“He blindfolded me, despite the dark, which strikes me as a really odd thing to have done. He taped my hands together, too, tightly enough that I couldn’t move them. He told me I was forcing him into a corner and this was his last warning. If I kept on trying to find him, he’d have to kill me. I was leaving him no choice. Then I guess he walked out of the room. He didn’t hit me or hurt me or anything.”
She seemed to feel that small gift of moderation on Ron Raven’s part was cause for gratitude. Luke considered it less than a drop in the bucket of good deeds when compared with the ocean of Ron’s sins. He was going to track down the son of a bitch, he swore silently, and make sure the bastard spent the rest of his miserable life in prison.
He put his arms around Kate, holding her tight, willing her to feel the comfort he was offering. “Let me guess. He didn’t untie you before he left.”
She shook her head. “No. He didn’t remove the blindfold, either. The only thing I can think of is maybe he was afraid I would follow him if I could see. Otherwise, why mess with a blindfold? It can’t be because he didn’t want me to recognize him, since that was the whole point of the exercise. He wanted me to know exactly who it was threatening to kill me.”
It made sense that Ron Raven wouldn’t want Kate to follow him, and perhaps a blindfold was marginally less cruel than any other precautions he could have taken. Tying her to the bed, for example, might have resulted in leaving her imprisoned for days until somebody came to the house in search of her. Luke gave up trying to second-guess Ron’s motives because thinking about the terror the man had inflicted on his own daughter left him homicidal with rage.
“You were very clever to escape.” Luke managed to filter most of the rage out of his voice, in itself a minor miracle. He suspected Kate needed kindness at the moment, not rage and bombastic threats of retribution. He’d save those for tomorrow morning, when he could start planning how to turn the threats into a realistic plan of action. “How did you manage to get rid of the blindfold? It must have been difficult with your hands taped together.”
“My father used my own bath towel to cover my head and the duct tape didn’t stick to the pile all that well. Eventually I managed to pop the tape around my neck and get rid of the towel. Then I went down to the kitchen and held a knife in my mouth so that I could cut the tape off my hands.” She produced a wan smile, but it tore at Luke’s heart to see the effort behind it. “Once I could see, it wasn’t too bad. Still, as you can imagine, my bedroom isn’t exactly my favorite place right now. It’s as if…as if I can feel his presence up there, menacing me.”
He wanted to bring Ron Raven to her in handcuffs, with steel chains around his waist and shackles on his ankles. Then he would compel the asshole to kneel down and plead for her forgiveness. Unfortunately, there was no way to make the fantasy real, so all he could do was hug her and offer advice that might help to limit the harm the monster had caused.
“It’s easy to understand why the idea of going back upstairs bothers you, Kate, and we can sleep on the sofa if you want. Except I hate to give your father that much power. You worked so hard to fix this house up and you’ve always loved it. Don’t let him destroy your pleasure in your home. Come to bed in your own room and reassert possession of the space.”
She managed to hold a smile for a couple of seconds before it slipped away. “Like a dog marking its territory, you mean?”
“Exactly like that.” He squeezed her tight, his heart swelling with emotion. “We’ll make love and stamp our presence on your bedroom, and obliterate any trace of Ron and his visit.” He kissed her gently on her mouth. “I’ll be there, Kate. I’ll keep the demons away.”
“Yes, you will for tonight, but the demons will be lurking just beyond the horizon, waiting to pounce when I least expect them.” The expression on her face was resigned, but it turned to determination as he watched. “There’s only one way to banish the demons forever. We have to find my father. I’m going to do it, Luke. I’m going to find him. I won’t let him scare me off.”
Twenty-One
October 23, 2007
T he phone rang, waking Kate from a deep and refreshing sleep. For a couple of seconds she was so afraid the call might be from her father that she had trouble drawing breath. Then she realized Luke was in bed next to her, his hand resting casually on Puff, and the paralysis vanished. The power of movement restored, she checked the caller ID and, with a sigh of relief, picked up the phone.
