“I’ll be in early tomorrow morning. Could I have it then?”
“I’ll bring it first thing,” Dylan told him.
During the drive back to Dolphin Bay, Dylan had assigned Heather an additional task. “You can make another list that will help the investigation.”
“What kind of list?”
“Think back over the past few years and name every person you’ve had an argument or disagreement with, no matter how trivial it seemed.”
“But—”
“I know that you, as a teacher, take pride in your conflict resolution skills, but there has to be somebody in the world you’ve ticked off royally.”
“Should I put your name at the top of the list?” Her question held no sarcasm, only sadness.
“I think it’s safe to rule me out as a suspect,” he said lightly. “But don’t omit anyone else—students, faculty members, even the guy who bags your groceries.”
She shook her head. The delicate floral fragrance of her shampoo drifted through the vehicle and triggered bittersweet memories.
“Why,” she asked, “would someone go to all this trouble over a perceived insult or minor dispute?”
“Some guy shot a motorist in Miami last week, just because she’d cut him off in traffic. There are lots of angry, maladjusted people out there, time bombs waiting to explode. It only takes a tiny spark to light their fuses.”
“That’s not a very comforting picture.” She sighed, as if in resignation. “I’ll make your list, as soon as I’ve finished the names and addresses for Detective Cramer.”
He had left Heather at his mother’s kitchen table, leafing through phone directories for addresses. He had offered to take Chip for the afternoon, but she had refused, insisting Chip needed his nap.
Frustrated at being denied time with his son, Dylan had returned home and paced his living room instead.
Abruptly he stopped in the center of the room. Once the kidnapper was caught and Heather returned home, would she allow him to see his son? Anger and resentment boiled inside him. She had already stolen almost two years of Chip’s childhood. Dylan intended to guarantee that she couldn’t deprive him further of his right to share and influence his son’s life.
What he needed was a lawyer.
Dolphin Bay boasted three excellent law firms, but reluctant to share his private dilemma with strangers, he punched the number of Sinclair and Moore Construction into his phone.
The receptionist answered, and he asked for Rand Sinclair.
“Mr. Sinclair is out of the office for the rest of the day.”
“This is Officer Dylan Wade, Dolphin Bay police.” His conscience pricked only slightly at the pretense of police business. “Where can I find him?” “Mr. Sinclair is on the construction site of the new shopping mall, on the main highway just north of the county line.”
“Thanks.”
He grabbed his keys from the tray beside the front door and sprinted for his Jeep.
As he drove north along the traffic-choked highway, Dylan began to relax. If anyone could help him, Rand Sinclair could. They’d been as close as brothers since childhood, and only last year, Dylan had arrested the man who’d threatened Jasmine Ross, now Rand’s wife. Dylan had been there for Rand during those tough times, and he was positive Rand would return the favor.
Thirty minutes later, Dylan turned off the highway onto a sandy road cut through a stand of cypress trees to a multiacre clearing a hundred yards from the asphalt Bulldozers and other heavy equipment ripped undergrowth from the ground and shoved uprooted trees and other debris into piles. Noise, diesel fumes and dust filled the air.
Before clearing had begun, the site had been a quiet enclave of dense forest amid creeping urbanization. Dylan couldn’t avoid a comparison with his own life. Before Heather showed up again, his existence had been relatively calm. Not perfect or particularly happy, but at least undisturbed. In a matter of days, she had changed his life as radically as Rand’s heavy equipment had altered the construction site. Now Dylan was determined to create some alterations of his own.
Jostling over the makeshift road, he headed toward the other side of the clearing, where a huge trailer beneath an ancient live oak bore the Sinclair and Moore Construction logo. He parked beside Rand’s car at the on-site office and strode to the front door.
“Come in,” Rand yelled in answer to his knock.
