Every Breath You Take (46 page)

Her entire body lurched in shock, her eyes snapped open, and she stared at him in utter disbelief; then she gave him a trembling smile and gazed at him with unabashed warmth, her wide emerald eyes shimmering with tears of gratitude and suppressed anguish. “Thank you,” she whispered.

For one of the few times in his adult life, Mitchell’s ability to remain coolly objective and logical deserted him, and he stared at her in distracted uncertainty. With her wounded green eyes lifted to his and her curly red hair lying like a mantle around her shoulders, Kate Donovan reminded him of a heartbroken Irish Madonna who was bravely trying to smile through her tears. …

The same “Madonna,” Mitchell reminded himself cynically, who’d entertained herself in St. Maarten by taking him for a mental and physical roller-coaster ride, and then left him standing on a dock waiting for her like an idiotic, lovesick schoolboy while she flew back to Chicago with Evan Bartlett.

Abruptly, Mitchell disengaged himself emotionally from her and from their past history, and focused solely on the present situation. “What are you thanking me for?” he asked shortly.

Until that moment, Kate had been content to remain in the rocking chair, letting what she thought was a dream unfold in front of her, but Mitchell’s curt tone hit her like a warning slap, jarring her into the reality of his presence and doing so with nerve-wracking suddenness.

Still clutching the rabbit, she stood up in order to more properly convey her respect and gratitude, and she answered his question by saying with earnest
formality, “Thank you for lending me the ransom money. I’ve already given your lawyers an IOU and asked them to draw up a formal loan agreement. I told them I’ll put my restaurant up as collateral and pay you back over a twenty-year period—”

She broke off when she realized that the undeniably lenient repayment terms she was suggesting were making him so furious that his eyes were turning to shards of ice and a muscle was beginning to tic in his jaw. It hit her then that he could still change his mind about lending her the money, and she decided the sooner he left, the better, so long as he left his $10 million behind. “I’ll pay you back in fifteen years, maybe even less than that, and naturally I’ll pay you interest, too,” she added frantically. “I’m solvent and my restaurant is thriving; I’ll agree to whatever terms you want. Just tell your lawyers what terms you want, and I’ll sign the loan papers.” In a last desperate effort to keep matters cordial and to show him gratitude and consideration while simultaneously persuading him to leave, Kate said carefully, “There was no reason for you to come here personally—although,” she lied, “I’m very glad you did. However, there’s no reason for you to stay. You can’t do anything more than you already have—”

Incensed because she had the gall to stand there and treat him as if his kidnapped son’s welfare were none of his business, and that he had no right to be present or involved in anything except “loaning” the ransom money to her, Mitchell gave her a brief, frigid warning. “Don’t thank me and don’t dismiss me. You and I are going to have a very long, very unpleasant, meeting with attorneys present, just as soon as the boy is safely back here.”

“Don’t call him
‘the boy’,”
Kate retorted fiercely. “His—”

“Why not?” Mitchell snapped. “You’ve made damned sure I couldn’t call him my son. Until today, I didn’t even know he existed.”

“I took you off my birth-announcement list when you called me an amoral bitch the last time we saw each other!” Kate flung back with blazing sarcasm. “Furthermore, you
divorced
the last woman who wanted to have your child—” Her brief spurt of fortifying fury dissolved in the realization that while she was standing there arguing, Danny was in the hands of brutal strangers. She glared at Mitchell through a haze of hot tears.
“Go away!”
she whispered fiercely, and turned her back on him. “Get out of here and leave me alone!”

Stunned by her indignant attempt to justify an inexcusable, grievous injustice with two feeble excuses for it, Mitchell watched her collapse into the rocking chair and double over, face buried in the rabbit, her shoulders jerking violently. “My baby is gone,” she sobbed. “He’s gone. Oh, God, he’s gone …”

Despite his desire to be completely impervious and to see her only as a shallow, manipulative liar, he found himself standing there, trying to remember the two conversations she’d brought up. In the years since then, he’d eradicated her so successfully and so completely from his consciousness that he had to concentrate in order to recall what he’d said.

