Dawn Stewardson (2 page)

Instead of answering, he glanced over her head—which wasn’t tough since she was only about five-foot-four—and tried to make sense of things. What he’d assumed was a closet was actually a tiny washroom, so maybe the girl had been washing her hair. Of course, that didn’t explain the wet weasel, but—

“What are you doing in here?” she demanded again.

He wanted to ask her the same thing, but quickly thought better of it. It wasn’t tough to read the look in her big blue eyes. She was mad and maybe a bit frightened, too. He took a step backward and slowly raised his hands to chest level, palms facing her, to show he meant her no harm.

“I’m sorry if I scared you,” he said quietly. “But I heard you yelling and I just…”

When her face flushed almost as bright as that baggy thing she had on, he cut the explanation and said, “I just came in looking for Ms. Van Slyke.”

I
am Ms. Van Slyke.”

He stared at the kid for a moment, waiting for a punch line. When she didn’t deliver one, he shook his head. “No, no. I’m looking for Ms.
Lauren
Van Slyke.”

“I told you,” she snapped, wiping water off her chin, “that’s me.”

“No, no,” he tried again. This girl couldn’t be more than eighteen, but maybe she was a niece or something—named Lauren after the old bat aunt. “It’s the Lauren Van Slyke who’s the director of the Van Slyke Foundation I’m looking for.”

“And that’s who you’re looking
at
. But you’ll have to give me a minute to find the cat. If I don’t get him dried off, the air-conditioning will give him pneumonia.”

S
ULLY IMPATIENTLY PACED
across Lauren Van Slyke’s office and stood staring down onto the rat race of Madison Avenue, wishing she’d hurry up and come back out of that washroom.

They’d captured her cat, although not before it had laid a slash that would have done a tiger proud down his forearm. But then, before he’d even had a chance to introduce himself, her assistant had arrived and taken the little beast into the reception area—leaving behind something dry for Lauren to change into.

So now that the
important
things had been taken care of, maybe they could get down to business. But only if she ever reappeared.

Just as he was deciding she was a human fly who’d crawled out the bathroom window and buzzed away, the door opened. He stared at her as she walked over to her desk, knowing he’d never have taken her for the same person he’d seen a few minutes ago.

The smell of wet cat had been replaced by the scent of perfume. If she’d been a different woman, it would have been almost appealing…particularly since it was obvious now that she was no teenager. She was, he’d guess, in her late twenties.

She’d washed off the mascara stains and had dried her hair enough that it was fluffed out, softly framing her face. It wasn’t very long, but he liked its dark honey color.

And she was now wearing clothes that fit. A creamy-colored suit had replaced the baggy pink thing. It turned out that the ghastly thing had been concealing a surprisingly nice figure.

And she was wearing shoes this time around. High heels, which he couldn’t help noticing made her legs seem longer.

All in all, she was a very attractive woman. Almost beautiful even, with high cheekbones and big cornflower blue eyes. But she was also, he reminded himself firmly, the enemy.

“So,” he said, pacing back toward the desk as she sat down behind it. “Do you always bring your cat to the office for its baths? Your husband or roommate or whatever doesn’t like you using the sink at home?”

“I don’t have either a husband or a roommate. And the cat…” Her words trailed off and she focused on the scratch on his arm. “Oh, my,” she murmured. “I’m sorry, I hadn’t realized that was nearly as bad as it is. I’ve got some bandages in the bathroom if you’d like me to—”

When he waved off the suggestion, she said she was sorry again, then gave him a tentative smile and gestured at one of the chairs facing the desk. “Please sit down, Mr….”

Her frantic, shrieking tone had disappeared and she sounded nothing at all like a chicken scratching. He decided she must have had a sore throat the day she’d called Otis, because her voice was actually so smooth it made him think of a tall cool drink on a hot day like today.

“Mr…?” she said again.

“Jack Sullivan,” he told her, sinking into the chair. “Sully to my friends.”

