In the Heart of the Wind Book 1 in the WindTorn Trilogy (27 page)

Edna Mae grinned as Lassiter faked his answer. “But, of course! The Boudreaux family is quite well-known.” She could almost see the man furiously writing down the name on a pad.

“Fine. I appreciate your help, Bruce,” Alec told the man, then eased down the receiver.

“The nominations for Best Actor are...” Doc laughed.

“And the award goes to...” Kyle chimed in.

“Please,” Alec begged, holding up his hand. His face sobered. “I wish to thank all the little people who have made this possible.”

“Offhand, I’d say he bought it hook, line, and sinker,” Edna Mae commented. “Let’s hope the phony information our man in Georgia provides for Kyle will hold up.”

“What about Bridget Casey? She lives in Georgia. Won’t she suspect something if she meets this David?” Edna Mae asked.

Alec smiled. “There is a real family and there is a real David. He’s in France at the moment in a private sanitarium there. His mother, Elise, is a very dear friend of mine and I have her cooperation in this. She’ll be leaving for St. Tropez this afternoon, so in case someone just happens to check on Edna Mae, they’ll think she’s the real Elise Boudreaux.”

“Let’s hope Bridget Casey has never seen Mrs. Boudreaux,” Kyle said.

“It wouldn’t be likely since Elise moves in much higher circles than Dr. Casey ever will. Elise spends most of her time abroad and there’s enough similarity between her and Edna Mae, I doubt even if Bridget Casey were to carry on a conversation with you, she could tell the difference.”

Edna Mae’s lip thrust out in a pout. “Are you trying to say all us little gray-haired ladies look alike, Dr. Gardner?”

Alec’s eyes gleamed. “You’re a flirt, aren’t you, Mrs. Menke?”

“One of the very best,” Kyle warned. “Did Alec tell you he’s not married, Miss Edna?”

“We’ll pick them
up at two tomorrow,” Mel told Dick Warrington. “I spoke with Thais earlier and he says the tags’ll be here by tonight.”

“Everything’s all together on our end,” Dr. Warrington explained. “Anything else we need to do?”

“Just hurry on down. They’re gonna be taking our little fella on out to Louisiana tomorrow afternoon.” Mel took the coffee cup Jake extended toward him. “Let’s hope they find our boy early enough so we can be back for the UNI game Saturday.” He took a sip of the hot brew and winced. “I got money on that game.”

Ellen Vittetoe tipped
the bellman and sat on the edge of her bed. She sighed, bone-tired, a headache playing at the edge of her right eye, the noise along the busy New Orleans street filtering in through the window to distract her. She laid back, looking up at the ceiling.

“Be careful, Kyle,” she whispered. “Please be very, very careful.”

Del’s face was
at least three shades lighter than his normal
cafe au lait
complexion. He swallowed convulsively, trying to gain his land legs again as he stepped off the jet. He glanced at his wife’s grinning face and scowled.

“I ain’t going back up in no air, no time, ever,” he spat.

“Relax, Del,” Galen scolded him. “Y’all won’t have to.”

“I wouldn’t, no way, any way.”

“Lighten up, Del,” Thais said with a chuckle.

“He get much lighter, he be white!” Mary Bernice joked.

Del growled at the three laughing people and stomped off, his pride hurt. He felt the humidity wash over him like an excited German Shepherd’s tongue and he sighed. He didn’t like Florida.

Not no way, not at all!

Jenny and Dick
Warrington climbed on board and settled in. It would take them all night to get to Destin, but they were in no hurry. They’d arranged everything on their end and were looking forward to a leisurely drive down to the coast.

“Have you checked all the medical supplies?” Dick asked as he keyed the ignition.

Jenny sighed. “Twice over.”

“We’ve got plenty of everything?”

“Yes, we do.”

“I guess we’re all set then.”

“I guess.” She waited, her eyes on her husband.

“Did you think to bring...?”

