"Isn't that a pretty extreme way to reassume control of Gus's trust money?" he asked, hazarding a guess at their motives.
"It would be," McHenry said, "if that's what we wanted. Gus's trust is only a small part of the prize. Her voting stock, combined with mine and Lily's, will give us the majority share. "
And kick Lake totally out of the picture, Jack thought. Apparently Lily's twin wasn't in on this. "And my death is going to help you accomplish that?" he asked. It was more than curiosity on Jack's part. He needed to keep them talking.
"Precisely." Lily's tone was soft, scathing.
McHenry gave her a quelling look, and she quieted, but for a moment Jack had thought she was going to turn the gun on him. Lily Featherstone had been surrounded by powerful men all her life, Jack realized, and quite possibly she had let them control her. Now she was grabbing some power for herself. Jack guessed before she was through, she would have total control. She would be running everything, even McHenry.
"You're going to shoot me?" Jack pressed, again to Lily. He was hoping to provoke an argument, but McHenry seemed more than willing to clear up his confusion.
"It won't be Lily who pulls the trigger as far as the police are concerned, " the older man explained. "It will be your wife. Gus has been trying to kill you off since the day you coerced her into marrying you. Today she's going to succeed with a gun she took from Lily's drawer. "
Jack knew it wouldn't be difficult to establish that Gus had shot and killed him, especially after the car accident. He hadn't reported that it was a car with her plates, but Lily could easily come forward during the investigation with information that would implicate Gus.
Jack curled his fingers into the strip of tape that was stuck to his palm, just one of the surprises he had planned for this family get-together. He'd wired a remote that was hidden in the lining of his workout jacket. "I still don't see how my death will give you control of anything. "
"Not your death," McHenry said, "hers. Sadly, Gus is going to crack under the emotional strain and have an accident. As trust officer, I'll be required to reassume control of the trust, as well as her voting shares. The board isn't likely to object, especially when Lily and I present a united front. "
"Ward," Lily warned. "He's up to something!"
Every good magician has something up his sleeve, Jack thought as he stabbed the trigger. An explosion rocked the grounds outside. It lit up the room like a signal flare. Windows rattled and shook with the concussion.
Startled, Lily reared backward. Her hand flew up, and
McHenry shouted at her to give him the gun. When she wouldn't, he tried to wrestle it away from her. A shot rang out, blasting a hole in the ceiling. Fortunately, Jack was on top of the man before either he or Lily could do any more damage.
Jack made quick work of subduing and disposing of both of them. Gus was sitting up by now, and though her wan features still concerned him, he tossed her the. 38 with instructions to keep them at gunpoint while he bound, gagged and stashed the "united front" in the bathroom for safekeeping. Once he had that accomplished, he gave Gus a crash course on the gun's use, cautioning her at length about being careful.
"Stay here," he told her, gently but emphatically. He wanted to say a great deal more, but the constriction in his throat made that impossible as he bent to kiss her lips. Tenderness flowed through him. "I'll come back for you, " he promised. "I'm going to get Bridget."
"Please," she whispered as he slipped out the door. "Don't d-die. "
Jack found Bridget hiding in her closet, frightened by the explosion. The noise had drawn the housekeeper outside with everyone else, so he took a moment to calm the child. She was hidden amidst a profusion of toys and ballet gear, and as he coaxed her out, he noticed the trail of white footprints she left on the shiny hardwood floor.
"It's flour," she explained, obviously pleased with herself. "Remember how you told me that I should powder around the outside of the room to see if Frances was sneaking in through some hidden passage? Well, I did? Look, I powdered the whole room! I used Frances's sifter from the kitchen. "
The evidence of her handiwork was everywhere. There was a path of pale dust decorating the perimeter of the entire place, except for the doorways. She'd done it exactly the way he'd described, too, sprinkling a thin film that resembled house dust more than flour. Unless you were looking for it, you'd never notice it. "Did you catch her?" he asked.
She scratched her nose with her knuckle as if she were about to sneeze. "Not exactly. But I powdered the linen closet and then I did the storage room in the basement, too, because she uses those rooms alot, and guess what?" She scrunched her face, then beamed at him.
"You found something?" Jack remembered telling her that footprints leading to a solid wall could indicate a secret passageway, but his only thought had been to entertain her.
