Nightwind (33 page)

savage beast he had once been, the primal organism intent on killing and maiming and destroying, heard

the female speaking and made some sense of her words. Although what the female was saying was

hurting him even more, he strove hard to listen, to understand, to grasp the sounds and interpret them into

meaning.

“She’ll have your child to remember you by,” Angeline told him, taking still one more step closer to the

cell. “You have given her what you set out to give her, Syntian. You have given her a life; you have given

her friends and respect and a reason to live.”

The female’s words were excruciating tortures that drove into his skull like arrows. They brought despair

and racking agony that tore at his brain and pierced his heart. Those hideous sounds: words that he

understood, with meanings he knew spelled his doom, filled what was left of his being with utter

hopelessness.

“You are mine, Syntian,” the female was telling him. “I shared you with her and now I want you back.”

He twisted his head until he could see her face. There were tears in the female’s eyes, but then again,

females often controlled their mates with tears. Tears meant little to them and meant nothing to him. But

there was sorrow in her face, in her damp eyes, and he recognized that for he had seen it many times in

his own face. He looked away from her and stared up at the bars over his head.

Angeline moved as close to the cell as she dared and looked into his bleak face. She wondered if her

words were getting through to him, breaking through the shell of resistance he had erected. There didn’t

appear to be any sign of human intelligence in his staring eyes. There was no telltale spark of humanity

glowing there. There was only a keen awareness of pain and a tortured expression on his sensuous lips

that said he was suffering.

“Can you understand what I am saying to you, Syntian?” she asked, pleading with him in a voice

breaking with its own grief. “Don’t you see that I am doing what is best?”

As he lay on his back, he turned his head toward her and stared at her for a long time.

“You belong to me,” she said. “I will never allow you to see Lauren again.” She heard him groan as

though in great pain. “I mean what I say, Syntian.”

His eyes filled with agony and he stretched out his hand to her, his palm up, his fingers splayed in an

attempt to be touched.

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “I don’t trust you.”

He turned over on his belly and crawled to her on his knees, like a broken animal, a wounded beast

seeking solace. He pulled himself up and sat in front of her, gripping the bars, peering at her with a face

filled with misery.

“No,” she said. “I am not going to allow you to make me feel guilty.”

He turned his head to one side and whimpered. The sound was pitiful. Slowly, he reached his hand

through the bars, asking for her compassion.

“No.” She shoved the tin plate of food toward him.

Syntian glanced down at the raw meat, still oozing with blood, smelling rank. His mouth watered and he

licked his lips, but he looked back up at his tormentor and flexed his hand, extending his arm as far

through the bars as he could stretch.

“Please,” he whispered coarsely.

Angeline shook her head and pushed herself from the floor. “You are mine,” she told him in a cold voice,

“and mine you will stay.”

He watched her walk to the stairs and start to climb. “Angeline,” he begged her, striving still once more

to reach out to her. “Don’t do this to me.”

She would not turn around. With her hand gripping the banister, she pulled herself up the stairs, ignoring

his whining cry for release. She heard his quiet sobbing, felt his heart breaking, sensed his bewildered

pain and hopelessness, but it made no difference. With one last look behind her, at his seeking hand, his

pleading face, she shut the door, closed off the light, and left him alone in the dark with Delbert’s corpse.

Sheriff BenHurlbert finished filling out the report, flipped the top of his notebook closed and pocketed

his pin. “I don’t know what else to do, Lauren,” he said glumly. “I’ve got an APB on him and we’ve

searched these woods around the house five times over.” He shook his head. “There just ain’t no trace of

him.”

Lauren looked at him with despair. “He can’t have disappeared into thin air, Benny,” she reminded the

man. “His car is still here; his belongings are still upstairs in the closet.” She stood up and paced the

room, her hands running over one another. “There hasn’t been any calls like you said I might get.”

“Well,” Ben admitted, “he’s a wealthy man, Lauren. If we was gonna get a ransom demand, we’d have

got it by now.”

