“Where are you?” Sean asked, perplexed.
“On Skidaway Island, southeast of the city. We received a tip that Mr. Dulay was transferring the boys to his hunting cottage. I’ve been waiting with a SWAT team to intercept them here.”
“You were tipped off? By whom? Mrs. Banks?” Sean guessed.
“That’s between your party and mine,” Hannah answered obliquely. In other words, Mrs. Banks’s betrayal was being kept a secret to safeguard her from Dulay’s reprisal.
“Yes, ma’am,” Sean answered, using the side mirror to glance with admiration at Ophelia in the black sedan. “I guess our ace reporter called that one right,” he said, earning a startled look from Solomon.
“Where are you now?” Hannah asked him.
“Headed in your direction,” Sean continued. “You want to meet up so we can pass these fuckers off?”
“Find a secluded place to pull off,” Hannah advised. “We’re on our way.”
Solomon found a dirt road hacked into the dense, vine-smothered forest. Pulling in, they bumped along a rutted track for several yards before killing the engine and waiting.
Filled with restless agitation, Sean stepped out and rounded the van. Leaning against the taillight, he watched Vinny pull up behind them as he called Hannah one more time to advise her of their location.
“We’ll be there in ten minutes,” Hannah promised.
“That went pretty well,” Vinny commented, stepping out of the sedan to confer with him.
“Yep,” Sean agreed, but his thoughts were on that moment when Ellie had thrown her arms around him in gratitude, and he’d looked into the car at her three beautiful little boys. He’d wanted so badly to drive off into the sunset with them. That was how it was supposed to be. Only, once again, Ellie was having to go it alone, just the way she’d been doing for years. It wasn’t fair to her. She deserved so much more. The boys deserved more. Hell, even he deserved more, after all his efforts to find them.
Only with Patrick and his family had he felt a connection this powerful. It wasn’t something he thought he’d ever feel for anyone else, let alone for Ellie and three rowdy boys. But he could no more deny his longing to be with them right now, witnessing their joyous reunion, than he could cut out his own heart. Shifting restless feet in the wet soil, he kept his gaze fixed down the dark road for the first indication of Hannah’s approach.
It took more than an hour to transfer the suspects and the body of Carl Stuart to the FBI. Each SEAL was made to give a sworn statement. Ophelia had promised to provide the FBI with a copy of her footage and to sit on the exposé until all the warrants were served.
It was close to dawn by the time Sean returned to the East Bay Inn, nodding at the desk clerk while still wiping camouflage off his face. As he rode the elevator to the third-story room Solomon had since relinquished, his heart pounded with anticipation, not to mention fear that they hadn’t made it back. Sliding his key in the door, he eased inside and stopped, heaving a sigh of relief.
The bathroom light had been left on, casting a muted glow over their sleeping figures. They lay nestled, all four of them in one bed, one against the other, so close that Ellie’s embrace encompassed all of them.
Is there room for one more? Sean wondered.
Kicking off his shoes, he lay down on the far side next to Chris. Just lying there, listening to their blended breaths, he basked in the contentment that flooded him and thought of all that he and Ellie had been through to get to this moment.
He’d nearly died, for one thing. And despite the evidence Butler had shown to Ellie, she had loyally stuck by him. She’d given him her body, her deep and honest passion. That kind of bond didn’t just happen with any woman. It had taken a woman like Ellie—strong, determined, and independent—to bring his heart out of hiding.
The shifting of the mattress roused Ellie from a deep, contented sleep. She stretched out her hand, then stilled with a smile to feel three warm little bodies tucked against her. Slitting her eyes to behold them, to assure herself that they were really here and she wasn’t just dreaming, her gaze intercepted Sean’s. For a perfect, undisturbed moment, they regarded each other. It felt so right just to open her eyes and see him there.
“Hey,” he whispered, sending her that slow, heart- stopping smile that never failed to make her heart flutter.
“Hi,” she whispered back.
