the stronger the wild streak in him grew. A yearning for adventure and excitement that was alien to Maggie. She’d always preferred safety and serenity.

“You’re too young to go off with a bunch of other boys, without a chaperone.” She and Bent had been batting this argument back and forth for weeks now. She had no intention of allowing her fourteen-year-old child to spend a week in Florida with five other boys, ranging in age from fourteen to eighteen.

“Chris’s big brother is going along to chaperone us.” Bent picked up his clear vinyl book bag from the kitchen counter.

“And how old is Chris’s big brother?” Maggie downed the last drops of lukewarm coffee in her mug, set the mug aside and grabbed her purse off the table.

“He’s twenty,” Bent said, as if twenty were an age of great wisdom and responsibility.

Maggie snatched up her car keys and headed toward the back door. “Let’s go. If I have to drop you off a block from the school, then we’d better head out now so you’ll have time to walk that extra block.”

Bent grabbed Maggie’s shoulder, then leaned over and kissed her cheek. “You’re the absolute best mom. Some mothers wouldn’t understand why a guy my age would be embarrassed to have his mommy drive him to school every day.”

Maggie caressed her kissed cheek. Those sweet moments of little-boy affection were few and far between these days. Her only child was growing up—fast. Each day she noted some small change, some almost indiscernible way he had transformed from a boy into a young man.

“Buttering me up won’t work, you know.” She opened the kitchen door and shooed him outside. “You aren’t going to Florida this summer, unless you go with me.”

Bent shrugged. “If you say so.”

He let the subject drop, but Maggie knew the issue was far from dead. Her son was a good kid, who’d given her very little trouble over the years, but she knew that the wanderlust in him would sooner or later break her heart. She could protect him, now, while he was still underage, but what would happen once he reached eighteen?

Ten minutes later, Maggie pulled her Cadillac over to the curb, one block from Parsons City High School. “Do you need any money?”

Bent flung open the door, glanced over his shoulders and smiled. Even his smile reminded her of his father’s.

“Got plenty,” Bent said. “You just gave me twenty Monday, remember?”

Maggie nodded. “Have a good one. And don’t be late this afternoon. You’re getting fitted for your tux at four-thirty so you need to meet me at the bookstore by four.”

He slid out of the car, then leaned over and peered inside, his smile unwavering. “I’ll meet you at the bookstore no later than four.” With that said, he slammed the door and walked down the sidewalk.

Maggie watched him for a few minutes, then eased the car away from the curb and out into traffic. Another perfectly ordinary day, she thought, then sighed contentedly. Perhaps her life wasn’t perfect, but it was good. Maybe she didn’t have a special man in her life and hadn’t had anyone since her divorce from Gil Douglas four years ago, but she was content. She had the most wonderful child in the whole world, a job she loved, enough money for Bent’s college as well as her old age and both she and Bent were blessed with excellent health. What more could a woman want?

A sudden, unexpected memory flashed through her mind. Her heartbeat accelerated. Heat flushed her body. Why had she thought about him? she wondered. She had tried to forget, tried not to ever think about that week they’d spent together and the way she had felt when she was with him. Fifteen years was a long time. Long enough for her to have gotten over her infatuation. So, why had she been thinking about Egan Cassidy so often lately? Was it because Bent had grown up to be a carbon copy of him?

She couldn’t help wondering where Egan was now. Was he even alive? Considering his profession, he could have been killed years ago. Emotion lodged in her throat. Despite the fact that a part of her hated him, she couldn’t bear the thought that he might be dead. As surely as she hated him, she still cared. After all, he was Bent’s father.

“Psst… Hey, kid, are you Bentley Tyson Douglas?” a deep, masculine voice asked.

Bent jerked his head around, seeking the man who had called out to him. “Who wants to know?”

A big, burly guy wearing faded jeans and an army fatigue shirt stepped out from behind a car in the parking lot at Bent’s right. “I’m a friend of a friend of your old man’s.”

Bent inspected the rather unsavory-looking character, from his shaggy dark beard to his scuffed leather boots. Bent very seriously doubted that this man was a friend of anyone Gil Douglas referred to as even an acquaintance. His adoptive father was one of the biggest snobs in the world. He probably wouldn’t let a guy who looked like this man did walk his dog.