Their confrontation at the charity fund-raiser came back to him with surprising clarity, but his only reaction now to the way he’d spoken to her there was the same one he’d had moments after he walked away from her: disgust at his unprecedented loss of control over his temper and at the fact that Kate Donovan had gotten under his skin enough to cause him to do that. The words he’d said to her were the ugly truth, and the fact that she’d denied Mitchell his right to know that he had a son was further proof of it, rather than justification for her action.

However, the realization that he’d also told Kate that he’d insisted on a divorce when his wife wanted to have a baby was difficult for him to overlook. It made it a little less easy to thoroughly despise her for her arrogant treachery, as he’d done since Matt’s phone call. That, combined with the sound of her agonized weeping, was making it impossible for him to continue thinking of her as completely heartless and unprincipled, and it also made it very difficult for him to continue regarding himself as a thoroughly righteous victim of her duplicity. And so he turned his back on her and walked out of the room, exactly as she’d wanted him to do.

He could still hear her shattered weeping as he walked down the hall, but unlike Kate, Mitchell refused to consider the possibility that his son would come to any harm or that he wouldn’t be safely returned tonight, when the ransom was paid. Not once, since that morning, had the thought that he might never see his son alive slipped past his barriers. The possibility was there, though, sinister and hideous—an evil specter crouching in the darkness at the edges of his mind. Despite all his money, power, and influential contacts, he couldn’t do one thing to help ensure the safety or the return of a little boy. His own son.

His jaw clenched with the effort it took to drive out the insidious thoughts and to shake free of the terrible dread trying to wrap its tentacles around his mind. He wasn’t helpless. He had money and power, and knew how to use them. He also had a plan; a simple, effective plan. Last but not least, he was an expert at persuading people to go along with his way of thinking, particularly greedy, desperate businessmen, who were the easiest kind of adversaries he dealt with. Kidnappers were greedy and desperate. And so, when the kidnappers made their ransom call, Mitchell was going to calmly take that call, and instead of agreeing to pay their $10
million ransom, he was going to offer them a much better deal: $20 million. One half would be paid at the first drop-off site they named; the second half would be taken to a second drop-off site of their choosing and handed over
simultaneously
while someone verified to him that his son was in sight and alive.

With his thoughts on that, Mitchell walked back into the living room, noticed that the priest was openly scrutinizing him, and decided he’d be better off waiting downstairs until the time for the ransom call approached. “I’m going to wait downstairs,” he advised the priest as he started in the direction of the apartment’s door.

“That would be a mistake.”

Surprise made Mitchell pause and turn toward him. “Why?”

“Because despite whatever Kate said to you just now, you’re Danny’s father. As his father, you have a right—and a responsibility—to be here and support his mother in this terrible time.”

Mitchell hesitated, walked over to a chair, and sat down.

“While it’s on my mind,” the priest added, “how is it that a man and woman who only knew each other three days could end up being so agonizingly disappointed in each other that neither of them can get over it even now, after three years?”

“I have no idea,” Mitchell said shortly.

“I have a very clear idea,” the priest said implacably, but he didn’t offer an explanation, and Mitchell didn’t ask for one.

F
ROM HIS VANTAGE POINT IN A CHAIR FACING THE
doorway, Mitchell contemplated the apartment Kate had talked about in Anguilla. It was nothing like the small, dark space he’d envisioned, but it was evident that the whole dwelling had recently undergone expansion and renovation. Everything was fresh and bright, including the woodwork and mullioned windows that marched along three sides of the apartment and were partially concealed by airy draperies that were pulled back at the sides and held in place with ties.

The floor plan was a large rectangle that occupied one entire end of the building from front to back. A modern kitchen with the latest appliances and granite countertops was separated from the living space by a large island counter with four stools. The living room was spacious enough for a pair of leather sofas, which faced each other across a coffee table and were positioned at right angles to the big easy chair in which Mitchell was sitting. Beyond the living space was a large play area with a table and chairs at a child’s height, a chalkboard, and what Mitchell assumed were long toy boxes disguised as window seats. A hallway that was parallel to the stairs led from the play area to what Mitchell knew were bedrooms.