“Good morning, Uncle Paul. How are you doing?”
“Oh, you’re home. I called the bakery a few minutes ago expecting to reach you and they said you hadn’t come in today. I was a little worried to learn that you hadn’t let them know you would be late. I hope you’re feeling well, Kate?”
She glanced at the clock and saw it was nine-fifteen, more than three hours past her usual time for getting to work. “Thanks for the reminder, Uncle Paul. I need to call and let them know what’s happened. I had a…disturbed night and turned off the alarm before I went to sleep. I didn’t expect to be this late waking up, though.”
“I’m sorry to hear you had a rough night.” Her uncle’s usually pompous voice softened. “There’s a nasty stomach virus making the rounds, so if you’re feeling sick you should stay home. Shall I call your mother and ask her to stop by your place?”
“No, I’m fine, thanks. My only problem was lack of sleep, and since I didn’t wake up until past nine o’clock, I’ve pretty much taken care of that!” She would explain about her father’s visit later, when they were face-to-face. Her uncle tended to fuss and he would be round here in a flash if she told him what had really happened last night.
“There must be a reason you’re trying to reach me, Uncle Paul. I hope nothing’s wrong?”
“Oh, no, nothing at all,” he said with heavy sarcasm. “I’m just fine and dandy, except for the minor fact that your mother called last night and explained what you and Luke Savarini discovered while the two of you were in Virginia. It’s a definite shock to the system to realize we’ve wasted six months grieving for a man who is very much alive. I’m stunned, Kate, simply stunned. I don’t know what to say, much less what to do.”
“He planned a convincing death, didn’t he? I wonder how long he spent preparing that particular little scam.”
“Less time than either of us would imagine possible, I expect.” Paul sounded bitter. “Ron’s been creating illusions for the past thirty years, and this was just one more. He always thought fast on his feet, that’s for sure.
What mystifies me is how he got away with deceiving us all about his basic character for such a long time.”
“Have you come up with any good answers?”
“I sure haven’t, but I’ve managed to work up a fine head of steam mulling over the possibilities.”
Kate could certainly sympathize with her uncle’s attitude. “I guess I’ve given up asking myself that sort of question. My plan is to find my father and then we can demand answers directly.”
Her uncle snorted. “I’m sorry, my dear, but that’s a bit like asking a dog why it wags its tail or asking a monkey why it likes bananas. They’re physically and mentally incapable of answering you. So is Ron.”
Kate was afraid Paul might be right. Her father had deceived so many people for so long that deception had become his standard mode of operation. She breathed every day without stopping to wonder how or why. Apparently her father deceived people on a daily basis with identical lack of thought.
“Was my mother upset when she talked to you, Uncle Paul? When I stopped by on the way home from the airport, she seemed okay with the news that Dad was definitely alive.”
“She sounded fine to me, too. My sister…your mother is a remarkable woman. I had moments during our conversation yesterday evening when it seemed to me she was coping with the news of Ron’s return from the dead better than I was. And while I’m handing out compliments, you and Luke deserve several. I’m truly impressed by your ingenuity. I’d ne
ver have expected you to run down so many leads in such a short time. That was well done, Kate.”
“Thanks. We were lucky that Luke happened to know exactly the right person to help us open up the files on that flash drive we found, otherwise we’d have been no further forward. Hopefully those files are going to provide us with a solid way to track my father. With so many addresses and phone numbers to work with, it should be a snap. Relatively speaking.” She scooted under the covers, snuggling against Luke as she talked. Somehow, even discussing Ron Raven didn’t seem quite so bad with Luke’s arm around her and her head resting on his shoulder.
“I sure hope so,” her uncle said. “But, as all the self-help books tell you, luck is what happens when opportunity meets preparation. You and Luke weren’t lucky, you were well prepared.”
She bit her lip to contain a giggle. Her uncle was so predictably patronizing she’d learned to be fond of his quirks. “Thanks for the praise, Uncle Paul.”
