In the Heart of the Wind Book 1 in the WindTorn Trilogy (9 page)

Annie’s eyes went to her neighbor. “I spent most of the day talking to a woman in Pensacola who knew him. She told me more than I wanted to know about my hus...” Annie clenched her eyes shut and lowered her head once more. “He lied to me. He lied to all of us. Gabe wasn’t who, or what, he said he was.”

Kyle stood staring out the window at the falling snow. “None of that matters right now. We’ve got to find him before they get him out of the state.”

“He told you he ran away from Pensacola because he was afraid they were going to kill him,” Alinor said, looking at Kyle. Her eyes swung to Annie. “You know that might not have been why he was running.”

“What do you mean?” her husband asked.

Alinor shook her head. “Something just don’t ring true. I can see him running from the mob, but why didn’t he take his wife along, too? I’m just thinking he might have been running from her as well.”

Annie nodded. “I expect that’s closer to the truth than anything else.” Her eyes narrowed. “Except—” She looked at Kyle. “—did you know he’d been hurt when he was in Florida?” At Kyle’s nod, she turned her head to one side. “He was kidnapped, wasn’t he?”

Kyle felt uncomfortable. “Kidnapped and tortured. They shot him full of dope until he was strung out on it, then they took him off it and left him to go cold turkey by himself.”

Virgil blanched. “My God, what a horrible time the boy must have had!”

“Did they ever find out who did it?” Jake asked.

“No,” Kyle answered. “Gabe just figured it was someone in the mob trying to get back at him for an investigation he was on.”

“Or it could have been his father-in-law’s way of getting back at him,” Annie said quietly.

Light—pale,
flickering, filtered—played across his eyelids and he struggled to open his eyes, but a heaviness kept them closed. He could hear the slapping of tires on wet pavement, the flick of windshield wipers, the sound of a hard rain falling on the roof. By the loud and tinny sound of the pummeling rain, he knew he was in a van of some sort.

He could smell food: hamburgers, fries, onion rings, and his stomach leapt with need, his mouth beginning to water. The sound of a straw slurping liquid, sucking air, made him swallow and underscored his thirst. His head ached; his belly growled; his bladder throbbed with the need to urinate. A slight groan of frustration and despair and anger he knew he could never vent came up from the very depths of him and he heard a voice he recognized.

“He’s coming ‘round.”

Gabe tried to move, but he felt constrictions around his wrists, holding his arms down to his sides. He felt his ankles rubbing together and knew his feet were tied as well. His head was on a soft, fresh-smelling surface and he turned his face into the fabric, feeling the coolness of cotton against his cheek and recognizing the faint scent of bleach and detergent.

“Here’s another 10cc’s. If he gives you any shit, just zap him back to la-la land.”

Turning his head back around, forcing his eyes open, making them focus on the face floating above him, Gabe stared up into the smiling visage of Mike Cronin sitting beside him.

“How ya doing, Jamie?” Cronin asked chuckling. “Feel like a game of one-on-one?”

Gabe became aware for the first time of the swaying IV bottle hanging on a hook just behind him. His eyes widened, his breath stopped. He was in an ambulance. Strapped down to the gurney. He turned to Cronin, whom he hadn’t seen since he was eighteen years old. The man was older, a little frayed around the edges, but still as deadly-looking as he ever was.

“Nice little house you had there. Too bad you won’t be seeing it again,” Cronin snickered.

A memory—bright, alive, painful—shot through Gabe’s mind and he struggled to sit up, his eyes wide with fear.

“Annie?” he gasped, his eyes boring into Mike Cronin’s dark gray orbs. A hard hand pressed into his chest. A hard voice spoke to him with a clear-cut warning as Cronin pushed him forcefully down.

“Safe as long as you behave yourself.” Cronin’s eyes squinted to slits of firmness. “Do you understand me, old son? You do what you’re told and that little Iowa farm girl gets out of this without a blemish.” There was a slight pause. “Those were Mrs. Tremayne’s orders. The old man wanted her throat cut.”

