Their Only Child

by Carla Cassidy

  “Maybe you just missed him. Maybe he’s at your place now.”

  “That’s the next place I’ll look for him…after I check every nook and cranny here.”

  They worked silently, methodically, making sure that everything was put back the way they had found it. Sully wanted to rip the place apart, destroy anything that belonged to Donny, but he kept his rage in check, knowing he had to be smarter than his anger.

  Sully knew Kip was taking a big chance, risking dismissal and loss of his pension and retirement by participating in this illegal search.

  Sully also knew that part of what motivated Kip was not only the thought of a missing child, but the hope that somehow their search would prove Donny innocent of Sully’s suspicions.

  The living room yielded nothing, no indication at all that Donny had anything to do with Eric’s disappearance. Nor did the kitchen hold any clues. It wasn’t until Sully dug through the kitchen garbage that he came up with a receipt from a convenience store that made his heart pound. “Why would Donny, on the day that Eric disappeared, buy sandwiches, potato chips, soda and comic books?”

  “Who knows? Maybe he was hungry and he’s not into heavy reading, material.” Kip straightened from the cabinet under the sink. “Sully, you can’t jump to conclusions. It’s just a damned receipt.”

  Sully knew Kip was right. He couldn’t explain how certain he was that Donny had set him up to die and that now Donny had orchestrated Eric’s disappearance. The receipt gave him hope. If Donny had Eric, and if this receipt was an indication, then at least he hadn’t killed Eric. He’d bought food and entertainment, and that implied he meant to keep Eric alive. Damn, but there were so many ifs…and no matter how he told himself the receipt might be a good sign, his stomach rolled and bucked with fear.

  “You want to know what scares the hell out of me?” Sully looked at Kip, needing to say the words, needing to share the horror that had gripped him from the moment he remembered Donny’s car being parked down the street from that alley. “If Donny is capable of standing in a window, aiming his gun at me and pulling the trigger, then what’s he capable of doing to my son?”

  Kip’s eyes darkened. “Come on, let’s go check the bedroom.”

  Although it had only taken them minutes to search the living room and kitchen, Sully had the feeling of time racing while he moved in slow motion. If they could just find something, anything that would tie Donny to Eric, anything that would give a hint of where Eric might be being held.

  “Son of a…”

  “What?” Sully raced over to where Kip stood at the closet door. He peered inside the small closet and there, on the floor, spied what had caused Kip’s exclamation. A brown paper sack, identical to the one Sully had stuffed with the ransom money. Sully leaned down and opened the sack, exposing the money for Kip to see.

  “Okay, so now we know if nothing else Donny is a dirty cop,” Kip said. “Maybe he just intended to cash in on a bad situation.”

  Sully picked up an item from the closet floor next to the paper sack. It was a battery operated toy, a voice synethisizer that transformed an ordinary tone into a roboticlike speech.

  “He’s a dirty cop who tried to kill me, and now has my son.” Sully hit the closet door with his fist, the souhd thundering through the small apartment. “But where? Where in the hell would be have him?”

  “Sully?” Kip frowned thoughtfully. “A couple of weeks ago Donny was complaining because the taxes were due on his father’s old farmhouse. He’d been hoping to sell it, but from what I gathered it was in pretty bad shape.”

  “Yeah…yeah, I remember Donny talking about his dad’s place before his dad died.” Sully tried to reach back into his memory, back to the days when he and Donny had ridden together as partners.

  Donny’s father had been an invalid in the last couple years of his life, and Donny had often complained about the time he had to spend on his days off at the farm. But where was the farm? Sully knew it wasn’t too far from here, but where, exactly?

  “I could find it by computer,” Kip said. “Let me go home, and I’ll access tax files, find it that way.”

  “Come on, it’s quicker to go to Theresa’s. She’s got a computer with a modem, you can do it there. Grab that sack. We’ll take it back to Theresa, and she can give it back to the bank.”

  “What happens when Donny discovers it’s missing?”