His gaze slid to the blond heads between them, studying each boy one at a time, just as she had earlier, eyeing them for signs of abuse, just taking in the miracle of their presence. “They look good,” he told her.
She smiled in agreement, but their mental and emotional welfare remained a concern. “We’ll see,” she said. Broader concerns nudged her contentment aside. “So what happened? Is everyone back?”
“Yep. We caught all three kidnappers and turned them over to the FBI,” he said.
“What about Carl?”
He drew a deep breath, then let it out again. “Sweetheart, Carl is dead,” he told her gently.
Having seen him splayed on the floor of the van, she had wondered about that. “How?” she asked, praying Sean hadn’t killed him. How would the boys handle that?
“He started talking crap about the kidnapping, how it was all Dulay’s idea and how he was innocent. Grimes just lunged at him and snapped his neck. It was over before I could stop him.”
Ellie regarded her boys’ sleeping profiles. How was she going to tell them?
“I’ll tell them if you want me to,” Sean offered.
“No, I’ll do it,” she replied with a brief smile of thanks.
“We need to get up soon and head out,” he told her, speeding her pulse with his message. “Dulay’s got too many contacts in this town to make it safe for us to stay. And Ophelia’s going live with her broadcast as soon as the first wave of warrants is served.”
“Where are we going? Back to Virginia?” She wanted nothing more than for her life to return to normal.
“Hannah wants us to stay close for a while,” he replied, disappointing her. “My commander offered us his time-share over at Hilton Head. That’s only half an hour from here. Right on the beach,” he added. “The boys’ll love it.”
Picturing the days ahead, Ellie summoned the energy to roll from the bed. Sean caught her as she started to move. “Not yet,” he added. “Just lie there. Let me look at you.”
The words flooded her with both tenderness and regret. For the boys’ sake, their affair was over. They couldn’t continue being lovers, not when the boys’ hearts were this vulnerable. Soon she would have to dig deep to assert her independence.
She’d been through the worst that life could throw at her and had still survived. Living without Sean’s teasing laughter, his laid-back charm, his warm, stirring kisses couldn’t be all that hard.
She would set him free—free to live the life he’d chosen, as a Navy SEAL, footloose and fancy-free.
Chapter Twenty
“This way. Hurry,” Skyler whispered to Drake. The corridors at the Hospice House stood silent at this time of the morning. Unlike most facilities for the terminally ill, the hallways were painted a sea-foam green and hung with landscape portraits that cheered residents and visitors alike. The night-shift nurse glanced up at them as they hastened through the foyer and turned down the hall toward Matilda Dulay’s private room.
“Is that woman going to try to stop us?” Drake asked, glancing over his shoulder.
“I hope not,” Skyler replied. “Visitors are welcome at any time, but she’s never seen me here this early.”
They had stolen out of the Dulay mansion before dawn this morning, creeping individually down the central staircase, praying her father wouldn’t overhear the creaking floorboards.
Slipping out the kitchen door and through the garden, Skyler had paused one last time to look back at her childhood home. Regret mingled with sorrow, then with bitterness as she reflected that the privileges she’d grown up with had most likely been acqu
ired at the expense of other human beings. She could never continue living here knowing what her father was and what he’d done. By betraying him, she was forced to abandon everything familiar and dear to her. Yet what choice did she have if she wanted to live in peace with her conscience?
“Here we are,” she whispered now, arriving at her mother’s door. Her heart beat fast and thready. But defiance gave her courage.
Feeling her way into the dark room, she found the bathroom switch and turned it on. Her mother, dosed with medications to help her sleep, didn’t stir. Drake crossed uncomfortably to the foot of her bed and gazed at her once-beautiful face. Skyler went to stand next to him, gratified when he pulled her close, savoring their last moments together.
A knock at the door startled them apart. “Miss Dulay?” called a voice. “Is everything okay in there?”
“Talk to her,” Drake whispered. Tiptoeing into the bathroom, he motioned her toward the door.