“So? What do you want?” Bent asked.

“I got a kid fixing to start school here next year,” the man said, easing closer and closer. “Thought maybe you could tell me about the teachers and stuff like that.”

Bent glanced into the mostly empty parking lot. It’d be another twenty minutes or so before the majority of his fellow students would start arriving. The only cars already here belonged to a few teachers on early duty and the other student council members. But right this minute, he didn’t see another soul around. Instinct warned him not to trust this man. Maybe he was selling dope. Or maybe he was just a nutcase. Whatever, there was something all wrong about him.

Across the street, on the school grounds, Bent noticed a couple of students entering the building, but they were too far away to hear him if he yelled.

What are you afraid of, Douglas? he asked himself. You’re not some little kid. You’re a pretty big guy, so if this man tries anything funny, you can handle him, can’t you?

“Look, I haven’t got time to talk,” Bent said, taking several steps backward until he eased off the sidewalk and into the street.

The man grinned. Bent didn’t like that sinister smirk. Just as he started to turn and make a mad dash toward the schoolyard, he heard the roar of a car’s engine. Before he had a chance to run, the big man moved in on him. Tires screeched. Someone grabbed him from behind. A hand holding a foul-smelling rag clamped down over his nose and mouth. With expert ease, the two men lifted him and tossed him into the back of the car.

The last thing Bent remembered was the car speeding away down the street.

“So how does mama bear feel about her cub going to his first prom?” Janice Deweese stacked the tattered books into a neat pile, being careful not to crease any of the loose pages. “And with an older woman!”

“Grace Felton is only two years older than Bent,” Maggie corrected. “She’s hardly an older woman. Besides, I’ve known Grace’s parents all my life and—”

“She’s quite suitable for Bent.”

“Lord, did I sound that snobbish?” Maggie stood perched on a tall, wooden ladder placed against the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves at the back of the room.

“I did hear a hint of Gil Douglas in that comment.” Janice eyed the books in front of her. “Should I start on these today or wait until tomorrow? Repairing all eight of them will require a great deal of patience.”

Maggie checked her wristwatch. “Since it’s nearly four, why don’t you wait and get started on that job first thing in the morning. Bent should be here soon and I’ll need you to close up shop for me today.”

“Have you two settled your trip-to-Florida argument?” Janice slid off the stool behind the checkout counter and stretched to her full five-foot height.

“As far as I’m concerned it’s settled.” One by one, Maggie placed the recent shipment of books, which were collections of first-person Civil War accounts, into their appropriate slots on the shelves. “Bent is too young to go off to Florida with a bunch of other teenage boys. He’ll have time enough to indulge his adventurous streak after he turns eighteen.”

“Bent’s a great kid, you know. I don’t think you need to worry too much about him. You’ve done a wonderful job of raising him without a father,” Janice said.

“But Bent has a father who—”

“Who wasn’t much of a parent, even before you two got a divorce. Let’s face it, Maggie, you’ve brought up your son with practically no help from Gil Douglas.”

“Gil tried.” Maggie wished she could have loved Gil the way a woman should love her husband. Perhaps if she had, Gil might have been a better father to Bent. In the beginning, he had made a valiant effort, had even adopted Bent. But a man like Gil Douglas just wasn’t cut out to raise another man’s son.

“Face the truth, Maggie. Gil couldn’t get past the fact that you were engaged to him when you had your little fling with Egan Cassidy.”

Maggie tensed. “I’ve asked you not to mention his name.”

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to dredge up bad memories.”

That was the problem, Maggie thought. The memories weren’t bad. They were bittersweet, but not bad. Nothing had prepared her for an affair with a man like Egan. She had been swept away by a passion unlike anything she’d known—before or since.

“It’s all right,” Maggie said. “Just try not to forget again.”

The bell over the front door jingled as a customer entered. Both Janice and Maggie glanced at the entrance. Mrs. Newsom, a regular patron who collected first editions and had a passion for books of every kind, waved and smiled.

“You two just keep on doing whatever you’re doing,” Mrs. Newsom said, her sweet grin deepening the laugh lines around her mouth. “I just came to browse. I haven’t been by in several days and I’m having withdrawal symptoms.” Her girlish laughter belied the fact that she was seventy.