Her eyes filled with tears. “Something’s happened to him, Benny,” she sobbed, burying her face in her

hands. “I can feel it!”

Ben got up from his chair and moved over to her, folded her into his strong arms and nestled her head in

his palm to lay it on his wide chest. “There, there, now. We’ll find him, darlin’. It may take us awhile, but

I swear to you we’ll find him.”

Nate Biggins, the deputy who had come to the old Herndon place with Ben, sat on the edge of his chair,

scanning the room for the ghosts everyone knew haunted the old mansion. He thought he heard a moan

and he jumped up, searching about him for the source of the sound, but sighed a deep breath of relief

when he realized it was just the rafters moving overhead. He looked at Ben and smiled sheepishly.

“Go on outside, Nate,” Ben snapped, annoyed with the man.

Biggins, more than glad to leave the gloomy interior of the old house, dipped his head to Lauren as he

passed and hurried out the door.

“That boy is scared of his own shadow,” Ben scoffed.

Lauren pushed out of his arms and ran the base of her palm under her left eye, wiping away the tears.

“I’m sorry, Benny. I just—”

“Don’t you worry none about it,” he told her, reaching out to pat her shoulder. “I understand.”

She sniffed and moved away from him, sitting once more on the loveseat near the marble fireplace. “It’s

just been so hard.”

“I know,” he said, not knowing what else to answer.

Lauren glanced up at him. “I’m pregnant.”

Ben felt as though someone had kicked him in the gut. He let out a harsh breath of surprise and then

seated himself on the chair in which he’d been sitting for over an hour. “When did you find out?”

She lowered her head. “Yesterday morning.”

The Sheriff studied her for a moment and then made up his mind to say what had come into his thoughts

at her confession. “Could he have known you were pregnant?”

Lauren looked up. “What?”

Ben squirmed in his chair. “I mean, could he have suspected you were expecting?”

A confused look came over Lauren’s face only to be replaced with anger. “We wanted a baby, Ben,”

she informed him. “We were trying to have one.”

Hurlbert shrugged. “You know sometimes a man gets kinda skittish when his wife’s gonna have a baby,

Lauren. Some men think it ties ‘em down, gives ‘em more responsibility than they’re ready to take on.”

She pursed her lips in annoyance. “That was not the way it was with Syntian.”

Ben nodded. “Maybe not.” He smiled at her. “I hope not. Anyway, I guess congratulations are in order,

huh?”

Lauren tried to smile, but his insinuation about Syntian not wanting the baby had struck a chord and she

was remembering her husband’s reluctance to start a family. She didn’t think that had had anything to do

with his sudden disappearance six weeks earlier, but she couldn’t honestly say for sure that it didn’t.

“Lauren, honey,” Ben said, standing up and then going to her to hunker down in front of her. “You know

you got friends here.” He looked up into her face, gathered his courage and reached for her hands, taking

them in his own big paws. “If there’s anything I can do, you know you don’t have to hesitate to ask,

don’t you?”

Her heart filled with tenderness at his words. “I appreciate that, Benny.”

“I ain’t saying there’s been foul play, you know?” He winced at her immediate flinch and was quick to

gloss over his suspicions, “but I want you to be prepared, darlin’, if that’s the case.”

“He’s alive, Benny,” she whispered, tears forming again. Her voice quivered. “I know he is.”

“Then where is he, honey?” Ben asked kindly. When she shook her head, he hated to remind her, but he

felt it was necessary. “You don’t really know that much about him, do you? Where he came from? Who

his people are? Who his friends are?”

“Mrs. Hellstrom,” she answered, looking up at him. “He was friends with her.”

Ben nodded. “Yeah, he was, but she ain’t seen him, either.”

“You investigated him, Benny,” Lauren said. “You didn’t find out he was some kind of criminal, did

you?”

“No,” Ben drawled out. “We weren’t able to learn much at all about him. He was a private man. What

we did find out was precious little and that was kinda suspicious if you ask me.”

