by Kaylea Cross
“Well, snap them over here,” he insisted, holding out his hand.
“Don’t be a bore.”
“Don’t make me take them from you.”
Giving him a dark look, Helen removed the keys from her pocket and threw them at him. “This doesn’t mean I’m going anywhere. I already brought my bag upstairs.”
“Why are you here, Helen?” Tyler asked as he had last time.
“I made one mistake turning my back on my child. I’m not about to make another.”
They glared at each other long enough to make Keelin uneasy. She tried to smooth things over. “Would anyone like something to drink? Tea?”
“No!” came the unanimous answer.
“What I would like,” Tyler said, seating himself in a wing-back chair, “is to know what Bryant came up with about my daughter before leaving town.”
Weaver shrugged. “Not much. Her friend Tiffany said Cheryl had been upset about something for the past few days. Your daughter wouldn’t say what…only that it involved you.”
Keelin felt Tyler’s ache as if it were her own. And her curiosity on the subject was renewed.
“What did you do to our daughter to upset her enough to make her run?” Helen demanded.
“Nothing!” Tyler insisted, yet Keelin heard the uncertainty in his denial.
Keelin perched on the other vacant chair and turned to the private investigator. “What about a reference to someone Cheryl knows who happens to live in the city?”
“Jeremy didn’t pass on any such information.”
“Then why are you here?” Tyler demanded.
“To offer my services to take up where he left off.” Weaver pulled out a notebook and pen. “Have you heard from your daughter since you last spoke to Jeremy?”
“As a matter of fact, yes.”
Tyler told the private investigator about the ransom notes and about the aborted telephone call. Without explaining how they figured it out, he also told Weaver about the Wicker Park location.
“That narrows it down. What about the Chicago Police Department? Are they on it?”
“Two detectives asking questions. Patrols on the look-out. We need someone going door-to-door, Weaver. I was hoping Bryant could round up a team.”
“I don’t have his resources. But I could get on the case myself.” Weaver made as if to check his wrist, then stopped himself. “I have a couple of hours to work before it gets too late.”
Throughout the conversation, Helen had remained quiet, Keelin noted. For all her protestations to the contrary, she seemed oddly removed from the emotional involvement a mother should have at knowing her child was in trouble. She covertly continued watching Helen as Tyler gave Weaver a photograph of Cheryl. The man took down more specifics about the exact streets he should canvass and left.
Tyler warmed up one of those dinners the housekeeper kept in the freezer for him and Cheryl. Helen made no move to leave, but since Keelin didn’t have much of an appetite, the meal for two stretched far enough. The table was a hostile environment, with Tyler and his ex-wife doing a good deal of glowering at each other if not actually trading barbs. Directly afterward, Helen volunteered to retreat to the bedroom she’d chosen.
Leaving Keelin and Tyler alone.
“Would you like some fresh air?” he asked.
Still able to sense the left-over tension in the room, Keelin said, “I would love that.”
The night was heavenly. In a clear starlight sky, a nearly full moon shone on them as they picked their way down the wood stairs to the narrow strand at the base of the bluff. Two Adirondack chairs awaited them.
Tyler pulled the wooden chairs closer together, so when they sat, they were side-by-side if not actually touching. Keelin lay her head back and stared up at the sky. Listening to the water lap almost at her feet, her face caressed by a sharp lake breeze, she could almost imagine she was home in Éire, sitting on the bank of Lough Danaan.
“Ah, tis a wondrous night,” she murmured with a sigh.
“And I feel wondrously guilty that I’m not doing something to find Cheryl.”
“Don’t.” Keelin moved her hand from her armrest to touch his. “You’ve done all that you could.”
“I should be knocking at doors in Wicker Park myself.”
“You’re not a professional,” Keelin said. “Jack Weaver is. Perhaps he will earn his fee.”
“I hope so. Even if I get the whole million together, that’s no guarantee…”
That he would ever see Cheryl again, Keelin silently finished for him.
“You must keep your thoughts more positive,” she murmured.
An elusive image reached for her, hovering just beyond her conscious mind. But every time she tried to concentrate on it, her head ached.
“If only we could figure out why this is happening, what the villains have against me,” Tyler said, turning her attention back to what she could say for certain.
Keelin ticked off the facts as they had them. “A man and a woman are working together. They have an intimate relationship. And they want you to know what it’s like not to be in control.”
“And the man used to wear a Rolex watch until today,” Tyler added.
“Does Nate Feldman wear a Rolex?”
“Knowing Feldman, he probably does.”
“And he and Vivian Claiborne are now involved…”
“Vivian sure as hell was thrilled about Feldman getting the Michigan Avenue contract,” Tyler muttered. A moment’s thought and he continued. “Then there’s George Smialek and his wife Ida. They have the strongest reason to want revenge and they live in Wicker Park.”
“Mr. Smialek would never be able to afford a Rolex watch, though,” Keelin reminded him. Hesitating only a second, she added, “But your partner could.”
“I haven’t noticed what brand watch Brock is wearing these days, but I can’t believe he’d do anything to hurt Cheryl. He’s always been so fond of her.”
“And she, no doubt, always trusted him.”