  Sully smiled tightly. “What’s he going to do? File a police report?”

  Kip hesitated a moment, then nodded and grabbed the sack, and together he and Sully left the apartment. As Sully drove to Theresa’s house, with Kip following in his own car, Sully’s thoughts went to the man who’d been his partner.

  What haunted Sully at the moment was why…why would Donny want him dead? Why would Donny want to hurt him enough to steal his son?

  There had never been a hint of any ill feelings between the two men. For two years, they had been partners. They’d shared pieces of themselves, faced tough situations together. Sully had trusted Donny to watch his back, to be there for him when the heat was on, and that only made the betrayal more bitter.

  There were no doubts in Sully’s mind now. It had been the sight of his partner’s distinctive yellow sports car parked down the street that caused the premonition of doom, the strange unease that coursed through Sully as he headed down that alley.

  Somehow, in the aftermath of the shooting, that memory had been repressed, shoved into a dark corner of his mind. Sully’s feeling that he’d been set up had been right, but after the shooting he hadn’t been able to remember the sight of Donny’s car.

  Donny had to be crazy—that was the only explanation. He must possess some sort of madness in his soul, a madness he’d been able to keep secret until that hot summer night so long ago. A secret madness. A killing madness.

  Sully stepped on the accelerator, once again feeling the press of time passing…with Eric’s life in the balance.

  THERESA FINALLY got Vincent and Rose to go home, after assuring them a dozen times that she’d call them if there was any news at all.

  After they left, Theresa dressed and sank down on the sofa, her gaze focused on the Christmas tree. Her heart cried out soundlessly, the pain too deep for words as she stared at the empty space at the top…the visual reminder that Eric wasn’t home.

  When she could stand the sight of the tree no longer, she moved to the kitchen, where she made a fresh pot of coffee, then stood at the window and watched it snow.

  The weather service had indicated that the area was under a winter storm warning, with expected snow totals of six to twelve inches and winds between thirty and fifty miles an hour.

  Wherever Eric was…she hoped it was someplace warm and dry. His coat wasn’t thick enough for him to endure this kind of cold for long, and as usual, he’d forgotten his gloves that morning when he left for school.

  That morning. Oh, how she wished she could call it back. How she wished she had driven him to school or kept him home that day. How she wished she could turn back the hands of time and stop all this from happening.

  She jumped when the back door flew open and Sully and Kip walked in.

  “Your computer. Kip needs to use it,” Sully said, his tone sharp.

  “In the back bedroom. Why? What’s happened? What’s going on?” She followed the two men down the hallway and into the bedroom office, where Kip sat down in the chair at the desk and turned on the computer.

  “I think Donny has Eric,” Sully said.

  “What?” she gasped. “But, Sully, why? My God, that doesn’t make any sense!”

  “I know it doesn’t. But it’s what I believe.” He looked at her, his eyes dark with torment. “He shot me, Theresa. That night in the alley, he stood in a window and aimed his gun. It was Donny who tried to kill me.”

  “Oh, Sully.” She leaned weakly against the wall, trying to comprehend, to make sense of it all. “Are you positive it was him?”

  Sully touched his chest, the pl
ace where Theresa knew the doctors had removed a bullet, a place that still bore the scar of that night. “I’ve never been so sure. I…I don’t know why he did it, but I know that he did. And I think he’s got our son.”

  “My God, if what you say is true, then Donny is a monster.” Anger stirred, a bubbling cauldron of rage that filled her, momentarily sweeping away the emptiness, the fear. “He sat with us, at our table, in our home…for the last three days he’s watched our terror, seen our torment. What kind of a monster does something like that?” She drew in a deep breath to steady her raging emotions. “What’s Kip doing?”

  “If Holbrook is a monster, then he has to have a lair. That’s what I’m looking for,” Kip explained as his fingers nimbly punched the keyboard.

  “Donny’s father had a farm on the outskirts of town. Kip’s trying to find out the exact location.”