Maggie climbed down the ladder, shoved it to the end of the stacks and emerged from the dark cavern of high bookshelves into the airy lightness at the front of the store, where the shelves were low and spaced farther apart. She checked her watch again. Four o’clock exactly. Bent should arrive any minute now. Her son was always punctual. A trait he had either inherited or learned from her.

Bent regained consciousness slowly, his mind fuzzy, his body decidedly uncomfortable. Where was he? What had happened? He attempted to move, but found himself unable to do more than twitch. Someone had bound his hands and feet. He tried to call out and suddenly realized that he’d also been gagged.

The guy in the school parking lot and someone who’d come up from behind had drugged him and tossed him into a car.

Bent looked all around and saw total darkness. But he felt the steady rotation of tires on blacktop and heard the hum of an engine. He was still in a car, only now he was inside the trunk.

Obviously he’d been kidnapped. But why? Who were these guys and what did they want with him? His mother’s finances were healthy enough for her to be considered wealthy by some standards, but he knew for a fact that her net worth was less than a million. Her bookstore, which specialized in rare and out-of-print books, barely broke even, so she relied on interest and dividends from her investments for her livelihood. So why would anyone kidnap him when there were kids out there whose parents were multimillionaires? It just didn’t make sense.

Bent had heard about young boys and girls being kidnapped and sold on the black market, so he couldn’t help wondering if his abductors planned to ship him overseas. The thought of winding up on an auction block and being sold to the highest bidder soured Bent’s stomach. Or he could end up in some seedy brothel, a plaything for dirty old men. A shiver racked his body. He’d rather die first!

But he had no intention of dying or of being used as a sex slave. He’d find a way to get out of this mess. He wasn’t going to give up without one hell of a fight!

“I can’t understand where Bent is,” Maggie said, checking her watch again. “It’s ten after five. He always calls if he’s running late and he hasn’t called.”

Janice grasped Maggie’s trembling hands into her steady ones and squeezed tightly. “He’s all right. Maybe he forgot. Or he could be goofing off with the guys or—”

Maggie jerked her hands free. “Something’s wrong. He’s been in an accident or… Oh, God, where is he?”

“Do you want me to check the hospital? I can call the ER.”

“If he’d been in an accident, the police would have contacted me by now, wouldn’t they?”

“I think so. Yes, of course they would have.”

Maggie paced the floor, her soft leather shoes quiet against the wood’s shiny patina. “I’m going to call some of his friends, first, before I panic. He usually catches a ride with Chris or Mark or sometimes Jarred.”

“So call their houses and find out if maybe he’s with one of them. And if he just forgot about calling you, don’t give him a hard time.”

“Oh, I won’t give him a hard time,” Maggie said. “I’ll just wring his neck for worrying me to death.”

Setting her rear end on the edge of her desk in the office alcove, separated from the bookstore by a pair of brocade curtains, Maggie lifted the telephone and dialed Chris McWilliams’s number first.

Fifteen minutes and six calls later, Maggie knew what she had to do. Janice stood at her side, a true friend, desperate to help in any way she could. With moisture glazing her eyes, Maggie exchanged a resigned look with Janice, then lifted the receiver and dialed one final number.

Paul Spencer, Parsons City’s chief of police answered. “Spencer here.”

“Yes, this is Maggie Douglas. I’d like to report a missing child.”

“Whose child is missing?” he asked.

“Mine.”

“Bent’s missing?” Paul, who’d gone to high school with Maggie, asked, a note of genuine concern in his voice.

“I’ve contacted all his friends and even talked to Mr. Wellborn, the school principal. Although I dropped him at school this morning—early—for a student council meeting, he never arrived. No one has seen him all day. Oh, God, Paul…help me.”

“Are you at home or at the shop?”

“I’m still downtown at the shop.”

“Stay where you are. I’ll be right over. As soon as you fill out the N.C.I.C form, we’ll get it entered into the computer. But I’ll go ahead and have a couple of men start checking around to see what they can find.”

“Thank you.” The receiver dangled from Maggie’s fingers. Every nerve in her body screamed. This couldn’t be happening. Not to her child. Not to Bent, the boy she loved more than life itself.