Mitchell picked up a copy of
Gourmet
magazine from the end table beside his chair and leafed through it, partly to avoid giving the priest an opportunity to bring
up scriptures, morality, and other topics of interest to the clergy, and partly to stop himself from looking at the kitchen and trying to imagine an old wooden table there with a seven-year-old girl draped across it, as she pretended it was a piano.

The room lapsed into silence, and Mitchell struggled against a sudden impulse to get up and go over to the play space to look at his son’s things. A minute later, all that changed. MacNeil came trotting up the staircase, looking tense but excited.

He went directly to Gray Elliott for a whispered conference, then nodded and hurried out of the apartment. Elliott got up and walked over to Mitchell, and to Mitchell’s initial surprise, he directed his remarks to him rather than Kate’s uncle. “I think we have very good news. The parents of a young woman who is in group counseling with Billy Wyatt saw the amber alert tonight. Their daughter has been in their guesthouse today babysitting a little boy as a favor to a friend. They went to have a closer look at the little boy, and they’re sure it’s Danny. We have cars on the way there right now, and we’ll know for certain if it’s him in ten minutes or less. Until we do, I don’t think we should risk raising Kate’s hopes. She’s very fragile right now. We have two hours before we’re supposed to receive the ransom call. I’d like to sit tight for a few minutes with no unusual activity in here. If we’re wrong about Billy’s involvement, then for all we know the real kidnappers are watching us now through the windows from another building.”

Father Donovan nodded, but Elliott waited for Mitchell’s response. Mitchell hesitated, hating to subject Kate to ten more minutes of the agony he’d witnessed in Danny’s bedroom, but in the end, he deferred to Gray Elliott. “That’s probably the best plan,” he said. The moment Gray Elliott had mentioned the
connection between Billy Wyatt and the emotionally troubled babysitter in the guesthouse, Mitchell knew in his gut that the little boy with her was Danny, and his relief that Danny was probably safe was so immense, so overwhelming, that he could ignore for now the fact that his maniacal nephew was likely the kidnapper. Later, he would deal with that, but right now, he wanted nothing to intrude on his forthcoming meeting with his son. Then, because he couldn’t resist the temptation anymore, he walked over to Danny’s play area.

He studied the scribbles on the chalkboard and concluded that his son was probably not an artistic prodigy. Since no one seemed to be paying any attention to Mitchell, he leaned over and opened one of the window seats. It contained an assortment of toy trucks and cars. From that, Mitchell concluded that Danny’s future might be in the transportation industry. He didn’t realize he was hoping his son might share his love of airplanes until he looked inside the second box: there were at least half a dozen toy planes.

Mitchell straightened and looked at his watch, wondering why it was taking so long to get confirmation that the boy in the guesthouse was Danny. Fifteen minutes later there was a commotion on the stairs, and Elliott got off his stool, striding swiftly to the door. “Why in the hell didn’t you call us?” he said, but underneath the reprimand he sounded excited, and Mitchell automatically tensed.

When Elliott walked back into the room, he was carrying a little boy and grinning from ear to ear. Kate’s uncle walked a few steps toward the bedroom hallway and called, “Kate, come out here right away. There’s someone who wants to see you.”

Elliott lowered the child to the floor as Kate rounded the corner from the hallway. People began crowding into the room from the stairwell, and the scene
exploded with joy and motion. “Danny?” Kate cried, and the child laughed out loud at the same time his mother burst into tears and dropped to her knees in front of him. “Danny!” she whispered, running her hands over his face and chest, then dragging him into a crushing embrace, weeping while she chanted his name like a prayer. “Danny, Danny,
Danny.”

It was an exhibition of maternal love beyond anything Mitchell had ever imagined. It imprinted itself on his mind and touched something deeper as he came to terms with the reality that the weeping, joyous mother who was holding her son in a fierce embrace was the same woman he had held in an even fiercer embrace in bed in St. Maarten.

She swept her son up and carried him to the doorway to show him to the crowd gathered there, and it dawned on Mitchell that the people in the doorway were mostly dressed in white, like kitchen staff, or in black suits, like waiters.