Gabe stared at Cronin. Understanding hit him like a sledgehammer between the eyes and he closed them, his panic building. Sweat dribbled down his temple, cold shivers trembled his body. He laid his head down and nodded his compliance, his eyes squeezed tightly together to keep the tears at bay.

“I won’t give you any trouble, Mike.”

Mike patted his leg. “That’s a good boy.”

“Untie me, Mike. I can’t go anywhere—”

“Orders, Bubba,” Mike snapped, cutting him off. “The restraints don’t come off until you’re twenty-thousand feet up.”

“And they may not come off then,” another man insisted from the front seat of the ambulance.

“Johnny O’Callahan,” Mike growled. “You remember him?”

Gabe did and the memory was one of dislike, distaste and discomfort. He was deathly afraid of Johnny O’Callahan and had been since they were cadets at Benedictine where John had been an upper classman who delighted in terrifying the plebes.

“Can you keep him away from me?” Gabe asked, his voice betraying the fear he had of O’Callahan.

“As long as you behave yourself and do what you’re told,” Mike agreed.

“Where are we?” Gabe thought he heard a lot of traffic around them.

“On Interstate 35. We just crossed into Minnesota.”

“Minnesota?” Gabe asked, puzzled.

“They’ve got cops looking for us all over Iowa.” Mike leaned back. “We’ve changed vehicles four times since I gave you that first injection.”

Gabe turned his head away. “They’ll be watching the airports.”

Mike shrugged. “As soon as we left the Des Moines airport, the plane we came in on took off and headed back south. Another plane’s waiting up in Minnesota for us.” Mike chuckled. “Who’s gonna be on the lookout for an ambulance on the interstate? When we get to Minneapolis, we just carry you on board the plane and jack back to God’s country.”

Gabe turned his eyes to Mike. “Shot full of your joy juice, no one the wiser.”

Mike nodded. “You got it. Just one very sick patient, lying all calm and sedated on a stretcher, on his way to a hospital in New Orleans.”

Gabe flinched. “He planned it down to the very last detail, didn’t he?” There was deep bitterness and regret in his voice. “You’re taking me to the clinic in Metarie, aren’t you?”

“Mr. Tremayne doesn’t leave anything to chance, Jamie,” Mike said in a sober voice. “You should know that by now. And if you don’t, you will before it’s all done.”

A hard thrust of terrible pain shot through Gabe’s eyes as he turned his face away from Mike Cronin. “Do you know what they’ll do to me there, Mike?”

Cronin agreed. “I have some idea, yeah.”

Gabe turned back to face the man he’d known nearly his entire life. “I don’t deserve this, Mike.”

Mike’s eyes searched Gabe’s. “As I see it, you do. After all, you brought it on yourself.”

Liam Tremayne
put the telephone down on the table beside him. He ignored his wife’s question about who had called and instead stared out at the moon-flecked waters beyond his deck. Absently, he reached out to pat her hand to forestall any further questions. He needed time to think, to plan, to throw a leash around the deadly temper activated by the unexpected call. His wife, having lived with the man a very long time, grew quiet and still, allowing her husband time to come to grips with whatever had turned his relaxed body rigid with fury.

Tremayne took a deep breath, released it and took another. His eyes cooled somewhat, but his temper was still lethally smoldering. Acute annoyance, mixed with unnatural emotions of which he had long since tried to rid himself, came back to prod at him much as one thrusts a tongue at a sore tooth. His anger took him back to a time he had tried to push from his memory, and with his memories came intense hate.

Only once in his sixty-nine years had any man, woman or child dared to stand up to him, dared to test his authority. Tremayne was used to absolute, total control of those around him. He pursued a ruthless dominance of his people, requiring mindless submission from every business acquaintance, employee, rival, or family member under his rule. He was quite capable of relentlessly destroying and eliminating anyone whom he even remotely suspected of not giving him full, blind obedience. His single-minded pursuit of the absolute pinnacle of power and control made him a deadly enemy and a formidable opponent, and a stern and uncompromising parent. Liam Tremayne was the kind of man other men feared, and he worked hard to maintain that image.