Janice took the telephone from Maggie and returned the receiver to its cradle, then she wrapped her arms around her best friend. Maggie hugged Janice fiercely as she tried to control her frazzled emotions. This was a parent’s worst nightmare. A missing child. She kept picturing Bent hurt and alone, crying for help. Then that scenario passed from her mind and another quickly took its place. Bent kidnapped and abused—perhaps even killed.

Maggie clenched her teeth tightly in an effort not to scream aloud.

Egan Cassidy poured himself a glass of Grand cru Chablis as he watched the salmon steak sizzling on the indoor grill. As a general rule, he dined alone, as he did tonight. Occasionally he had beer and a sandwich at a local bar with another Dundee agent. And once in a blue moon he actually took a woman out to dinner. But as he grew older, he found his penchant for solitude strengthening.

He liked most of his fellow Dundee agents, but except for two or three, they were younger than he. Perhaps the age difference was the reason he had very little in common with most of the other employees of the premiere private security and investigation firm in the Southeast, some said in the entire United States.

And as for the ladies—he’d never been a womanizer, not even in his youth. There had been special women, of course, and a few minor flirtations. But it had been years since he’d dated anyone on a regular basis. He had found that most of the women close to his age, those within a ten-year-span older or younger, were often bitter from a divorce or desperate because they’d never married. And he found younger women, especially those in their twenties, a breed unto themselves. Whenever he dated a woman under thirty, he somehow felt as if he were dating his daughter’s best friend. Of course, he didn’t have a daughter, but the fact was that at the ripe old age of forty-seven he easily could have a twenty-five-year-old daughter.

Egan turned the salmon steak out onto a plate, then carried the plate and the wine to the table in his kitchen. Although the kitchen in his Atlanta home was ultramodern, his table and chairs were antiques that he’d brought here from his apartment in Memphis. Over the years, while he’d traveled the world as a soldier of fortune, he had always returned to the States, so he’d maintained a place in his old hometown. But two years ago, after joining the Dundee Agency, he’d bought a home in Atlanta and moved his furniture, many priceless antiques, into his newly purchased two-story town house.

The salmon flaked to the touch of his fork and melted like butter when he put it into his mouth. He ate slowly, savoring every bite. He enjoyed cooking and had found that he was a rather good chef.

Egan poured himself more Chablis, then stood, picked up the bowl of fresh raspberries on the counter and headed for the living room. He could clean up later, before bedtime, he thought. As he entered the twenty-by-twenty room, he punched a button on the CD player and the strains of the incomparable Stan Getz’s saxophone rendition of “Body and Soul” filled the room. The stereo system he and his friend and fellow Dundee agent, Hunter Whitelaw, had installed was state-of-the-art. The best money could buy. Everything Egan owned was the best.

Easing down into the soft, lush leather chair, he sighed and closed his eyes, savoring the good music as he had savored the good food. Maybe growing up on the mean streets of Memphis, with no one except an alcoholic father for family, had whetted Egan’s appetite for the good things in life. And maybe his lack of a decent upbringing and his brief tenure in Vietnam when he’d been barely eighteen had predisposed him for the occupation to which he had devoted himself for twenty-five years. He’d made a lot of money as a mercenary and had invested wisely, turning his ill-gained earnings into quite a tidy sum. He had more than enough money, so if he chose to never work again, he could maintain his current lifestyle as long as he lived.

Two hours later, the kitchen cleaned and the bottle of Chablis half-empty, Egan made his way into his small home office. The bookshelves and furniture were a light oak and the walls a soft cream. The only color in the room was the dark green, tufted-back leather chair behind his desk. This was the one room in the town house that his decorator hadn’t touched. He smiled when he remembered Heather Sims. She’d been interested—very interested. And if he had chosen to pursue a relationship with her, she would have been only too happy to have filled his lonely hours with idle chitchat and hot sex. Three dates, one night of vigorous lovemaking and they had parted as friends.

Egan sat, then opened his notebook and picked up a pen. No one knew that he wrote poetry. Not that he was ashamed, just that to him it was such a private endeavor. At first, it had been a catharsis, and perhaps even now it still was.

