Vow to Protect (3 page)

The cop was the first to break the silence. “Time to talk, dawg.”

Cord hadn't been called dawg since he was behind bars. A memory this cop obviously wanted him to relive. “And you are?”

“Detective Stan Perreth.” He glanced down at his watch. “You have five minutes to come clean, or I'm calling your parole officer. I hear your friends
are throwing a par-tay in your cell and everyone's coming. You understand what I'm saying?”

This guy was a riot. A regular prison jargon stand-up show, albeit a little cleaner than the language flying around the joint. “How about you call my lawyer first?”

“Why? You got something to hide?” Perreth plunked into a chair and leaned close. Table shoved to the side of the room, there was nothing between him and the cop. The odor of cigarette smoke emanating from Perreth's clothing and breath was enough to make Cord crave a rollie of his own, though he'd kicked the habit when he'd been paroled. “It's in your best interest to talk,” Perreth said.

Right. “I don't see how it's in my best interest to have anything to do with you.”

“You should
want
to talk to me, punk. I can see to it that Melanie Frist and her boy are safe. Or should I say,
your
boy?”

Cord's gut clenched. He wasn't surprised Perreth noticed the resemblance. One look and anyone could guess Ethan was his son. But Cord didn't like the implication that Mel and Ethan's safety hinged on him confessing to something he didn't know about and didn't do. “Is that some kind of threat?”

“I'm just saying if you help me, I'll be more inclined to help you. That's how the world works.”

That might be true. But it still didn't tell Cord what he was supposed to be confessing to in order to earn Perreth's favors.

A sharp knock sounded, and the door opened.

Cord never thought he'd be happy to see his brother-in-law. He sure as hell didn't have a stash of good feelings for Reed McCaskey, but after chatting with Perreth, McCaskey seemed like a long-lost friend. At least he didn't think McCaskey would resort to using Mel and Ethan to get what he wanted.

A female detective with the face of a supermodel and the edgy stare of a barracuda stepped into the room behind McCaskey. Cord had met her before, on the same day McCaskey and Diana had dropped the news that Kane was his father.

She stood behind McCaskey, letting him take the lead. But she was no shrinking violet. She had more in common with a sleek and beautiful Doberman pinscher with a keen eye for weakness and no qualms about attacking.

McCaskey nodded to Perreth. “We'll take this, Stan.”

Perreth shoved his chair back and puffed out his chest. For a moment Cord wondered if he was going to get the chance to watch a cop pissing match, but Perreth turned and stomped from the room without lowering his fly.

McCaskey and Valducci assumed the chairs facing Cord. Plunking a stack of files on the table at his elbow, McCaskey took the lead. “We need to ask you a few questions.”

“And here I thought you dragged me in here for a social visit. You know, a little catching up among family.”

McCaskey didn't react. Next to him, Nikki Valducci leaned forward, as if she was anticipating the taste of blood and was just waiting for McCaskey's go-ahead to take a piece out of him.

In contrast, McCaskey leaned back in his chair, the picture of calm control. “Where were you last night, Turner?”

“This again?” Cord really had to start documenting his every move. Maybe then his brother-in-law would get off his back. “Why don't you just tell me what you think I did this time so I can get right to denying it?”

“Have you been in contact with Dryden Kane?”

He thought of the invitation and the scrawled note that had sent him racing to protect Melanie. “Are Melanie Frist and her son in a safe place?”

“They're in protective custody.”

Cord blew a breath through tense lips.

“Answer the question, Turner. Have you been in contact with Dryden Kane?”

As long as Mel and Ethan were safe, the invi
tation didn't matter. All admitting to receiving it would do was give McCaskey an excuse to violate Cord's parole and send him back to serve the rest of his fifteen-year term behind bars. “Have I contacted Kane? No.”

McCaskey's eyes narrowed to dark slits. “Then how did you know Melanie Frist and her son were in danger? Or did you just make that up?”