  “And you think Eric might be there?” Theresa’s heart thundered in her chest.

  “If Donny has him…that’s where he’ll be,” Sully said with finality.

  “Bingo,” Kip cried in triumph. “County tax records show one Donald Holbrook paid taxes on a piece of property just outside city limits on the south side of town—2900 Highway 10.”

  “I’m on my way.” Sully started out the door.

  “Sully, wait!” Kip yelled after him. Both Theresa and Kip hurried after Sully, catching up to him at the front door. “You can’t go out there all alone,” Kip said.

  “He won’t be alone. I’m going with him.” Theresa pulled her coat from the hall closet.

  “Theresa…” Sully began.

  She held up a hand to still him. “Don’t tell me to stay here, Sully. Don’t you even try to talk me into not going with you.” She held his gaze, determinedly, defiantly. There was no way in hell he was going to talk her into staying here while he went to the place where their son might be.

  “It could be dangerous,” he said.

  “I know that.” She buttoned her coat. “Now let’s go.

  “I’ll get backup and meet you out there,” Kip said.

  “Don’t use your radio,” Sully warned. “Donny might be monitoring.” Sully grabbed Theresa’s arm. “Come on, let’s go get our son.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Wind buffeted the car and howled around the windows like a mourning banshee. The blowing and falling snow not only cut down visibility to almost nothing, but also made for excruciatingly slow going.

  Theresa stared out the window, feeling as if Mother Nature were conspiring with Donny to keep her away from her son. She wrapped her arms around herself and moved the heater vent to blow directly on her.

  “How far do we have to go?” she asked Sully, whose knuckles shone white as he fought to keep the car on the road.

  “About fifteen miles, but it’s impossible for me to go much faster than thirty. Damn, if only this snow had held off for another hour or two.”

  “It doesn’t matter how long it takes us to get there. Either we get there in time…or we don’t.”

  Sully looked at her sharply, and she held his gaze for a long moment. She knew there were no guarantees of what they would find at the farmhouse. There was no guarantee Eric would be there…and if he was, there was no guarantee he’d still be alive. She closed her eyes for a moment, rejecting the possibility.

  Sully reached out and touched her hand, a touch that communicated strength and the commitment to do whatever was in his power to make Eric be safe. But Theresa knew Eric’s safety was not in their hands. It was in the hands of a man they had trusted, a man they’d thought a friend, an utter madman.

  “How did you remember that Donny was there the night you were shot?” she asked as he released her hand and gripped the steering wheel once again.

  “I knew there was something about that night I wasn’t remembering, some detail that kept niggling at the back of my mind.” He kept his focus on the city streets. “I was up all night, thinking about it, wondering about it, and somehow in my gut I believed that Eric’s disappearance and my shooting were connected.”

  Theresa held her breath as they turned a corner and the back end of the car spun out, nearly sending them headfirst into a street sign. Sully backed off the gas and whirled the steering wheel, managing to right the car on the icy street.

  “Close call,” she said, relaxing her death grip on the dashboard. She stared out the window, where the road seemed to have disappeared beneath the blanket of snow. “Will we be able to make it to the farmhouse?”

  He flashed her a tight smile. “If I have to steal a bulldozer, eventually we’ll make it.”

  They didn’t speak again until they left the city streets and turned onto Highway 10. Here, the road conditions were even worse. With no buildings, no obstacles to block the wind, the snow blew and drifted on the roadway, making traveling not only difficult, but hazardous.

  “’I went back to the alley this morning,” Sully said as he slowed the car to a crawl. “I hadn’t been there since the night of the shooting.”

  “Oh, Sully, I know how difficult it must have been for you to go back to that place.” Theresa remembered what Kip had told her, about the fear that Sully had suffered since the night of the shooting, a fear he’d suffered all alone.

  She studied his features, the taut line of his jaw, the deep shadows both in and below his eyes. She remembered the nightmares he’d suffered, his silence and withdrawal after that night. “Why didn’t you tell me all the things you were thinking, feeling, after the shooting?” she asked softly.

