Always

by Jude Deveraux

  The two agents cuffed the man to a chair that was bolted to the floor, then took their places beside him.

  “You may go,” Greg Ryerson said.

  “He’s—” one of the agents began, but Ryerson stopped him with a look.

  Silently, the agents left the room, closing the door behind them.

  Greg went to the big window and closed the blinds. He wasn’t at a high enough level to rate an outside window, but one wall of his office was glass and looked down over the enormous lobby below. He could close the blinds to slits and secretly observe the comings and goings of everyone—something he’d rather do than watch a bunch of birds in a bunch of trees.

  Turning back, Greg looked at the man cuffed to the chair. He’d been roughed up. The corner of his mouth was bleeding and the cut over his eye might need a few stitches. Other than that the man looked good. For a second, memories flashed through Greg’s mind: a van rolling down a cliff; a man’s body flying through the air; a man in a hospital bed, his face covered in bandages.

  “So, Jack,” Greg said conversationally, “how are you?”

  “Bleeding to death. You want to get these things off of me?”

  “Think I’ll be safe?”

  “You won’t be if you leave me tied up for another two minutes.”

  Smiling, Greg opened a box on his marble-topped desk, withdrew a key, and unlocked the handcuffs. As Jack rubbed his wrists, Greg opened a small closet to reveal a sink with glasses above. He took a cloth from a drawer, wet it with hot water, and handed it to Jack. “Want me to get a doctor?”

  Jack raised an eyebrow as he held the cloth to his temple. “I’m still recovering from the last time you got me a doctor.”

  Again, images flashed across Greg’s mind: Jack’s smashed face, unrecognizable, as he was wheeled into an operating room. “Yeah, I did a good job that time,” Greg said, watching Jack relax and smile. The man sitting in front of him bore no resemblance to the boy he’d grown up with. That boy had inherited his father’s big, hooked nose and the protruding brow. But that face had been crushed and rebuilt. Out of necessity, Jack had had an “extreme makeover,” and he’d come out looking a great deal better than he’d gone in.

  “You know, Greg,” Jack said slowly, “if you’d wanted to see me, you could have called. Left a message. We could have had lunch. You really didn’t need to do all…this.” He waved his hand to indicate his injured face.

  “Where’s the fun in that? Besides, all your numbers are tapped.”

  “By you guys.”

  “Us guys. You’re one of us, remember?”

  “I try to forget.” Jack folded the cloth and wiped the blood from his lip. “So what do you want?”

  Greg went to the bar and removed a small glass from behind some junk glasses purchased at the local home store. It was Waterford crystal and only Jack drank from it. Bending, Greg removed a bottle of twenty-year-old port from beneath the sink, then poured the glass three quarters full and handed it to Jack. “I need a progress report. How are you doing? What have you found out? Ready to make any collars?”

  Jack didn’t answer for a few moments as he sipped his port, seeming to weigh Greg’s words. “You never were good at lying,” Jack said. “Remember how I always found out the truth when we were kids?” Lifting his head, he looked Greg in the eye. “What’s happened and what do you need me for?”

  Nervously, Greg moved behind his desk, putting a barrier between him and Jack. “Your father was kidnapped about six weeks ago.”

  “And here I thought it was something important,” Jack said lightly. “By the way, now that you have me in here, how do you plan to get me out? Those boys you sent after me think I have a record going back to when I was nine!”

  Greg didn’t smile, nor did he answer Jack’s question. “I know what your father did to you. I know what he did to my mother after Dad’s death. More than anyone else on earth I know what a cold, selfish bastard J. Barrett Hallbrooke is. I lived with it for years, remember?”

  Jack sipped his port and studied the glass. “Why do I feel that there’s a ‘but’ in this?”

  “There’s a big one. But the president wants him. Needs him.”

  “Needs the Hallbrooke money,” Jack said, his jaw rigid. “Good ol’ dad can write a check but he can’t forgive or—”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know all that,” Greg said impatiently.