He liked the way her face paled when she put his name into context. He obviously wasn’t on her list of want-to-sees, and he was glad his visit was going to make her uncomfortable. She deserved to be.

“Ahh…” she murmured. “I’d never have expected you to drive all the way down from the Adirondacks.” So what
had
she expected? That she’d write him her kiss-off letter and he’d just go crawl under a rock? He dug the offending letter out of his jeans and tossed it onto her desk. For a moment, she simply looked at it the way someone might look at a sheet of toxic waste, then she reached for it.

Lauren only picked up the letter because Jack Sullivan clearly expected her to. She certainly didn’t need to read the words she’d written a few days ago. She’d agonized over them so long that they were burned into her memory. But at least rereading them would give her time to organize her thoughts.

She stared at the letter for a little longer, but when she realized that having time to organize her thoughts wasn’t helping, she glanced across her desk at Jack Sullivan again.

Now that she’d had a chance to look at him without water in her eyes, she’d realized he might have walked straight out of a dream. Not any dream of hers, of course. She wasn’t prone to such things. But she could see he’d be the sort of man some women would dream about.

He was tall and dark, and something about him seemed as dangerous as all get out. In his early thirties, he had untamed hair that curled up at the bottom of his neck, a straight nose, heavy eyebrows and a shallow but intriguing cleft in his chin.

On top of all that, he looked as if he spent a whole lot of time chopping wood up at his wilderness lodge. Beneath his blue T-shirt and jeans was a lean frame.

Yes, she could see that he had a certain…something. And she found it almost as disconcerting as the way his deep brown eyes were radiating pure unadulterated hatred.

She tried to think of what to say, but her letter had said it all, so she simply waited for him to break the silence.

“I’d like to talk about this problem with my funding,” he said at last.

“Ahh…yes, I feel bad about that, Mr. Sullivan.”

“Sully,” he corrected her, leaning forward in his chair. “I feel pretty bad about it myself,” he continued. “So I thought we could discuss whatever concerns you have. Thought there must be some way we could work things out.”

He paused, as if giving her a chance to say there was. But she was hardly going to lie to him.

Finally, he pressed on. “I know Eagles Roost is one of the smaller homes in the Foster Alternatives program, but we’ve got a solid success rate.”

“Yes…yes, you do. Wait just a minute and I’ll find your file.” She leaned back, pulled out the file drawer in her desk and dug out the folder, glad she’d come up with a way to escape his gaze—even if it was only a temporary escape. Opening the file, she began leafing through it. Anything to keep from having to meet his eyes again.

“I guess,” he said, “it was the trouble with Leroy Korelenko that got you worried about what we’re doing up there. But that was an isolated incident, and I should never have taken him in the first place. He was fifteen, and my kids are always younger than that. But his caseworker said there was nowhere else for him to go, so…well, I guess that’s beside the point. I shouldn’t have let her convince me to take him.”

“Yes, but that’s the only major trouble you’ve ever had, isn’t it,” she said, flipping over a few more pages and building up her courage. Once it got as high as she figured it was going to get, she looked at Sully again.

“The problem,” she managed to say evenly, “is that even though you’ve been doing a good job, I’m afraid there’s simply no way I can help you at the moment. But if you reapply again next year—”

“Next year?” He leaned forward again…quickly and menacingly this time. Then he slowly rested his forearms on the edge of her desk.

She couldn’t help noticing that long nasty scratch and she wished again the cat had kept his claws to himself. Finally, she met Sully’s gaze once more—and was sorry she had. The look in his dark eyes had gone beyond hatred. Now it was saying he’d like nothing better than to strangle her.

“Let’s stick to this year,” he said at last. “Because right now I’ve got five kids at Eagles Roost, and I’ll probably be sent another one before we’re into August. And…I don’t imagine you’ve ever tried to look after half a dozen kids at once, have you?”