So much for avoiding a parole violation. “Kane sent me an invitation for a wedding reception. You and Diana and Sylvie and her husband are the guests of honor.”

A muscle twitched along McCaskey's jaw. “And what does Melanie Frist have to do with this?”

“She's supposed to be my date.”

“And your son?”

Cord wanted to think that Kane didn't know about Ethan. But seeing that the killer seemed to know about everything else, it was probably wishful thinking. “If you take me back to my apartment, I'll turn it over to you.”

“No need. The lieutenant probably secured a warrant to search your apartment by now.”

A search warrant. This had gone farther than he'd guessed. “What exactly do you suspect me of doing?”

“I imagine you've heard about this morning's accident. The one involving your father.”

“I heard.” Since he'd learned Kane was his father, he'd followed stories of the serial killer in the local news. He'd heard how Kane had controlled another serial killer from his prison cell like a puppet master. He'd heard how, even though locked behind bars, he'd tried to kill his daughter Diana—Cord's half sister and McCaskey's wife. And of course, there was the accident. “It's been all over the news.”

Detective Valducci shifted in her chair with the impatience of an attack dog pulling at her chain. “When is the last time you saw Eddie Trauten?”

A wave of heat washed through Cord. He kept his expression carefully frozen.

McCaskey gave his cover-girl partner an approving glance before narrowing his eyes on Cord. “Recognize the name? Or did he go by a nickname at Waupun?”

If he could, he'd pretend he'd never heard of Eddie Trauten. But after sharing a cell with the whiney little skinhead for six years of his sentence, it might be a little hard to pull off the lie. “What the hell does Eddie have to do with this?”

“Your cellie drove the stolen pickup that slammed into the motorcade transferring Kane. His truck went into the water along with the cage van. The Banes County sheriff fished his body out of the water this morning.”

“And Kane? Have they found his body yet?”

“You know they haven't.”

Somehow he knew McCaskey would say that. This morning just got better with each passing minute. “I don't know where Kane is. I didn't have anything to do with Eddie breaking him out.”

McCaskey gave him a humorless smile. “Somehow I'm not inclined to believe you.”

“I don't care what you're inclined to do, it's the truth.”

“The truth? I'll bet. You ex-cons wouldn't know truth if it bit you.” Valducci smiled showing the teeth she'd no doubt like to do a little biting with.

He was over his head. So far over, he was drowning. “I need to talk to my lawyer.”

McCaskey offered a casual shrug of one shoulder. “You sure you want to do that?”

“Why? Are you going to give me the same line as the last detective?”

McCaskey raised a brow. “Line?”

“Yeah. The old chestnut about helping you so you'll help me. You know, that if I want Melanie and Ethan Frist protected, I'll have to confess to whatever you want me to confess to?”

“Is that what Perreth said to you?”

“Pretty much.”

That muscle started working again. Apparently
there was more bad blood between McCaskey and Perreth than a simple pissing match could explain.

McCaskey leaned forward, elbows on tabletop, fists clasped at chin level. “Melanie Frist and her son are in protective custody, and they're going to stay there. The only skin you have to worry about saving is your own.”

“Okay. Then I'd like my lawyer to help me save it.”

“Meredith Unger, right?”

He'd told McCaskey and Valducci to call his attorney when the detectives suspected he was the copycat serial killer. “You have her number in one of those files?” He nodded at the stack looming on the table.

McCaskey kept his eyes riveted to Cord's. “There's one thing you might want to be aware of before you have a heart-to-heart with Meredith Unger.”

“And what's that?”

“She has a conflict-of-interest problem you might want to consider.”

What kind of game was McCaskey trying to play this time? “I'll bite. What's the problem?”

McCaskey's black eyes drilled into him, as if watching for his reaction, eager to see how he'd take the punch line. “Meredith Unger is your father's attorney. She represents Dryden Kane.”

