In the Heart of the Wind Book 1 in the WindTorn Trilogy (20 page)

“Drew and I were home for summer vacation and were working on a class project. I don’t even remember what now, but we were in the study when Jamie came running into the house, slamming the front door behind him. He yelled for Papa then stormed into Papa’s office.” Patrick winced. “That was something you did
not
do, but Jamie was so angry, he just barged in without knocking. He told Papa what had happened, demanded he fire Mike Cronin, and threatened to go to the cops if Papa didn’t.” Patrick shook his head. “You can just about imagine what Papa said to that.”

“Did Jamie really think your father would listen to him after everything that had happened between them?”

“He knew he wouldn’t. He just wanted to push the envelope, as they say, and wanted Papa to know just how angry he was. I remember me and Drew going to the office door, watching them shouting at one another, standing there in awe as Jamie threatened the part about the cops. We couldn’t believe he’d be so stupid to make such a threat.” Patrick ran his hand over his face.

“I can still hear him telling Papa he couldn’t stand being a part of a family like ours, knowing where the money came from, knowing what Papa did to little kids by selling them drugs. Papa hit him and knocked him down, but Jamie got back up again. He faced Papa as though they were equals, as though he had the same strength and power. Drew laughed, but I was scared out of my mind. I was so afraid Papa was going to kill Jamie. You should’ve seen the look on his face. If Jamie had been anyone else, Papa would’ve beaten him to death.”

“What happened?” Kristen whispered.

“Papa left the room. I think he knew if he stayed, he’d really hurt Jamie. I went to Jamie to shut him up, to calm him down. I thought if he didn’t, Papa would come back, and by the time it was over, Jamie would’ve been in the hospital. Drew thought so, too, especially after Jamie yelled he couldn’t stand the sight of his own father because he was a drug-dealing gangster.” Patrick shook his head. “Papa heard him.”

Kristen let out a long breath. “So now, after all these years, just to get even with him, Liam had you turn Jamie’s own face into the one face he hated the most. What a horribly exacting revenge.”

Patrick held up his refilled glass of gin in salute. “He told me, ‘Make him look like me, Paddy. Make it so whenever he looks into the mirror, he sees the face of the man who put him where he is. I don’t want him to ever forget.’”

“Poor Jamie.”

“Yeah, poor Jamie.” Patrick tilted his glass and drained it.

Kyle rang the
doorbell again, listening for movement inside the house. He cupped his hands and tried to peer into the breakfast room, but all he saw was Annie’s dog, Kibbles, staring up at him, his little tail wagging furiously.

“Where’s Mama, Kibby?” Kyle asked, tapping on the glass of the door. “Is Mama in there?” He grinned as the little Pomeranian began to turn around and around in circles. “Go get Mama,” Kyle said and laughed. “Go tell Mama she’s got company!”

After an excited yip, the little Pom disappeared. Kyle could hear continuous yipping, then he saw Annie. She smiled apologetically as she opened the storm door.

“Sorry, I was on the phone and I couldn’t get off.”

“No problem.” He hung his state patrolman’s cap on the hall tree, sniffed, then rubbed his hands together. “Is that mulled cider I smell?”

Annie laughed. “You know where the cups are.” She followed him into the kitchen. “Any word this morning?”

Kyle nodded as he poured a cup of the steaming cider. “Virgil got a call from a sheriff’s deputy down in Escambia County, that’s Pensacola, and the man offered to help in any way he could. He was a friend of Gabe’s. He’s going to be flying out here.”

“Why?” Annie sat at the breakfast table with Kyle and pushed a plate of homemade oatmeal cookies at him.

“All right,” Kyle said with a grin as he crammed a cookie into his mouth and began to speak around the treat. “He says he wants to talk about something important and he doesn’t want anyone down there knowing about it.”

“Could he know where Gabe is?”