“No, but—”

“No, I didn’t think so. Well, I’ll tell you, it’s no picnic in the park. ’Specially not when every one of the boys who comes into my program has been yanked out of some completely intolerable family situation. They all have a million problems and a level of self-esteem that’s down below their ankles. Giving them enough individual attention to do any good is full-time work, so I can hardly go out and get a nine-to-fiver to support them. And I’ve got to pay my teacher and housemother, too.”

“Yes, of course.” Lauren retreated to the file again and turned some more pages. “Otis and Grace Plavsic. I see they’ve been with you since the program began.”

“Right. For almost five years. And I can hardly ask them to start working for nothing. So if you can’t reconsider things, is there at least enough money floating around to carry us while I find funding somewhere else?”

“I…I really am sorry,” she murmured. “But the board’s made its decision and—”

“Decisions can be changed,” Sully snapped. “If people actually want to change them.”

She took a deep breath, trying to think of words that would diffuse his anger. “Mr. Sullivan…Sully…I don’t know if Matthew Grimes ever explained this to you, but the decision-making power of the foundation lies with the board, not with the director. I only study the grant applications and report on them.”

“Oh? And the board members don’t make their decisions on the basis of your reports?”

“Well…basically, yes.”

“Then it’s obvious you gave my program a lousy review, isn’t it.”

“The obvious,” she said quietly, “isn’t always the truth.” She was very tempted to tell him exactly what the truth was in this instance. Then he could go and glare at Hunter Clifton instead of at her. But it would hardly be a professional way of handling the situation.

Sully sat looking at Lauren Van Slyke, trying with all his might to keep his mouth shut. But he couldn’t stop the next question from slipping out any more than he could keep the sarcasm from his voice. “Don’t you think, just in the name of fairness, you should have talked directly to me before you wrote your report on Eagles Roost? Instead of snooping around behind my back?”

She stared at him evenly for a minute, then said, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

The sudden arctic chill in her voice almost made him shiver, and he could feel the final remnants of his control slipping away. She was the one who’d done the snooping, so where did she get off playing Ice Princess when he called her on it?

“You’re saying,” he muttered, matching her tone right down to the last icicle, “that you didn’t phone Otis Plavsic nine or ten weeks ago? Didn’t ask him all about Eagles Roost?”

“I most certainly did not.”

He sat back in his chair, at a loss for words. He knew how to handle a kid who was lying through his teeth, but what did he do here? He knew she’d phoned Otis, because Otis had told him all about their conversation.

“Was there anything else, Mr. Sullivan?”

Looking at her again, he realized those murderous impulses had returned. “No. No, I guess if the decision can’t be changed, then my funding’s done as of the end of September. So there’s no point taking any more of your time.”

Lauren Van Slyke gave him a cool smile. “Well, as I said before, please feel free to apply to us again next year.”

“Yeah.” He shoved himself out of the chair and headed across to the door. When he reached it he looked back. “If my program’s still around next year, I’ll keep that in mind. Thanks.”

For nothing,
he silently added, closing the door behind himself. And forget reapplying next year. He’d had enough of Ms. Lauren Van Slyke to last his entire lifetime, and then some.

Family matters

L
AUREN SAW HER
three-thirty appointment out through the reception area, in case the cat decided to make a break for freedom while the door was open. Once it was safely closed again, she turned to Rosalie—who definitely did not look happy.

“The cat’s been giving you problems?” she guessed. At the moment, the little guy was sitting on the corner of Rosalie’s desk, contentedly chewing on the fronds of her spider plant.

“Well, that depends on what you consider problems,” Rosalie muttered. “He’s ripped my panty hose, scratched the hell out of the carpet, tried to climb the coat tree about a hundred times, and now he’s having my plant for an afternoon snack.”

“Ahh,” Lauren murmured, making a mental note to stop on her way to the office in the morning and pick up panty hose and a new plant. “Maybe I’d better leave early and get him out of your hair.”

