by J. D. Robb
He supposed if he'd ever been as handsome as Trevor, he might have been a bit more vain. The boy was a picture, Steve thought. Tall and trim, tanned and golden.
And he worked at it, Steve thought with a little twinge. The boy spent a fortune on wardrobe, on salons and spas and consultants.
He shook off the thought as he reached the door. It didn't do any good to poke at the boy over things that didn't matter. And since Trevor rarely visited, he didn't want to spoil things.
He opened the door and smiled. "Well, this is a surprise! Come on in." He gave Trevor's back three easy pats as Trevor walked past him and into the entrance hall.
"What're you doing out this time of night?"
Deliberately, Trevor turned his wrist to check the time on the luminous mother-of-pearl face of his wrist unit. "It's barely eleven."
"Is it? I was dozing off in my den." Steve shook his head. "Your mother's already gone up to bed. I'll go get her."
"No, don't bother." Trevor waved him off. "You've changed the security again."
"Once a month. Better safe than sorry. I'll give you the new codes." He was about to suggest they go into the den, share the pot of tea, but Trevor was already moving into the more formal living room. And helping himself from the liquor cabinet.
"It's good to see you. What're you doing out and about and all dressed up?"
The casual jacket, regardless of label and price, was hardly what Trevor considered dressed up. But it was certainly a step up from his father's choice of Mets T-shirt and baggy khakis.
"I've just come from a party. Dead bore." Trevor took the snifter of brandy—at least the old man stocked decent liquor—swirling it as he sprawled into a chair. "Cousin Marcus was there with his irritating wife. All they could do was talk and talk and talk about that baby they made. As if they were the first to procreate."
"New parents tend to be wrapped up." Though he'd have preferred his tea, Steve poured a brandy to be sociable. "Your mother and I, we bored the ears off everyone who couldn't run and hide for months after you were born. You'll do the same when it's your turn."
"I don't think there's any danger of that as I'm not the least bit interested in making something that drools and smells and demands every minute of your time."
Steve continued to smile, though the tone, and sentiment, set his teeth on edge. "Once you meet the right woman, you'll probably change your mind."
"There is no right woman. But there are any number of tolerable ones."
"I hate hearing you sound so cynical and hard."
"Honest," Trevor corrected. "I live in the world as it is."
Steve let out a sigh. "Maybe you need to begin to. It must be meant to be that you came by tonight. I was thinking of you before you did. About where you're going with your life, and why."
Trevor shrugged. "You've never understood or approved of my life because it doesn't mirror yours. Steve Whittier, man of the people, who built himself from nothing. Literally. You know, you should sell your life story. Look how well the Gannon woman has done with her family memoirs."
Steve set his snifter down, and for the first time since Trevor had come in, there was a warning edge in his tone. "No one is to know about any of that. I made that clear to you, Trevor. I told you because I felt you had a right to know, and that if, somehow, through that book's publication the connection was made to your grandmother, to me, to you, you'd be prepared. It's a shameful part of our family history, painful to your grandmother. And to me."
"It hardly affects Grandma. She's out of it ninety percent of the time." Trevor circled a finger at his ear.
Genuine anger brought a red flush to Steve's face. "I don't ever want to hear you make light of her condition. Or to shrug off everything she did to keep me safe and whole. You wouldn't be here, swilling brandy and sneering, if it wasn't for her."
"Or him." Trevor inclined his head. "He had a part in making you, after all."
"Biology doesn't make a father. I explained to you what he was. A thief and a murderer."
"A successful one, until the Gannons. Come on now." Trevor shifted, leaned forward, the brandy snifter cupped between his knees. "Don't you find him fascinating, at least? He was a man who made his own rules, lived his life on his own terms and took what he wanted."
"Took what he wanted, no matter what it cost anyone else. Who so terrorized my mother she spent years running from him. Even after he died in prison, she kept looking over her shoulder. I know, whatever the doctors say, I know it was him and all those years of fear and worry that made her ill."
"Face it, Dad, it's a mental defect, and very likely genetic. You or I could be next. Best to live it up before we end up drooling in some glorified asylum."
"She's your grandmother, and you will show respect for her."
"But not for him? Blood's blood, isn't it? Tell me about him." He settled back again.
"I've told you all you need to know."
"You said you kept moving from place to place. A few months, a year, and you'd be packing up again. He must've contacted her, or you. Come to see you. Otherwise why would she keep running?"
"He always found us. Until they caught him, he always found us. I didn't know he'd been caught, not till months afterward. I didn't know he'd died for more than a year. She tried to protect me, but I was curious. Curious children have a way of finding things out."
Don't they just? Trevor thought. "You must've wondered about the diamonds."
"Why should I?"
"His last big job? Please, you must've wondered, and being a curious child . . ."
"I didn't think about them. I only thought of how he made her feel. How he made me feel the last time I saw him."
"When was that?"
"He came to our house in Columbus. We had a nice house there, a nice neighborhood. I was happy. And he came, late at night. I knew when I heard my mother's voice, and his, I knew we'd have to leave. I had a friend right next door. God, I can't remember his name. I thought he was the best friend I'd ever have, and that I'd never see him again. And well, I didn't."