Skyler cracked the door a scant inch or two. “Hi, Cathy,” she said with a forced smile. “Everything’s fine. Today’s my birthday. We just wanted to leave my mother a surprise thank-you-for-giving-birth-to-me gift.”
“I see,” Cathy replied, sounding unconvinced. “Are you sure your father knows?”
“Of course,” Skyler reassured her. “It was his idea.” She closed the door firmly between them.
Then she joined Drake in the restroom in time to hear him say, “I’ll surrender the witnesses in exactly thirty minutes. Don’t keep me waiting.”
Hearing his words, true reality hit her. Until that moment, a part of her still thought of Drake as the young man from the shelter. She felt her head swim and her knees grow weak. As her legs began to fold, Drake leapt forward, slowing her descent down the wall. She pushed him away. Now wasn’t the time to get clingy. Who knew how long it would be before she would see him again—assuming witness protection even worked. Who was to say some Centurion didn’t work for that branch of the FBI?
“Skyler, I know you’re scared,” Drake murmured as he crouched next to her. “I’m scared, too. But there’s a team on the way. We’re going to meet up on the other side of the Talmage Memorial Bridge.”
She managed to nod, signaling her understanding.
“They’ll have a doctor in the car,” he added, in consideration of her mother.
“Thank you.”
“Don’t,” he pleaded. “I’m the one who should thank you. I hate that you have to do this, Skyler. Whatever it takes, I will find you again,” he swore, wresting her from her misery.
She found his dark eyes shimmering wetly. “But your safety will always be my priority,” he added. “Until I’m a hundred percent sure you’re not in danger of reprisal, until I’m sure some Centurion isn’t going to track you down by following me, I’m going to keep my distance. Just promise you’ll keep me in your heart, because I sure as hell will be keeping you in mine.”
His words reminded her of the key she had given him yesterday, sending him with clear instructions and a note to Father Joseph asking him to give Drake access to the box. He’d returned grim and pale with the news that Skyler and her mother would have to disappear at once. Warrants for her father’s arrest would be issued within hours.
His cell phone beeped. He glanced at it, reading the text message. “Time to go,” he said with a grimace. “Are you sure your mother’s going to stay asleep when we wheel her out of here?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never tried it. What do you think?”
“I think we do it, and we run like hell,” he decided, giving her a quick little kiss and pulling her to her feet.
They had parked near the emergency exit, which would save them from having to pass the information desk—not that their departure would go unnoticed. Opening the emergency exit would set off an alarm, but Drake had assured her they’d be gone by the time security responded. “Okay,” he said, looking braced for action. “Are you ready to shake things up a little?”
If it meant eventually seeing him again, loving him as a woman free to give her heart to the man of her choosing, then, yes. She was up for anything.
Owen Dulay hadn’t slept well. The fact that his phone hadn’t rung once with an update from Bates was deeply troubling. He rose several times in the night to place calls to his henchman and directly to the hunting cottage. Regardless of which number he dialed, no one picked up.
Something had gone amiss. And recalling Mrs. Banks’s virtual accusations the day before, he had to wonder if the faithful housekeeper hadn’t turned traitor on him.
In which case, his goose was cooked.
At the sound of the kitchen door softly closing toward the break of dawn, followed by the distant but distinctive purr of Skyler’s Lexus, Owen threw back his quilt and hurried to the window overlooking Jones Street in time to see a car turn the corner and disappear.
With an indrawn breath, he reached for his robe and threw it on as he hurried from his bedroom to race up the stairs. Thrusting open Skyler’s door, he found her bed beneath the ghostly canvas undisturbed. Skyler was privately defying him. She’d fled. But where? For how long? With whom?
A thread of suspicion, based solely on a look he’d intercepted between his daughter and the gardener, had Owen lunging toward the steps to the third floor.
He crashed through the gardener’s door, his darkest suspicion confirmed. The young man was gone as well. They’d fled together, foolish, foolish children. Didn’t she know by now he could nullify anything she chose to do?