Kyle looked at her over the rim of his cup. “No, but whatever he has to say might help us find him.” Gabe took her hand in his. “We’re going to find him, Annie. Don’t you ever forget it.”

She eased her hand from under his. “But what will we find, Kyle? What kind of cripple will they have made him by now?” She stood and went to the big picture window facing Rock Creek. “I’m so afraid they may be brainwashing him or turning him against me.” Her voice quivered. “I’m so scared.”

Kyle came to his feet, went to her and turned her into his arms. Almost instantly she began to sob, her body wracked with violent tremors.

“Let it out, baby,” he said softly. “Let it all out.”

“I want him back, Kyle,” she cried. “I want my husband back!”

“I know.” He ran his hand up and down her back.

“Why can’t they find him?” Her tears were wetting the front of his uniform shirt. “Why can’t they?”

“They will. We’ve just got to give it a little more time.”

Annie pushed away from him and looked up with red and swollen eyes into his face. “What if he doesn’t
have
time, Kyle? Everyday they’ve got him, they may be hurting him. They may be—”

“Stop it,” he said in a stern voice. “You can’t think like that. If they’d wanted to hurt him, Annie, they wouldn’t have gone to all the trouble they have. They would’ve just put a bullet in his head and that would have been the end of it.”

“You don’t know they haven’t,” she spat at him.

“Yes, I do,” he shot back.

Annie stared up into his eyes so positive, so sure, so filled with the absolute certainty Gabe was still alive. Her shoulders slumped. “I’m sorry.”

He pulled her into his arms once more. “It’s okay, baby. This has been hard for you.” Both of them jumped as the phone rang. “I’ll get it,” he told her and eased her from his embrace.

Annie sat at the table and stared out the back windows to the barren cornfield beyond. She barely heard Kyle speaking to whoever was on the phone, but when he returned to the table, she looked up at him and stilled. His face was chalk white.

“What’s wrong?” she stammered, coming slowly to her feet.

Kyle stood there, wavering, his big hands clutching spasmodically by his side. Annie had to repeat her question before he could answer.

“They found Gabe’s wallet.” His eyes bored into hers. “It was on a riverbank down on the Georgia-Florida line. Some fishermen brought it in.”

Unbounded fear washed over Annie. “Gabe?”

“They found the clothes he was wearing that night. His wedding ring was in one of the jacket pockets.” His voice became strained. “They’ve began dragging the river for his...” He couldn’t say it.

Annie’s eyelids fluttered, her eyes rolled up in her head and her knees buckled. She would have crashed to the floor in a heap had Kyle not leapt to catch her.

He stared up
at the grim, hateful face of the white orderly who had come in with two of the black orderlies to get him. No one said anything to him as they unbuckled his restraints. They had rolled in a gurney. His eyes flickered with fear as he looked up at them.

“Where are you taking me?” he asked, but they didn’t answer. He felt their hands on him, lifting him onto the gurney and his fear rose higher. “Where’s my brother?”

The white orderly, his broken nose encased in a splint, squinted his eyes and smiled. The smile was vicious, but he didn’t answer.

“Is Patrick here?” Their silence was evaporating what little bravery he had. “Is he going to take the stitches out this morning?”

They strapped him to the gurney, the cinches so tight they dug into his flesh, but the men wouldn’t answer him. Two of them were looking at him as though he were the main course for lunch, while the third, one of the black men, was looking at him with eyes that begged forgiveness. It was that look that terrified him the most.

“Where are you taking me?” he asked again, his head swiveling to look from one man to the other. His heart was beginning to pound against his rib cage. His mouth had gone dry. Then he remembered Lassiter had told him he was going to be put in isolation. Somehow the thought didn’t calm him. He swallowed hard as they rolled him into the corridor.

Overhead, the fluorescent lights hurt his eyes and he turned his photophobic eyes away from the glare. He passed nurses and orderlies who watched him go by with detached interest, turning to speak to one another as he passed, him the obvious topic of conversation. He saw men wandering down the hallway, eyes glazed, mouths slack, their shambling gait indicative of the drugged existence of most mental patients. He craned his neck to see a beautiful woman standing in one of the doorways, a doll held lovingly in her arms.