Tyler swore under his breath. “No! He’s so desperate to break up our partnership that he’s willing to give me part of the ransom money.”
“That doesn’t eliminate him.” How odd that a man so given to doubt refused to suspect his partner.
“A kidnapper would supply part of the ransom to himself?”
“Wouldn’t he have some idea of how much cash you could raise in a short time?”
Tyler swore again, yet still loyally argued in his partner’s defense. “I know what you’re getting at. Don’t you think I’ve considered Brock myself? True, he could be playing along because he’ll get what he wants – a clean split and a new chance to prove himself. Maybe that’s worth a quarter of a million to him. But the kidnappers are a couple, remember. Brock’s not currently married. And none of the myriad women he’s dated has any reason to resent me.”
“Not even Pamela?”
Tyler’s hand tensed under hers. “What are you talking about…” His words trailed off. “I have seen them in a few intense huddles lately.”
“And I have seen them kissing.”
“When?”
“This afternoon, when Vivian came by,” Keelin said. “I was staring out at the park when I spotted Pamela. Brock was waiting for her. If he is the one, he would throw suspicion from himself by offering to help you raise the ransom money.”
Silence. Keelin sensed Tyler was taking her seriously.
“Brock was in the park today shortly before you were attacked?” he suddenly asked.
A thrill shot through Keelin. She hadn’t made the connection herself. Could Tyler’s partner have tried to warn her off?
“He couldn’t guess that I would take a walk, though.”
“Maybe it was a fluke. He saw his opportunity and took it. He could have parked nearby, could have had a windbreaker and cap inside the car. How long would it take to pull them on?”
“The man was wearing street shoes,” Keelin admitted. It was possible.
<
br /> “I know it’s reaching,” Tyler admitted. “Besides, Pamela’s loyal to me.”
“But maybe she’s committed to your partner personally.”
Tyler exploded. “Why is it I can’t ever trust a woman?”
Remembering the suspicion he’d met her with, Keelin was saddened that one woman had so clouded his view of life. “You can trust me.”
Tyler turned his hand so that it was cupping hers. “You’re the exception to the rule,” he said, giving her fingers a squeeze.
Keelin’s heart skipped a beat. “You didn’t think so at first. Do you look at every woman you meet with the same misgiving?”
“Maybe I do.”
“A terrible way to go on through life, Tyler. More than a decade has passed. Do you not think you could forget whatever happened between you and Helen?”
“Not as long as I live.”
He fell silent again, and Keelin wasn’t certain he would say more on the subject. Her heart hurt for him. A terrible thing, not being able to trust.
“I suppose you’d need to know more to understand,” he said. “And I suppose it’s time I told someone. Someone I’ve come to trust,” he added.
Knowing how much that concession cost him, Keelin linked her fingers through his in a gesture of solidarity. “Sometimes, a dark secret can be more of a burden than a person can bear.” She knew of what she spoke.
“Helen had an affair,” he said bluntly. “I imagine you’ve guessed that.”
“You are a bit transparent there.”
“When I met her, she was a moderately successful model. I was in the park on a day she was shooting an ad for a local paper. Like an idiot, I fell instantly in love with the image she was projecting rather than the real woman. And for reasons of her own, Helen decided she wanted marriage to me, despite her ambitions.”
An easier way to become rich if not famous? Keelin wondered, though she did not put words to the hurtful thought.
Instead, she leaned toward Tyler across the chair and rested her forehead on his shoulder. His arm slid around her back, his touch thrilling her, making her want to get even closer.
“At first she seemed happy,” he went on. “I encouraged her to keep working if that’s what she wanted. Maybe everything came crashing down because she became pregnant too quickly, effectively ending her modeling career.”
Keelin splayed a hand across his chest, felt his heart thrum against her palm. “But after the baby was born, she could have gone back to work.”
“At first she didn’t want to be pregnant. She was downright hysterical when she found out. We argued…and she appeared to accept the situation. After Cheryl was born, she even seemed to be a good mother. For a while.”
“Until the affair started?”
“Going off with another man would be bad enough,” Tyler said grimly, “but she brought Cheryl with her along on her trysts. Or brought her trysts into our home. And one day, she was too involved with her own pleasure to realize that her two year old child had wandered off. That’s how I learned about the affair. I came home to a police car at the curb.”
“You must have been frantic.” Even more so than he was now, she imagined. “What about Cheryl?”
“I’m the one who found her, blocks from home. She could have been killed. It was a miracle that she wasn’t even hurt. But after Helen tearfully confessed the sordid details…I wanted to kill both her and her lover. I remember wrapping my hands around Helen’s throat…”
Keelin swallowed. He must have exerted some superhuman control to resist harming Helen. She herself had felt the tightly leashed ferocity in him more than once. Then, again, his daughter was lost to him again, as she had been so long ago.
“I couldn’t stay married to Helen any longer,” Tyler was saying.
“So her affair and the neglect of your daughter are the reasons you were able to secure custody.”
Tyler wrapped an arm around Keelin’s back and pulled her out of her seat as if he needed closeness for courage to finish the story. She gladly settled on his lap, wrapped her arms around his neck and touched her forehead to his temple.
