Mr. Moore was alive, a little roughed up, but coming around. He clutched the towel to the back of his head and wrinkled his nose. Between that and his messy head of pure white hair, he could’ve passed for a human version of a garden gnome. “Who are you?” he asked groggily. “Why are you in my house, young man?”
“I came here to talk to you about Shannon Reagan and found you unconscious. Take it easy.”
The poor guy struggled to rise, but Adam made him take it slow, only allowing him to sit up and lean against the nearest cabinet. Mr. Moore rubbed the back of his head. “Dag nab it. Some scallywag used my noggin for baseball practice. You see who did it?”
“No, sir, I’m sorry. Like I said, I just got here.” Adam grinned. This spry gentleman was his granddaddy all over again.
“I don’t remember seeing you around before. Are you one of my new neighbors?”
“No, sir. I’m Adam Torrey. I’m—”
“Oh. You’re that fellow who lost the prototype.”
Adam pursed his lips and nodded, chagrined his reputation consisted of that single blunder. “Yes, Mr. Moore. That would be me. Junior Agent Adam Torrey at your service.”
“Humph,” Terrence snorted. “You seem like a nice kid. Are you my friend or not?”
“Sure,” Adam answered quickly, not certain where that question was headed.
“Then stop calling me Mister. It’s Terrence.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And none of this ‘sir’ business, neither. It’s Terrence, darn it. Just Terrence. Do you understand?”
Adam allowed a small smile. “I do now. Good to meet you, Terrence. Shannon thinks a lot of you.”
“Where is she?” The old man scrambled onto his knees, pulling himself to the edge of the kitchen counter. Terrence wasn’t out of his head by any means, and he knew stuff. Important stuff. Piercing gray eyes beneath craggy white brows studied Adam, analyzing as only the older generation could do.
“She’s flying to Dallas Fort Worth early this afternoon for a week-long business meeting. Are you sure you’re okay?
Terrence swayed, but grasped Adam’s forearm with surprising strength. “Jiminy crickets, I’m not dead. Now, move your keester. I can’t stand around all day. What do you think I am, a spring chicken?”
Adam guided him to one of the wooden kitchen chairs, easing him slowly to the seat before he let go. “You’re almost there. Okay, now sit.”
“Will you be quick about it and just set me down? Dag nab it. I said I’m fine,” Terrence grumbled as he plopped down with a big sigh. “Whew. Maybe I am a might dizzy. Thanks.”
“It’s okay.” Adam took the chair next to him. “I’ll wait with you until the paramedics get here. They’ll need to check you over.”
“Adam Torrey, huh? You part of the Torreys up in New Hampshire?”
“No, sir. My family’s from South Carolina. They’ve been there since the Revolution.”
Terrence nodded. “Palmetto State, huh? Never been there.”
“You ought to come visit when you’re feeling better. I think you’d like my granddaddy.”
“Is he much like you?” There were those gray eyes again, still sizing Adam up and seeing right through him while they did.
“No, sir. If anything, I’m like him, and darned proud of it.”
“Huh,” Terrence snorted, but Adam caught the sparkle in his eye. “South Carolina was the first state to secede from the Union during the Civil War. You know that, don’t you?”
“Yes, sir, it was and we’re still a bunch of rebels today.” Adam would have preferred getting down to business, but he needed Terrence to get his bearings first. This old guy was one surprise after another.
“Ain’t nothing wrong with being a rebel. What’s wrong is not standing up for something you believe in. That’s what people forget. Now, you were going to tell me why in the blue blazes you’re in my house.” Again with the bushy brow over the evil eye routine. This older gent’s cantankerous mannerisms were growing on Adam. “Oh, wait. You already did, didn’t you?”
“Yes, sir, I did. I came here to ask you about Shannon.”
“What’s she to you?”
Adam sighed, not willing to reveal all that Shannon meant to him. Not yet. Not until he knew more about this man she called friend.
“Have you seen her lately?” Terrence didn’t wait for an answer. “Because I sure haven’t. I’ve been over to that dungeon Paul calls a home more times than I care to remember. Either she’s been one sick little gal since she got home, or he’s pulling something again. The last time...” Terrence stopped short, his mouth clapped tight like he’d almost said too much. He blinked hard, but his eyes watered.