When Rosalie said that sounded like a fine idea to her, Lauren started back toward her office to get her things. Before she reached it, though, the hallway door opened again and Elliot walked in.

“Well, if it isn’t my brother the lawyer,” she said, reversing course and giving him a hug. “What are you doing here?”

“Oh, I just wanted to talk to you about something. But the better question is what’s that doing here?” Elliot pointed to the cat.

“It’s a long story. Come into my office, though, before he starts your allergies acting up.” Glancing at Rosalie, she added, “Just a few more minutes?”

“Sure. But if he starts trying to climb the walls, I’ll be knocking on your door.”

Smiling, Lauren ushered Elliot into her office and sat down beside him. “So, what’s up?”

He shrugged. “There’s a little problem I want to let you know about. Roughly seven years ago, I defended a really nasty client named Ken Higgins. He ended up getting a ten-year sentence.”

“Not one of your more successful defenses, then.”

“I didn’t have a prayer. In fact, the guy was lucky he didn’t get twenty years instead of ten. Unfortunately, though, he didn’t see it that way. He figured I should have pulled a rabbit out of a hat so the judge would let him walk. And when that didn’t happen, he said he’d get me once he was out.”

A chill settled in Lauren’s chest. She adored her big brother, and the fact he was telling her this meant he was awfully worried about it. “Is that common? For lawyers to get those kinds of threats?”

Elliot nodded. “Common enough that, normally, I wouldn’t give it much thought. But as I said, this guy’s really nasty. And he’s written me a few times, telling me how much he’s looking forward to seeing me again—letters worded innocently enough that they got past the prison check, but with a clear message to me.”

“And he gets out…?”

“He got out today. Nobody ever serves their full time these days.”

“So what are you doing?” She was trying to stay calm, but she could feel the chill spreading through her entire body.

“I’m being careful, and I’ve hired people to guard the house so that Ursula and the boys will be safe.”

“The boys,” Lauren murmured, almost to herself. Her nephews were three and five, and the thought of anything happening to them or Ursula…

“But the reason I’m telling you this,” Elliot went on, “is because the guy threatened to get me…or someone I love. So, just in case, I want you to be really careful for the next little while.”

“Oh, Elliot,” she whispered. “What about Mom and Dad? And Marisa?” she added, thinking that the man her sister lived with was away at the moment. And that Marisa didn’t like being alone in her apartment.

“I’ve already talked to them,” Elliot said.

“How did they take it?”

“Well, Mom’s pretty upset about it, but she’s got nothing on Ursula.”

When Elliot anxiously clasped his hands together, Lauren rested her hand on top of his. “You must be worried sick.”

“I’m trying not to be. The odds on the guy actually doing anything are low. It’s rare for that sort of threat to really lead anywhere.”

“How rare?”

“Rare enough that I considered not even telling the rest of the family about it, so you wouldn’t worry. But I decided I had to, no matter how low the risk. So even though the chances of anything happening to you are awfully remote, you keep a sharp eye out, okay? And if anything makes you even the least bit anxious, call the police. Immediately.”

She nodded. “I will.”

Elliot gave her a forced-looking smile. “With any luck, the guy will be back behind bars in no time. He’s the kind who’ll spend most of his life in prison.”

Her thoughts racing, Lauren walked Elliot out and gave him another hug—a long, hard one this time. “You take care,” she whispered. “You take really serious care.”

When the door closed behind him, she looked over at the cat, half wishing he was a stray Doberman rather than a half-grown tom.

“I
SWEAR
,” S
ULLY MUTTERED
, “there should be a law against women like her.” He paced across the kitchen once more, then turned and looked back over to where Otis and Grace were sitting at the table.

Listening to him rant and rave wasn’t part of the job description for either teacher or housemother, but he’d been so steamed when he’d left Manhattan that even the four-hour drive back up to Eagles Roost hadn’t completely cooled him down. And filling them in on his visit with Lauren Van Slyke had made him angry all over again.