“Yes.”

Dick Warrington glanced at her. “How do you know what I was gonna ask?”

Jenny shook her head. “I’ve been married to you for fifteen years. I’ve been your nurse for eighteen. I know how you think, Doctor. We’ve got everything we need.”

“You’re sure?” he pressed.

Jenny nodded. “Very sure.”

The Badger handed
over two Louisiana license tags to the Alabama DEA agent. “You guys got your instructions?” The other man nodded. “If you need anything else, you know how to reach me.”

“I had those Georgia driver’s licenses and registrations sent over to the condo a little while ago. The Warringtons picked up their Tennessee licenses yesterday when they ordered the two vans. The folks in the condo know not to leave outta there until they get theirs. Just in case.”

The Badger nodded. “I’ve got people listening out for them. If even one of these people get even so much as a parking ticket, I’ll find out about it. We want to cover their asses as tight as plastic wrap.”

“Consider it done.”

“What about Gardner’s plane?”

“Taken care of. The pilot’s DEA.”

A rare smile touched The Badger’s firm lips. “I think I’m gonna enjoy this.”

“Putting a kibosh to Liam Tremayne is like winning the lottery. It don’t come everyday, but when it does, look out!”

Patrick Tremayne
sat in the parking garage of his office complex in Orlando and stared at the gray concrete pylons that soared up to the ceiling. His telephone conversation with Bridget only a half hour earlier had made him mad as hell and scared that hell out of him.

“When I left there, he was sitting, staring at the wall. He hadn’t moved in over two hours. I left instructions with Lassiter that if he started acting up again, he was to be taken immediately to therapy.”

“What are you trying to do to him, Bridie?” Patrick had yelled at her.

“I’m trying to control him, Paddy,” his sister had said in a reasonable voice. “You wouldn’t want him hurting himself during one of these personality splits, would you?”

“I want you to leave him alone! He’s not doing any harm to Papa. Why don’t you just leave him alone?”

The line had gone dead.

Sitting there, the smell of spent oil, gas and motor fumes drifting under his nostrils, Patrick Tremayne gripped the steering wheel of his automobile and took long, steadying breaths.

He wondered if the woman in Iowa had understood what he had told her.

“She had to,” Patrick whispered. “She just had to.”

Annie James listened
only partially to what Nora Mueller was saying as the older woman went about rolling out the dough for a pie. Her mind was on the people who had left Iowa the day before. She had wanted to go, too. Had argued with them. Had begged and pleaded and shouted and cried. But in the end, they’d left without her.

“It’s too dangerous, Annie,” Kyle had told her. “Don’t you think they know what you look like, darling? If they see you anywhere down there, they’re gonna know something’s up. We’ll lose the element of surprise, and right now, that’s all we’ve got!”

So she stayed in Iowa while Gabe’s friends had gone to his rescue. It wasn’t easy to just sit there and try to be calm. It wasn’t easy to try to take her mind off what might happen, or be happening, down there. It wasn’t easy just doing nothing to help her husband.

It was almost as hard as losing him had been.

He walked clumsily
, his motor functions impaired by the massive amounts of barbiturates in his system. He couldn’t seem to hold onto any one thought for very long. His thinking was rambling, cloudy, confused, and sometimes where he had been going was a complete mystery to him when he stopped and tried to remember.

Often, he found himself simply staring into space, his roaming attention seemingly caught and held, but by some inner voice speaking to him on a level he couldn’t quite hear. It seemed to him it was as though, at the periphery of his consciousness, he had a guide showing him the way he should go, should act, must act, what was required of him, and he would behave accordingly; but at other times, he was without that star of understanding to guide him and he wandered aimlessly about, moving from place to place, seeking something he couldn’t remember wanting to find.

It became obvious to him, on some primal level that still held meaning, that his thought processes were not progressing beyond the here and now. They did not wander back through time and space to what had been, neither did they move forward to what might be. He became a present-focused zombie lurching from one end of the day room to the other seeking, but never finding.