  For a long moment, the only sound in the car was the hum of the heater fan and the rhythmic swishswish of the windshield-wiper blades.

  “It was all so ugly,” he finally said. “I was angry, and filled with fear and suspicions.” He shot a quick glance to her. “I didn’t want to taint you with that”

  Theresa’s heart filled with love for this man who’d suffered alone, afraid to expose his fears to her. And again she wondered what they’d done wrong, what ingredient their marriage had lacked, that he didn’t feel he could come to her, share the bad along with the good.

  She stared back out the window, the cold, desolate wind outside having nothing on the one that blew through her heart. She’d lost Sully long ago. Was Eric lost to her, as well?

  “I still don’t understand any of this. Why would Donny want to set you up? Had you been fighting with him before the night of the shooting? Did something happen that might have made him so angry?” She looked once again at Sully.

  “I wish I had those answers, Theresa, but I don’t. I’ve thought about it and thought about it, but Donny and I were fine up until the moment he shot me. We never exchanged a cross word with one another. And I’ve scarcely seen him since the shooting, so I can’t imagine what prompted him to take Eric.”

  “But you’re sure he did.”

  Sully nodded. “We found a voice synthesizer in Donny’s closet, along with the ransom money.” Sully hit the steering wheel with the palm of his hand. “I wondered when we got the note and the ransom phone call if the house was being watched, because the calls came in when Donny wasn’t at our house. I should have known then something was screwy.”

  “How could you know that the man running the kidnap investigation was the kidnapper himself?”

  “I should have known. The moment we got the note, it should have been handed over to the FBI, but it wasn’t.” His voice was filled with torment “I should have pieced it all together.” He hesitated a moment, then added. “If I hadn’t been such a coward, I would have gone back to that alley sooner, realized that Donny had tried to kill me. Then none of this with Eric would be happening.”

  His words sent a torrent of shock through Theresa. “My God, Sully. You can’t blame yourself for this.” She reached over and touched his arm, felt the tautness of muscle, the tension that radiated from him. “Sully, Donny is crazy, the most insidious kind of crazy of all, because he managed to hide it from everyone. By taking even partial blame for t
his, you diminish his guilt. He’s the guilty one, Sully, not you.”

  He acknowledged her words with a curt nod, then sat up straighter in his seat, his gaze sweeping the snow-covered landscape on the left side of the road. “We’re getting close.”

  Theresa dropped her hand from his arm, adrenaline shooting through her. Eric. Eric. Her heart thundered his name as she prayed that they’d find him alive.

  She knew it was possible they were on a wildgoose chase, that they’d get out to the farmhouse and find nothing. It was possible that Donny was keeping Eric someplace else.

  “Theresa, get in the glove box and hand me my gun,” Sully instructed as he turned off the highway onto a long driveway.

  She opened the glove box, and as she wrapped her fingers around the butt of the gun, the danger of the situation became horrifyingly real.

  If Sully’s memories were true, then Donny had already attempted cold-blooded murder once. He’d proved himself to be an evil man with no conscience. He wouldn’t give himself up easily, and Theresa was suddenly afraid not only for her son, but for Sully, as well.

  Sully took the gun from her, then pointed up ahead, where a farmhouse had come into view. The two-story house looked forbidding, with its faded, peeling paint and broken windows. A thick copse of woods provided a dismal background, accentuating the feeling of isolation and abandonment.

  As Sully pulled the car up front, Donny’s distinctive yellow Corvette came into view, parked against the side of the house. “He won’t be going anywhere too soon in that car, with this weather,” Sully said, his voice tight with emotion. “You stay here in the car. I’m going to look around.”

  His voice left no room for argument He turned off the car engine, flipped the safety off his gun and got out of the car.

  “Sully?”

  He bent down and looked at her.

  “Be careful.”

  He nodded, for a moment his gaze caressing her face, as if he were memorizing her features. He straightened and closed the door.