The Test (35 page)

Welton headed toward the tarmac, two dozen yellow roses in his arms. But the plane was a Gulfstream, not the Parnell Learjet. He saw a second plane was approaching the runway—the Parnell aircraft this time. Clutching the bouquet to his chest, he watched as three individuals deplaned the Gulfstream—Monica Monroe and Patrick Nelson helping Ashley's uncle, the cardinal.

Welton watched as Frank Parnell walked over to greet the trio. Light-headed now, he gasped as he felt a wild flipping in his chest—paroxysmal superventricular tachycardia. Once he'd lost consciousness with an attack.
That could not happen now
. Welton told himself to breath slowly, not to hyperventilate. Use your mantra. “I will not give up.” He repeated this five times. Once between each labored breath.

Rory waited in the family room, rigid with fear over the missing twins. Carrie and Gina flanked her on the sofa, each trying to distract her with small talk. She'd sent Tyler to his room, his breathing much improved with the treatment. Chan was on the way back from the airport. She needed him, not for Tyler now, but to help find Chip and Charlie. Leo Tally had been gone for ten minutes, searching for the boys. Terry had ended a long phone conversation with Jenna, Monica's niece, who'd surprised him with the news that Monica and Patrick would be flying in later in the day. She didn't know why they'd made such sudden plans, but to Terry's delight, Jenna would be driving in from Tampa that evening. When Terry came in to inform Rory, she'd been too distracted to hear him out, immediately asking him to go out and look for the twins.

Terry had been gone only a few moments when he ran back inside. “They found Mr. Tally,” he shouted.

“How about Chip? Charlie?” Carrie asked, jumping up.

“Are they okay?” When Rory tried to pull herself out of the wheelchair, her body buckled.

“The property security man found Mr. Tally in the dune grass by the beach,” Terry said in a rush. “Rory, he's been shot! We've called the police—an ambulance.” Rory could hear sirens in the background.

“Where are my boys?” Rory rasped.

“We don't know. The police are on their way.”

“Chip and Charlie are out there. And there's a gunman on the loose?” Rory's voice was hoarse with strain. “The rest of the kids?”

Carrie answered. “Tyler and Rick are in their room. The girls were with Ann, setting the table.”

“Ann just ran out to be with Leo,” Terry reported. “Emily and Becky
gathered the younger girls in the library. There's a security guard with them. Rory, I promise you, they're okay, but the twins—”

“Please bring them in here, all the kids,” Rory said. “I need to have them with me.”

Carrie and Gina returned with the two younger boys, all the Stevens girls, and Elise. They all surrounded Rory with terrified expressions on their innocent faces.

“They were in the pool fooling around, and all of a sudden they were gone.” Becky said. “I didn't pay much attention.”

“From what you're telling me,” Rory recapped, “they were last seen about four o'clock.” She stared at her watch. “An hour ago.”

The doorbell chimed, followed by a loud pounding.

“The police,” Carrie bolted for the front door.

Monica and Patrick stood with the cardinal on the tarmac, waiting for the passengers on the Lear to deplane, surprised that Frank had met their plane, and also relieved that Ashley was aboard the second jet. They had thought to make their way to the terminal to allow Ashley a private reunion with Frank, but the cardinal made no effort to move on.

“There's Dan,” Frank pointed to the first to step off the plane. “And Ashley with dark, short hair. She looks shaky. We should have arranged a wheelchair.”

Monica glanced back toward the terminal. A man was walking directly toward them, carrying a bunch of yellow roses that obscured his face. She felt a trickle of annoyance. No one was supposed to know she was here, but the paparazzi had their networks.

The pounding in his chest diminishing, Welton tried to focus on the scene playing out on the tarmac. Too many Parnells milling about. He had to extract Ashley from the group, get her out quickly, efficiently, onto his waiting jet. He strode out, roses in his arms, like a one-man welcoming party. Ashley looked horrible. Her hair was chopped off and she was very, very pale. For a moment he wondered whether she'd been so traumatized on September eleven that her physical health had deteriorated. Well, no matter, he'd have her happy and fit in no time. He would easily erase the New York City atrocities from her mind.

