Shattered

by Joan Johnston

  It was torture. But he wouldn’t have given up a moment of it.

  He didn’t have any trouble finding Judge Blackthorne and the kids. They were making plenty of noise in the corner of the cafeteria. The little girl was crying. The boys looked subdued. Kate’s father was chastising them.

  As Wyatt watched, Blackthorne abandoned the boys and picked up the little girl to comfort her, awkwardly brushing her tears away with his thumb. He watched as Dallas looked up at her father from beneath tear-clumped dark eyelashes. And saw Clay Blackthorne melt at one look from those dewy blue eyes.

  Wyatt barely kept himself from grinning. Judge Blackthorne had a reputation for making mincemeat of incompetent and unprepared attorneys in his courtroom. But he was helpless in the face of a six-year-old girl’s tears.

  Wyatt glanced at his unrepentant sons, who were already making trouble again, and understood exactly how Clay Blackthorne felt. “Hey!” he called. “Stop that.”

  Lucky and Chance froze and turned in his direction.

  “He started it,” Lucky accused, standing and pointing at Chance.

  “No, he started it,” Chance retorted as he rose to face his brother.

  “I’m ending it,” Shaw said, putting a hand on each boy’s shoulder and settling them back in their seats. “Drink your lemonade and behave yourselves.”

  Blackthorne was still holding the little girl in his arms. He seated her beside her brother and said, “Leave your sister alone.”

  Then he turned back to Shaw, keeping his eyes on all four children, watching for rebellion in the ranks. The boys began comparing how much was left in each of their glasses and started a contest to see who could finish first, slurping lemonade loudly through their straws.

  Blackthorne joined Shaw, who’d backed a short distance away from the table where the kids were sitting.

  “You did that masterfully,” he said to Shaw. He hesitated and added, “Just like a father.”

  Wyatt also hesitated, then said in a voice quiet enough that the boys couldn’t hear, “That’s because I am their father, Judge Blackthorne. Although they don’t know it. Yet.”

  Wyatt had to give him credit. Kate’s father took the news without swearing, in fact, without making a sound.

  “I don’t even know where to start asking questions,” the judge said. “I’m concerned first and foremost for my daughter, Mr. Shaw.”

  “Please, call me Wyatt.”

  “I’d rather not be on a first-name basis with Dante D’Amato’s son. Or a man accused of murder.”

  Wyatt bit back the retort that came to his lips. Instead he said, “I’m nothing like my father. And the police have another suspect for that murder.”

  “So you say.”

  “Kate believes I’m innocent.”

  “Kate’s a fool for love. I can see from the way she looks at you that she’s head over heels.”

  “You might want to check your eyesight,” Wyatt said. “Kate’s in love with another man.” Kate never looked at him with anything resembling love. He would have noticed. “I’m D’Amato’s son by an accident of birth,” he said. “You don’t hate your grandsons because I’m their father, do you?”

  Blackthorne eyed him askance. “When you put it that way, I can see your point. Wyatt.”

  Wyatt swallowed over the painful lump in his throat. It was a small hurdle to win Judge Blackthorne’s approbation, but he was glad to have gotten over it. “I only found out that I have twin sons a few weeks ago. I’ve been doing my best to make up for lost time.”

  “And doing a good job of it, from what the twins say,” Kate’s father said grudgingly. “Why did you move Kate and the boys to Houston?”

  “To keep them safe.”

  “From what?”

  “From my father. And Kate’s husband.”

  Blackthorne frowned. “J.D. is dead.”

  Shaw shook his head. “He’s alive and well and causing plenty of trouble. He was trading munitions for heroin in Afghanistan. He’s being hunted by the drug dealers he stole from, including my father, which is why I wanted Kate and the twins out of the way.”

  “Does Ann Wade know J.D.’s alive?”

  “Kate says she does.”

  Blackthorne swore under his breath. “I have to thank you, then, for keeping my daughter and grandsons safe, Wyatt.”

  “You’re welcome, Judge Blackthorne.”

  Kate’s father hesitated, then said, “Call me Clay.”

