But he wasn’t pulling her anywhere. With luck, she wouldn’t even know he’d been there. Except, of course, that Julia would be gone.
A light over the stove gave off enough glow to tell him he was in the kitchen. From there, he could see out to a dining room. Wide wooden blinds covered the front windows. He was pretty sure they would hide anything from the street, but to make sure, he kept low. From the dining room, he could pretty much make out the rest of the layout, and he headed for a promising hallway.
A night-light plugged into a socket lit the way. He passed a bathroom, so he knew he was on the right path. There were two other rooms, both with closed doors. He figured Neesy would take the one closest to the bathroom, so he skipped that and went for the second room.
Slowly, he opened the door. He couldn’t see much from the doorway, so he stole in until he was at the bed.
He stared at it. Knelt down and patted the surface, even, to make sure.
Empty.
Was Julia sleeping with Neesy? If so, that meant he wouldn’t be able to get away without waking her. And then what was he supposed to do? Leave her to call the police? His stomach knotted. Maybe there was another floor he didn’t know about. One with a bedroom. A basement perhaps. But he could find no trace of stairs leading above or below that floor.
Which left the one door he’d skipped. Stealthily, he retraced his step. Put his hand on the knob. He had a bad feeling about this. A really bad feeling.
24
Neesy woke with a start. Someone was shaking her. Growling at her. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the dark and the words to penetrate the fog in her brain.
“Where’s Julia?”
Mitch. Mitch was at the edge of her bed. Sleep left her in a rush. “What are you doing here? Abe Marfield has men all over looking—”
“Where the hell is Julia?”
She sat up, brushed the hair back from her face. “How did you get in?”
“No one locks their doors here.”
“You should go. They walk around the house every few hours. They also come inside and check.”
“I’ll get out of here as soon as you tell me where Julia is.”
Despite the snarl, he looked like he could fall over and sleep for a month. There was dried blood on his cheek and a cut on his lip. She’d never seen him so messed up. The car wreck was all over the news. Had he been hurt then, or later, during the escape?
“Neesy!” he barked. “For God’s sake, what happened to my kid?”
And now there was something else in his face. Dread. What she had to say wasn’t going to ease it. “She’s gone, Mitch.”
“I know she’s gone,” he said through clenched teeth. “I’ve been all over the house. What happened? Did the Blunts come back early?”
She shook her head. Didn’t know how to tell him. “Far as I know, they’re still in Florida.”
“You didn’t send her down there, did you?”
“It’s…” She paused, searching for the best way to say it; then, when she couldn’t find one, she just blurted it out. “Mitch, your brother came.”
He tensed. “My brother.”
“Tall, handsome? Killer blue eyes just like… just like…” She cleared her throat. “Anyway, he had papers, a court order—”
A line of flame leaped into his eyes. “You let him take her? How could you let him take her?”
“I didn’t have a choice! I even called Hannah Bl—”
“I trusted you!”
“I’m sorry, Mitch, I—”
“Where did they go?”
“I—”
“Where did they go?” He turned on her, shouting it, shaking her.
“I don’t know, Mitch. I don’t know!”
They both heard the noise at the same time. Neesy grabbed on to Mitch and their gazes locked. Someone had come inside.
“It’s the police,” she whispered. Without thinking or asking, she shoved him into the corner behind the door. “Don’t move!” She shuffled out of the bedroom and met the deputy at the foot of the hallway. “Dammit, do you know what time it is?”
“Sorry, ma’am. Just doing my job.”
She yawned. “I know.” She patted his arm. “I’m just cranky. Coffee? I can have a fresh pot in a jiffy.”
“Thanks, but I got some out in the car.” She’d managed to make him look embarrassed. “I’ll just… take a fast look around.”
She stood in the hallway while he made quick work of it. He didn’t bother going past her, which was what she was hoping for.
“Sorry to wake you,” he said as he let himself out.
“No problem, Officer. I understand.”
And he was gone.
Quickly, she returned to the bedroom. Mitch burst into more questions.
“When did Dutch get here? Why wasn’t I told? Dammit. Dammit!”
He looked frantic, and she understood completely. She’d felt frantic herself. “He came yesterday. He just… showed up. You were being transferred, and there was no way to reach you. I even had Hannah Blunt check the paperwork, but it was all legal. Julia didn’t want to see him, and then she did, and then…”
He grabbed her by the shoulders again. “What? Then what?”
She told him about the ride in the limo. “He promised she could come back whenever she wanted to. And I’m telling you, Mitch, it was a miracle he got her to go with him in the first place. I have no idea how he did it, but I swear, she had no intention of going off with him.”
Mitch pressed his lips together in a grim line.
“I thought they’d be back in twenty minutes—thirty tops. A couple of hours later, he called and said she’d changed her mind and wanted to stay longer.”
“Did you talk to her?”
Neesy shook her head. “I didn’t think to! Hannah said he could take her. He’s her father and he has every right—”
“Fuck that.”
“I’m sorry, Mitch, really. If it makes you feel any better, he didn’t seem so… so bad.”