With a sneer and a growl, he turned away, hastening back to his first-story bedroom to jump into his clothes. This was an annoyance he didn’t need, not when his grandsons’ current situation was unknown. Had they arrived safely at the hunting lodge or not?
Unable to stanch his fears and furious with his recalcitrant daughter, he determined to take matters into his own hands. The tramp would not get far in this town, not with the police on alert.
Marching to his study, he tapped out the number to the sheriff’s office. “Mark,” he bit out, recognizing the voice of the dispatcher, a former Boys’ Home resident. “This is Owen Dulay. I want every patrol car in the city on the lookout for my daughter’s cream-colored Lexus convertible, with personalized plates, SKYLER 2.”
“Uh, yes, sir,” Mark replied. “Do you want us to detain her or . . .”
“I want you to arrest the boy with her on whatever charges you like. As for Skyler, drop her off here at the house.”
“Yes, sir. We’ll get right on it.”
“One more thing, Mark. Were there any accidents reported on the Diamond Causeway last night? Or on Skid-away Island?”
“I’ll check for you, sir. Would you like me to call you back or—”
“I’ll hold.”
Tamping down his impatience, Owen crossed to his entertainment cabinet to turn on the television. The earliest morning news program didn’t air until 6:00 a.m. It was barely five. Having missed the evening news several nights in a row, he played the tape he’d recorded before the last Centurion meeting. While Mark took his sweet time finding the answer to Owen’s simple question, Owen thumped onto his settee with the phone to his ear and watched news that had taken place three days ago.
To his consternation, he got his first real look at Ellie Stuart. A strangely vulnerable feeling ambushed him as he noted the steely determination in her gray eyes and listened to her accuse the Centurions of kidnapping her sons. What had compelled him to agree with the Culprit to let her go?
Mark spoke up suddenly in his ear. “Sir, there were no accidents on the Diamond Causeway. But police were called to an incident at a Texaco station on Skidaway.”
Owen broke into a cold sweat. “What kind of incident?” he asked.
“Let’s see. According to the convenience-store clerk, three men held up the occupants of a van. Some children were transferred to a third vehicle. The men in the van were all incapacitated, and all three vehicles took off before our officers arrived on the s
cene.”
Owen swallowed against his suddenly parched throat. He realized with a stab of real fright that the van with Carl and the boys had been intercepted. His grandsons had been snatched from his custody and whisked away.
By whom? How had he not seen this coming?
It had to be the same people Mrs. Banks had warned him of, the ones who’d visited the Boys’ Home.
Pressing a palm to his clammy forehead, Owen wordlessly hung up. He stood for a moment, reeling with the ramifications of what Mark had told him. Of course, the report was unconfirmed at this point, but Owen’s instincts had been telling him for hours now that his masterful abduction was backfiring, no thanks to the Culprit, who’d convinced him to let Ellie Stuart go.
Owen had to get out. He had to leave, now. There was only so much that his minions in law enforcement could do for him if he became a suspect in the boys’ abduction. Even more troubling than facing honest federal agents was the prospect of losing credibility with the Centurion Elite, men like himself who would view his carelessness as a threat to the brotherhood.
Dropping the phone on his desk, he hurried to his bedroom to pack a suitcase. It was time to pull the plug.
“We’re being followed,” Drake realized as he watched the white patrol car turn the corner behind them.
Skyler, who’d left the driving to Drake in order to sit in the back beside her mother, craned her neck to see out the rear window. “Police!” she whispered. “They work for my father!”
“Maybe they’re just following their usual route,” Drake added hopefully. But blue lights began to flash, ruling out the possibility and signaling that the cruiser was now in silent pursuit.
“What do we do?” Skyler cried, glancing with worry at her mother. “If she wakes up now, she’ll be frightened.”
“We’re almost at the bridge,” Drake stated, confident in the training that had prepared him to expect even the best plans to go to shit. “The agents are waiting on just the other side. We’re going to outrun him,” he said, shooting her a reassuring glance in the rearview mirror.
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