“Helen swore she would fight me,” he went on, his tone low. “Considering the circumstances, I didn’t think she could win. But she at least would have had visiting privileges as she so clearly reminded me. Helen demanded an absurd settlement, and a yearly stipend that wouldn’t end even if she married. If I didn’t agree, she said one day Cheryl might just disappear…and I would never see my daughter again. I was furious that she would use her own child as a pawn, but I agreed to give her what she wanted. She would get the money…but only if she agreed to be dead to her daughter.”
Keelin sensed how painful the admission was for Tyler. And yet his confession gladdened her. He had to feel something special for her if he was willing to share the sordid details that he’d kept locked up inside him all these years. And she was glad, for now she understood. He was no monster.
“I never wanted Cheryl to find out what kind of a woman her mother was,” he whispered. “I feared it would destroy her. Helen took all of thirty seconds to agree to the deal. I made a pact with the devil and have had to live with the guilt for twelve years.”
Suddenly the import of what he’d just admitted hit her. “So Helen threatened to kidnap her own daughter?” Keelin asked, her mind already whirling.
“I guess you’d call it that.”
“And now someone has. Why not your ex-wife?”
“Someone Cheryl trusted,” Tyler reminded her.
Keelin pulled back slightly, so she could look into the pale eyes that were for once open and vulnerable.
Why did he do it?
Why?
Now that I know, everything is ruined.
His daughter’s remembered thoughts spinning in her own head, she asked, “Are you certain that Cheryl didn’t somehow find out about her mother?”
He sighed. “I can’t be certain of anything. Something was wrong between us for a few days before she ran. We even argued the night before. Cheryl made accusations…but she wasn’t clear about what I’d done. I thought maybe someone had put an idea in her head that Harry Smialek’s death was my fault or something. But underneath…”
He didn’t have to say that he thought Cheryl might have suspected her mother was alive. But how to know for certain?
“At one time you knew Helen better than anyone in the world. Could she actually hurt her own child?”
Tyler tightened an arm around her and slid long fingers around the back of her neck. “I don’t know. I don’t seem to be certain about much of anything any more.”
Their mouths met in a kiss filled with repressed passion and infinite tenderness. Keelin was moved. Filled with longing, she at the same time wanted no more than this gentle melding. This proof that they were closer than she ever suspected was possible. Tyler broke the kiss and sighed her name.
“Ah, Keelin.”
She pulled his head to her breast. And though his physical warmth stirred her, the emotional bond they were forming was far more potent. He had opened up to her with his deepest, darkest secret as she had to him earlier. Their mutual trust had to mean something.
The words of her grandmother’s legacy drifted into her mind.
Dreams are not always tangible things, but more often are born in the heart. Act selflessly in another’s behalf, and my legacy shall be yours.
Love was that legacy, Keelin knew – the unexpected love she felt for Tyler Leighton – though she worried that she had not truly acted selflessly as Moira had advised. She had nearly as much at stake here as did Tyler.
He had his daughter.
She had her very soul.
How long could a love born in the desperation of the human heart last? she wondered. If not for Cheryl running away, they would never have met. If not for Tyler’s grief over his missing daughter, he would not be so open.
What about when the child of his heart was returned to him? Would he have room for her
, as well, Keelin wondered?
Not that it mattered, for as she had told herself before, they were worlds apart.
And yet, sitting in the dark, the lake breezes curling the thin material of her dress up along her legs, wrapped in arms that she never wanted to leave, Keelin couldn’t quite see that anything mattered but love.
SOME TIME LATER—TYLER COULDN’T SAY how long for certain—he realized that he had dozed off cocooned around Keelin, dazed by her warmth. With awakening came the remembrance that he no longer had any secrets. Uncomfortable at having opened up so completely to the woman in his arms, he felt the need for some space.
And yet, he said, “Keelin, we’d better get inside,” as softly as if they’d just made love.
The mental comparison betrayed him and he grew increasing uncomfortable as she stretched and wiggled her bottom against him as she slid to her feet. Splashed by moonlight, she seemed dreamy-eyed…and yet her smile was a bit distant, not quite reaching her eyes.
He followed her up the stairs to the top of the bluff. They crossed the lawn side-by-side, and he was careful not to touch her. She seemed equally tentative. An awkwardness hung between them even as they entered the house in mutual silence. As she glided through the dining room, he busied himself locking up the French doors.
“I’d better check the front,” he said, brushing by Keelin in the foyer.
He’d snapped the dead bolt in place when he happened to look down. The breath caught in his throat. A plain white envelope sans postage but bearing his name was caught beneath the door. Like a madman, he ripped it free and tore it open.
“Tyler?”
As he unfolded the sheet of pasted letters, he glanced up and their gazes locked. He swore he could feel strong emotions pour from her to him, as if they were psychically united. He felt her support…and something far deeper.
Discomfited, he focused on the third ransom note.
The fireworks will go off at Navy Pier at 10:15 Friday night. Wait at the north end of the Crystal Gardens with the goods in a backpack for a trade. Come alone if you don’t want anyone to get hurt.
“What does it say?” she asked anxiously.
“Forty-eight hours.”
