Awakened (Intimate Relations) (15 page)

“It was really dark.”

“Were you in a city?”

He shook his head. Mandy’s hand was sweating where their fingers were clasped. It had to be her. Marc was completely calm, but she wasn’t about to let go. Not now.

“Were you in the country?”

“I think so. There weren’t any houses around. Not much of a moon, either.”

He asked Marc more questions, retracing the dream scene by scene as Marc had relayed it to him earlier. But then he asked Marc to describe what was outside the car.

“But it’s dark,” he said. “I can’t see.”

“You have a flashlight, Marc. It’s magical, and it shows you what’s hidden in the shadows. Do you have it in your hand?”

Marc lifted the hand that held Mandy’s. She shot a quick glance at Alden, but he merely nodded.

“Yes. I have it.”

“Shine it outside the car. Tell me what you see.”

“I see Daddy. He’s digging a hole.”

“Is there anything around him?”

“The pile of garbage he said he had to bury. It’s wrapped in the blanket off Mommy and Daddy’s bed. I wonder why he’s throwing it away?”

“I don’t know, Marc. Maybe he made a mistake. Are there any buildings or trees or big rocks around? Anything that you might use as a landmark to find the hole? What if Mommy wants her blanket back? Do you think you can find it for her?”

“There’s a post in the ground where we turned onto this road. It has numbers on it. Would that help?”

“It might. What numbers are they?”

Marc rattled off a string of numbers that Alden quickly wrote down. He read them back to Marc. “Is that right?”

“Yes.

Mandy’s gasp startled even her. “That’s an address. I saw mail boxes with addresses on them—they’re long. All five digit numbers. Fifteen thousand, seventeen thousand. I can’t…”

Alden held his finger up to silence her. She remembered she wasn’t supposed to speak and clamped her lips shut. Marc turned to her, still deeply in the trance state. “Mommy always said I was very smart.”

“You are,” Alden said. “Marc, is there anything else you remember about your dream?

“No. No more.”

“Why don’t you close your eyes and rest? I’m going to count to five, and you will slowly awaken until I say five, when you will come fully awake. You’ll remember everything we discussed. You’ve done very well, Marc. Very well indeed.” He paused and then slowly counted to five.

On five, Marc blinked and turned to Mandy. After a moment of disorientation, he said, “We need to go back. I want to see if we can find the rock at that address.” He stood and turned to Alden. “Thank you so much for agreeing to see us on such short notice.”

“Any time.” He shook Marc’s hand. “Your story is fascinating.”

“When Mandy first told me about you, I thought she was nuts.” Marc turned to her. She stuck out her tongue, but he just leaned over and kissed her. “I’ll let you know what we find.”

“Please do. Which winery is yours? My wife has been asking me to take her to Healdsburg. She loves the shops and restaurants, and we’d really like to come out and try the wine at your place.”

Marc grabbed one of his business cards and wrote the name and address on the back. “If you come this week, we should still be there. Call me and we can give you a tour. There’s a really neat wine cave that’s not open to the public.”

As they walked back to the car, Mandy tugged on his hand. “I haven’t even seen the wine cave. I forgot you had one.”

“I promise to give you the private, after-hours tour. Will that make up for my error?”

“Possibly.”

She was laughing when he opened the car door and she got in. Marc came around to the driver’s side, but his phone rang as he sat down. “Ted. How’s it going? Have you learned anything? Mandy’s with me. I’m putting you on speaker.”

“Hi Mandy. And yes, Marc, I have. I’ve sent an email to your office account with the details. That was the only one I had, but I can give you the abbreviated version if you like.”

“Go ahead.” He reached for Mandy’s hand and held on.

“Your mother’s name was Elizabeth Cole Marchand. Her nickname was Bett. She was the daughter of Marilee Alice Watts and Barnabas, aka Buck, Rogers Marchand.” He spelled it out and added, “pronounced
Marshawn
, both from Boston, Massachusetts. Marilee was a young socialite and Buck was pretty much a professional playboy. They both came from money. I can’t find any records of either of them ever working. Your mother was their only child. Marilee and Buck—your grandparents—were killed in a plane crash when she was eight years old. Buck was the pilot and they went down off of Cape Cod. The plane and their bodies were recovered—they’re buried in a cemetery in Bedford. I’m not certain why, though I think the maternal grandmother’s family is buried there. She is as well.