“Exactly what did he pull before?”
Terrence looked down the hall instead of meeting Adam’s gaze. The evil eye was gone, replaced by a shadow of—guilt? Now it was Adam who scrutinized Terrence. “You don’t have to tell me anything, sir, but did you happen to see Shannon on television yesterday?”
Terrence scratched his hand through his hair. “No, son. Guess I might have gone to bed a tad early. You know how it is when you get to be my age. A fellow needs his beauty sleep.”
Adam wrangled his cell phone back out of his pocket and pulled up the YouTube video currently making the rounds.
“That can’t be my little Shannon,” Terrence said, squinting to view the small screen. “Get me my glasses. They’re over there.” He glanced around the floor. “By the refrigerator, dag nab it.”
Adam retrieved the spectacles. The old man’s amazement at what he saw on You Tube mirrored Adam’s. “Oh, my. What’s going on? She looks just like...” He clamped his mouth shut, glancing at Adam only to avert his eyes just as quickly.
“Have you seen something like this before? What’s Paul Reagan doing to her?”
Terrence handed the cell phone back to Adam, his lips tight, but those appraising grays were still meat forks stabbing for a tender spot.
“Listen,” Adam started again. If this guy wanted a weak spot before he’d ante up, Adam intended to give him one. “This is not the woman I knew when we were stuck on that island. We went through hell together. I helped her deliver Squeaks. Shannon is the purest, sweetest woman on earth. If her father’s up to something, if there’s any chance that he’s hurting her, you’ve got to tell me. She’s in trouble. I can feel it in my gut.”
“Squeaks? What in tarnation is a Squeaks?” Terrence muttered.
Adam took a big breath. Was it possible this fellow didn’t know Shannon had a son?
“Squeaks is her baby boy, but she calls him James Malone. Jimmy Malone. You didn’t know she had a baby, did you, sir?”
The old guy shook his head. “She told me she had a bun in the oven before she left, but I didn’t know she had him. Dag nab it. That means that little guy of hers is three months old already. I haven’t seen him. Not even once.”
Adam caught the regret in Terrence’s words. “I know you gave her the kill code to deactivate those drones. Thank you for trusting her. Seems to me she feels closer to you than she does her own father.”
Terrence licked his lips, a nervous glitter in his eye. “Can you get me a drink of water, son? I’m a might thirsty.”
“Sure.” Adam retrieved a glass from the cabinet to the right of the sink, exactly where his mother kept her glasses in her kitchen cupboard back home. He let the water run cold, then filled the glass. When he turned around, the old man was gone. Darn. Terrence was as fast as Granddaddy, too.
“I’m in here,” he called from one of the other rooms. “There’s something I want to show you.”
Adam peered around the corner, hoping Terrence didn’t intend to treat this like a home invasion after all, and show him the business end of a double-barrel shotgun.
The old guy stood in his living room, one hand on the fireplace mantle. “Get over here.”
Adam obeyed. “Here’s your water. Can I help you sit down?”
“That’d be nic
e.” Terrence breathed out a trembling sigh and sat with a huff in the nearest easy chair. After he took a long swallow, he pointed to the mantel. “See that picture? Bring it here.”
Adam did as he was told. The woman in the portrait was Shannon all over again. He settled onto the couch to listen, fully aware the YouTube video had struck a nerve in Terrence and that Terrence might know what was going on in Reagan Manor.
“This is Olivia Reagan, Shannon’s mother.” Terrence’s voice softened as he fingered the woman’s cheek. “Paul doesn’t know I’ve got this picture, but then, he hasn’t been to my house in years. Shannon was just a little girl when her mother died. What a hard day that was. Look at her, would you?”
Adam took the frame in his hands, noticing the gilded roses carved into the walnut that surrounded the lovely photograph. The portrait depicted a smiling Olivia Reagan with little Shannon in her lap. She faced her mother, both hands on her shoulders while Olivia smiled upwards at whoever the photographer was. She was maybe thirty, give or take a year. Shannon looked to be around two. Whoever’d taken the shot had captured the glow in Olivia’s eyes. It matched the light he’d seen in Shannon’s eyes when she’d finally asked to hold her newborn son.