In prison, when an inmate needed a weapon he could make disappear fast, he filled a sock with something heavy, a handful of batteries, a can of beans. One good swing, and the weapon, known as a slock, could level a man. The revelation that Cord was sharing his attorney with Dryden Kane hit him like a slock to the dome.

One corner of McCaskey's lips lifted in something only a hair short of a smile. “You still want to call your lawyer?”

“I'll pass.” When he'd seen Kane's reference to Melanie in the note, he'd wondered where the serial killer had learned of their history. And although he couldn't prove anything, he didn't wonder any longer. “You can't think I had anything to do with Kane's escape. I've never met the man.”

“But your attorney has.”

Cord wiped a hand across his forehead. Sweat
already dampened his cropped hair. A sign of nerves that McCaskey would no doubt interpret as guilt. “I haven't talked to Meredith Unger for ten years.”

“There are a lot of coincidences here, Turner. Coincidences I'm having a hard time swallowing. Meredith Unger. Eddie Trauten.”

Cord let out a breath. He couldn't deny the apparent connection between him and Kane through his attorney. He couldn't deny his own connection to Eddie Trauten. But maybe he didn't have to. Maybe those connections were the point. “I don't know what you think of me, McCaskey, but I'm not a stupid man.”

McCaskey narrowed his eyes. “Go on.”

“If I wanted to help someone like Dryden Kane escape from prison, I wouldn't set up my own cellie to do it. The prison yard is a big place. There are a lot of punks I could recruit for the job. Punks that would force you cops to at least break a sweat before you tied them to me.”

“I'm listening.”

“I don't want Dryden Kane out. The only thing he is to me is a threat. A danger to Melanie. And a danger to my son.”

McCaskey watched him with sharp, nearly black eyes. A slow, agonizing minute ticked by before he finally pushed back from the table, the legs of his chair screeching across the linoleum
tile. He glanced at Detective Valducci and then back to Cord. “We'll be back.” He stood and walked out, Valducci in his wake, letting the door thunk closed behind him.

Cord forced a breath of stale air into his lungs. He was probably over his head on this one. Hell, he'd been over his head since before he was born. Unfortunately, unlike the gang bangers he'd hung out with as a kid and the cons he'd done time with, he was smart enough to recognize the fact that he was drowning in sewage.

Just not smart enough to do anything about it.

The door opened and McCaskey entered alone. “I just heard from the officers searching your apartment.”

He let silence lie between them as if waiting for Cord to acknowledge something incriminating they'd found in an effort to explain it away.

Too bad nothing like that existed. “They found the invitation I told you about?”

“They did.”

“And the note threatening Melanie Frist?”

“Yes.”

“You've looked through my apartment. I've told you everything I know. So am I under arrest?”

“No. You can go.”

Cord nodded but he didn't let himself feel relief. Not yet. “Will Melanie and Ethan be protected?”

McCaskey drilled into him with that black gaze. “You have my word.”

Cord slumped against the back of his chair. A trickle of sweat ran over his temple and wound around his ear.

McCaskey might have thrown him a life preserver this time, but Cord had the feeling this ordeal was far from over.

 

C
ORD STOOD IN THE OPEN DOOR
of his apartment and looked at the mess the cops had made of his place. In the joint, the inmates were obsessed with receiving respect. The smallest slight, like one of the dawgs failing to say “what up?” in the yard was an affront to one's manhood. It was times like this that made Cord grateful he didn't have that respect/disrespect hangup. Life as a con and an ex-con was easier once you acknowledged you didn't much respect yourself. At least then it wasn't a bitter pill when others didn't respect you, either. “Cord Turner?”

He spun around, expecting to see a cop coming back for a second try at strewing his belongings over every inch of floor. Instead a bookish man with a smart-ass smile and wire-rimmed glasses peered at him from the hallway.

“Who the hell are you?” Cord asked.

“Aidan Powell. I'm with the
Capital Times.
”

A reporter. Cord almost groaned out loud. “Why are you here?”

“I've heard from a reliable source that you are the son of Dryden Kane.”