All eyes focused on Ashley, Dan, and the private investigator who looked hefty enough to double as security detail. Crane may have been right. This big man could be trouble. But Welton would not let even a giant prevent Ashley leaving with her future husband.

As the passengers from both aircrafts and Frank converged in a group hug, Welton approached. Then Ashley spotted him. Her scream pierced the air.

For an instant, Welton panicked. This was not the response he'd hoped for. He stepped toward her with a brisk step, nevertheless. “For you, my love,” he blurted, offering her the flowers. With one shoulder, he nudged Dan aside to get close enough to squeeze her arm, to fling an arm around her, gather her body to his. Then, pulled back into his induction mode, she would come without complaint.

Ashley pulled away. “No!” she screamed again.

In an instant the huge man pulled her out of Conrad's reach. And in the same instant, Welton felt a tug and a frail hand grasp his pant pocket. Ashley's uncle, the cardinal, his face oddly contorted, canted forward against Welton. Welton elbowed the old man back. Words were coming out of the cardinal's mouth. “Your mother must have loved you so.”

“The fuck about my mother.”

“Stand back, you.” The huge man spoke in a deep, commanding tone. Welton dropped the flowers.

In his head he heard Winston Churchill say, “Don't give up!” He forced himself to breathe slowly, just as he'd trained so many others to do. He had to keep the heart rate steady with mind control. Deep breaths, he coached himself—in and out—a type of self-hypnosis. Consider your choices. But there was only one. Welton reached for his weapon.

The first detective to arrive at the house assured the family that the Longboat Key chief of police was on his way. The Sarasota Police Department had also been notified. Rory thrust a picture in front of the detective—two freckle-faced boys with auburn hair and brown eyes ready to tackle a birthday cake with ten candles. Then she heard the roar of motors that signaled the arrival of three more police cars, followed by the familiar engine of the Land Rover.

The family was still in the family room and Chan bolted past it, heading for the boys' bedroom. What must he be thinking with the police vehicles out there?

“Chan, no,” Rory called, and Carrie ran out to catch up with him.

“Tyler's fine, Chan, but we need you here.”

Chan turned to gape, and Carrie grabbed his arm and pulled him into the family room.

“Dad, Chip and Charlie are missing.” Emily had attached herself to him, tugging on his shirt. “Mr. Tally's shot. We don't know where the twins are—”

“Rory?” Chan asked as four uniformed and two plainclothes officers stepped toward him, everyone talking at once over the chatter of radios.

Carrie stepped up. She briefed both the police and Chan. How they'd found Mr. Tally lying in the dune grass on the beach.

“Tyler's okay?” Chan touched his youngest son's cheek.

“We're starting a manhunt,” a more senior police officer announced. “Do you have a blueprint of the property?”

“I don't know,” Chan said. “And I don't have time to mess around trying to find one. I'm going to find my kids. It'll be dark soon.”

“We'll take the dogs,” Carrie said. “They love those kids. If anybody can find them right away, it'll be Lucky and Lucy.”

Rory slumped in the wheelchair, her four daughters and two sons fidgeting at her side. Terry and Carrie had gotten the dogs, and Chan, with a local police officer and a detective were searching the property perimeter. To the rear of the estate was the road, effectively blocked by fencing. To the front, the ocean. To either side, similar estates, all isolated by fencing hidden in lush landscape. A burly plainclothes policeman announced to the group that security was down across the entire estate. The state of the art security surrounding the outside perimeter, each of the buildings, and motion detectors throughout were all nonfunctional.

The chaotic scene was further interrupted by raucous barking. Dan's dogs were going crazy over something or somebody. In response, the family moved from the family room to the patio outside, Gina guiding Rory's chair.

“Mom, are you okay?” Rory heard a familiar young voice call out over the barking dogs. “Mom!” coming from the direction of the beach.

The dogs barked harder and strained at their leashes.

“Mom!” Karen screamed, running out. “That's Charlie!”

Rory grimaced. So this had all been a trick. The twins had been hiding, planning a joke on all of them. Now, with the dogs barking, they must have crawled out of their hiding places. She felt relief
and
anger.

“Mom, Mom?” Charlie ran to her side. “We heard the sirens—”

Rory opened her eyes. “Charlie, you had us terrified—” Then she remembered the security system. Disabling such a sophisticated system would be far too complicated for ten-year-olds.