“I always like to give credit where credit is due. Anyway, you and Luke did a great job—in such a short time period! Now we need to discuss how we’re going to handle this new information. I understand from your mother that you believe you’ve come up with a way to smoke Ron out of his hiding place? She didn’t explain how, though.”
“It’s a bit complicated. It would be easier to explain if we talked about the situation face-to-face so that we can show you the files on the flash drive.”
“I certainly agree it’s complicated. In fact, it occurred to me as I was driving into work this morning that we might be getting in over our heads. We’re amateurs, all of us. Maybe it’s time for us to call in the police.”
“I don’t know, Uncle Paul—”
“A major step like going to the police needs to be thoroughly discussed beforehand.” Her uncle was clearly in no mood to waste time listening to her comments. “I’m hoping to arrange a little get-together with you and your mother as soon as you finish work this afternoon. I’ll call Luke Savarini once we’ve agreed on a time and place for the meeting and see if he can join us. On the one hand, I usually don’t like the idea of sharing intimate problems with someone who’s outside the family. On the other hand, Luke already knows what’s going on, so his input might be valuable. A well-informed outsider sometimes has a better grasp of the big picture than those of us struggling to view the situation from the inside.”
“I agree we need to arrange a meeting, and the sooner the better.” Kate spoke quickly, before her uncle could go off into another peroration. His tendency to deliver monologues richly dotted with on the one hand, on the other hand was a family legend. “If I go to the bakery for a few hours, just to catch up on any crises, we could meet in the early afternoon at my mother’s house. That way, Luke could join us before the evening rush starts at his restaurants.”
“Shall we say two o’clock, then, at Avery’s house? She tells me her office furniture arrived at the end of last week, so we’ll have somewhere comfortable to sit while we talk, and her house is conveniently located for both you and Luke.” He delivered this information as if it were news to Kate.
“I’ll be there at two,” she confirmed. “I’ll take care of filling Luke in on our plans.”
“And I’ll let your mother know we’ve volunteered her house for our meeting. I’m glad to hear you sounding so well, Kate. When the girl at La Lanterne said you hadn’t gone in or called this morning, I got a bit worried.”
Kate ignored the reference to the “girl” at the bakery. There wasn’t a woman working at La Lanterne who was less than forty, but her uncle was too set in his ways to change them now. She smothered a sigh and reassured him one more time that she was healthy, with no sign of any bugs or viruses about to launch an attack on her health. Her uncle ended the call after what was, for him, a relatively short goodbye.
“What have you volunteered me to join?” Luke asked as she hung up the phone.
“Mom gave my uncle Paul the news about my father being alive and Paul is not a happy camper. He thinks we should have a meeting to discuss what to do next.”
“I agree with your uncle, especially since you need to let both him and your mom know about Ron’s visit here last night. That’s information you need to share, Kate, however reluctant you might be to tell them about Ron’s threats.”
She pulled a face, but she knew Luke was right. She hated to be responsible for delivering a mortal blow to any shreds of affection her mother might still hold for her bigamous husband, but it couldn’t be helped. Ron’s visit was proof positive he was alive, and that was knowledge to be shared, not kept secret.
“Uncle Paul and I agreed to get together with my mother this afternoon. Two o’clock at Mom’s house. I know how busy you’ll be today since we just got back into town, but I figured the middle of the afternoon would be the easiest time for you to break away for an hour. If you can join us, that would be great.”
“I’ll make the time,” Luke said. “Sometimes I need to remind myself that I hired executive chefs for my restaurants so that I wouldn’t have to be physically on the premises 24-7.” He reached across the bed and took her hands, lacing his fingers through hers. “Before you get up, tell me what your plans are for the rest of the morning, Kate.”
“I’m going to call the bakery right now, before I shower. I need to apologize for being late and let them know I’ll be coming in for a few hours, at least—long enough to catch up on anything urgent left over from the time we spent in Virginia.” She shrugged. “Apart from work, I guess I’m not doing much, at least until the meeting at my mother’s place.”
