Janelle Taylor (20 page)

Jordan nodded.

She never wanted to go back to the house. Not until Beau came back.

As though he were reading her thoughts, Spencer asked, “What time will Beau be home?”

Home.

That he referred to this unfamiliar place as “home” made a lump rise in Jordan’s throat. This wasn’t home. Not for him—not for any of them.

Her town house in Georgetown wasn’t home for Spencer, either.

The little boy’s only home was a Philadelphia mansion that now lay empty and deserted forever by its owners.

Spencer had asked about his mother a few times this morning.

But he had asked about Beau first.

His face fell when she reminded him that Beau had gone back to Washington for a meeting. And Spencer certainly didn’t perk up when she once again evaded his follow-up question about when he was going to see his mother again.

How long could she avoid telling him about his parents’ deaths?

Guilt seeped into her when she thought about last night—about the pleasure she’d found in that fleeting interlude with Beau.

How could they have been thinking of anything but Spencer’s plight? How could they have allowed themselves to give in to temptation, to think of their own needs when this little boy would never again have the one thing he needed most?

If Beau hadn’t told her about his own loss, it never would have happened.

But she had found herself caught up in his tragic tale, wanting to ease his pain.

No, Jordan. Your motives weren’t as noble as that.

Maybe at first. But when she looked into his eyes, and knew he was going to kiss her, pure desire had overtaken her.

She couldn’t let that happen again. She needed to keep her head clear and her mind on Spencer’s welfare.

“Whoa! Whoa, Jordan, look!”

She jerked her gaze back toward the horizon, where Spencer was pointing.

Against the backdrop of an ominously black sky, the green-gray sea seemed to be growing more frenzied by the moment. As the wind whipped strands of damp hair against her cheek, Jordan stared at the furious lather of monstrous waves.

Moments ago, she had told herself that she wasn’t afraid of this storm.

Now she wasn’t so sure.

Now she was having trouble finding anything that
didn’t
frighten her.

Hurry back, Beau,
she begged silently, fervently, hugging herself against the clammy wind.

Beau reached his apartment in record time. Soaked to the bone from the rain, chilled despite the warm, humid weather, he was in and out of the shower in a matter of minutes. In the bedroom, he saw that he had time to spare before he had to be at the office for his meeting.

Again, he tried dialing the beach house. He had called
every five minutes for the past hour, to no avail. This time was no different. The phone rang incessantly before he finally hung up.

He tossed the receiver aside and reached for the television remote control. There was a commercial on The Weather Channel, so he quickly tuned to MSNBC News, figuring they would have an update on Hurricane Agatha.

Sure enough, a reporter was shown in a blustery live shot with a caption that indicated she was in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.

Beau toweled himself dry and dressed slowly, riveted to the television screen.

The hurricane was tracking up the coast, now expected to make landfall in Nag’s Head, North Carolina around daybreak. The severity of the storm depended on several factors, but most areas along the South Carolina coast were being evacuated.

Beau had apparently missed the live report from the Outer Banks, but he managed to piece together that the evacuation there was still voluntary at this point. The network would broadcast regular updates through-out the day.

When the anchor turned his attention to other news, Beau muted the television and again tried dialing the beach house.

This time, to his shock, Jordan answered on the third ring.

“Where have you been?” he demanded, relief coursing through him.

“Out on the beach,” she said breathlessly, as though she had dashed for the phone. “We just came back in. You should see the waves, Beau. Spencer wanted to—”

“Jordan, there’s a hurricane headed up
th
e coast,”
he cut in, his eye on the television set, where there was a graphic regarding the Fed’s latest interest rate. “You should be safe until I get back tonight, but then we’re going to have to get out of there.”

There was a pause.

“A hurricane?” she echoed softly. “Oh, God. I had no idea. No wonder …”

“Jordan, there’s a voluntary evacuation of the Outer Banks now. They’re talking about the possibility of a mandatory one. If that happens, we’ll have to leave. Or maybe we should leave anyway.”

“But… where would we go?”