He laughed bitterly. “That’s what all the little mice say. Right up until he rips their throats out.”
Neesy stepped back. “Come on, Mitch, he wouldn’t—”
“I don’t know. I don’t know what he’ll do!” He paced away, and she noticed he was favoring his right leg.
“What happened to your leg?”
“My leg?”
“You’re limping.”
He waved the question away. “I screwed up my ankle. It’s nothing.”
“I’ll get you a bandage.” She started out the door, but he pulled her back.
“Why didn’t you tell the cop I was here?”
She looked at his face, searching for an answer there. “I don’t know,” she said at last, “and that’s the God’s honest truth.”
“Anyone finds out I was here, you tell them I forced you, okay?” He reached over to the nightstand and picked up a gun she hadn’t even noticed was there.
Even though it was in his hand, the weapon didn’t feel much like a threat. “Do you even know how to use it?”
He shrugged. “Point and shoot. How hard can it be?”
“Not hard at all… if you don’t care about hitting what you’re aiming at.” She peered at him thoughtfully. He probably had a good couple of hours until the police made another round, and he looked like he needed a break. It wasn’t her job to provide one, and she didn’t know why she wanted to. Something about the despair in Mitch’s face churned her own worry about Julia. It wasn’t her fault she was gone, and yet it felt like it. Especially with him tramping around her room worrying.
She knew she should run outside and tell that nice deputy that Mitch Turner was in the house. She just couldn’t make herself. “Look, I think I can find you some clothes. You can take a shower, even. You’ve got blood and cuts all over you. I’ll make some coffee and get you something for that ankle. But then”—she took a breath—“then you have to go.”
“I’ll take th
e clothes and appreciate it, but the rest…” He shook his head. “There is one more thing. I don’t like asking, but I need your car.”
She’d opened the closet to unearth those clothes—leftovers from her exes. At the mention of her car, she turned and stared at him. “And let’s say, for the sake of argument, that I let you have it—which I won’t—but let’s say I do. Where will you go? You have no idea where Julia is. Are you going to roam around in a 1959 Oldsmobile Super 88? Way to stay underground, boy.”
“He’s probably taking her home. To New York. I’ll start there.”
“And how are you going to look for her with your face plastered all over the TV and your name blasted from every radio?”
“I don’t know.”
There was silence after that. She didn’t have an answer, either, except the one circling inside her that was so crazy she immediately squashed it.
Instead, she ventured common sense. “Maybe you… I don’t know, Mitch, maybe you should give yourself up.”
“I can’t help her from inside a jail cell!”
“You can’t help her if they catch you and kill you, either!”
He glared at her.
“You don’t even know if she needs help,” Neesy continued. “Granted, I didn’t like the way Dutch implied they’d be gone for fifteen minutes and then never came back. And I didn’t take to him leaving me all that money, though God knows I could use it, but—”
“He left you money?”
“Five thousand dollars.” She rolled her eyes. “A little thank-you for taking care of Julia.”
“Christ, he’s smooth.”
“I can’t say I’m not a little worried about her, but he is her father, and he has been looking for her. Why would he hurt her?”
“You don’t get it, do you?”
“Explain it to me.”
“He’ll hurt her because she’s important to me.”
“Well, aren’t we the center of the universe….”
“It’s what he does. What he’s done all our lives. It’s why I learned not to care about anything—school, job, career, and especially women.”
She thought about the newspaper articles she’d seen in the police chief’s office—the picture they painted of a rich wastrel. It had never jibed with the Mitch she knew. Was that why? Because that wasn’t the real Mitch—just some ghost of him, stripped of passion and enthusiasm, and anything except triviality?
“Is that what happened with Julia’s mother?”
His gaze was a sharp, angry jab. “Are you asking me if I killed her?”
“No, Mitch. That’s already been asked. And answered. But if she was important to you—”
“She was everything,” he said in a fierce gust of emotion. “And, God help me, I should have known better.”
25
19 February
Eleven Years Ago
Mitch woke with a groan. The lump beside him in the bed told him he hadn’t spent the night alone, though he couldn’t remember who he had spent it with. Her face was turned away, so the only clue was the tumble of expertly streaked blond hair. Which, given his proclivities, wasn’t much of a clue at all.
Gingerly, he sat up, the blankets falling off his chest and exposing it to the cool morning air. Across the room, the floor-to-ceiling window would have let in the sun if there was any.
Another cold, gray, winter day. Christ, he was sick of them.
As if to echo that thought, the other body on the bed mumbled something and huddled deeper into the covers.
Whatever.
He’d find something to do. He always did.
He stumbled off the bed, picked his way to the bathroom through a trail of empty Taittinger bottles and plastic glasses, a puddle of glimmering cherry satin—which he took to be his companion’s dress—his tuxedo jacket, his white shirt, and a pair of lethal gold stilettos. He knew he’d been at some charity thing for the Met—one of his mother’s pet causes. The stilettos must have been there, too. He had a vague memory of staggering into the hotel’s penthouse suite and the two of them laughing hysterically when whoever it was kicked off her shoes and suddenly shrunk by half a foot.