Cord felt sick. He knew reporters would eventually unearth that fact. With the building media frenzy over the serial killer, it was inevitable. But he'd hoped it would take longer than this. “Who told you that?”

“Is it true?”

He grabbed the door. “If you insist on answering my question with a question, you can do it through a closed door.”

He held up a hand, blocking the door. “Wait.”

“You're going to tell me who is spreading this crap?”

“I heard it the same place I heard that Kane also has a grandson. A kid by the name of Ethan Frist.”

Cord pushed the door aside. Reaching out, he grabbed the reporter by the shirt. “Where did you hear that?” Heat crept up his neck. Pressure built in his head.

“Does Kane know?”

“Tell me where you heard it.” He hadn't even known he had a son until a few hours ago. But a reporter knew? A reporter who would write about it in his rag for Dryden Kane to see. If the monster didn't already know he had a grandson, he would now. Cord gave the guy a shake.

The guy's glasses flew, landing somewhere in the mess strewn over Cord's apartment's floor. His eyes widened, as if he had finally figured out he'd made a mistake. “Hold on.”

“I want an answer,” Cord demanded.

“Hey, back off.” Powell's voice trembled along with his chin. “Everybody knows. Not just me.”

“Everybody?”

“The TV news crews have had it for the past half hour. I'm the only one who cared enough to get a confirmation.”

A half hour? After Cord had left the police department, he'd had to hop a bus back to Mel's house to get his police-rummaged truck. He'd driven back to his apartment in silence, unable to stomach anything but the worries being broadcast in his own mind.

He tightened his grip on the reporter's shirt, pulling the crisp cotton taut around the little worm's throat. “Did you hear this from the police?”

The reporter's eyes flared.

Bingo.

“Who in the police department gave you the information?”

“I can't tell you that.”

“What do you mean you can't tell me?”

“I promised confidentiality. I can't reveal my source.”

The guy was scared to the point of pissing his pants. But he chose to protect his source instead of his hide?

Maybe there were idealists left in the world.

Cord released the reporter's shirt, letting him fall back against the door like a sack of laundry. “This isn't just some kid. This is my son. When this hits the airwaves and newspapers, Kane could see it. And if Kane knows about him…” What would the monster do? Cord didn't know. But he sure as hell didn't want to find out.

Aidan Powell picked himself up, straightened his shirt and put on his glasses, then swallowed a few times before meeting Cord's eyes. “That's not all Kane will find out.”

“What else?”

“The boy and his mother are staying at a hotel on the west side of town. The TV cameras are over there now.”

Staying in a hotel? They weren't merely staying. They were hiding. Hiding from Kane.

And now the serial killer only had to switch on a television set to find out where they were?

As soon as Cord had seen Mel and his son, he knew he had to walk away. He wasn't the kind of man who could be a father. A husband. He couldn't do anything but drag Ethan and Mel down.

But he couldn't walk away—not quite yet.

He might not be able to be part of the family, but neither was he going to sit by and let anyone hurt Ethan or Mel.

Especially not a sick bastard like Dryden Kane.

 

M
ELANIE WATCHED
E
THAN
cross the pool deck and jump cannonball style into the swimming pool. A splash of chlorine-scented water hit the deck in front of her and spattered her legs.

The water felt nice on her skin, cool, and for a moment she wished she were wearing her swimming suit instead of the T-shirt and shorts she'd changed into. The prospect of slipping into the pool, lounging in the hot tub that bubbled under fake palm trees or taking her son's challenge and trying out the slide that curled around the circumference of the indoor water park beckoned on the edge of her mind like a seductive dream.

She rolled her shoulders, trying to relieve the tension aching in her back and arms. Her shirt stuck to her skin, damp with sweat.