  “John Barrett Hallbrooke is the coldest bastard on earth. Drop him in a volcano and he’d freeze it. He can’t go fishing because he freezes the water for three miles around the boat. The cook stores the frozen food in his bed. I was there, remember? I helped make up the jokes.”

  “You forgot the one where he kissed my mother and she froze to death. Not the Midas touch, the ice touch.”

  “Jack,” Greg said in a tone of great patience, “I’m not asking you to forgive the man. I just need for you to find him.”

  “If he’s been gone six weeks, he’s probably dead.” Jack finished his port and set the glass on a table in front of the window, then stood up and looked through the blinds, his back to Greg.

  “He’s still alive. He’s confined, but not being tortured. The people holding him want something other than money.”

  “Couldn’t be any of my relatives then,” Jack said, turning back to Greg. “Look, I’d really like to help you on this but I can’t. This project I’m on is nearly completed. If you hadn’t dragged me out to play jewel thief I would be a lot closer to the end. Did they tell you that I got chased into an alley by some cops? I had to hide facedown on a filthy ledge with a bunch of pigeons on my back. If I hadn’t shown them where I was they would have given up. Which reminds me.” Jack reached into his pocket, withdrew a ruby and diamond necklace, and put it on Greg’s desk. “That girl you planted? Cute but not much upstairs.”

  Greg glared at Jack. “You’re avoiding me.”

  “Should I take the elevator or the stairs to get out of here?”

  “You do know, don’t you, that all I have to do is push a button and you’ll be locked up? There are only three people in the bureau who know you’re working for us, and I’m the only one who knows what you look like now.”

  Even though Greg had put on his most threatening scowl, Jack just smiled at him. “Pistols at dawn?”

  Deflated, Greg sat down in his chair, put his face in his hands for a moment, then looked back up at Jack. “This case is driving us crazy! It’s top secret and every day it’s getting harder to keep it a secret. Your father—”

  “Mr. Hallbrooke.”

  “Yeah, okay. Iceberg Man. Whatever. He was a joke to us as kids, but he’s not a joke to a whole lot of people. He practically supports half a dozen charities by himself. And stop looking at me like that! His money helps a lot of people.” Greg grabbed a piece of paper off his desk. “This is a letter from the White House. Signed by the president. It’s an official command for us to get off our butts and find J. Barrett Hallbrooke the third and get him back at his checkbook.”

  Grimacing, Jack looked away for a moment, then back at Greg. “Okay, so tell me what you know—not that I’m interested, mind you, but maybe I can tell you which of my relatives has him.”

  Greg moved to the front of the desk. “We’ve checked out Gus and Theo and that man she married. Clean, as far as we can tell. We have them bugged and under surveillance. We put a maid in there and they’re on camera all day long.”

  “They’re in the house?”

  “Sure. They were contacted by us and—”

  “Back up. Why you? Who got the ransom note?”

  “I have no idea who was told your father was missing and how he or she was told. No one’s told me a ransom has been asked for. The only civilians who know about your father’s disappearance are his siblings,” Greg said.

  “And let me guess. The minute you told them they started crying and begged to be allowed to be as near as possible to their beloved brother.”

  Greg chuckled. “Exactly.” Pausing, he s
hook his head in memory. “Remember what we used to do to them? How we used to lie to them?”

  “I remember the time you called Aunt Theo, crying, and said you thought Mr. Hallbrooke had had a heart attack.”

  “You put me up to it!”

  “Yeah, but you did it.”

  Greg laughed. “They got there at, what was it? Three A.M.?”

  Jack smiled. “Theo was already crying into her handkerchief, and Uncle Gus had enough luggage to stay forever.” He looked at Greg. “What I remember most is how mad your father was.”

  Greg shifted on his seat. “I still remember that paddling he gave me.”

  “And wanted to give me.” Jack looked at the window blind, then said softly, “You know, I was jealous of you for that paddling. My father…” He trailed off.

  “Said nothing,” Greg said. “He stood at the top of the stairs and told his siblings he was not dying so they could go home. Even though it was the wee hours, he didn’t invite them to spend the night.”