Lauren knew they had traced Syntian back to New Haven, Connecticut where he had been part owner

in a stock brokerage. His partner had supplied them with scant information about a man he had

supposedly known for over ten years.

“If he has family here in the states, I don’t know about it,” Rutherford Langly had told Ben. “There used

to be some cousins or such over in Boston, but I don’t think Syn ever discussed them. I couldn’t tell you

their names if my life depended on it.”

The Florida Bureau of Investigation had come up with very little other than a valid social security

number, unimpeachable tax returns, a deed to the old Herndon estate, a birth certificate which listed

Massachusetts as Syntian’s home state, various grade school, high school and college diplomas from that

same state. There had been a military deferment from active service, a stock broker license, bank

accounts listing a great deal of money and assets, and a valid Florida driver’s license that had been taken

out to replace the Connecticut one.

“This man is so squeaky clean,” Ben said the deceased Sheriff had told him, “he ain’t for real!”

Which made Lauren wondered even more what Angeline Hellstrom could possibly know about Syntian

that would have kept him tied so securely to her. But when she had brought the subject up, Mrs.

Hellstrom had denied there was anything other than an occasional bout of mutual lust that kept them

together.

“Syntian is a man of great appetites, Lauren,” Angeline had said sorrowfully. “It wouldn’t surprise me to

know he had moved on.”

Lauren had been dumbfounded. “Moved on?” she’d echoed, disbelief running rampant through her

voice.

The older woman had put a comforting hand on Lauren’s shoulder. “He likes women, Lauren. Do you

remember me telling you that once? He has a hunger for women; all kinds of women. I really had my

doubts about him ever being faithful to you.”

A shaft of fury had driven deep in Lauren Fowler’s being. “You don’t know what you’re talking about!”

Mrs. Hellstrom had looked at her with pity. “Do you remember calling him a gigolo once? Well, he might

not prey off women to get their money, but he does like variety, Lauren. He’s slept with more women

than either of us will ever know. If you want to know what I think—”

“No,” Lauren had answered coldly. “I don’t want to know what you think, Mrs. Hellstrom.” She had

grabbed her handbag and rummaged inside for the keys to the bookstore. She slammed them down on

the counter and stared the older woman down. “As a matter of fact, I think you’re just a vicious, jealous

woman who is angry because he left
you
for
me!”

To give Angeline Hellstrom her due, Lauren had to admit the woman had seemed genuinely upset by

Lauren’s actions. She had reached out to take Lauren’s arm, real hurt showing in her eyes when Lauren

had snatched her arm back and stepped away from her.

“I didn’t mean anything by what I said, Lauren,” Angeline had apologized. “Please, accept my apology.

Don’t let this end our relationship.”

“Syntian would not have left me for another woman,” Lauren said in a stiff voice. She closed her purse

with a snap. “I asked for your help in trying to find him and all you want to do is try to make me think

he’s screwing around on me.”

If Angeline had been shocked by the word Lauren had used, she didn’t show it. Instead, she had tried

once more to get Lauren to calm down.

“You’re right, of course, and I’ll do whatever I can to help you find out what’s happened to him. Please

stay on here at the store, Lauren. You need something to keep you occupied and the money will certainly

be a help.”

Lauren had lifted her chin and with all the dignity she could muster, she had told the older woman that

she had plenty of money in the joint checking account Syntian had opened for her.

Angeline Hellstrom had shaken her head with sadness. “How long do you think that money will last you,

sweetheart?”

“Until my husband comes home!” Lauren had snapped and left the store, her shoulders squared and her

face set. She had not seen the look of guilty triumph that had passed over Angeline’s; nor did she hear

the words that sealed Syntian Fowler’s fate:

“Your husband will never come home!”

“Lauren?”

She looked up, brought back to the present by the concerned look on Ben’s face. “I’m sorry, Benny,”

she confessed. “I was thinking of something else. What did you say?”