Jan Burke - Bloodlines

Who could help him?

He thought about Auburn. Auburn’s kindness to him.

He had used Auburn to some degree. He was not proud of that.

And now, far too late, he realized that he had been used himself. The thought made him furious-and in the next moment, utterly alone and helpless.

They’d left a cop here to guard him, they said. To make sure he was safe.

To imprison him, they meant. To keep an eye on him.

What did the cops suspect?

He looked at the phone. He thought about making a call. Decided not to. Cops were probably listening in. Or they’d get the phone company to tell them whom he had called.

Probably wouldn’t get through, anyway. He would have to wait a couple of days, until the devil he had dealt with came back to town.

Then he would make a call. Just to ask, just to learn if it had just been a mistake. If there was still a cop outside on Monday night, he’d say that he needed to walk down to the drugstore for some cigarettes, find a pay phone, and make a call.

And be followed and then…no. That wouldn’t work.

Besides, he already knew the answer to his questions, didn’t he?

He could recall every word of the conversation. The conversation with the devil.

Mitch Yeager.

The offer to loan him money, which-thank God!-he had refused.

The flattery, which of course he fell for-stupid ass!

Then the questions, designed to make him talk more and more about all the things that made him most angry about his parents. Fueled his outrage over long-held grievances that were real enough. Agreed with him that his parents were a pair of selfish drunks. Yeager confiding that his own parents were drunken losers, that he and his brother had saved the family fortunes. Assuring Warren that-just as Warren suspected-Barrett Ducane was ruining the family companies.

“I think you’d do a better job of running them.”

“Not me. But Todd could.”

“You and Todd together. I could advise you.”

“Why would you?”

“I want to invest in your companies.” (Your companies! Already making it sound as if he owned them.) “I see the potential. But not if your father is running them.”

And then later, asking about the new boat, the Sea Dreamer-a sore subject for Warren, knowing that Katy and Todd were fighting over money and he himself barely scraping by-and eventually a few questions about where it was docked and when his parents would next be going out on it.

And finally those damning words, the words that made him understand things he wished he didn’t have to think of now. The story that Yeager would be going away with his wife and the child they had adopted two months ago, spending some time out of town on a quiet little family vacation, but not too hidden away-some place where people would see them, and note they were there. His reassurance that he would be in touch sometime soon. And the hint-more than a hint, really-that Warren ought to think about being away from home over the weekend, should be somewhere that people could vouch for him.

He had known then, hadn’t he?

Of course he did.

He did not have the slightest doubt that if he told the police Mitch Yeager had asked him these things, Mitch Yeager would deny everything. Yeager might even make it sound as if Warren planned it all. And since Warren was supposed to be the one who gained everything, he was the big suspect.

That was why there was a cop outside his door right now.

But what about Max? Why did the kidnapping have to happen now? He wondered if Yeager had done that as well, but it didn’t make sense. He couldn’t see that Yeager would gain anything by that. People lost at sea in a boating accident, something that couldn’t be proved, wouldn’t change how people thought of him-that was the sort of thing he would do.

God knows who all was at that party. Maybe someone there learned that Katy and Todd were going on the boat and decided it would be the perfect time to steal Max.

There would be a call. A demand. He just had to be patient.

He was so tired. Maybe he could fall asleep. Fall asleep and wake up, and this would all be over. Todd would be okay, and the police would apologize for their mistake.

If only he could talk to Todd. That thought started him crying again.

I T WAS PAST THREE O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING NOW. O’CONNOR WONDERED if Lillian would still be awake and decided there was little possibility she would sleep until she knew Katy’s fate. When he drove up to the Linworth mansion, he wasn’t surprised to see lights on downstairs.

The rain was letting up. Maybe the Coast Guard would have better luck searching for the Sea Dreamer.

He scraped as much mud off his shoes as he could and made his way to the door. Hastings, Lillian’s elderly butler, let him in, took his coat, and pretended not to notice how disheveled O’Connor looked. He escorted O’Connor to a library, where a fire burned brightly in a stone fireplace with a bench hearth.

O’Connor took a seat on it, hoping the fire would take some of the chill off and begin to dry his damp clothes.

Not long after Hastings left, Lillian Vanderveer Linworth entered the room. She was looking tired and grief-stricken, he thought, and wondered what possible comfort he could be to her.

Even with the strain of this day showing on her face, though, she was exquisite. He remembered thinking she was beautiful twenty or so years ago, but realized he had been mistaken. She had been pretty and petulant then, and was beautiful and in command of herself now-assured and elegant in a way she never could have been at twenty or even thirty. Tonight her skin was paler than usual, the area around her eyes a little swollen. He knew better than to expect to see tears from her-those would be saved for moments alone.

He rose to greet her, but she motioned him to be seated, saying, “I’d offer you a change of clothes, but you’re larger than Harold, or any other man in this house.”

“Brobdingnagian, that’s me,” he said, still waiting for her to be seated first.

She halted, mid-stride, halfway across the room, smiled a little to herself, then came forward, sitting down in the leather chair closest to him. “Gulliver’s Travels.”

“Yes. How are you, Lily?”

“More than any other of my friends and acquaintances,” she said, “you must have an idea of how I am, Conn.”

“It’s never the same for anyone, is it? Maureen was my sister. I don’t like to think how I’d feel about losing a child, or a child’s child.”

“And yet you’ve never seen your own boy, have you?”

“Not in person, no. I think it would only confuse him to have another ‘daddy’ in the picture at his age. But I know that Kenny is loved and well cared for-spoiled, if anything.”

O’Connor also knew that Lillian’s attitude toward him had changed when she learned of his child. He knew that she had long been involved in charitable projects for caring for unwed mothers and their children. Shortly after Jack had complained to her about O’Connor’s “foolish marriage,” she had contacted O’Connor to say that if he or Vera needed her help, she would gladly give it. O’Connor never took her up on it, but Lillian seemed to look at him differently from then on. Helen Swan had told him that he ought to stop thinking of Lillian as the brat she was at nineteen, that life had knocked her around a little since then, and he had realized that was true. He thought perhaps Helen had influenced Lillian’s attitude toward him as well. Over the last seven years, O’Connor and Lillian had become close friends, even as she continued to become less and less friendly with Jack.

She asked about Jack now, though, and he knew he couldn’t keep putting her off.