With pen in hand, he wrote.

because he was eighteen

he was considered

man enough to fight old men’s wars…

The ringing telephone jarred him from his memories, from a time long ago when he’d lived a nightmare—a boy trapped in the politicians’ war, a boy who became a man the hard way.

Egan lifted the receiver. “Cassidy here.”

“Well, well, well. Hello, old friend.”

Egan’s blood ran cold. He hadn’t heard that voice in years. The last time he’d run into Grant Cullen, they’d both been in the Middle East, both doing nasty little jobs for nasty little men. When had that been, six years ago? No, more like eight.

“What do you want, Cullen?”

“Now, is that any way to talk to an old friend?”

“We were never friends.”

Cullen laughed and the sound of his laughter chilled Egan to the bone. Something was wrong. Bad wrong. His gut instincts warned him that this phone call meant big trouble.

“You’re right,” Grant Cullen agreed. “Neither of us has ever had many friends, have we?”

Cullen was playing some sort of game, Egan thought, and he was enjoying himself too damn much. “You want something. What is it?”

“Oh, just to talk over old times. You know, reminisce about the good old days. Discuss how you screwed me over in Nam and how I’ve been waiting nearly thirty years to return the favor.”

“You want me, you know where to find me,” Egan said, his voice deadly soft.

“Oh, I want you all right, but I want you to come to me.”

“Now why the hell would I do that?”

“Because I’ve got something that belongs to you. Something you’ll want back.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Egan clutched the phone tightly, his knuckles whitening from the strength of his grasp.

“Remember Bentley Tyson III, that good ol’ boy from Alabama who saved your life back in Nam?”

“How the hell do you know about Bentley?”

“You’ve been paying for flowers to be put on his grave every year ever since he killed himself fifteen years ago.”

“Get to the point,” Egan snapped, highly agitated that a man like Cullen would even dare to say Bentley’s name. Bentley, who’d been a good man destroyed by an evil war.

“The point is I know that when you paid your condolences to Tyson’s little sister fifteen years ago, you stayed in Parsons City for a week. What were you doing, Cassidy, screwing Maggie Tyson?”

Egan saw red. Figuratively and literally. Rage boiled inside him like lava on the verge of erupting from a volcano. How did Cullen know about Maggie, about the fact that he’d spent a week in her home?

He’s guessing about the affair you had with her, Egan assured himself. He wants to think Maggie meant something to you, that she still does.

“I don’t know where you got your information,” Egan said. “But you’ve got it all wrong. Bentley’s little sister was engaged to a guy named Gil Douglas and they got married a few months after Bentley’s funeral.”

“Oh, I know sweet Maggie was engaged, but she didn’t marry Gil Douglas until five years later. What Maggie did a few months after Bentley’s funeral—nine months to be exact—was give birth to a bouncing baby boy.”

Egan felt as if he’d been hit in the belly with a sledgehammer. His heartbeat drummed in his ears. He broke out in a cold sweat. No, God, please, no! He’d spent his entire adult life looking over his shoulder, waiting for Grant Cullen to attack. He had denied himself the love and companionship of a wife and the pride and joy of children to protect them from the revenge Cullen would be sure to wreak on anyone who meant a damn thing to Egan.

“What’s the matter, buddy boy, didn’t sweet Maggie tell you that you have a son?”

“You’re crazy! I don’t have a son.” He couldn’t have a child. God wouldn’t be that cruel.

“Oh, yes, you do. A fine boy of fourteen. Big, tall, handsome. Looks a whole hell of a lot like you did when you were eighteen and you and I were buddies in that POW camp.”

“I do not have a son,” Egan repeated.

“Yes, Cassidy, you do. You and Maggie Tyson Douglas.”

Cullen laughed again, a sharp, maniacal sound that sliced flesh from Egan’s bones.

“You’re wrong,” Egan said, his statement a plea to God as well as a denial to Cullen.

“Run a check. Your name is on his birth certificate. And one look at a photograph of Bentley Tyson Douglas will confirm the facts.”

“I don’t believe anything you’ve told me. You’re a lying son of a bitch!”

“Well, believe this, buddy boy. As we speak, your son is in my hands. I had him flown in from Alabama this afternoon. So just think about that for a while. And you have a good night. Bye now.”