A blast of air-conditioned air greeted him as he stepped into the mobile office. Rand Sinclair stood behind a draftsman’s table covered with blueprints. Dressed in casual slacks and a chambray shirt with sleeves rolled to his elbows, his tall, rugged friend looked more like a construction foreman than head of his own multimillion-dollar company. His face split into a welcoming grin when he saw Dylan.
“What brings you all the way out here? Did I lose the bet on the All-Star game?”
Dylan stopped short Heather had him so distracted, not only had he missed the game, he hadn’t caught the final score. “Who won?”
Rand’s smile vanished. He laid down his pencil and motioned Dylan into a chair beside the desk. “I’m the one who’s supposed to be absentminded these days, but you’re in worse shape than I am. What’s going on?”
Rand sank into his desk chair, laced his fingers behind his head and scrutinized Dylan with a concentration that made him antsy. Face-to-face with his oldest and best buddy, he was suddenly reluctant to talk about his problems.
“You first. How’s Jasmine?”
“Terrific, as always. Only four weeks before the baby arrives.” Rand’s expression darkened. “But she’s worried about her mother.”
“Is Lily ill?”
Rand shook his head. “Remember what I told you six weeks ago, about Lily and Talbot discovering they had another child?”
“Uh-huh.” Lily’s kid had been born nine months after Charles Wilcox imprisoned Lily in the nursing home. Kid wasn’t exactly the right word. The unknown male or female would be twenty-something now.
“The search reached a dead end, and it’s breaking Lily’s heart.”
“Charles won’t tell them where he sent the child?”
“He claims he doesn’t know anything about it. He does, but he refuses to incriminate himself by telling us.”
“He’s already locked up for the rest of his life. What’s he got to lose?”
“Charles, the mean bastard,” Rand said, “is taking great pleasure in Talbot and Lily’s misery. He blames them for his crimes.”
“Charles is a classic psychopath.” Dylan recalled the case that had rocked the town less than a year ago. “Nothing’s ever his fault.”
“Everybody knows Charles was in the wrong,” Rand said with a scowl. “I don’t understand how he can maintain he’s not to blame.”
“Take it from one who’s arrested plenty of psychopaths, you don’t understand because you don’t think like they do. From Charles’ point of view, everything is Talbot and Lily’s fault.”
“How can he believe that?” Rand asked.
“According to Charles, if Lily hadn’t existed, he wouldn’t have been forced to remove her as his sister’s rival. If Talbot and Jasmine had conveniently died, Charles wouldn’t have attempted to murder them to gain control of your and Talbot’s company.”
“Only over my dead body,” Rand snapped.
“Charles would have been happy to accommodate. In fact, I’m surprised he didn’t try.” Still unready to talk about himself, Dylan launched a new tack. “How’s business?”
Rand waved toward the construction site. “Couldn’t be better, in spite of Talbot’s spending less time in the office. T.J. and Art are doing a good job of filling their father’s shoes.”
“And Blain?”
“Living in France with his mother. Which is just as well. He’s the baby of the family, and he’s acting like one. He still isn’t ready to forgive Talbot for divorcing Irene.” Rand squinted at Dylan with an inquisitive stare. “You didn’t drive all this way just to ask about Jas
mine and the Moores. What’s up?”
Attempting nonchalance, Dylan propped his right ankle on his left knee and fiddled with the laces of his running shoe. “Looks like I beat you to fatherhood, old buddy.”
“What?” Rand bolted upright and slammed his feet to the floor. Under other circumstances, the shock on his face would have been comical.
Dylan shrugged. “Heather has an eighteen-monthold boy.”
“He’s yours?”
“Heather says so.”
“Then it’s true. Heather wouldn’t lie.” Next to Dylan, Rand had always been Heather’s biggest fan.
“I never figured she’d dump me, either, but she did, as soon as she discovered she was pregnant.”
“Did she explain why she left?”
Dylan grimaced. “She was afraid I would’ve insisted on marrying her.”
“You would have.”
“You’re right. And she undoubtedly didn’t want to marry me, so she ended it.”