  23

  Acute myelogenous leukemia. The bad one. That’s how Jack thought of Ryan’s AML diagnosis. Ten days had gone by—it was May already—and he hadn’t spoken once to Kate, not even to tell her the calamity that had befallen his family.

  They’d been playing phone tag, neither of them apparently willing to leave a message for the other. He couldn’t bear to leave a message describing the situation. He wondered how she was, how the boys were doing, but there had been no time to arrange a visit, either. He’d been spending every spare moment he could find at the hospital with Ryan and Holly. There hadn’t been many, because J.D. Pendleton had finally surfaced.

  Jack had gotten a call from his friend—one of Kate’s many uncles—FBI Special Agent Breed Grayhawk, suggesting that he check in with Sheriff Freddy Fredericks of Alvin, Texas. Alvin was an agricultural community that produced rice and fruits and vegetables located twelve miles southeast of Houston.

  Sheriff Fredericks had responded to a call from a local junkyard about a loud explosion during the night and discovered a bombed-out junked car. The sheriff had called in the Houston FBI because it looked like something a budding terrorist might have done.

  Breed, who’d recently been transferred to the Houston FBI office from his position as Supervisor of the Joint Terrorism Task Force at the University of Texas at Austin, was on-site when Jack arrived at the junkyard in Alvin.

  The two lawmen, who each owned half of Twin Magnolias, performed the male shoulder slap that substituted for a hug between men who were glad to see each other. Breed had moved from Twin Magnolias to a condominium in Austin, where he lived with his girlfriend, Grace Caldwell.

  “Long time, no see,” Jack said. “Did Grace ever say yes?”

  Breed had proposed to Grace Caldwell for the first time in December of the previous year. At the time, the couple had only been acquainted for two months. Grace had insisted that they spend more time getting to know each other before she gave Breed an answer.

  Personally, Jack thought that made a lot of sense. When the couple had met, Grace was a twenty-two-year-old convicted double murderer—in violation of her parole—who was suspected of planning a terrorist attack against the president of the United States. Breed was the twenty-six-year-old FBI special agent sent out to catch her.

  Grace turned out to be innocent of everything, including the double murder, but while they’d been chasing the real culprit, Breed and Grace had fallen in love.

  Breed grinned. “You’re looking at a happy man, Jack. I’ve been asking that woman to marry me at least once a week for four months. On Sunday she finally said yes.”

  “Congratulations!” Jack reached out and shook Breed’s hand. He could see from the look on Breed’s face how delighted he was to be marrying the woman he loved. Jack’s throat was choked with envy. His own life was such a mess right now, he didn’t know if he was ever going to find that happy ending.

  He cleared his throat and asked, “Have you set a date?”

  “August twenty-seventh at the First Methodist Church in San Antonio. I’m counting on you to be my best man.”

  “You’ve got it,” Jack said. And then realized his wife was due in mid-August, and that if the baby was late, he might not be available.

  “What’s happening with you and Kate?” Breed asked as they headed into the junkyard.

  “Things are crazy right now.” Jack wouldn’t have known where to start explaining the situation between Kate and Wyatt Shaw, let alone Ryan’s illness and his own predicament with Holly.
The past week, he’d barely been hanging on by his fingernails. He didn’t have the emotional control to tell his friend what was going on without breaking down completely. Better just to keep it all to himself.

  Thinking about Ryan’s leukemia reminded him that Breed’s father—and Kate’s grandfather—King Grayhawk, had recently been diagnosed with cancer.

  “How’s your father?”

  “He checked into M.D. Anderson. They’re giving him another round of chemo, but it’s not looking good.”

  “You never told me what kind of cancer he has.”

  “Leukemia.”

  “Really? What kind?”

  “ALL. That’s acute—”

  “Lymphoblastic leukemia,” Jack finished for him.

  Breed gave him an odd look. “How do you know that?”

  “Ryan was just diagnosed with AML,” Jack said.

  “Oh, God. How is he?”

  “He’s getting chemotherapy at the Children’s Cancer Hospital,” Jack said, unwilling to share more than that. “You should have your father talk to my wife. To Holly, I mean,” he corrected. She was still his wife, but not for long.

  “Do you have her number in Kansas?”