Boo-hoo, Trevor thought in disgust, but he kept his tone light and friendly. "It wasn't easy for you, or Grandma. How old were you?"
"Seven, I think. About seven. It's difficult to be sure. One of the things my mother did to hide us was change my birth date. Different names, a year or two added or taken away on our ages. I was nearly eighteen when we stuck with Whittier. He'd been dead for years, and I told her I needed to stay one person now. I needed to start my life. So we kept it, and I know she worried herself sick because of that."
Paranoid old bat, Trevor thought. "Why do you suppose he came to see you there and then? Wouldn't that have been around the time of the heist? The diamonds?"
"Keeping tabs on me, tormenting her. I can still hear him telling her he could find her wherever she ran, that he could take me from her whenever he wanted. I can still hear her crying."
"But to come then." Trevor pushed. "Of all times. It could hardly have been a coincidence. He must have wanted something. Told you something, or told her."
"Why does this matter?"
He'd plotted it out carefully. Just because he found his father foolish didn't mean he didn't know how the man worked. "I've given this a lot of thought since you first told me. I don't mean to argue with you, but I suppose it's upset me to realize, at this point in my life, what's in my blood."
"He's nothing to you. Nothing to us."
"That's just not true, Dad." Sorrowfully, Trevor shook his head. "Didn't you ever want to close the circle? For yourself, and for her? For your mother? There are still millions of dollars of those diamonds out there, and he had them. Your father had them."
"They got nearly all of them back."
"Nearly? A full quarter was never recovered. If we could piece things back together, if we could find them, we could close that circle. We could work a way to give them back, through this writer—this Samantha Gannon."
"Find the diamonds, after ov
er fifty years?" Steve would have laughed, but Trevor was so earnest, and he himself so touched that his son would think about closing that circle. "I don't see how that's possible."
"Aren't you the one who tells me constantly that anything's possible if you're willing to work for it? This is something I want to do. I feel strongly about it. I need you to help me put it back together. To remember exactly what happened the last time he came to see you, to remember exactly what happened next. Did he ever contact you from prison? You or my grandmother? Did he ever give you anything, send you anything, tell you anything?"
"Steve?"
Steve looked over as he heard his wife's voice. "Let's put this away for now," he said quietly. "Your mother knows all about this, but I don't like dragging it out. Down here, Pat. Trevor's dropped by."
"Trevor? Oh, I'll be right down."
"We need to talk about this," Trevor insisted.
"We will." Steve gave his son a nod and an approving smile. "We will, and I'll try to remember anything that may help. I'm proud of you, Trevor, proud of you for thinking about trying to find a way to make things right. I don't know if it can be, but knowing you want to try means the world to me. I'm ashamed I never thought of it myself. That I never thought beyond putting it all away and starting fresh instead of cleaning the slate."
Trevor kept his annoyance behind a pleasant mask as he heard his mother hurrying downstairs. "I haven't been able to think of much else for weeks."
***
He left an hour later and strolled along in the steamy heat rather than hail a cab. He could count on his father to line up details. Steve Whittier was hell on details. But the visit had already given him his next move. He'd play concerned grandson the very next day and go see his grandmother in the loony bin.
***
About the time Trevor Whittier was crossing the park, Eve stifled a yawn. She wanted another hit of coffee, but knew that would mean getting through Roarke. He had a habit of knowing when her ass was dragging before she did.
"Three potentials on the woman, twice that on the kid." She scratched her scalp, hard, to get the blood moving.
"If we discount the rest of the first-level matches."
"I'm discounting them. The computer likes these picks, so we go with them. Let's move on the kid—man now. See if anything looks good."
She shot those six images on screen and began to scan the attached data. "Well, well, lookie here. Steven James Whittier, East Side address. Owns and runs his own building company. That's a nice pop for me."
"I know him."
She looked around sharply. "You know this guy?"
"Mostly in that vague professional sense, though I've met his wife a number of times at various charity functions. His company has a solid rep, and so does he. Blue-collar him, meets blue-blood her. He does good work."
"Check the lists from the job sites you got earlier. Let's see if Whittier's got anything going in or around Alphabet City."
Roarke brought up the file, then leaned back in his chair. "I should learn not to question your instincts."
"Rehab on Avenue B. Five-story building, three sections." She pursed her lips, made a popping sound. "More than enough to take a closer look. See there, he's got a son. One son, Trevor, age twenty-nine. Let's get that image."
Roarke did the tech, and they studied Trevor Whittier's face together. "Not as close on the artist rendering as I'd like, but it's not a total bust. Let's see what else we can find out about Trevor."
"You can't do anything about him tonight. It's nearly one in the morning. Unless you think you can build a case strong enough with this to go over and scoop him up and into a cage, you're going to bed. I'll set the computer to gather data while you get a few hours' sleep."
"I could go wake him up, hassle him." She considered. "But that would just be for fun. And it would give him a chance to whine for a lawyer. It can wait." She pushed to her feet.