“Bett was raised by her maternal grandmother, Alicia Coburn Watts, widow of Jerome Watts, which I assume is the source of your middle name, Marc. Anyway, Alicia died in 1979 when Bett was twenty-five. Your mother married Steven Reed a few weeks later. I don’t know if they’d been dating or had known each other very long, but I did learn that your mother went into the marriage with a very large cumulative trust fund, the only heir of both her parents and her grandmother. I don’t know if your father was aware that the way all three trusts were written, she was unable to access the money until she was thirty years old. We also don’t know the date of her death, but she was very close to thirty if she died when you were four years old. She would have just turned thirty, or have been about to turn thirty.”

There was nothing but silence. Mandy watched Marc, but his face was absolutely blank. She had no idea what he was thinking. Finally, he glanced her way and then stared at the phone. “Were you able to find out anything about the money? Did he get it?”

“No. The three trust funds are still intact. Attempts have been made to access the money on numerous occasions, but the persons claiming to be your mother could not prove their identity to the court’s satisfaction. The money is still intact.” There was a long pause. “Marc, I know how much money you have, and the amount of funds in these three trusts makes you look like a pauper. I imagine your father thought he would be able to get his hands on it, or maybe he lost his temper and killed her without planning to. Does he have that kind of temper?”

“Explosive. Yes. That makes sense, though. He was so close. Has he ever tried to have her declared dead?”

“Nothing I can find, and there’s a provision in the trust that keeps the funds intact for her ‘issue.’ Her children, and that would be you. Look, I’m going to come out ahead of schedule, if that’s okay with you. I’ll just get a room at the same extended-stay I stayed in before. My testimony is through for the proceedings here for now, and I’d really like to be closer to this material. How have you done with the memories?”

“So well it’s scary, Ted. I think we’re close.”

“Be careful. Your father is in some serious financial trouble. There might be gambling involved. I’m not positive, but it’s not looking good for him. He’s got some fairly important people angry with him. He’s pulled a few scams that left some really pissed off folks with more power than I think he realized at the time. He’s probably feeling pretty desperate about now. Watch your back.”

“Advice taken. Mandy and I are making a quick run by my office and then we’re headed back to the winery. I want to do some snooping around. Ted, I might know where he buried her.”

“How the fuck did…?”

“Call me as soon as you get in.”

*   *   *

“Do you mind going by the office before we head back to the winery?” Marc kept his eyes on the road, but his mind was spinning. The bastard. His father might have planned his mother’s death from the very beginning.

“Not at all. You need to download the information Ted sent.”

“Thank you.”

Mandy grabbed his hand and he held on. He’d been holding on to her a lot over the past few days. She’d become his anchor, so solid and strong, someone he’d quickly grown to count on. Did she have any idea just how much she meant to him? Crap, she certainly hadn’t signed on for anything like this.

“When do you think Ted will be here?”

“Not soon enough.” He tried to laugh. Sounded more like a snort. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he shows up tomorrow or the next day.”

“I hope so. I’m not used to Lola and Ben being gone, and with Kaz and Jake out of the country, there’s no one else to bounce ideas off of.” She shot him a smile. “We’re all pretty good at collaborative thinking.”

“I don’t know, Mandy. You’re pretty good all on your own.”

“Do you think so? I feel like I’m just dead weight, like I’m not helping you at all.”

He didn’t say anything. Not until he’d pulled into the parking garage and turned off the car. Then he unhooked his seatbelt, turned, and wrapped his arms around Mandy. “Babe, I can’t imagine doing any of this without you. Think about it … those dreams have haunted me for years, and then you come along and suddenly I’ve got answers, I’ve got a chance to find out the truth about my mother, and maybe even a chance to lead a decent life without fear or guilt or, most important, hating a woman who deserved so much better. Because of you, Mandy. You are the furthest thing from dead weight I can imagine.”

He kissed her and wondered just how private this garage actually was, but he quit thinking with his dick long enough to carefully end the kiss and back away. “I hope you appreciate how hard it was not to start unbuttoning and unhooking just then.”