“I took that picture,” Terrence said quietly. “Before I say another word, I want to know your intentions towards my... towards Shannon. Why are you asking questions about her? Why do you care?”
Adam returned the honest appraisal. His dad had taught him there was only one way to make a friend out of a potential enemy, and that was to look the man in the eye, and be the kind of friend a man would want to have.
“Honestly, I love her.” Sharing those sweet sentiments proved his undoing. Tears he would not let fall misted his vision. “That’s all my intentions are, but you saw the video. She’s hurting. Whatever’s going on inside Reagan Manor is destroying her. I can’t stand idly by. I have to get them out of there. That’s why I’m here. I need your help, and I need it today.”
Terrence leaned into his hands, covering his face with trembling fingers.
Adam hadn’t meant to hurt his feelings. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
He waved Adam’s apology off, struggling to regain his composure. “No, son. It’s me who’s sorry. Here I’m bragging about being a rebel and standing up for what I believe in, only I should’ve done it twenty-two years ago.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
“How old are you?” Adam had to know.
Terrence lowered his eyes. “I’m sixty-two.”
Adam did the math. If Shannon was twenty-five...
“Oh, stop trying to figure it out in your head,” Terrence snapped. “Look at her. Does that perfect little girl look anything like Paul Reagan?”
Oh, hell. I’m right. Terrence Moore is Shannon’s father.
“What happened to Olivia?” he asked quietly. “Do you know?”
The elderly man sucked in a deep breath as his grief filled the tidy sitting room. “As God is my witness, I never knew. One day she was happy, like you see her in that picture there, but the next day she wouldn’t talk to me. She threw me out of that awful dungeon he calls a home when I went to visit; said she never wanted to see me again. I couldn’t get in to see her after that, not even once. He kept her locked up tighter than a parakeet in a cheap, dime-store cage.”
That scenario sounded familiar. “But why?”
“He’s a damned genius, that’s why.” Terrence dashed the tears off his cheek. “He’s always dreaming up fantastic inventions, and then finding a way to make ’em work. He’s the one who single-handedly built the Purity Power Pak, you know? The one NASA uses to keep their optical mirrors on their long-range satellites in perfect focus.”
“I didn’t know that,” Adam admitted. Until now, he hadn’t cared what Paul Reagan invented. He didn’t care about Paul Reagan at all. Genius or not, the man seemed to do more harm than good.
“But I really think he’d suspected all along that we cared for each other. That we’d been seeing each other,” Terrence whispered, his eyes gazing out the window. “She was younger than him. Hell, she was younger than me, too. Olivia was a beautiful woman, but so lonely. He was a smart man alright, but not smart enough to know that a woman like her needed companionship more than she needed platinum and diamonds. He always had something more important to do, and he spent too much time in his lab. He wasn’t cheating on her, but in a way, he was. It might not have been with another woman, but he loved his work more than his wife. Anyway, he asked me to take her to a dance one night. Said she was nagging him, and—” Terrence choked. “My Emma Sue had passed. Olivia and I were like two birds with broken wings. We needed each other.”
“And then she got pregnant.”
Terrence nodded. “He never confronted me, but I’m sure he knew right off the bat that Shannon wasn’t his. He seemed happy about her birth. We all were. But one day, it changed. Just like that. It was like he turned a switch off. He grew more secretive and sneaky. He shut me out first, then Olivia did, too. Little by little, she wasted away.”
Adam bit his tongue. He hated to ask, but he needed to know. “How did she die?”
Terrence stared at nothing, his eyes vacant. The moment stretched until he snapped out of it. “He said she hit her head in the bathtub, that she drowned. It was an unattended death, so an autopsy had to be performed. The medical examiner found water in her lungs. He ruled it accidental. It fit Paul’s version. There was no way to prove anything else.”
“But you suspected murder?” Adam’s heart pounded.
