Ransomed Dreams (17 page)

Tonight’s impromptu meeting had left Clint’s hackles raised. He hoped his partner would be in a frame of mind to help him sort through the nagging impression that something was wrong. Maybe he’d overlooked something in an employee record like he’d missed Mrs. Brown’s having a brother who’d died in May.

None of his searching would bring Olivia home, but it could put an end to her killer’s freedom. And allow people like Charlotte Brown and the Kensington family to grieve without an investigation hanging over their heads.

S
unday morning, a silent house greeted Steven.

No parents dropping by to see if he wanted to go to church. No James bounding around asking for chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast. He missed his son already.

Steven threw back his red and black comforter and dragged himself out of bed. Sun streamed through the curtains. As a child, he’d decorated his room with an ever-changing array of sports team logos. But Angela wouldn’t allow him to display any of his collectibles. She hated the Louisville Cardinals. And it seemed everything else Steven had held close to heart.

His faith.

Having a family.

His parents.

Even his alma mater.

After a quick shower, he slipped into some cutoff jeans and an old sleeveless blue T-shirt. His stomach growled. Louder than his partner’s ever had. Time for some grub, straight out of a box of sugarcoated cereal.

Who said you had to grow up in everything?

The glow-in-the-dark stars all over James’s bedroom ceiling caught his attention as he passed by Steven admired his son’s neatness, the made bed with toys and books all in their proper places. So much like Steven’s mom. Neat. Organized. Efficient. His mom had been full of life and fun, though.

Not Steven. Not after Angela left. She’d destroyed more than their wedding vows. She’d taken a big chunk of his heart too.

Leaning on the doorframe, he looked around the quiet room.
His eyes stopped on the well-worn teddy bear he and Angela had picked out when they were shopping for baby clothes, long before he’d had any idea of how his wife had been spending her free time.

The bear now sat atop a comforter decorated with asteroids and planets. Steven was surprised the favorite bear had been left behind. James was probably too excited packing for Space Camp to think about his bedtime buddy. Steven picked up the brown-and-white animal and breathed in his son’s fresh-out-of-the-bath scent. He’d be glad when James was home again.

Steven continued on his quest for sugary food. Tempted to slide down the banister, he behaved and took one step at a time down to the kitchen. No use twisting his ankle and getting ribbed hard for it at work Monday.

The “family” pictures of him and James with Gracie caused his neck muscles to tighten. He could call her today. Explain what happened Friday night. At least try to make it up to her. Steven pushed that thought aside and poured a bowl full of milk and pure sugar hearts, moons, stars, and clovers. He ate it standing by the sink.

James would have a blast at Space Camp this week, learning how to become an astronaut while Dad and Sue took a well-deserved vacation and played tourist. Steven ached to join them in Florida. To watch James play in the waves and collect shells.

From the moment James was born, Steven had felt such joy and pride. He and Angela had done at least one thing right. But in the silent moments when work wasn’t screaming for his blood, sweat, and tears, he wondered if loving his son was enough. It hadn’t been enough just to love Angela. It wasn’t enough just to love rescuing children and making the world a safer place.

What was enough?

If James was growing up to be like him, what kind of footprints was Steven leaving him to follow?

A knock on the door put an end to his contemplation. Who
would be out selling things at ten o’clock Sunday morning?

Opening the door, Steven felt a frost come over him.

“Not at church this morning preacher boy? Interesting.” The leggy raven-haired beauty stepped into his personal space. “How about inviting me in, Steven?”

He stepped back.

With a wicked smile, she floated past him.

“Angela.”

“Glad you remembered me.” She looked around the foyer and up the carpeted stairs. “Where’s my son? Surely you don’t let him watch cartoons in his room all morning.”

“He doesn’t have a TV in his room. And he doesn’t watch cartoons.”

Angela folded perfectly manicured hands over her toned biceps.

His body responded. Five years, and her short leather skirt, low-cut sleeveless blouse, and suggestive pout still turned him every which way but loose. Too bad she’d shared everything else with someone else. That iced his desire. Quick.