Maybe she didn’t care what happened to his kids, or to all the ones who’d be coming through here in the future—assuming he could keep the program going—but he sure cared. And he cared about what would happen to Grace and Otis, too.

Back when he’d started the program, he’d been lucky that Otis had decided to pack in his inner-city teaching job and come to work here. He and Grace were a lot of the reason Eagles Roost was a success. And what did a couple in their late fifties do if the rug was suddenly pulled out from under them?

“How,” he said, shaking his head, “could they appoint a complete incompetent as the director of a foundation? Even if she
is
family?”

“Will you take it easy?” Otis said quietly. “You’re going to give yourself a heart attack.”

“Take it easy? Otis, you weren’t there. You weren’t the one she conscripted to help catch a soaking-wet cat. You aren’t the one who’s got a ten-inch gash in his arm.” He brandished the scratch at them again.

“We really should get that cleaned up,” Grace told him. “You don’t suppose there’s any chance of rabies, do you?”

“It wouldn’t surprise me in the least. Actually, it wouldn’t surprise me if the woman had rabies, never mind her cat. I mean, she’s simply not a normal person. Who would think of bringing her cat to the office, let alone bathing it there?”

“Well, it does sound peculiar,” Grace admitted. “But maybe she had a reason.”

“Right,” Sully muttered. “The reason is that she’s a total wing nut. I’ll bet she’s lived her entire life without having a reason for
anything
she does. We’re a perfect example of that. She doesn’t have a clue what goes on up here, yet she merrily chops our funding.”

“I thought she said the decision was the board’s, not hers,” Otis pointed out.

Sully shot a glare in his direction. “Stop trying to be so reasonable. The woman’s a liar. She straight out denied having phoned you, and there’s no doubt she did, is there?”

Otis shook his head. “I talked to her for a good half hour. And as I said at the time, the more questions she asked, the more it seemed she was trying to unearth problems.”

“Exactly. Which tells us how much faith we can put in anything she says.”

“Well, it doesn’t matter anymore,” Grace said, “because we’re obviously through dealing with her. But where do we go from here?”

The worried expression on Grace’s face made Sully suddenly wish he’d soft-pedaled things. Eagles Roost was her home. And Otis’s, too, of course.

“Maybe,” Grace murmured to Otis, “we should postpone our vacation for a while. Until we get this sorted out.”

“No,” Sully said firmly. “It’s me who has to sort it out, not you, so you’re leaving on Saturday as planned. I’ll bet your relatives have a ton of things organized for your visit.”

“Well…you’re probably right,” Otis admitted. “They usually do.”

“Exactly. And you both need a break from here. So you’ll go and have a good time, and by the time you get back, I’ll have other funding lined up.”

“Sully…what if that doesn’t turn out to be easy?”

He shrugged, trying to look as if that possibility wasn’t worrying him at all. “You know the answer as well as I do. If we don’t have funding, the authorities will shut us down just as fast as they can find new placements for the kids. But that’s not going to happen. It’s just a matter of figuring out…” He paused, hearing a noise on the other side of the door.

“Sully?” Billy the Kid called a second later. “Okay if I let Roxy in there? I think she wants a drink or somethin’.”

“Yeah, sure,” he absently called back.

The door swung open from the lodge’s main lounge—which these days served as a family room—and Roxy lumbered in. At a hundred-and-twenty pounds, with a rottweiler mother and a Saint Bernard father, she wasn’t a dog who normally moved very fast.

“Is dinner gonna be soon, Mrs. Plavsic?” Billy asked politely.

She nodded. “Half an hour or so. Can you last till then, or would you like an apple?”

“No, I’m okay, thanks.”

A
FTER
B
ILLY HAD BACKED
out of the kitchen and shut the door again, he realized he was shaking. He was almost afraid to believe they hadn’t known he’d been standing there listening. Sully was always suspicious about stuff like that.