Then the hallucinations began.

At first, when he had seen the man sitting across from him at the table, he thought he recognized him. The face was vaguely familiar. The man’s hair was the same shade as his own, although the eyes were a vivid, startling brown.

“How’s it going, Jamie?” the apparition had asked him.

“All right,” he had answered.

“Who you talking to, Sinclair?” Beecher had sneered, coming to stand over Jamie.

It was then Jamie realized no one could see his visitor but him.

Others had shown up. People he thought he should know, but couldn’t seem to put a name to. There was an elderly woman, kindly and smiling, teasing, who often chatted non-stop with him about the merits of shoveling snow. There was the man his own age, curly brown hair gleaming beneath the overhead fluorescent lights, brown eyes sparkling, who discussed trout fishing and quail hunting. Sometimes there was a black woman, her eyes gleaming with mischief, who came to sit on the edge of the table and complain about how much she hated snow.

Most of the time, he sat there at the little table, dealing the fifty-two cards onto the top, putting red eights on black nines, black Queens on red Kings and listened silently to the people who came to visit him. They faded away whenever one of the orderlies came near him.

“Uh-oh,” the older gentleman–somehow he knew the man’s wife was the lady who liked to shovel snow so much—whispered to Jamie. “Here comes that bastard we hate.”

Jamie watched as the man slowly phased away, his smile, like the Cheshire cat’s, the last thing to leave. “Don’t leave,” he said, reaching out, but the image faded. He jumped as the cards before him were swept to the floor by an angry movement of Beecher’s arm.

“Were you winning, James?” The voice was slick with contempt. “I’m so sorry. Life’s a bitch, ain’t it?”

Jamie looked up to see Beecher grinning down at him.

“Why don’t you leave that boy alone?” Martin Cobb asked as he walked over.

Beecher turned, his face ugly with contempt. “Why don’t you mind your own business,  before you get some of what he’s gonna get?”

“What’s he gonna get, Beecher?” Cobb snapped. “He ain’t down for no treatments.”

Beecher put a stubby finger in Cobb’s chest and pushed. “A bath, as if you can’t smell it!” He turned away from Cobb and reached down to jerk Jamie to his feet.

“Who ordered him to have a bath?” Cobb asked, his face unsure, his eyes wary.

“We’ve got company coming this afternoon,” Beecher growled. “If you’d care to look at the schedule, you’d see the Doc ordered all the patients to be cleaned up.” His eyes raked down the black man. “That is, if you can read!”

“I can read!”

“Then you’d better do what’s written.” Beecher shoved Jamie away from the table.

“I’ll bathe him,” Cobb said, reading the look of terror in Jamie’s eyes.

“You,”
Beecher snarled, “will do what you’re supposed to do!” He shoved Cobb out of the way.

“Dr. Gardner?
”

Alec lowered the window on the limo and looked toward the camera positioned above the car. “Yes.”

“Welcome to The Chancel, sir. One moment, please.”

Edna Mae’s hand tightened on Kyle’s as the gate to the imposing mansion ahead of them began to open. Her eyes were intent on the clinic, on the sweeping portico, the white expanse of brick and mortar which, in her mind, seemed to loom at them out of the lowering January sunset. She flinched as she saw two men with shotguns walking toward the car.

Kyle swung his eyes to Doc Remington’s in the rear view mirror as the older man sat behind the limo’s wheel, his chauffeur’s cap at a jaunty angle.

“Just a precaution, I’m sure,” Alec said. “Don’t let these men scare you, David.” He nodded as the man on the left of the car tipped a cap to him. “My patient’s a bit skittish around firearms,” he explained. He touched the window button and the smoked glass panel slide upward, concealing the passengers in the back seat.

“Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” Edna Mae whispered, crossing herself. “Those were twelve gauge pumps!”