She practically exploded in laughter. “And here I thought you were the shy, quiet type.”

“A carefully manufactured façade, my dear.” He leaned close, kissed her quickly, and then got out of the car, walked around, opened her door, took her hand, helped her out. “Let’s go on up, see what we can catch Theo doing, grab the notes from Ted, and get back to the winery. It feels much more sane there, don’t you think?”

“Agreed.” She grabbed his hand and the two of them raced up the stairs.

As soon as they hit the foyer in front of Reed Industries, they both heard shouting coming from inside. “What the hell?” Marc reached for the door.

“Be careful. That sounds like your father.”

“You’re right.” He paused by the door and listened, but it was difficult to make out what they were saying. “Will you wait here?”

“Absolutely not.”

Marc just shook his head. “That’s right. I’ve heard how you faced down a guy with a gun.”

“C’mon. We go in like you own the place. Because you do.”

He was actually laughing when Mandy shoved the door open. The argument was coming from Marc’s office. Clearly, Theo had had enough of whatever Marc’s father was telling him to do.

Marc and Mandy paused just outside the door. Steve Reed had his back to them, and Theo never even blinked when the two of them stepped into his line of sight. Instead, he leaned closer and got into Reed’s space.

“I asked you, Mr. Reed, how you got into this office. You’ve been told you’re not welcome here.”

“I have every right to be here. My son gave me permission to come on the premises to pick up some papers. You are interfering with his orders. Now I am going to get what I came after, and…”

“And just what would that be?”

Reed spun around. “What the…”

“Get out of here now, before I have you charged with trespassing. As it is, I intend to get a restraining order if that’s what it takes to keep you out of my life.”

“What has gotten into you?” His father stalked across the room and poked Marc in the chest. “You’ve always been a prick, but something’s put a bee up your ass. Is it her?” He glared at Mandy. “Get a little pussy and you…”

“Shut the fuck up.” He’d always backed down when his father got aggressive. Knowing what he knew now, it was probably some form of PTSD from being beaten as a child. From witnessing his mother’s death. From so many things he might never know, but on some level, Marc realized that whatever had held him submissive to his father, snapped.

He shoved against the man’s poking finger, shoved him back and kept shoving, pushing Reed until he was backed up against the desk. Both Theo and Mandy merely stepped back, out of the way. Steven Reed looked perplexed—Marc knew the bastard had no idea what had gotten into his son.

“First, you don’t ever speak to Ms. Monroe like that. Never. Do you understand me? And a bee up my ass? I dunno … tell me, anything about Rockpile Road ring a bell, Daddy? A long drive on a dark night with a four-year-old boy in the back seat? Something large and bulky wrapped in my mother’s favorite comforter the same night she disappeared? She always loved that blanket. And she loved me. She had no need to take the money and run. She could buy and sell you ten times over, so what was it you did that night so many years ago? Don’t want to talk about it, eh? Trust me, you will. Now get the fuck out of my office and don’t come back. I don’t want to see you again. Not. Ever. Got it?”

His father stared at him. The color had leeched from his face, and he looked crazy enough to kill. Marc grabbed him by the front of his shirt, twisted, and lifted him to his toes. Got right in his face, and very calmly said, “Get out. Now. And don’t come back.”

Reed’s hands were clenched into tight fists and he glared at both Marc and Mandy. Then he shoved himself free of Marc’s grasp, stepped around him, pushing Mandy out of the way before she had time to move, and stormed out the door.

Marc grabbed her arm. Steadied her. “You okay? Crap.” He sucked in huge draughts of air. Felt as if he’d run a mile, been in a fight. Climbed a mountain. He’d never stood up to his father, but then he’d never known what a disgusting waste of humanity the bastard was.

It took him a few more deep breaths to calm down to a point where he could actually talk without gasping for air. He glanced down and realized he still had such a tight grip on Mandy’s arm he’d probably left bruises. He let go as if she burned him. “Damn, babe. I’m so sorry. Did I hurt you?” He brushed his fingers over the red marks on her forearm. “I didn’t mean to grab you so hard. I was afraid you’d fall.” He shook his head, feeling like a complete jerk. “I’m sorry. I guess I sort of lost it.”