“You mean they’re going to be allowed to socialize with other human beings,” Kate said sarcastically. “I thought we were going to be hiding behind high stone walls.”
“Now you’re being absurd.”
Kate fought the tears that threatened. She gripped her hands together to keep him from seeing how badly they were trembling. “I’m happy living here. I don’t want to move.”
“You can’t stay here,” Wyatt said flatly. “It’s not safe. Your Texas Ranger friend isn’t going to be any help to you. He’s proved his loyalty to my father.”
Kate wondered what Jack had done to prove his loyalty to the mob boss. It didn’t bear thinking about. “I can hire protection,” she said.
“It won’t be enough.”
“Who says?”
“You don’t even have a garage for your car. It would be easy to put a bomb in it.”
Kate felt gooseflesh rise on her arms. “Who would do such a thing?”
He didn’t answer her, just lifted a brow and let her imagine the worst. Which she easily did.
Kate was startled by a hard knock on the door. Her heart leapt with the hope that Jack had returned. His name was already on her lips, when the door swung open with a bang.
A giant with the face of a gargoyle stepped inside.
“Oh, God!” Kate cried. She turned to run toward the bedroom, where the boys were playing, but Shaw grabbed her around the waist and yanked her back tight against his chest. His other hand came up to cover her mouth but never closed over it.
“Don’t scream,” he warned.
Kate whimpered, but she didn’t scream. She wasn’t sure she could have, because all the air had been frightened out of her lungs. She remained silent because she didn’t want to draw Lucky and Chance into the living room to witness her death.
“If you’re going to kill me,” she said in a shaky voice, “I’d rather you didn’t do it in front of my sons.”
“Boss?” the big man said, his scarred brow furrowing.
“It’s all right, Bruce,” Shaw said. “I think Mrs. Pendleton thought my father sent you to take care of both of us.” He angled Kate’s chin so she could see his face and said, “I asked Bruce to join us.”
Kate sagged in Wyatt’s arms and put a hand to her mouth to hold back a sob of relief. Tears brimmed in her eyes and she blinked them back. “Why?” she gasped.
“What?”
“Why did he burst in here like that?”
“Bruce was waiting outside in the limo with my driver. I told him to give me fifteen minutes and join us.”
“It’s all right, ma’am,” Bruce said. “I’m here to protect you. Actually, I’m going to be keeping an eye on the Boss’s kids.” He glanced at Shaw, smiled crookedly and said, “I think the Boss is going to be keeping an eye on you himself.”
A polite giant. Who knew?
Kate would have laughed, except her throat was still choked with leftover terror.
“Can you stand if I let you go?” Shaw asked, easing her feet back onto the ground.
Kate’s legs were limp noodles. The instant Shaw set her down, she stumbled away from him and turned to face both men. “You had this planned from the beginning,” she said bitterly. “I never had any choice in the matter, did I?”
“No.”
“What if I refuse to go with you?”
“You can stay. But the boys are coming with me.”
Kate was horrified. “They won’t leave the house without me, not without a fight.”
“Whatever it takes, they’re coming with me.”
Kate realized what he was saying. “You’d use force on your own sons?”
“I’d rather not,” he admitted.
But he would. He’d obviously brought the big man in to help him manhandle the twins, if that became necessary. Kate felt panicked. She glanced toward the landline in the living room, but knew she wouldn’t have time to dial 911 before Shaw stopped her. Maybe she could call for help when she was in her bedroom supposedly packing.
“Don’t even think it,” Shaw said.
“What?”
“Don’t think about calling the police. Or anyone else. I promise you, you’ll regret it.”
It was a threat that left everything to her imagination. Which was working overtime.
“Call the twins back in here,” Shaw said. “We need to tell them what’s going on. Then Bruce will help them pack.”
“What about me?”
“Are you coming?”