“Back here?” he said, frustrated. “Hell, I don’t know. We can’t keep running. Can we? Is that what you want? Is that what’s best for Spencer?”

“All I know is that I made a promise to a friend,” she said, so softly that he realized Spencer must be right there with her. “I’m planning to keep it, Beau, at any cost.”

“I know you are.” He gazed idly at the television, where a report from Sunny California was apparently showing the latest Hollywood star getting his footprints on the sidewalk outside Mann’s.

Jordan was silent.

“Look,” he said, checking his watch, “I’m on my way to my meeting now. I’ll be out of there in an hour or two, even if I have to cut it short. I’ll be back to you and Spencer as soon as possible, Jordan. And then we’ll figure out what to do. Don’t worry. No matter what, we’ll keep that little boy safe.”

“Thanks, Beau.”

“Hang in there. And for God’s sake, stay inside. It’s getting rough out there, and this is only the edge of the storm.”

“We’ll be fine. Don’t worry. Get back safely.”

“I will.”

He heard a click as she hung up.

He walked toward the television, pointing the remote at the screen to turn it off.

Then the graphic over the anchor’s shoulder captured his attention.

There was a streamer of yellow police tape and a chalk outline of a male and female silhouette, captioned “Murder in Philadelphia.”

Beau hurriedly jammed the mute button to restore the sound as the scene switched to a reporter standing outside an elaborate brick Georgian-style home on a leafy street.

”… police have not been forthcoming about possible suspects. But a source here now says that there may be a link between Reno Averill’s death and a high-profile client he recently agreed to represent.”

Beau stood frozen in front of the television screen, his heart pounding.

“Convicted, paroled pedophile James Shelton now stands accused of the strangulation deaths of several teenaged girls in the metropolitan Philadelphia-New Jersey area—including the murder of Lisa Gisonni, daughter of reputed mob soldier Joseph “the Moose” Gisonni, a member of the notorious Beramino crime family. Shelton, who selected his victims at random, has reportedly confessed to abducting, raping, and strangling the girl on Christmas Eve of 2000. He faced certain conviction when the case went to trial—until Averill, notorious for winning acquittals in cases like this, replaced defense lawyer Howard Goff.”

Beau sank to the edge of the bed, riveted to the courthouse footage of a no-nonsense-looking lawyer
escorting his client, a pock-marked loser that even a fresh haircut and an obviously newly purchased suit and tie couldn’t transform.

“Now Shelton may be facing acquittal on a technicality. But NBC News has just learned that Shelton’s sixteen-year-old daughter, who lives in New York City with her mother, Shelton’s estranged wife, has been missing for several days.”

There was a school photograph of a lank-haired young girl wearing a vacant expression.

“While the girl has a history of drug and alcohol abuse, and has been known to vanish for a day or two at a time, there is speculation among those who know her that this time she met with foul play—and that Joseph Gisonni may be behind her disappearance as well as the double murder of Reno Averill and his wife, Phoebe.”

Beau felt sick at the sight of two tarp-covered bodies being loaded into an ambulance in a waterfront scene.

Those were Spencer’s parents’ bodies.

Tears sprang to Beau’s eyes. He swiped them with the back of his sleeve, not caring that he was wearing a two-thousand-dollar suit coat.

“Though Gisonni has an airtight alibi for the night they were slain, a source confirms that his ties to organized crime suggest he might have ordered the killing of the Averills. Gisonni was heard threatening the defense attorney and his family after he joined the Shelton defense.”

Beau gasped as a familiar face filled the television screen. The snapshot couldn’t have been taken more than a month or two ago. It showed Spencer exactly as he looked now. He was smiling into the sun, holding a fishing pole on the deck of a boat.

“As for young Spencer Averill, Reno and Phoebe Averill’s four-year-old son, police originally assumed he was on board his father’s yacht, was killed with his parents, and that his body simply had yet to surface. Now that several days have passed and police divers have turned up nothing, there is speculation that the child may have been abducted from the scene by the killer. Police are asking anyone who has seen Spencer Averill to contact them at one-eight-hundred, five-five-five, three-oh-four-nine.”

