In the Heart of the Wind Book 1 in the WindTorn Trilogy (43 page)

“Just sleep, Jamie,” he heard an inner voice demanding. “Just sleep.”

Doc Remington
looked up at Jenny Warrington and frowned. He shook his head and straightened his tired back.

“Do you think he knows us?” Kyle asked.

Doc shrugged. “I’m not sure.” He ran a weary hand over his face, flinching at the day’s stubble that scraped his palm. He walked to the little table where Edna Mae and Ellen were sitting, coffee cups clutched in their hands.

“How is he?” Edna Mae asked.

“I think he’s trying to retreat into one of those personalities Marty told us about.” He glanced at the black orderly who was sitting beside Delbert on one of the sofas. “He answered to Jamie.”

“It was Jamie who realized who we were,” Edna Mae reminded him.

“Yes, but maybe Jamie doesn’t remember me and Doc,” Jenny replied as she came to stand beside them, her hand on the railing that ran along the overhead cabinet. She swayed as the motor coach changed lanes. “What concerns me is that he didn’t recognize Kyle.”

“He didn’t really look at me,” Kyle answered.

“Give him time,” Mary Bernice told all of them. “He’s been through so damned much, is it a wonder he don’t want to go through no more?”

He could hear
them talking. Were they talking about him? Surely not, for their words were kind and gentle. He thought he knew who Kyle was. The word conjured a warm and glowing feeling inside him, but he just couldn’t seem to recollect an orderly by that name.

“You have to protect them, Jamie,” that inner voice warned. “Remember?”

A wavering memory flitted over his tired mind and he strove hard to latch onto it, but like a will-’o-the-wisp, it moved out of his reach, floating past him into the darker regions of his subconscious.

As he slipped into an uneasy sleep once more, he wondered who could possibly trust him to protect whomever he was supposed to protect when he couldn’t even protect himself.

Liam Tremayne
glared at his son. If he had been able, he would be up, his palm lashing out to wipe the fear off Andrew’s face. The young man’s terror was palpable, a scent like stale grease.

“We’ve got men on the way to Iowa right now,” Andrew whimpered. “We’ll find out who those people were. We’ll send men to—”

“Did it ever occur to you—” Liam cut him off with a sneer. “—that those people might’ve been hired by that woman in Iowa.” He cut his eyes to his daughter. “What was her name?”

“Annie,” Bridget answered. “Annie Cummings, Papa.”

Liam impaled Andrew with a stony stare. “Did that ever occur to you?”

“Where would she get the money?” Andrew asked. “She’s just a school teacher.”

A snarl erupted from Liam’s throat. “James’ picture has been plastered all over this state,” he snapped. “That took money, Andrew. Renting that ambulance, the limo, all that shit. It cost money. Shitkickers from Iowa can’t plan like this, Andrew. This was done by professionals. People who knew what the hell they were doing!”

Bridget nodded.

Patrick looked away from his sister. If only they knew, he thought with a malicious sneer. There was no doubt in his mind that the people in Iowa who loved and cared for his brother had made the trip south to retrieve him.

“What do we do about Lassiter?” Bridget asked, drawing eyes to her angry face. “Do we let him get away with his ineptitude?”

Liam snorted. “Lassiter is the
least
of our worries, Bridie!” He turned his hot eyes to Patrick. “Do you have photographs of James after the surgery?”

Warily, Patrick nodded. “Why?”

Liam flicked his eyes to Andrew. “Get those photographs from Paddy and have a thousand copies made. I want them distributed all over Iowa. Send them to every newspaper, TV station, every contact we have in that pissant place. I want him found. Do you understand, Drew?” He raked his eyes over his son. “Or is that too much for your feeble brain to handle.” The hot eyes narrowed. “If it is, I can turn the whole thing over to your sister. I’m sure she could see the job done!”

“I could,” Bridget agreed, her eyes blazing.

Andrew glared at his sister. “I’ll take care of it.”

“You’d better,” Liam warned.