Her mind was racing, trying to think of a way out of the trap Shaw had sprung. But she—and her sons—were well and truly caught. “What’s to keep me from calling the police later? I mean, if I’m going to be allowed to work, I’m not always going to be stuck behind high stone walls.”
He didn’t even dignify her question with an answer.
He would have an explanation ready that would satisfy the police. And he had a secret weapon. He was the twins’ father. He could prove it, if need be. He might seek joint custody or, if she became too troublesome, sole custody of the twins.
And he had the money to make it all happen.
Her family was wealthy, and she knew both her grandfathers would be happy to fight Shaw. But a nasty legal fight like that was bound to impact her sons’ lives. And not in a good way.
She met Wyatt’s implacable gaze and said, “Suppose I go with you willingly and give Lucky and Chance a reason for this visit that will keep them from hating your guts. When is this forced imprisonment going to end? When is it going to be safe for my sons to come back home?”
His answer was blunt and uncompromising. “From now on, their home will be with me.”
6
“I need cash, Mother. I’m tapped out.”
Ann Wade Pendleton pursed her lips as she stared at her wayward son. She’d received some shockingly bad news this morning and had abandoned the campaign trail for her ranch in Midland, Texas, seeking solitude to think about what she should do. Surprise, surprise, she’d discovered J.D. hiding out at the ranch, which boasted far more oil wells than cattle.
Luckily, she’d kept her Secret Service contingent out of the house, so knowledge of her “dead” son’s presence, and the public relations disaster that would have resulted, had been narrowly averted.
She could remember being glad, as her only son grew from a boy into a man, that he’d inherited his father’s good looks and athletic ability. J.D. was tall and blond and blue-eyed. He’d become a star football player. He’d also learned at the master’s knee how to charm a woman, how to lie to her and cheat on her and still smile at her without a hint of guilt.
She almost didn’t recognize the gaunt figure with shaggy blond hair and sunken blue eyes who sat slumped in the studded black leather chair across from her. The charm was long gone. What she saw in her son’s eyes was desperation. And despair.
She contemplated the road to J.D.’s downfall from her seat behind the ancient oak desk where her deceased husband had kept track of his dwindling fortune. Dwindling because Jonas David Pendleton, Jr. had gambled his oil money on every half-assed harebrained investment scheme that came along. Another trait he’d passed along to his son.
J.D. had married a woman with enough money to keep them living in luxury their entire lives and had frittered it away in a few years. It was her son’s enormous unpaid gambling debts that had gotten him into trouble with D’Amato, and given the mobster the leverage he needed to involve J.D. in the brokering of guns for heroin that had led to her son’s ruin.
Ann Wade settled farther back into the oversize chair made of polished cow horns and covered in black-and-white spotted cowhide and asked her son, “What happened to the quarter million I gave you last fall?”
“It’s expensive to stay invisible, Mother. Bribes. Payoffs. Blackmail. And the sons of bitches found me in Brazil anyway. I was lucky to escape with my life.”
Ann Wade’s insides wrenched when her son reached toward the festering scab on his face wher
e a bullet had gouged a path through his flesh. Fortunately, he dropped his hand before touching it.
“Actually, getting shot is the least of my worries,” J.D. said. “I think Dante D’Amato has something far worse than a bullet to the brain in mind if he ever runs me down. Probably a bullet in each knee and two in my balls—for a start.”
“Why don’t you give him back the heroin he told me you stole from him?” Ann Wade said.
“He’s already made it clear it’s too late for that. Besides, I don’t have it anymore.”
“What happened to it?”
“I stowed it in a cargo container on the deck of a tramp steamer. The container went overboard during a hurricane. What are the chances?” he said ruefully.
Ann Wade knew her son wasn’t as nonchalant as he was trying to appear. Besides the infected-looking scab across his left cheek, he had another bullet wound in his thigh that hadn’t yet healed. The hitmen D’Amato had sent to hunt him down had left her son wounded and shaken.