“Where's Chip?”

“He's still dragging the guy. I ran up to make sure that you were okay. We got scared, Mom, when we saw the ambulance.”

“Guy? What guy?”

A cacophony of voices rose from the front of the house. Rory tried to stand, teetered, then slipped back into the wheelchair, as Chip, in his bathing suit, ran to her side.

“Mom, you're not going to believe this,” Chip began. “Me and Charlie tracked him in the sand. He was crawling like a dog.”

“More like a snake,” his twin corrected.

“Then we tied him up, right, Charlie?”

“Yup. Wait'll we tell Dad.”

Rory put an arm around each wet, sturdy body and pulled them close to her, confused, but no longer terrified. When she looked up, four sheriff's deputies were dragging a man dressed in black, a cap over his head, a ski mask obscuring his face, across the lawn. The man was tied up, hands and feet with strips of beach towel. Chip and Charlie joined the others standing over their prisoner; both were clearly proud of themselves.

“Chip, Charlie,” Chan's voice shouted from the driveway amid the barking dogs.

“I'll put the dogs in the garage,” Carrie said, patting Tyler on the head.

As soon as the family gathered on the front deck, Chan began his story. “First of all, Mr. Tally is going to be okay. Before going into surgery, he said that he'd gone out to look for the boys, and he found a man wearing all black circling the house. He was laying out some wires. Mr. Tally followed him when he went out toward the beach. In the tall dunes, the man had opened a box hidden under a tarp, and Mr. Tally asked the man what he was doing. And the man turned around and shot him. But Mr. Tally had a stun gun behind his back. Even after he'd been hit, he'd got a shot off. Then he passed out.”

“It turned out the boys were wandering on the beach, where they were not supposed to be without adult supervision, and found the man—still with residual effects of the Taser—crawling along the dunes.”

“We knew he was a bad guy 'cause of the mask,” Chip said. “So we jumped on him.”

“Yeah, he had a knife and we used it to cut up our towels so we could tie him up,” Charlie concluded with a wide grin. “So you're not gonna punish us now that we're heroes, right?”

Welton yanked the Colt out of his pants pocket. He'd never fired it, not even in target practice.

“Stand back,” he yelled, waving the gun, wildly. “Ashley, come with me. Now, my love!”

He almost smirked as Frank and Dan stood dumbfounded. Monica and Patrick stared. But the big man, Preston, did not release Ashley.

“Let her go,” Welton ordered. “Or I will shoot. Not her, but—” He swung the gun to target Monica. “Come to me, Ashley.”

She made as if to step forward, but Preston held her back. “I'll go with him,” she said. “I can do it—”

The cardinal came at Welton again, stumbling into him, grabbing him in the awkward clutch of an older person. Maybe it was the feeble tug or maybe just the distraction, but Welton's grasp loosened, and the gun fell to the pavement with a thud.

“Welton stared at his empty hand an instant before plunging to the ground, desperate to retrieve the weapon, ignoring the old cardinal who kept flailing at him with weak, but purposeful blows. Then he heard a woman's name, “Jessica.”

By the time his hand touched steel, he heard a voice boom. “Stop right there or I'll shoot.” It was Preston.

Bent over, but without hesitation, Conrad turned toward Preston and pulled the trigger. A grunt. The gun in the big man's hand fell onto the blacktop.

Welton got to his feet, seeming more dazed than amazed that he'd hit his target. He'd disarmed the only professional in the crowd, and blood began to saturate the big man's sports coat. The Parnells, except for the cardinal, who lay on the ground panting, seemed in shock.

All Welton had to do now was get Ashley out. He reached her and
grabbed for her arm, but not soon enough. Frank inserted himself, pulling his sister just beyond Welton's reach. The cardinal was mumbling words that distracted Welton so that he did not see Dan lean over to pick up Preston's gun. “Jessica, my love, why didn't you tell me? Our son—we could have—” Welton cringed at the tears streaming down the old man's wrinkled face as he slowly rose and grasped the sleeve of Welton's jacket. There was the blast of a gun and the cardinal fell forward, forcing Welton to take a step back. A second blast. Welton's eyes widened, fixated on Ashley as he fell over the cardinal's body.