The words
Confidential Police Hotline
and the 800 telephone number replaced the photograph of Spencer’s face.

“Meanwhile, the official search for a motive and suspect in the Averill slaying goes on. Now back to you, Brian.”

The scene shifted back to the anchor and a story about a shark attack on a surfer in Oregon.

Beau rose, strode across the room, and turned off the television set.

His mind was reeling as he picked up his keys and his cell phone. He headed blindly for the door.

As he closed it behind him and turned the key in the lock, it occurred to him that maybe he should have brought an umbrella.

But he didn’t go back.

Two-thousand-dollar suit and Ed Landry’s expectations be damned, there wasn’t a moment to waste.

For a moment, as he dashed down the quiet carpeted hallway toward the elevator bank, he again considered skipping the meeting and heading straight back to North Carolina.

But he was already here in Washington.

Ed was counting on him.

He owed Ed. His friend had given him more than a job. He had presented a chance for a fresh start when Beau most desperately needed one.

He could go to the meeting and cut it short as he had planned.

He would still have plenty of time to beat the storm.

Thank God he had happened to catch that story on the news. Now, at least, he knew what they were dealing with—or might be dealing with.

The newscaster had been careful to attribute the speculation to an unnamed source. The police weren’t officially linking the Averill murders to the mob, but the implication was crystal clear.

Beau had heard of the Beramino crime family. He knew that they were powerful and lethal.

What the hell had Reno Averill been thinking, getting tangled up with them?

Okay, Beau conceded as he got on the elevator, the defense lawyer wasn’t directly connected to them. But he was representing the serial killer responsible for a mob soldier’s daughter’s death.

If Gisonni intended to get even with Shelton and his attorney, he would probably do so in exactly that manner: by hurting Shelton’s daughter, since he couldn’t get to Shelton himself, who was in prison. And by going after not just Reno, but his family, too.

So who was the mysterious pirate?

A hit man hired by Gisonni and the Beramino family?

Jordan and Spencer are safe where they are,
Beau reminded himself as he got off the elevator and crossed the parking garage toward the SUV.

With Spencer’s photograph being flashed on the national news, they couldn’t afford to be seen anywhere the child might be recognized.

So Hurricane Agatha was, it now seemed, a blessing in disguise. In bearing down on the Carolina coast, the storm had further isolated the beach house and sent people fleeing the Outer Banks.

He had to call Jordan and let her know what was going on.

In the car, Beau steered his way out into the busy weekday traffic before turning down the volume on the radio and reaching for his cell phone.

As soon as he tried to dial, he realized he’d made a mistake.

A huge mistake.

The display screen was flashing an orange “Low Battery” image.

He cursed under his breath. He wasn’t used to carrying the damn thing, and he sure as hell never left it on all day as he had today.

He’d left the charger kit in the Outer Banks, along with his other possessions.

He clenched his jaw, focusing on the traffic through the rain-spattered windshield.

Calling Jordan with the latest would only alarm her, he told himself. The news could wait until he got to her.

The trouble was, without the cell phone, Jordan had no way of getting in touch with him if she needed him.

And anyway, from here, he was all but helpless.

A familiar feeling of guilt washed over him—along with renewed determination to get back to the beach house as soon as possible.

He wasn’t far from his office now, stopped at a red light at Massachusetts Avenue. He turned up the radio volume again and tuned it to the all-news station he sometimes listened to.

When the light changed, he would only have to drive straight ahead another block and turn into the entrance ramp for the parking garage beneath his office.

Frowning, Beau willed the light to change.

The radio newscaster announced that the latest on Hurricane Agatha would be right ahead, after this message.

Hurricane Agatha.

A mob hit.

Beau closed his eyes and leaned his forehead against the steering wheel as Spencer’s and Jordan’s faces mingled with Tyler’s and Jeanette’s.

You have to save them.

This time, you have to.

Behind him, a horn blared.