“I honestly don’t know what I suspected. That’s why I couldn’t quit Reagan Industries. I had to stay close to hear any news about Shannon.”
Adam stood, glancing at the clock on the mantle. He needed to go. Shannon was in more trouble that he’d suspected. “I need to get her out of there today. Will you be okay to wait for the paramedics by yourself?”
“No!” Terrence barked. “You said you needed my help. Now what in tarnation do you want me to do?”
Adam hesitated. Mr. Moore was still shaky, and all this true confession business hadn’t helped get his strength back.
“Dag nab it,” he growled. “I’m not dead yet. Let me help. I owe Olivia that much.”
“Can you get access to the Hummingbird Hawk drones?”
“You mean the ones that got lost at sea?” The old gent’s brow spiked again, this time with a healthy dose of sarcasm. “Them the ones you’re talking about? The ones the Navy let slip out of their hands?”
Adam held his breath. Either Terrence stepped up to the plate and helped save his daughter, right then and there, or he failed her again. “Yes, sir. Those drones.”
“Just where do you think they are?”
“I think we both know where they are, don’t we?”
Terrence shook his head. “Damn him if they are, but yes. If Paul stole them from the Navy, they’d be stashed in his lab. They might already be stripped down and on their way to the incinerator. What do you want me to do once I find ’em?”
Adam knelt at the side of Terrence’s chair and explained what he needed. By the time he was through, Terrence was on his feet and as spry as that spring chicken he claimed he wasn’t.
“Are you sure you’re up to this?” Adam asked, holding the man’s elbow for support and still not willing to risk his life.
Terrence straightened to his full six-foot height and gave his chest a hearty smack. “Never felt better.”
He proved it when someone knocked at the front door, and he all but raced Adam to answer it. The paramedics had arrived, better late than never. “Don’t you young fellows have anything better to do?”
“Umm, we got a call someone was injured?” A surprised young man’s voice wavered. “Does anyone here need medical attention?”
“Nope. Just headed to work. You boys go save someone who needs saving. It ain’t me.” Terrence waved them off his porch as he told Adam, “I’ll be seeing you later.”
“Yes, you will.” Adam pressed his chin into the two-way radio at his shoulder while Terrence sauntered out the door. “Can I get someone to ensure Terrence Moore makes it safely to Reagan Industries? Driving a silver 1980s Lincoln. He’s just leaving his residence on Hawthorne, but he had a suspicious visitor before I arrived. Someone roughed him up. He’s still unsteady.”
“On my way.” Harley’s voice came through loud and clear. “Are you sure he’s fit to be driving?”
“He is at the moment. Watch over him for me?”
Harley chuckled. “You know I will. Be safe.”
“Copy that.” By the time Adam hit the sidewalk, the paramedics had sped off, and Terrence’s silver Lincoln idled alongside his SUV at the curb. “You got a foolproof plan to save my daughter?”
“Yes, sir, I do.” Adam nodded as he sank into his driver’s seat. “The next time we meet, I’ll be introducing you to your grandson.”
The old guy’s face lit up. “Dag nab it, I’m a granddaddy. Quit your lolly-gagging. You’ve got work to do.”
Adam hit the ignition button. Terrence drove one way; he drove the other.
Two down, and God willing—one to go.
“Your limo is ready, Miss Reagan.” Hubbard stood outside her bedroom door like the obedient manservant he was not.
Shannon didn’t acknowledge him on her way to the winding staircase. Hubbard was her father’s butler, not hers. She didn’t owe him courtesy, much less trust or casual conversation. He could bring the bag inside her door or not; it didn’t matter. Someone would. Someone always did.
At the top of the staircase, she paused to evaluate her reflection in the floor-to-ceiling mirror. She pushed a stubborn strand of long hair off her forehead. The damned thing wouldn’t stay put.
That was the day she’d rebelled—the day she’d hacked her hair off to spite her father. It was nothing more than adolescent acting out, and of course, Paul Reagan had been less than pleased. She just hadn’t expected to end up on the floor again.
“Who do you think you are?” he had bellowed after he’d slapped her, the veins on his forehead dark and throbbing.
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