  Jack grimaced. In an effort not to talk about Ryan’s situation, he’d revealed other information he hadn’t been ready to share. “She’s working at M.D. Anderson.”

  “When did this happen?”

  “Recently. She’s pregnant. It’s mine, so we’re holding up on the divorce until after the baby’s born. I’ve been staying with her in Houston.”

  Breed huffed out a breath. “Wow.”

  “Yeah,” Jack said. He could see the questions in Breed’s eyes, but like most western men, he didn’t ask for information that wasn’t volunteered. “Anyway, Holly’s up-to-date on all the latest research being done on leukemia. She would know if there’s some cutting edge clinical trial your father could join.”

  “Thanks, Jack. I’ll pass the word to King. By the way, he still hasn’t told anyone else in the family that he’s sick, so keep this under your hat.”

  Jack frowned. “Your brother North doesn’t know?”

  “No. And neither do King’s Brats.”

  Jack whistled. Because of his relationships with both Kate and Breed, he was one of the few people privy to the strange Grayhawk family tree. King Grayhawk had been married four times looking for a woman he could love as much as he’d loved Eve De Witt, the woman Jackson Blackthorne had stolen from him and married.

  Kate’s mother Libby, and her uncles North and Matthew, were the children of King’s first wife, Jane. Matthew had left home at seventeen and no one had heard from him since. He could be dead for all anyone knew.

  King’s marriage to his second wife, Leonora, had been annulled.

  King’s third wife, Sassy, was Breed’s mother.

  King’s fourth and last wife, Jill, had presented him with three kids in five years before she ran off with one of King’s cowhands. Taylor, Gray and Victoria were better known as King’s Brats. They were all in their twenties and spent their time at Kingdom Come, King’s ranch in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

  “I’m sure if Kate knew about King’s cancer, she would want to visit her grandfather and bring the twins to see him, especially since he’s so close. When are you going to tell everyone what’s going on?” Jack asked.

  “When King gives the okay,” Breed replied. He pointed to a cordoned-off, burned-out vehicle that sat at the rear of the junkyard and said, “That used to be a 1988 Cadillac Seville.”

  “Not a whole lot left of it,” Jack said. The Cadillac had been shredded.

  “The junkman gave me a description of a guy hanging around yesterday that fits a certain fugitive we both know and dislike,” Breed said. “Tall, thin, shaggy blond hair, toothy smile.”

  “Come on, Breed, that could fit a hundred thousand vagrants.”

  “It also fits J.D. Pendleton. Except, this guy had a sore on his face and a limp. Any reason to think J.D.’s been hurt recently?”

  “Actually, yes.” Jack thought of the report Roberto had made to D’Amato, that he’d seen blood on the ground in Brazil, and that J.D. had run with a limp as he’d escaped. “Have you said anything to your boss about J.D.?”

  “Come on, Jack. You know better than that.”

  Because of his close relationship to both Kate and Jack, Breed had become privy to the close-held information that J.D. Pendleton was still alive. He also knew that Jack was hunting J.D. for Dante D’Amato.

  The FBI did not.

  “How are you going to handle this?” Jack asked.

  “I’ve already handled it,” Breed said. “I called you. The FBI will put out a warrant for anyone matching the description we have from the witness at the junkyard. But they won’t be looking for a man the military supposedly buried with honors at Arlington Cemetery more than a year ago. I think I can trust you to hunt down J.D., if that’s where this trail leads.”

  “Thanks, Breed.” Jack was excited because this was the first decent clue he’d gotten to J.D.’s whereabouts.

  “J.D. was a demolitions expert in the National Guard, wasn’t he?” Breed asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “So he’d know how to put together a bomb like this. The FBI bomb tech tells me it was actually a pretty sophisticated IED. Military munitions were used, stuff J.D. would have had access to in the Guard and in Afghanistan.”

  “J.D. used to brag about how good he was,” Jack said.

  “Looks like he’s trying to figure out exactly how much C-4 he needs to blow up a car,” Breed said. “Who do you think J.D. would like to obliterate?”