“There’s something else you should consider taking care of this morning,” Luke said. “This is important, Kate.”
“What’s that? You’re looking very somber.”
“I guess I feel somber. You need to make an official police report about your father’s visit here last night. What he did was criminal and the cops need to know.”
“Maybe.” She wrinkled her nose. “I wish I trusted the cops more.”
“Why don’t you trust them? Do you think they’re corrupt, or just incompetent?”
“Neither,” she said. “I think mostly they’re overworked and have too few resources. On top of that, the ones I’ve encountered seem to suffer from severe tunnel vision. What happened with Julio Castellano and the investigation of my father’s disappearance is a classic example of how they get their teeth into a theory and won’t let go.”
“My sympathy is with the cops.” Luke shrugged. “Your father went to a lot of trouble to have them believe Castellano had killed him.”
“Unfortunately for us, his ploy worked too well. At this point I think it would take the equivalent of a nuclear explosion to blast the police out of their preconceived notions about this case.”
“Your father’s visit here last night almost counts as a nuclear explosion. It was one thing for detectives to ignore me when all I could tell them was that I’d glimpsed Ron Raven across a crowded restaurant. They can’t ignore the fact that your father invaded your home last night, tied you up, and then threatened to kill you. Tying people up and threatening murder are serious crimes—felonies, not misdemeanors. They’re obligated to investigate.”
She gave a sigh that turned into a yawn. Between her father’s phone call and his nocturnal visit, she was running several hours short on sleep over the past two nights. “If I talk to the cops, I’m worried somebody inside the department will leak to the press that Ron Raven is alive. The media will instantly go wild, my father will be spooked and we’ll never be able to smoke him out of hiding. Right now, if we’re careful how we set up the sting, there’s no reason for him to suspect that we’re so close to catching up with him. But it only takes a few careless words from some clerk to the media and we’ll lose the edge we have right now.”
Luke frowned, his silence an acknowledgment of the problems. “Your uncle is a fixture in the Chicago business community. Maybe he has a high-level contact or two inside t
he police department. If you make your report to somebody really senior, there’s more chance of keeping the information confidential. I agree, media hype is a problem, but the cops have resources we don’t for tracking people on a national scale, especially since 9/11.”
“But why do we need to launch a massive manhunt? Thanks to Seth and your sister, we decoded my father’s files and we have a way to trick him into showing up at a time and place we can control. I’m not clear what we gain by involving the cops right now.”
“Increased safety for you, at the very least.”
She laughed. “You’re joking, right? The cops are as likely to parade naked down Michigan Avenue whistling ‘Dixie’ as they are to waste manpower guarding me from a man they’re not a hundred percent sure is alive.”
“You have a point,” he conceded. “And if the cops aren’t going to protect you, I guess the negatives of talking to them outweigh the positives. Ron is obviously spooked, or he wouldn’t have risked coming here last night to threaten you. If he gets any more alarmed than he already is, he’ll bury himself so deep in a new identity that we’ll never pick up his trail. Realistically, all he has to do is drive across the border into Mexico, and we haven’t a hope in hell of tracking him down.”
“At least if he’s in Mexico, I don’t have to worry about him killing me.” Kate laughed without any humor at all. “It seems every cloud truly does have a silver lining. Don’t you just love the old clichés?”
“There are others I like better than that one,” Luke said grimly. “How about what goes around, comes around? I’d really like to see Ron Raven get his. And as for him killing you, he isn’t going to get the chance because you’re not going to be alone anymore. You need to move in with me, Katie, starting tonight. My building has street-level security doors that can only be accessed if you know the code, plus my condo is on the fifteenth floor. Unless Ron turned into Spider-Man during the past six months, once you’re with me, he can’t do a repeat of last night’s performance because there’s no way for him to gain access to my condo.”
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