“Want to see my baby?” she asked, hurrying to the gurney. One of the black men pushed her gently away, said something softly to her and she faded behind the gurney.

Terror was beginning to build in him as the orderlies pushed the gurney through a set of double doors and he realized he was in some kind of treatment room. He lifted his head and looked around in confusion. There were strange-looking pieces of equipment in the room and a large circular operating room light hanging over a stationary operating table. As he was rolled toward the table, his heart began to lurch.

“What’re you going to do?” He was aware his voice was filled with primal terror.

The men simply began to unbuckle the straps on the gurney, their eyes boring into him, daring him to give them trouble. He knew if he did, the retaliation would be swift and exacting.

He began to tremble violently as they lifted him to the table. A low moan of abject terror welled up in his throat and he whimpered. The white orderly laughed.

“Dr. Lassiter’s going to give you something to groan about, pal.” The man buckled another strap tightly across Jamie’s forehead.

“And you ain’t gonna like it,” one of the black men said and chuckled as he tugged on the strap that ran across Jamie’s chest.

Instant recognition flooded Jamie’s mind and his eyes flew wide. He stared with terror-stricken shock at the black man who had spoken. He had heard that voice before. A long time ago. On a rainy night in 1986.

“No,” Jamie whispered, his voice quivering with fright. “Oh, God, no.”

The black man glanced across Jamie to the white orderly and grinned. “I think his memory ain’t all that bad.”

“It will be when the Doc gets through with him!”

Both voices, Jamie thought with pure terror. He had heard both those voices on that horrible night, and all the equally horrible nights that had followed. He had known then he would never forget how those faceless voices had sounded. And he hadn’t.

Even though the straps were firmly in place across him, the canvas pinching into the flesh of his wrists and ankles, pressing the breath from his lungs, holding his head in place, gouging into his hips and anchoring his knees to the table, he tried to get free. Tried to get away from the maniacal laughter that was making the hair on his scalp stir.

“Let’s get this over with,” he heard Dr. Lassiter bark.

He tried to call out to the man, to beg, but the white orderly gripped the lower portion of his face and pried his mouth open, forced a thick black wedge between his teeth, and held his chin tightly, keeping him from opening his mouth. Jamie grunted, tried to move his head, but the orderly kept a tight hold on his face even as he stepped aside to let the doctor move to the head of the table.

“I don’t want you to think this will become an everyday occurrence, James,” Lassiter explained as he began to rub something wet and cold onto Jamie’s temples. “But you have to endure it. If you behave in an acceptable manner, this won’t have to be done again. If you don’t...”

Jamie’s eyes rolled wildly as something tight was clamped on his temples. His heart hammered in his chest, sweat pouring from his pores, his adrenaline pumping through his body like a runaway piston. He screamed behind the constriction of the rubber wedge in his mouth, but all he managed to do was strain his already injured vocal chords. He tried to buck, but the restraints were securely in place.

“Shock therapy,” came the white orderly’s smug voice.

“Shut up, Beecher,” the doctor ordered.

The demon had a name, Jamie had time to think before Lassiter’s voice stopped the breath and the pulse in Jamie’s body.

“Clear!”

Beecher stepped back, as did the other men, then a current of pure agony shot through Jamie’s defenseless body.

The moment the electricity snapped into his head, Jamie felt the pain all the way to his toes and back again. The agony was excruciating and he had clamped his teeth down on the rubber wedge, instinctively realizing that had it not been in his mouth, he would have bitten through his tongue. His head snapped backward as far as the strap would allow, his toes curled, his fingers curled into claws, his spine went taut as steel, and his pelvis shot up from the table as his entire body went rigid.

He screamed. He knew he did. The pain seemed to go on forever.