Patrick excused himself, knowing his father neither wanted nor needed, any help from him. He gently closed the door to his father’s room behind him and met the worried look of his mother. He smiled and walked to her, took her into his arms.

“Don’t worry, Mama. They won’t find him.”

His mother shivered. “Are you sure, Paddy?”

Patrick knew what his father had had planned for Jamie at the clinic in Louisiana. Andrew had made the mistake of telling him when he’d called Paddy on the scrambler in his Orlando office.

“Can you believe it?” Drew had laughed. “Papa was actually gonna have James snuffed!”

And Patrick had known a fury unlike anything he’d ever experienced. Both Andrew and Bridget had long wanted James eliminated. He’d known that for quite some time. But finding out their father not only wanted his son out of the family’s way, but had ordered his death, brought Patrick himself to the edge of murder. The knowledge sat like a heavy weight on Patrick’s chest and he had unburdened that weight upon his mother’s frail shoulders.

“You must’ve misunderstood,” Margaret Tremayne had said. “Surely—”

“No, Mama,” Paddy had told her. “They want to see him out of our lives forever, Mama, and I don’t intend to let that happen.”

“No,” she’d sighed. “We won’t let it happen.”

Jamie had always been her favorite. He had been the one child among all of them to whom she had felt the closest. He hadn’t been serious like Patrick, or vain like Andrew, or mean-spirited like Bridget. He’d been a warm, loving, shy little boy who hadn’t even been given a chance to win his father’s love. He’d been despised from birth, not wanted, not loved, ignored by his father.

Until the beatings and abuse began.

“I didn’t want to see it,” she had told Patrick that afternoon when he arrived at the mansion in Miami. “I didn’t want to believe Liam could mistreat his own flesh and blood in such a horrible way.”

“Why didn’t you ever try to stop him, Mama?” Patrick had accused.

“I...I...” The old woman had broken down and wept bitterly, her past actions no longer making sense to her.

On this day of his brother’s freedom, as Patrick held his mother, he glanced past her to the grandfather’s clock in the hall. It was three in the afternoon.

He wondered where Jamie was and if he was safe. He worried the drugs Beecher had given him might have taken Jamie’s life, but somehow deep in his soul he knew if that had been the case, he would have felt it. He would have known it.

“Don’t worry, Mama,” he whispered to the woman who had given him life. “Jamie will be just fine.”

The Atlanta beltway
was clogged with afternoon traffic. Cars were gridlocked ahead of the motor coach. Up ahead, the revolving roof lights of two Georgia State Patrol cars kept the cars and trucks, vans and semis at a distance from the accident that had blocked all three lanes.

“I’m getting hungry,” Delbert told his wife.

Dick looked around from the driver’s seat. “Jenny stocked up on sandwich meat and salads, Del, and there’s bread and snacks in the cupboard. If you’re gonna make something, how about piling some pastrami on wheat for me?”

Delbert nodded and got up to go to the mini fridge. He asked if anyone else wanted anything and was surprised to hear a weak voice from the back of the motor coach ask for something to drink. He stopped, glanced at the others and saw Ellen Vittetoe push hurriedly up from her seat to rush back.

“You want some water, baby, or pop?” she asked as she knelt on the floor next to Gabe. She covered his hand with her own.

He stared up at her for a second, eyes narrowing. He licked his lips, swallowed, then let out a long breath.

“Ellen?” he asked.

Her face broke into a wide grin.

Annie James let
go of the curtain that covered the front window of the little apartment in which she and Nora Mueller and Annie’s little Pomeranian had been staying for the past several days. It wasn’t home, just a safe house, but it wasn’t bad.

“Where do you think they are now?” she asked Nora.

Nora looked up from her knitting. “I don’t know, dear. Maybe in South Carolina if they’re lucky.” She laid her knitting in her lap. “I haven’t ever traveled that way so I’m not familiar with the country or how long it takes to get from one place to another.” She smiled gently at the younger woman. “I’m sure they’ll check in soon to let you know how things are.”