If only this really were a vacation, a time to relax with her son instead of just a way to take Ethan's mind off the fact that they were hiding from a serial killer. If only she could dial back time to yesterday, when she and Ethan had a normal life, a good life, filled with neither hair-raising excitement nor tragedy. But if-onlys ac
complished nothing. The only real avenue she had was to pray the police would catch Dryden Kane, pray Ethan would never find out the monster was his grandfather, and pray that Cord would stay out of their lives.

She glanced at the police officer standing a few yards from her at the edge of the pool area. Reed McCaskey had assured her that an officer would stay with them until Kane was back behind bars or dead. She should feel safe. Secure. But the vague dread that had started with Cord's appearance at her house continued to build.

She had to get her mind off Kane and off Cord if she was going to hold on to her sanity. She focused on Ethan, on the unbridled fun he and the other children were having. On the far side of the dome, kids crawled over a wrecked pirate ship and zipped down slides springing from the hull.

And beyond them, through the window, something moved. A face peered through the glass.

A gasp caught in Melanie's throat. She stepped closer to get a better look.

A woman stared through the window, scanning the pools and water slides. A bright light turned on behind her, illuminating a van parked along the curb. A van with a cable-news logo emblazoned on the side.

The media?

She glanced back at the warehouse-size room. Ethan perched on top of the longest waterslide, getting into position to take its winding ride into the pool.

Could the media have found out Ethan was Dryden Kane's grandson? Could they be planning to tell the world?

She inhaled a breath of humid, chlorinated air. She couldn't let herself panic. If they knew, there wasn't anything she could do to change it. But she'd be damned if they were going to get footage of her son to go along with the story.

She crossed the pebbled surface of the pool deck to where the cop was keeping watch. “A cable-news crew is outside.”

The cop gave her a surprised look and glanced around the pool area. “News crew? Where?”

She pointed at the news crew just as the reporter peered through the window.

He shrugged a shoulder. “They're probably covering some event or something. Don't worry.”

“An event? Do you see an event going on in here?”

“You think they're taping you?”

“No, I think they're taping my son.”

Pushing out his lower lip, he nodded in a glib way, as if the whole situation was nothing more than an interesting joke.

Didn't he know what kind of monster he was
protecting her and Ethan from? “You aren't taking this seriously.”

“I'm taking it plenty seriously. You need to calm down, ma'am.”

Calm down? Not until she knew her son was safe. Not until this damn mess was over and her life and Ethan's were back to normal. “Tell them to leave.”

“I can't do that.”

“Why not? I thought you were here to protect us. If you aren't, I want an officer who will.”

“I'll talk to hotel management. They can ask the reporters to leave the property.”

“Do that.”

He gave her a sideways smirk. He clearly thought she was overreacting.

Fine. Let him think what he wanted. As far as she was concerned, nothing she could do was overreacting if it meant keeping Ethan safe. She turned back to the pool to find Ethan.

“Where are you going?”

So suddenly he's concerned? She looked back at him. “Why? Are you worried about protecting us now?”

“You don't have reason to be so hostile.”

“By disregarding the danger my son is in—danger that news exposure will make worse—you've given me plenty of reason.”

The cop's good humor slid from his lips. “I
didn't disregard anything. And if you really wanted to keep him safe, maybe you shouldn't have hooked up with Dryden Kane's son in the first place.”

He thought she brought this on herself? On Ethan? He thought they deserved this? Her legs shook. Her hands balled into fists.

She tried to breathe, tried to control herself. “I want those cameras out of here. I'm going to get Ethan.” She'd call Detective McCaskey the moment she and Ethan got to their room.

She turned back to the pool, expecting to see Ethan at the bottom of the slide.

He wasn't there.

A jolt of panic raced along her nerves. Ridiculous. She'd seen him just a second ago. She'd only taken her eyes from him for a moment. He had to be here.

She scanned the wet heads and slick bodies of kids splashing, scampering and sliding.

No Ethan.

Her heartbeat grew faster, thumping in her ears. She ducked around concrete palm trees. She raced across the deck of the pool, dodging children, circling tables. She had to stay calm. Had to find her son.