“What are you doing here?” Steven shut the door. “Last I heard, you’d shacked up with that cue ball prof of yours.”

“Marcus and I married as soon as my divorce from you was final. The best day of my life.” Angela raked her eyes over his entire frame. A spark of interest still smoldered there.

He put both hands behind his neck and clenched his jaw. Nothing like taking up right where you left off. “I’ll ask again. Why are you here?”

She walked into the den like she owned it. “Remodeled and redecorated. Do it yourself, stud?” She picked up a picture of James from the built-in bookshelf and folded into the couch without a word. “He’s so handsome. Even has my eyes.”

“No. He has Kessler eyes. And everything else. But why would you care, Angela? You walked out. On both of us.”

His ex-wife smoothed her hand over stomach. “He’s my son too, like it or not.”

“The one you abandoned.”

Angela pinched the bridge of her nose.

Steven must have been imagining things, because he thought he’d seen tears forming in her eyes. But this was Angela Barrett Kessler. No, not Kessler anymore. She was still the hardball attorney, though. No tears. No emotional investment, unless she’d had a few too many drinks.

“I left you and your beloved FBI mistress, Steven. Not my son.”

He perched on the arm of his recliner. “You don’t even know his name, do you?”

“James. James Andrew Kessler. Named after both of our fathers.” She hadn’t lifted her eyes from the photo. “A mother doesn’t forget the child she gave birth to.”

“Unless she’s too drunk to give a …”

“Shut up!” Angela stood and stalked over to his side of the den on her four-inch stilettos. “I’m clean now, Stevie. I even have documents from a well-respected facility to prove that. Besides being all grown up, I have a law practice of my own. I want my son. I want a second chance with him.”

Now that Steven had raised him to the point she didn’t have to get her hands dirty. No diapers to change. Old enough to send to school.

Over his dead body would this woman ever take his son.

His son
.

“Let me remind you, I’m married to an attorney too.” Angela returned his ice-cold stare. “With friends in the Alexandria court system ready and waiting to help me. I have a stable nine-to-five job. I’m home on the weekends. No being out all night because of surveillance.” She held James’s kindergarten picture up to him. “And last I heard, you were still playing the saintly monk. All work and no play No little Kentucky wife, barefoot, pregnant, and in the kitchen baking bread.”

Red-hot terror impaled him. Angela’s threats were sharpened daggers pointed right at his heart. She wanted his son.

“Your parental rights were severed years ago. You have no leg to stand on, Angela. High-priced sugar daddy or not.”

Angela slapped him. Hard.

He caught her arm at the wrist when she tried again and held her close to his chest. “Get out of my house, and stay out of our lives. We’ve lived well without you, and I intend to keep it that way.”

She wrenched her arm away and took a deep breath. After smoothing her skirt, she threw her shoulders back. “We’ll see about that.”

One hand on the door, she turned back and tossed her black hair over her shoulder. “I’ve already petitioned the courts to have my rights reinstated. And I’m filing for sole custody. If I win, you’ll never see James again.”

Steven invaded her personal space and glared down on her. “Why don’t you go have your own children with Mr. Cue Ball? Leave me and my son out of it.”

She bit her bottom lip.

“Or does the mighty Angela Barrett have a chink in her perfect armor?” Steven hated baiting her like that. Hated the mean little man he’d become in her presence.

“I never forgot my son. I needed time to get clean and …” She looked up at him with tears in her eyes. “I can’t have any more children. I want a second chance with my only child.”

“Nice act, Angela. You always played the drama queen bit to perfection.”

The brief guise of vulnerability quickly morphed into anger. She flung open the door and stepped outside. “You just wait, Stevie. Next time I see you, you’ll be waving good-bye to your little Rockwellian fantasy world. James needs a mother, not your always-absent single-parent act.”

Watching her strut away, scenario after scenario gnawed at his stomach. A sympathetic female judge might buy Angela’s second-chance bit. His ex-wife could tug heartstrings with the best of them.