  “And even though he knew I’d done it, he said nothing to me. Not a word. It was the worst punishment I ever had.”

  Greg gave a melodramatic sigh. “Okay, poor you. Poor little rich boy unloved by his daddy. You got him back, though, didn’t you? Drugs, women, a hell-raiser without equal. And now they all think the heir apparent is dead and that the billions are going to go to Gus and Theo and those two criminal-minded kids of hers. No more charities. No more dumping millions into shelters for battered women and abused children. No more paying the salaries of people to find runaway teens. No more—”

  “Get off your soap box,” Jack snapped. “What’s happened since he disappeared?”

  “Nothing!” Greg said, throwing up his hands. His frustration obvious, he went to the bar, filled two glasses with ice, and poured them full of ginger ale. When they were kids they thought ginger ale was alcoholic and that they were pulling a fast one over on Greg’s mother—Hallbrooke’s cook—when they drank it. They’d spent many afternoons believing they were drunk from consuming great quantities of ginger ale. They stopped on the day they heard Greg’s mother and three housemaids howling with laughter over what the boys had thought was a secret. By the time they were exposed, they’d developed a lifelong love of the beverage.

  Taking his drink, Jack said, “I’m confused. You say you’ve heard nothing else but you also said you knew he was still alive. In fact, didn’t I hear you say…what was it? He is ‘confined but not being tortured.’ How do you know that if you haven’t heard from the kidnappers?”

  “Have I ever told you that I’ve always admired your memory? It’s almost photographic, isn’t it? Remember how Mom used to ask you to help her remember which cookbook a certain recipe was in?”

  Jack didn’t reply, just leaned back in his chair, sipped his drink, and looked hard at Greg.

  After a moment, red began to creep up the back of Greg’s neck. “A psssh…ick,” he said at last, his mouth on the rim of the glass.

  “A what?” Jack asked, then his eyes widened. He set his glass down on the coffee table. “I’m outta here.”

  Greg put himself between Jack and the door. “You try to leave and—”

  “And what?” Jack challenged, his eyes showing anger.

  “I’ll call my mother and tell her that you faked your death and that you’re still alive.”

  Jack’s face drained of color and he sat back down. “No,” he whispered. “Your mother…”

  “She cried hard at your funeral, you know. If I had died she wouldn’t have cried harder.”

  “She’ll kill me,” Jack whispered.

  “Oh yeah,” Greg said cheerfully. “And me. She won’t be like your dad and be silent. She’ll make your life a living hell. You’ll go back underground and—”

  “Couldn’t. Your mom would put my picture on CNN and tell the world what a rotten thing I did.”

  “True. And all that plastic surgery would be wasted. Everyone would know that John Barrett Hallbrooke the fourth is alive and well—and rich. You would be the one to have to deal with the charities and your aunt and uncle. And the twins, of course.”

  “Ah, yes, my young cousins. How are they, by the way?”

  “Same as always. Self-centered and bone lazy. The boy, Holcombe, complains if his sheets are wrinkled, and the girl, Chrissy, talks of rebellion and ‘the people,’ but she makes no effort to get a job.”

  Jack looked away. When the opportunity had presented itself for him to die, so to speak, he’d eagerly taken it. His face had been reconstructed and a new identity had been given to him by the FBI. He’d never once regretted what he’d done. Greg and his parents, his father’s cook and chauffeur, had been his only family.

  Taking a deep breath, Jack looked back at Greg. Only his blood relatives had the power to make him feel this bad. “Okay, out with it. What and how?”

  Greg leaned back against his chair. “A psychic.” He held up his hand to stop Jack’s laughter. “You don’t have to tell me what you think of psychics. It’s what all of America thinks of them. But this one is different. This one is…” He looked away.

  “Was that a shudder?” Jack laughed, smirking. “What’d she do? Read your mind? Did she tell you that she knows you’ve been unfaithful to your wife and now you’re scared she’s going to tell Sue?”