Having risen up from the ranks of street thievery and petty larceny in the Georgia port city of Savannah to become the head of a multi-billion dollar racketeering empire, Liam Tremayne wasn’t about to let anything, or anyone, stand in his way of becoming the most influential man in North America. He was already well on his way with fingers in more pies than the Feds even dreamed. He was well-insulated from the reaches of the law by layer upon layer of middlemen, legitimate enterprises, and dummy corporations fronted by lesser men of his ilk who answered only to the Tremayne Group.

And those men were loyal, willing to drop a dime on one another if the need arose, or willing to do time themselves to keep Liam Tremayne out of the limelight and out of jail. He’d chosen his lieutenants well—men who would rather die than betray Liam Tremayne. He only wished he’d been able to choose his family as well as the men with whom he did business.

His thoughts turned to the three children he claimed as his heirs. Calm thoughts always came when he thought of his sons and daughter.

His eldest son, Andrew, was a success, Liam thought as he stared out over the flickering lights of Miami—Harvard graduate; Phi Beta Kappa; Magna Cum Laude. A red-haired giant of a man at six-feet, three-inches tall with eyes the color of new-mown hay and a powerful physique well-maintained with a vigorous regimen of physical training. The boy had a thriving legal practice in Atlanta, specializing in corporate tax law.

Married with three charming, well-mannered little girls and one polite, respectful fourteen-year-old son, Andrew gave Liam the deference he demanded. He also maintained the air of respectability his father required: Permanent Deacon at his church in Marietta; Past Grand Knight of the Knights of Columbus; past Parish Council President; President of the Atlanta Bar Association; on the board of one of the local hospitals; chairman of numerous charities. Well-thought of, admired, spoken-well of, Andrew Tremayne was an asset of whom Liam could be proud. A brilliant lawyer and businessman, he had taken to the family business like a duck to water. When the time came, Andrew would inherit the control of the multi-billion dollar empire Liam had carved out for his children.

Patrick, the middle son, was just as successful a physician as his older brother was an attorney. After graduating with similar honors from Harvard, Patrick had done his residency at Johns Hopkins, honing his skills with the very best of them. His tall good looks, rust-colored hair and dark green eyes had caught the attention of one state senator’s wife, and with her help, Patrick was soon able to start his own practice. With a celebrity patient roster of some of the country’s most beautiful and influential people, Patrick had snipped and stitched his way into the hearts and pocketbooks of Hollywood star and Washington politico alike.

Author of three bestsellers dealing with the more glamorous side of cosmetic surgery, Patrick had denoted the proceeds from the books’ sales to help needy children throughout the world who needed reconstructive surgery in order to live a full, normal life. And Patrick hadn’t let his help stop there either. The young man had made several trips to Latin American countries to do surgery on those pitiful children himself, all at his own expense, taking with him other surgeons and nurses with soft hearts.

A Eucharistic Minister at his church in Orlando; State Deputy of the Florida K of C; past President of the Florida AMA; Eagle Scout leader; and co-host each year of the Jerry Lewis Telethon in Orlando, Patrick was a warm, caring individual who took his job and his family life very seriously. Having married his childhood sweetheart, Mary Marlene Shea, the young couple were the proud parents of six rambunctious, bright, and athletic boys ranging in age from eight  to seventeen.

Then there was Bridie.

Liam smiled as he leaned back in his lawn chair. The warm tropical air blew over him, rattled the palm tree high overhead, and moved on to ripple the water of his private marina. The thought of his only daughter brought tears to Liam’s eyes. Of all his children, he loved Bridget the best. Whenever he had reason to think of her, and if truth be told, he
made
time to think of his lovely, intelligent daughter, the heart of stone he had always been accused of having softened.

How could he best describe his Bridie? he wondered as he closed his eyes and pictured the glorious mane of strawberry-blond hair that framed Bridie’s elfin face.
Beautiful?
Yes, she was certainly that. With her pert, turned-up nose with its light sprinkling of leprechaun freckles across the bridge and her long reddish gold lashes that hid startlingly emerald green eyes, she had won the Miss Georgia Contest and been first runner up at the Miss World beauty pageant. A true Irish lass from the crown of that Gaelic hair to the tips of her pretty feet which could dance a jig with the best of them, she had also won the Miss Congeniality contest at both pageants.