  “D’Amato for sure,” Jack said. Or maybe Kate, if J.D. had found out from his mother that his wife had cheated on him, and that the twins weren’t his kids. Jack felt a shiver roll down his spine at the thought of a bomb like this one aimed at Kate.

  Would J.D. wait until Kate was alone to try and kill her? Or would he be mad enough to want Shaw dead, too. And what about the twins? Would he care if Lucky and Chance were in the car with his wife and her lover?

  Who knew what rang J.D. Pendleton’s chimes?

  Jack hunkered down to get a closer look at what was left of the Cadillac blown up by the IED. The remaining shards of metal were small and burned black. He looked up at Breed and said, “This looks like overkill.”

  “He wants to make sure whoever is in the car ends up dead. He used a shaped charge on the ground, Jack. It burned a hole clear through the bottom of the chassis and allowed the C-4 to do a helluva lot more damage to the interior of the vehicle. The FBI bomb tech said this IED was remotely detonated.”

  Jack stood and pulled off his Stetson and ran a hand through his hair, then tugged it back down again. “That son of a bitch is making a roadside bomb.”

  Breed nodded. “If it’s anything like this one, it’ll be one hell of an IED.”

  Jack looked into the distance, where rice grew in wet paddies. “Assuming this was J.D., any clues where he went from here?”

  “He didn’t use any local means of transportation—bus or taxi or rental car—so he’s probably got his own vehicle. Nobody saw or heard a motorcycle last night, so probably a car. He could easily disappear in any one of the gazillion small communities surrounding Houston.”

  “Gazillion?” Jack said with a twist of his lips.

  “Houston is dotted with tiny towns and minuscule municipalities, too many to name in a single breath. Lots of farm workers, oil workers, transients. Easy to disappear if you have a little cash and a car, which I presume J.D. does.”

  “I guess the question is whether I should warn D’Amato.”

  And Kate and Shaw.

  “Might win you some points with the mob boss, but it won’t keep him safe. A roadside bomb like this one can take out an armored military vehicle. It’s going to make mincemeat of an armor-plated bulletproof limousine.”

  “Guess it can’t hurt to let D’Amato know what’s coming,” Jack said. “
Knowing D’Amato, he isn’t going to let a threat like this keep him from going where he wants to go.”

  “Just make sure you’re not in the car with him,” Breed said wryly.

  “No problem. Give Grace a hug from me. And say hello to King.”

  “Will do.”

  Before he left Alvin, Jack talked with Sheriff Fredericks, confirming the description of the suspect who’d caused the explosion and getting one additional piece of information.

  “Had lunch today at the drugstore counter in town,” the sheriff said. “The waitress, a pretty little girl named Betty Jean, said she served a man yesterday who matched the description of our bomber. Flirted with her, if you can believe it.”

  Knowing J.D., Jack believed it. “Did he say anything to her that would help us figure out where he might have gone?”

  “Depends. Said he was married now, but he was going to be a free man soon. Does that help you?”

  “Yes,” Jack said. “It does. Thanks, Sheriff. I’d like to show her a picture, see if she can identify it, if that’s all right.”

  “Sure is. You got some idea who did this?”

  “I’ll know more after Betty Jean takes a look at the photo.”

  The young blond waitress stared at the photo of J.D. that Jack handed to her and said, “Holy cow! That’s him, ’cept he didn’t look nowhere near this nice. If I’d known he would clean up like that I’d have thunk twice about maybe takin’ a ride in that car of his.”

  “You got a look at his car?” Jack said.

  “Nothin’ fancy,” the girl said with a shrug. “Some white SUV. Looked new enough, tinted windows. I like sporty cars, the ones with the tops that come off.”

  Jack thanked the girl and the sheriff. At least he knew J.D. had been in town, which made it a good bet he was the one who’d blown up the car in the junkyard. It was interesting to know he was driving a white SUV, but that information wasn’t going to be much help finding him.

  On the drive back to Houston, Jack decided to call Kate. Which was when it occurred to him that they hadn’t communicated once during the past ten days. He’d seen a couple of phone messages but hadn’t returned her calls. He wondered if she’d been distracted by something equally catastrophic in her life. His call went directly to voice mail. “Hi, Kate,” he began.