"Until morning. We'll check out this job site, see if we can nail it to the trace from Cobb's body. I need to approach Whittier and find his mother, interview her, too. They might be in on this. This Trevor feels the best to me. Smarter to wait to move on him until I have it all lined up."
"While it lines up, you lie down."
She'd have argued, but her eyes were starting to throb. "Nag, nag, nag. I'll just contact the team and tell them we're going to brief at seven hundred instead of eight."
"You can do that in the morning. It's easier, and more humane."
"Yeah, but it's more fun to do it now," she protested as he took her hand and pulled her out of the room. "This way I get to wake them up so they have to work at getting back to sleep. The other way, I just get them out of bed a little early."
"You're a mean one, Lieutenant."
"Yeah. So?"
28.
While she slept it all played in her head. Father to son, murder and greed, blood gleaming on sparkling stones. There were legacies you couldn't escape, no matter how fast or how far you ran.
She could see herself, a child, with no mother to panic or protect. No one to hide her or stand as a shield. She could see herself—she could always see herself—alone in a freezing room with the light washed red from the sign blinking, blinking, blinking from the building next door.
She could taste her fear when he came in, that bright, metallic flavor. As if there was already blood in her throat. Hot blood against the chill.
Children shouldn't fear their fathers. She knew that now, in some part of her restless brain, she knew that. But the child knew nothing but fear.
There had been no one to stop him, no one to fight for her when his hand had slashed out like a snake. No one to protect her when he'd torn at her, torn into her. There'd been no one to hear her scream, to beg him to stop.
Not again, not again. Please, please, not again.
She'd had no one to run to when the bone in her arm had snapped like a twig broken under a careless foot. She'd had only herself, and the knife.
She could feel the blood flooding over her hands, her face, and the way his body had jerked when she'd hacked that blade into his flesh. She could see herself smeared with it, coated with it, dripping with it, like an animal at the kill. And even in sleep, she knew the madness of that animal, the utter lack of humanity.
The sounds she made were vile. Even after he was dead, the sounds she made were vile.
She struggled, jabbing, jabbing, jabbing.
"Come back. Oh God, baby, come back."
Panic and protection. Someone to hear, to help. Through the madness of memory, she heard Roarke's voice, scented him and curled up tight in the arms he'd wrapped around her.
"Can't." Couldn't shake it off. There was so much blood.
"We're here. We're both right here. I've got you." He pressed his lips to her hair, her cheek. "Let it go, Eve. Let it go now."
"I'm cold. I'm so cold."
He rubbed his hands over her back, her arms, too afraid to leave her even for the time it would take to get up for a blanket. "Hold onto me."
He lifted her into his lap, rocking her as he would a child. And the shudders that racked her gradually eased. Her breathing steadied.
"I'm okay." She let her head fall limply on his shoulder. "Sorry." But when he didn't loosen his hold, when he continued to rock, she closed her eyes, tried to drift into the comfort he needed as much as she.
Still, she saw what she'd been, what she'd done. What she'd become in that horrible room in Dallas. Roarke could see it. He lived it with her through her nightmares.
Burrowing against him, she stared off into the dark again and wondered if she could bear the shame if anyone else caught a glimpse of how Eve Dallas had come to be.
***
Peabody loved briefings at Eve's home office. However serious the business, there was always an informal atmosphere when you added food. And a breakfast meeting not only meant real coffee, but real eggs, real meat and all manner of sticky, sugary pastries.
And she c
ould justify the extra calories because it was work-related fuel. There was, in her opinion, no downside to the current situation.
They were all loaded in—Feeney, McNab, Trueheart, Baxter, Dallas, even Roarke. And boy, oh boy, a look at Roarke in the morning was as delicious a jolt to the system as the strong black coffee sweetened with honest-to-God sugar.
It was hardly a wonder the lieutenant was so slim. She had to burn up the calories just looking at him. Considering that, Peabody snatched a couple extra slices of bacon and calculated she might actually lose weight during the briefing.
It was a pretty good deal.
"Updates are in your packs," Eve began, and Peabody divided her attention between her plate and her partner.
Eve leaned on the corner of her desk, coffee in one hand, laser pointer in the other. "Feeney and our civilian made some progress last night, as did McNab. McNab, give the team your data."
He had to swallow, fast and hard, a mouthful of Danish. "Sir. My area deals with the 'links and d and c's from both vics."
He ran through it, pinpointing transmission locations, with considerable comp-jock code. The jargon, and the questions and comments Feeney tossed him in the same idiom gave Eve time to finish her coffee and contemplate another cup.
"You'll scout those locations this morning," Eve put in when there was a short lull. "With these images. Screen One. This is Steven Whittier. Current data leads us to believe he is the son of Alex Crew. On Screen Two you see Trevor Whittier, son of Steven Whittier and likely the grandson of Crew. Given accumulated data and the profile, he fits. Steven Whittier is the founder and current owner of Whittier Construction."
"That's a nice little pop," Baxter commented.
"Bigger and louder one as we've determined Whittier Construction is the contractor on a major rehab job, building on Avenue B. The company is licensed for four gasoline storage facilities. None of the other potential matches have as many links as this. Steven Whittier's official data states his father is deceased. His mother . . ."