Rand opened his mouth as if to say something, then clamped it shut. After a moment, he spoke. “I take it you’re not here to pass out cigars.”
“I need legal advice.”
Rand held up his hands in protest. “I don’t practice, remember? I went straight from law school into Talbot’s business.”
Dylan pushed to his feet, walked to the window and gazed out across the dusty clearing. “You graduated summa cum laude. You must remember something about custody cases from your law studies.”
Rand jumped to his feet. “You’re not planning to take the child away from his mother?”
“He’s my son, too!” Dylan forced himself to relax. Yelling at his best friend would get him nowhere. “All I want is visitation rights.”
“Have you asked Heather?”
Dylan shoved his hands in his back pockets. “What’s the use? She’s made it plenty damn clear she doesn’t want me around her or Chip.”
“His name’s Chip?”
“Dylan Wade Taylor. Chip’s his nickname.”
“As in ‘chip off the old block’?” With a contemplative frown, Rand sank into his chair. “I think you’re selling Heather short.”
“Give me a break. I know ‘drop dead’ when I hear it.”
“How come she gave the child your name if she hates you so much?”
Dylan flung his hands up in frustration. “Look, I just want to make sure I can spend time with Chip on a regular basis. In my job, I deal with too many kids whose lives are screwed up by absentee fathers. I don’t want that happening to my son.”
“You want my advice?”
“That’s why I’m here.”
“Talk to Heather.”
Dylan regarded his friend with disbelief. “You’re out of your mind. She’ll refuse.”
“You’re angry now—and with good cause,” Rand said with irritating reasonableness. “I would be, too, in your situation. But anger is clouding your thinking.”
Dylan scowled. “You bet I’m angry, but not so angry I can’t feel the boot on my butt when I’m being kicked out the door.”
“Give it time. After you’ve cooled off, discuss visitation rights with Heather. If she refuses to cooperate, which I doubt, then I’ll recommend an attorney.”
“You might as well give me the name now and save me another trip.”
“You’ll hurt your case if you don’t try working things out with Heather first.” Rand tugged his wallet out of his back pocket and drew out a five-dollar bill. “By the way, you won that bet on the All-Star game.”
“Keep it, as payment for your advice.” Dylan crossed the room and paused in the doorway. “It’s ten times what it was worth.”
He slammed the door on his way out, but not before catching the look of sympathy on Rand’s face.
“WAIT HERE WHILE I CHECK inside.” Dylan took the house key from Heather. Leaving her on the porch, he made a hurried sweep of her empty house and returned. “All clear. You can come in now.”
He stepped aside to allow her to pass, and gripped the door frame to keep from reaching for her. His longing to hold her burned like a thirst nothing could quench. A good night’s sleep, the result of his exhaustion, had sharpened his physical responses. Every nerve ending longed for reciprocal contact with her, whose body he knew by heart, like the well-read pages of a much-loved book.
Anger didn’t help. His resentment at her abandonment and deception and his disgust with himself over yesterday’s quarrel with Rand only fueled his tension. He should have put his foot down when she insisted on accompanying him this morning and saved himself this agony.
When he had arrived at his parents’ to pick up Heather’s reconstructed address list for Cramer, she had been adamant about going home to gather more clothes and toys for Chip. Since he had forced her to abandon her car, he had little choice but to yield to her demand.
He hoped Cramer would find her list of names and addresses helpful. The sooner the kidnapper was caught, the sooner Dylan’s misery would end. The numb emptiness of life without Heather had been easier to bear than the torture of self-imposed restraint in her presence.
Rousing himself from his thoughts, he found her watching him, her green eyes guarded. He hastily closed and locked the door from the inside. “Will this take long?”
“I’m going to make coffee. Your mother had only decaf this morning, and I need the caffeine to stave off a headache.”
He suppressed a groan of desire. Coffee wasn’t what he wanted. “Forget the coffee. We promised Cramer your list early today.”