Turning to the rest of the kids, he whispered, “That was close. I
told
you not to make any noise. They mighta caught me.”

“So what was they sayin’?” Freckles asked. “What happened in New York?”

Billy nodded his head in the direction of the bedrooms. If they stood here talking, they’d get caught for sure. He started off across the lounge, glancing back to make sure the others were following. They were, of course. He’d been at Eagles Roost the longest, so that kinda made him the leader.

Besides, he was twelve, so he was oldest. Freckles was eleven. And the terrible twins, Tony and Terry, were only ten. And Hoops…well, Hoops was twelve, too, but he never said much unless it was about basketball. So when something was happening, it was Billy the Kid everybody mostly listened to.

And they were
really
listening to him about this, ’cuz if he hadn’t been practicing up on his detective stuff they wouldn’t know nothing ’bout what was going on. But after he’d snuck into Sully’s office the other day and read that letter, he’d told the rest of them that the rich lady wasn’t giving the chief eagle any more money to run Eagles Roost.

He led the others into the room he and Hoops shared, and plopped down on his bed. Hoops grabbed his basketball and started slapping it back and forth between his hands, but the rest of them just stood waiting.

“So?” Freckles asked. “What’d they say?”

Billy shrugged. “The chief eagle said he couldn’t make her change her mind. She just ain’t goin’ to give him no more money.”

The twins looked at each other, then Tony said, “So what’s gonna happen to us?”

“We’ll hafta go someplace else,” Freckles muttered. “That’s what’ll happen to us.”

Terry looked like he was going to start crying, but Tony gave him a sharp jab in the ribs that kept him quiet.

“I don’t wanna go no place else,” Hoops said.

His dark face almost never showed what he was feeling, but right now Billy could tell Hoops was scared. It made the flip-flopping in his own stomach even worse. He was scared, too, but he couldn’t let the rest of them know. Leaders weren’t supposed to get scared.

“We don’t wanna go no place else, either,” Tony said. “We heard about some of ’em other places.”

“Okay, don’t worry,” Billy told them. “We’re all gonna stay right here.” At least he sure hoped that was what would happen, ’cuz he didn’t want to go no place else, either. Not unless he could go back home, and Sully said that wasn’t on. Not as long as his mom was still living with
Uncle
Brian—with his big drug deals and his even bigger fists.

“So what are we gonna do, Billy?” Freckles asked.

“Well, see, from what Sully was sayin’, I think that lady could give him the money if she really wanted to. But I think when he went to see her he kinda blew up. You know how he does sometimes. So maybe she didn’t understand that’s just his way. Maybe he made her so mad she wouldn’t listen.”

“So…?” Tony said.

“So, if she
did
listen…see, Sully said she doesn’t have a clue what goes on up here. But if she did, she’d give him the money, right?”

“You sure?” Freckles said.

“Yeah, I’m sure. And I got a plan, too. But everybody’s gotta help with it.”

L
AUREN CLOSED
the Eagles Roost file and set it aside. After yesterday’s visit from Jack Sullivan, she’d been strangely curious about him—and had realized she didn’t know the history of his program.

When she’d first taken over as director, there’d been so much to learn that she hadn’t had time to read all the material in
any
of the files. And the Eagles Roost file had been intimidatingly thick.

But now she’d read every detail, even though that seemed a lot like locking the door after the thief had left. It had kept her mind off the threat to Elliot, though, and had also gone a long way to satisfying her curiosity.

Matthew Grimes had collected a lot of detailed information about Jack Sullivan, undoubtedly because of his criminal record. But from what she’d read it didn’t seem that Sully had an innately criminal character. He’d simply had some incredibly bad breaks—a father he’d never known and an alcoholic mother who’d died when he was eighteen were two of the worst. At any rate, she now knew a lot more about Jack Sullivan’s life story than she had before.