Annie sighed. “I hope so.”

She went back to the window, pulling the little muslin curtain aside with the backs of her fingers. She gazed out into the parking lot and shifted her vision to the high-rise medical center just to the north. It was one of Des Moines’ prettiest buildings and the sight of it seemed to calm her. It seemed to remind her there were three medical experts on that motor coach with Gabe.

“He’s gonna be just fine, dear,” Nora said quietly. “He’s in good hands.”

“I know,” Annie whispered.

FBI Agent Mark
Sadler cursed. He was staring at a photo just handed to him by his assistant. He pitched the faxed photo onto his desk and swiveled his chair around, staring out at the cold Iowan afternoon as snow drifted sullenly past his window.

“They changed his face,” Sadler snarled.

His assistant, Henry Butler, glanced at the photo and back at Sadler. “Do they really think we’ll cooperate with them?”

Sadler snorted. It was an ugly sound. “What was it that bastard down in Florida said? ‘We cooperated with you trying to find Gabe James. Now, it’s up to you to help
us
find James Tremayne!’” He growled. “Mentally unstable, my ass!” Sadler spun around in his chair. “When you send a reply to Florida, tell them unless they come out here and get a federal extradition order signed, we aren’t going to be busting our butts trying to find Tremayne.”

After his assistant was gone, Sadler smiled. Butler knew nothing about the team that had gone to rescue Gabe James from the clinic in Louisiana and he didn’t need to know. He hoped things had gone well down there. Chuckling softly to himself, he reached for his phone and punched in Virgil Kramer’s home number.

“Virgil? Mark Sadler. How’s things down south?”

“Bright and sunny’s what I hear on the Weather Channel. How’s things where you are?”

“Heating up, but I’ve got my finger on the thermostat. How’s our little weather girl holding up?”

Virgil’s gruff voice softened. “Just heard from her and she and Toto are hanging in there.”

“Keep in touch,” Sadler advised his local counterpart. “And good luck on your fishing trip in Minnesota.”

Virgil sniffed. “As though I’m really looking forward to it!”

“Don’t slip through no cracks up there, Virge,” Sadler said with a laugh. “We’re gonna need you back here.”

“As best I
can tell, boss,” Carmine ‘Cheech’ Giafaglione’s right-hand man told him, “all this is on the up and up. Old man Tremayne had his son kidnapped in Iowa and had him locked in some private clinic in Louisiana. They was keeping him doped up down there.”

“The Chancel?” Cheech asked.

“How’d you know?” the man asked, his eyebrows nearly meeting over his craggy nose.

“I’ve used it a couple times,” Cheech said. “Go on.”

“Anyway, it seems Tremayne’s son, James, got snatched from there, too, by person or persons unknown. His whereabouts isn’t known at this time.”

Cheech frowned. “No idea who took him?”

“Rumor is it was some of Tremayne’s friends from out west. The young Tremayne, that is.”

A rare gentle smile creased Carmine Giafaglione’s lips. “Got some ballsy friends, don’t he?”

“He was a cop,” the man sniffed. “DEA in Florida.”

Cheech leaned back in his chair. “Is that so? And he was married to Connors’ daughter, eh?”

“Yeah, but she’s dead, now.” He lowered his voice. “I hear tell it was Tremayne’s daughter who ordered that hit.”

Light speared through Cheech’s hooded eyes and he made a temple of his fingers. “Bridget Casey.”

“That’s the one.”

“That bitch is a pit bull in disguise,” Cheech growled.

His own daughter, Teresa, had gone to finishing school with Tremayne’s arrogant girl-child. Teresa had told her father more than he had ever wanted to know about Bridget Tremayne. He looked out his garden window. “Do you have all the information I requested?”

“Yes, sir. We’ve got some guys from Palermo just waiting for orders. We gonna help, boss?”

Cheech’s eyes lifted slowly to his henchman. “If we’re asked, yes. Cop or no cop, James Tremayne has a friend in the Giafaglione Family.”