She wasn’t so sanguine herself. She was practically a shoo-in to be selected as her party’s next presidential candidate. Everything could fall apart in a heartbeat if J.D.’s criminal activities, not to mention the fact that he’d faked his death and deserted his post in wartime, became known. God forbid the public learned that she’d paid her son an extortionate amount of cash to disappear.
She could understand why some mothers ate their young.
“This can’t continue, J.D. You have to come to some accommodation with D’Amato.”
“You have twenty million dollars to spare?”
“No, I don’t!” she snapped. “It’s bad enough that I’ve had to keep the Texas attorney general off D’Amato’s back since that mobster found out you’re still alive. I was able to justify that by saying D’Amato is the federal government’s problem, not ours. I even managed to reassign Jack McKinley, the Texas Ranger hottest on D’Amato’s trail, as a bodyguard for my grandsons. But I don’t like being blackmailed by that conniving bastard.”
Ann Wade patted at her short, perfectly coifed blond hair and pressed her lips together to smooth her pink lipstick, both activities that helped her to calm down. It was never a good idea for a woman in politics to show too much emotion. But she was seriously annoyed with her son.
“I shudder to think what that scoundrel might expect from me once I’m president,” she said. “You need to disappear, J.D. Somewhere I can be sure D’Amato will never find you.”
So long as her son was alive and about in the world, D’Amato had a very large sword to dangle over her head. Once she was president, any accusations D’Amato made without J.D.’s body in hand could be explained away.
J.D.’s casket in Arlington Cemetery was empty because there had supposedly only been enough of his body left after the ammo dump explosion to identify his remains through DNA. J.D. had given the sample of his DNA, along with a great deal of cash, to the lab tech making the identification. So, no body, no proof her son had survived.
J.D. made a disgusted sound in his throat and shoved himself onto his feet, limping over to the wet bar. “So nice to know you care, Mother.”
Ann Wade watched as J.D. poured himself a Dewar’s and drank it down, then poured another double shot, drank it and carefully set down his glass.
He turned to her and said, “What did you have in mind for me to do? I tried disappearing. It didn’t work.”
“Then perhaps you should stop running and start fighting back.”
“How?”
“You’re the demolitions expert. Figure it out.” If D’Amato was dead, it would solve both their problems.
“D’Amato has a half-dozen bodyguards around him at all times. His home in Houston is impregnable. His cars are kept in underground garages. He has no family left except that bastard son of his, and Wyatt Shaw has security even tighter than his father’s.” He cracked his knuckles, then added, “Well, there may have been a loophole or two, but those have been closed since that hooker was found strangled in his bed.”
“And you know all this how?”
“I’m not as dumb as you think, Mother. You’re not the first one to consider blasting the problem out of existence.” He poured himself another drink and gulped half of it down.
Ann Wade almost smiled. There were some things J.D. had learned from her. Shrewdness. Guile. And a willingness to do the hard thing.
She loved her son, but right now, J.D. was a loose end that could cost her the presidency. And his situation was unfraying before her eyes.
She debated whether to tell him the shocking news she’d heard this morning from Harry Dickenson’s assistant, who was going through his deceased boss’s open files to make final reports to Harry’s clients. She should’ve known that her bitch of a daughter-in-law would find a way to stab her in the back. Her grandsons, who’d been such assets in the political arena, had become definite liabilities.
Her eyes narrowed. “I have some unpleasant news I need to share with you.”
J.D. groaned. “Save it.”
“This is important. It relates to our other problem.” She smiled as she realized her own play on words, “In fact, it’s directly related to our other problem.”
He swallowed the rest of the Dewar’s in his glass and said, “Get to the point, Mother.”
Upset at his rude interruption, Ann Wade said bluntly, “Lucky and Chance aren’t your sons.”
“The hell you say!” J.D. limped his way over to her from the bar, his unshaven face blotchy with the blood that had rushed there. “That isn’t funny, Mother.”