He did his business in the bathroom and crawled back to bed. She was awake by then, and he still couldn’t remember her name, even when she rolled over and smiled seductively and he could see her mascara-smeared eyes.
“Hey, baby,” she said.
He pulled her on top of him. “Hey, yourself.”
She squirmed, and between the rubbing and the sight of her full breasts and jutting nipples, he had no trouble getting in the mood. But it was too early in the morning for exertion. So he rolled them over, and after paying a couple of seconds’ attention to those nipples, he got her head down between his legs and could finally relax while her mouth did all the work.
After he came, he slept a little, then got up for a shower. She must have ordered breakfast, because it was there when he got out. She was sitting at the dining table in some kind of slip thing that showed the red straps of her bra and most of her legs. Objectively, he had to admit she was hot enough—no one could accuse him of bad taste—and she did give good head. So why did he wish she’d hurry up and go?
“I ordered you some eggs.” She downed the last of her coffee and started gathering up her clothes.
Perversely, he stopped her. “Where’re you going all of a sudden?”
She smiled—she did have a pretty smile—and pushed him away. “I have work to do.”
“On Sunday?”
“Yes, on Sunday.” She slid into the red satin, and now he remembered eyeing her from across the ballroom.
“Can’t you do it here?” He put his arms around her. A minute ago he couldn’t wait for her to leave; now he was practically begging her to stay.
She untangled herself. “No, Mitch, I can’t. I want to write up the event while it’s still fresh in my mind.”
Write up the event. Was she a reporter?
“How about tonight, then?”
“Got plans.”
“Cancel them.”
She laughed and slipped into those killer shoes. “Look, here’s my card.” She took a sober-looking business card from a tiny, glittery purse and handed it to him. “Call me.” She kissed his cheek. “Thanks for breakfast.”
And she was gone. He looked down at the card he was still holding. Well, at least he knew her name now.
The rest of the day stretched in front of him. He ran through a list of things he could do, found reasons not to do any of them. The eggs were cold, so he ordered more, and while he was waiting, he called Carlo and had him bring over a pair of slacks and a shirt so he wouldn’t have to put the tuxedo back on.
“I’m in the penthouse. Just bring them up.”
“Sure, Mr. Mitch.”
The eggs and the clothes arrived the same time as the phone rang, so he was waving the food in, telling Carlo to throw the clothes on the back of a chair, and answering the call all at once. Which is why it took him a moment to recognize the voice on the other end. But when he did, he went cold. Not frozen, the way a rabbit does, but a small shiver of recognition as though greeting a past he never thought to hear or speak of again.
“Just a minute,” he said curtly into the phone. Then he told the waiter to leave the food on the cart and told Carlo to help himself to coffee.
“Mitch? Are you there? Mitch? God, please don’t hang up.”
The last time she’d called—he counted back, a year ago?—he’d heard similar desperation in her voice, but he’d refused to talk to her.
“What do you want?” he demanded.
Carlo was sitting at the edge of the couch, his chauffeur’s cap parked precariously on one knee. Blank-faced, he was staring straight ahead as though not listening, though there was no way he couldn’t hear every word. Mitch could have excused himself or ordered Carlo to wait in the car, but deep in the heart of his black soul, he was glad Carlo would hear him blow her off. He wanted the entire w
orld to hear.
“I’m in trouble, Mitch.”
“That’s what you said last time.”
“I know, and I’m sorry,” she said swiftly. “I had no right to call you. But it’s worse now.”
“Call Dutch, then.” He banished the picture of his brother that rose in his head. “You had no trouble calling him when you were sleeping with me.”
“I know.” Her voice cracked. “I made a mistake. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
But ever since Dutch had taken the first girl Mitch had showed any interest in, he’d made it a strict policy not to fight his brother for who or what he wanted. The minute a woman looked his brother’s way, Mitch was over her. This one was no exception.
Except she was.
She wasn’t educated at Chapin or groomed at Foxcroft, and she didn’t attend debutante balls. Her mother’s English still wasn’t very good, and her father had long since disappeared. The only thing she had going for her was an incredibly fragile beauty and a smile that used to take his breath away when she blessed him with one at the coffee shop where she worked.
But he steeled himself against the memory. “Sorry doesn’t cut it, babe.”
“He’s going to kill me, Mitch. I know he is.”
She started crying, and despite his determination, the wall around his chest cracked a little. “Jesus, Alicia, cut out the drama.”
“I’m not. I mean it. Oh, God, you have to help me. I don’t know who else to ask.”
“Okay, calm down. Who’s the big bad wolf this time?”
“Dutch.” Her voice trembled on the name.
He stilled. “Dutch,” was all he managed to get out.
“He wants the baby.”
“The—” The rest dried in his throat.
“He can’t have her.” Beneath the tremble of threatening tears, her voice took on a hard determination. “I don’t care if it is his. There’s something… something wrong with him. Oh, God, if only I’d—” She stopped, inhaled a huge, shaky breath.
If only she’d what? Hadn’t been mesmerized by Dutch’s face? By his whispered promises? His legendary charm?
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