“It won’t take long. While it brews, we can discuss the list you asked me to make.”
He didn’t want to discuss anything. He wanted to scoop her in his arms, carry her down the hall to her poster bed, as he’d done only once before but hundreds of times in his dreams, and make love to her until they were both too weak to move.
“The sooner you catch this guy,” she said, “the sooner Chip and I will be out of your hair.”
Had he lost his mind? He didn’t want them out of his hair. He wanted to spend all his days with Heather and his son. Except for one small but insurmountable problem. If he disappeared instantly in a puff of smoke, it wouldn’t be too soon for Heather.
He trailed behind her into the kitchen and sat at the table. “Who are your suspects?”
“It isn’t a long list.” She removed a paper from her pocket, handed it to him and, with characteristic efficiency, started coffee brewing.
He unfolded the legal-size sheet, and his eyes bulged. “Fourteen!”
“I did what you asked.” She leaned against the counter, arms folded, her bottom lip caught between her teeth.
He had nibbled those lips many times, and the memory of the taste of her blossomed in his mouth. He swallowed hard and concentrated on the list.
“How did you manage to tick off more than a dozen people? I remember a lot of things about you, but terminally obnoxious isn’t one of them.”
“Thank you. I think.”
She slipped onto the chair beside him and pointed to the list. Her breast brushed his arm, sending pleasure signals straight to his groin, making him glad the table hid his taut lower body from view. He wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of knowing he wanted her, that her slightest touch rendered him hard with need.
“These top three are the only people I’ve had serious disagreements with.”
“We’ve pretty much eliminated John Rowland.” He drew a line through the first name on the list. “Who’s Robert Tipton?”
She sighed and leaned back in her chair, breaking the contact that had battered his senses. “He’s the father of one of my students.”
“You argued with him?”
She nodded. “He was really hot. Three weeks ago, I thought he was going to jump across my desk and throttle me.”
“Why didn’t you mention him before?”
“Because I’d forgotten all about him until last night His daughter Kayla was in my honors history class this year.
”
“Did you fail her?”
“Might as well have, from the way her dad reacted. She earned a B.”
Dylan squeezed his eyes shut and tried to concentrate. “Her dad reamed you out because his daughter made a B in your class? A bit obsessive, isn’t he?”
“She was three points below an A. He said I should have given her the extra points. The B in history ruined her eligibility for valedictorian of her class.”
“Three points doesn’t seem like a big deal. Why did you refuse?”
“Because Kayla could have achieved that A herself if she’d bothered to turn in homework assignments. The kids on the list for valedictorian earned their places. Giving Kayla points she didn’t deserve wouldn’t have been fair to the others.”
Heather had always carried fairness to a fault, which made her keeping Chip’s existence from him so hard to understand. “So her father threatened you?”
“He swore if I didn’t raise her grade, he’d have me fired.”
“An empty threat?”
“Maybe, but Robert Tipton is a wealthy and influential man with several friends on the school board.”
“What happened then?”
“Nothing. I told him if the board wanted to fire me for doing my job, I didn’t really want to work for them, anyway.”
“And that was that?”
She nodded. “I didn’t see him again. He spoke with my principal, but she backed my decision, and that was the last I heard of the incident.”
“I think we’d better pay a call on Tipton. He could be the type who’s lashing back at you and Chip because he believes you hurt his kid.” Dylan circled Tipton’s name. “Who’s Andrew Hayward?”
“Lea’s husband. Lea’s a good friend who teaches in my department.”
“What’s Hayward’s beef?”
A bright flush flooded her face. “He claims I’m interfering in their marriage.”
“Are you?”
“Yes.” She rose and filled two mugs with coffee.
“How?”
She turned and met his gaze with unblinking eyes. “I encouraged Lea to divorce him.”
He wasn’t surprised. Heather had walked out on him easily enough. Little wonder she had urged her friend to do the same.
First-Class Father Page 10