“No, it isn’t,” she agreed, curling her hands around the smooth horn arms of the chair. “And you haven’t even heard the best part.” She sat forward and looked up at him. “Wyatt Shaw is their father.”
The glass dropped from J.D.’s hand and rolled across the Turkish carpet under the desk, before clattering along the pegged oak floor all the way to the wall.
“You’re shitting me,” J.D. said.
“I promise you, it’s the truth. I found out the twins weren’t your sons when Lucky needed a blood transfusion earlier this year. Kate was in a coma, so the hospital sought permission from me to treat him. Which is how I found out his blood type is A positive, an impossibility if the twins were yours.”
“How did you find out Shaw is their father?”
“I hired a very good private investigator, Harry Dickenson. Harry’s assistant called me this morning to tell me he found copies of DNA tests that prove Shaw fathered the twins. The assistant was calling because Harry was killed after he met with Shaw.”
“Shaw had him killed?”
“Who knows? He was hit by a garbage truck that ran a red light outside Shaw’s office in downtown Houston.”
“Has Shaw contacted Kate?”
“I don’t know that he has, but we have to presume that he will.”
“Oh, shit.”
“What has me concerned is the possibility that Dante D’Amato has—or will—discover the truth.”
“Holy shit.”
“Precisely my feeling,” Ann Wade said.
“Goddamn it all to hell,” J.D. said angrily, stomping back to the bar, where he found another glass and poured himself another double shot of Dewar’s.
“I’m not any happier about this than you are,” Ann Wade said. “Do you realize what this means?”
“My wife was fucking another man the same time she was fucking me.”
“I was thinking more about the additional ammunition this will give D’Amato when he comes asking for more favors.”
“This is all that bitch’s fault,” J.D. muttered.
Ann Wade didn’t bother to point out that J.D. had been playing the same game as his wife. Except, no unexpected children had shown up on his doorstep. Yet.
“What happens now?” J.D. asked, shoving a hand through his stringy blond hair.
“I think the solution to both our problems is obvious.”
“Kill D’A
mato. Kill Shaw. Kill both the bastards dead.”
“Can you do it?” she asked. “Or arrange to have it done?”
“Sure. If I had enough cash.”
“How much?”
“Fifty thousand,” J.D. said. “But the minute you make a withdrawal like that, D’Amato’s going to hear about it and start looking over his shoulder for a hired assassin.”
“I’ve got that much in the safe here at the ranch.”
“Then I can manage the rest. I plan to—”
“I don’t give a good goddamn how you make this all go away, J.D.,” she interrupted brusquely. “Just get it done.”
Because if he didn’t, she would take care of the problem herself. The entire problem.
7
“This plane is bad!” Lucky said, grinning broadly as he stepped inside Wyatt’s luxurious Gulfstream 550 business jet.
By which Wyatt knew his son meant the plane was “neat” or “cool” or one of the myriad other phrases his generation had used to sound “hip.”
“It’s a jet, stupid,” Chance said as he clambered onto the camel-colored leather couch that took up part of one wall toward the rear of the plane. He leaned over to peer through a porthole window and said, “How far can we fly before we have to stop, Mr. Shaw?”
“She’ll go seven thousand seven hundred and fifty nautical miles without a fill-up,” Wyatt replied with a smile. He was going to have to think of something else to have his sons call him besides “Mr. Shaw.” And he would rather his sons didn’t call each other stupid. But there would be plenty of time to correct them, after they learned he was their father.
And that he loved them. Had loved them from the moment he’d seen their images in a photograph and learned of their existence. And that he would always love them. For themselves, of course, and because they had brought him back together with their mother.
Wyatt had felt poleaxed when he’d realized that the mother of his children was the woman with whom he’d spent a single, life-altering night nine years before. That woman had shared herself without holding back, then stolen away like a thief in the dark, taking his heart with her.
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