What if she won even partial custody? Steven closed the door, walked into the den, and sank into his leather chair. She might be clean now, but that could change. His son could be in constant danger. Away from his protection.

His most basic nightmare had become a very present reality.

The day passed in a hazy, stomach-churning blur. Cleaning his guns didn’t distract him. Neither did making James’s favorite chocolate chip pancakes. But Steven had a freezer full for when his son came home next week. Maybe they would go to church with his parents next Sunday night.

Invite Gracie to come too.

What was he thinking? Playing church and dragging Gracie into his domestic problems wouldn’t work. He didn’t want to hurt her. Or lie to James and make his son think church could be a large part of their lives as it had once been.

But Steven had to do something.

Fast.

Calling Clint wouldn’t help. Steven didn’t want to talk about work and hear dead-end theories. Olivia Kensington’s case had gone cold a week before they’d found her body in Memorial Hill Park. Besides, his partner was most likely at church serving right alongside his pretty wife.

Steven looked at his kitchen calendar. A little over three weeks until school started, the day after Labor Day Surely the courts wouldn’t uproot James right before school. Not to give him to a mother he’d never seen. The one who’d abandoned him for her whisky bottles and any number of lovers.

But Angela and her new husband were wealthy. Had stable jobs with reasonable hours. Why wouldn’t the courts award her sole custody? How could he fight her and win?

He wandered into his son’s room and fingered the Bible on the nightstand, the one Dad had given James last year when he got baptized. Why hadn’t he taken it to camp?

Steven’s old nemesis—guilt—slipped into the room and started pounding away.

What kind of father worked while his son packed for vacation?

What kind of man couldn’t keep a wife?

Or find a child before some slimy perpetrator stole his or her last breath?

Steven opened the book to a passage he’d committed to memory as a teenager, one of his mom’s favorites. He read out loud. “Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.” The words felt like stones in his mouth.

And a knife in his heart.

There was no rest for him. Not when he had a neverending job to do. Faster. Better. Harder. He’d outgrown the Bible stories his parents had raised him on. Moved beyond a belief system that gave total power to someone unseen, whose supposed control of the universe still allowed children to die despicable deaths. This invisible God had allowed Steven’s marriage to fall apart, even when he had prayed with every fiber of his faith.

He returned the Bible to its rightful place.

Amid the rocket ships and stars that decorated his son’s room, Steven sat at the white desk transfixed, staring at the Bible until the grandfather clock downstairs chimed the hour of midnight.

Right now, he had to get some sleep. He needed energy to plan his attack. He would not allow Angela to rip his world apart ever again. Or destroy his son.

Ever.

Steven dragged himself into his room and collapsed onto his unmade bed. He hoped sleep would come soon, because first thing tomorrow, it was time to find a lawyer.

T
om read through Gracie’s e-mails a second time.

The updates from her private investigator—ones he’d not been able to delete—always ended with, “Let’s do a police sketch, soon.”

Tomorrow was the day.

And tonight he had to stop her.

As he paced in front of his townhome’s large picture window watching Friday’s cloudy skies darken, his mind churned with fear. He had the medication he needed, but what if he got caught? Or his timing was off?

His stomach had to be a case study for ulcers. No matter. Soon things would return to normal. Better than normal, maybe.

School started in less than a month. Behind his desk, he felt powerful. He’d also be seeing Agent Grivens every day. That little thought could keep him busy for a while.

Walking into his kitchen, he smelled the remnants of tonight’s Chinese takeout. His stomach grumbled for a late snack, so he downed handfuls of trail mix as the clock ticked off the slow minutes until midnight.

After more wasted time with boring e-mails, Tom rechecked the syringes. Each dose of the special anesthetic had been measured for a fatal injection.

He checked his appearance in the bathroom mirror. Too thin. Too ashen. But the tight black outfit highlighted the few muscles he’d managed to build up in the last several months. He looked better than he had in high school.

Far different from his college days too.

The normal drive to Gracie’s little brick house might as well have been stop-and-go traffic for all the wear and tear it did on his insides. Pulse thumping out of his chest. Sweaty hands.