  Greg’s voice lowered. “She made me unbutton my shirt and show her where I fell on that iron spike when we were kids. You know that that place has always bothered me. Then she held a little glass ball up to the scar and…” He paused a moment. “When she took the ball away, I could move my shoulder more freely than I’ve been able to since it happened when I was eight. She said the muscle had attached to the bone and she’d freed it.”

  Jack ran his hand over his eyes. “Lord! A psychic and a faith healer.”

  Greg looked harder at Jack. “You didn’t listen to me. I said she made me take off my shirt.”

  “Gunpoint?”

  “With her mind.”

  “Right, Greg,” Jack said. “She sent you a thought and you obeyed it.”

  “Exactly.”

  “I’m supposed to believe that someone exists on this earth who can do this?”

  “Her husband’s family has a lot of money so they’re able to protect her. At least they’re able to keep what she can do out of the press. We know because she helps us on cases.”

  Jack shook his head. “You’ve been in here too long. Or maybe you’ve seen Men In Black too often. Gregory, this is the real world, not some teen series on FOX. No Buffy, no kid talking to God. Real. Get it?”

  Greg was unperturbed. “She comes in about once a week and goes over pictures and objects. She feels them, and tells us what she sees. She’s solved hundreds of cases. Over and over she’s proven that she can control things with her mind. Truthfully, people here think she can do a great deal more than she lets us know about. Last year she and Lincoln Aimes—”

  “The actor?” Jack asked.

  “Yeah, the actor. He was at some resort with her and the place burned down.”

  “Couldn’t she have willed the fire to stop?”

  Greg ignored the snide remark. “Nobody died but the guy who started the fire kept yelling that he’d killed Aimes. He said that after Aimes was dead, zombies had carried him away—and brought him back to life.”

  “He in a psych ward now?”

  “Dead. Heart attack soon after his trial. When he was given only four years for arson, he started laughing and saying he got away with murder. He also said he’d ‘get the kid’ after he got out. Two days later he dropped dead in his cell.”

  “A crazy man.”

  “Yeah, but two other women at that spa also said they saw Lincoln Aimes being carried away by ‘zombies.’ ”

  “Mass hysteria. Do you have a point to this? Or are you going to tell me that this psychic used her little crystal ball and raised some pretty boy actor from the dead?” When Greg didn’t reply, Jack snorted. “I used to think the
FBI used science. So where are the rooms full of aliens? How about the people who’ve been on spaceships?”

  “Laugh all you want but I know what she did to my shoulder.”

  “Okay, I’ll bite. Why you? If she can cure people, why isn’t she in cancer wards curing little kids?”

  “She is. She does. But she has to be discreet or she’ll cause riots. The president knows of her, and her powers are being used in ways that are kept from the public.”

  “Why do I feel as though I’m watching the Sci-Fi channel?”

  Greg waited for his friend to stop his sarcasm.

  “Okay,” Jack said after a while, “let’s just pretend this is true. A psychic told you that my father is alive and well somewhere, and the president of the United States wants him found. Why doesn’t this psychic just tell you where he is?”

  “She doesn’t know. She says there’s something blocking her from finding him.”

  “You mean like a truck? Or is it a mountain?”

  “Would you cut out the attitude? If your father dies, then all that money goes to your aunt and uncle and her two selfish kids. What do you think they’ll do with it? Give it away to help others as your father does?”

  “Okay, okay,” Jack said. “Point taken. I see why you want to find Iceberg Dad, and I see that you’re using any method you can to find him. What I don’t see is what I have to do with it.”

  “She, the psychic…you see, she really only deals with the top guys in the FBI.”

  “Not down to your level?”

  “No. Not down here. But she asked for me. She said there was someone in the bureau who knew someone who could find your father. I’m sure she knows you’re his son and she must know you’re deep undercover, but she admitted nothing. She picked me out of a book of photos and I met her alone. She told me to contact the man I know, and that you’d be able to find Hallbrooke.”

  “I see,” Jack said slowly. “And, let me guess, I find myself on the journey.”

  “You know,” Greg said slowly, “I’ve never wanted to punch you as much as I do right now.”