"In the storage room! Cool, huh? I spotted footprints in the flour by the back wall, so that proves it. She is spying on me. She's coming up from the basement. I just haven't figured out how she gets in here yet. "
A surge of adrenaline nearly took off the top of Jack's head. "Bridge, can you keep a promise?" At her eager nod, he knelt and caught hold of her arm. "Promise me you'll stay right here until I get back. Can you do that? If you get scared, go back in the closet, and I'll find you, but stay here, all right?"
"Are you going to find the passageway for me?" Her eyes bugged with excitement as he nodded.
"I'm going to try," he said.
The storage room did have a secret panel, but it didn't lead to the passageway that Bridget had hoped for. The panel opened onto a vaultlike room with a door that Jack scanned with a metal detector from his bag of tricks. A pinging noise told him there was a magnetic device within the door. From his experience that kind of device kept a metal lever from depressing the alarm switch until the door was opened. It was a relatively simple concept as intrusion detectors went, and he quickly defeated it with a powerful magnet of his own.
The small room he found himself in was a storage area for fine art, and the first painting that caught his eye was the one he'd recently been searching for. Blush looked as if she'd been hastily propped against the shelves and abandoned. Jack felt another slam-dunk of adrenaline. His heart jerked hard, and his skull throbbed with it as he crouched beside her and picked her up, cradling the frame in his palms.
He didn't have time to admire her. He had to find what she was concealing, if anything. A damp finger rubbed over a corner of her skirt revealed no signs of another artist's work painted underneath, but the loose grips on the back of the frame made him think that she might have been stretched over another canvas. If that was the case, the other painting had already been removed, he realized. He was too late.
Despair washed over him, sapping him of strength for a moment. His skull was still throbbing hotly, but now it was the pain of an incipient headache. It was even an effort to push to his feet. Christ, was this never to end? He felt as if he'd had the sealed book of Fate in his hands, and it had been snatched away from him again.
A faint scuffing behind him alerted him that he wasn't alone. The sound was so slight it registered on his nerves more than his conscious mind, but when he turned, it was to one of the most confounding sights he'd ever seen.
Lake and Bridget had entered the room behind him, and the child looked as if she were about to cry. It took Jack another moment to register that Lake was holding a gun to the child's head. He had a Walther. 380 pressed to her temple.
"Bridget told me you might be down here, " Lake explained. "I found her in her closet. She said the explosion had frightened her, and you'd told her to stay there. "
The little girl hadn't realized what she was doing by telling Lake, Jack knew. She had simply responded to her uncle's questions. His heart went out to her now. She was terrified and bewildered, perhaps even thinking she'd caused this nightmare. He tried to reassure her with a silent nod, and then his gaze flicked to her captor, murderously. If
he could have gotten his hands on the man without endangering Bridget, Lake would have had the gun rammed down his sick throat.
Jack no longer needed to find the Van Gogh. "It was you, wasn't it, " he said, searching Lake's fine-boned features for the signs of depravity he knew must be hidden there. "You sent the thugs who terrorized my family. You had my child kidnapped and killed. "
"Your child wasn't killed." Lake's thumb dragged down the hammer, forcing a sharp click out of the gun. It echoed like a rifle blast in the small room. "But this time she will be. "
Bridget whimpered with fear, and Jack stared at the five-year-old, his heart freezing. His brain could barely make sense of what was happening, but some instinctive part of him knew the moment he began to search her imploring blue eyes and her round, tear-stained features. In that one life-turning moment he understood that she was the infant who'd been taken five years ago. His child.
He said her name. "Haley...?"
"I had nothing to do with the kidnapping—"
It was Lake who spoke, but Jack barely heard the man other than to register that he was apparently making a feeble attempt to disassociate himself from the crime.
"The men who approached you did work for me," Lake went on, seemingly determined to explain. "But I had no idea they would resort to anything as desperate as kidnapping. Their instructions were to persuade you to cooperate, nothing more. I was horrified when I found out what they'd done. And when I learned that they were planning to sell the baby on the black market, I had to intervene—"
Jack tore his gaze from Bridget, enraged as he thought about the devastation that Lake's "instructions" had brought about. "Horrified? If your conscience was bothering you that badly, why didn't you give her back to me?"
"I couldn't," Lake averred softly. "My younger sister, Jillian, was dying of anorexia. We'd done everything we could—doctors, clinics, but nothing helped. She admitted to me once that she'd always wanted a baby and regretted terribly that the anorexia had made her sterile. I urged her to get well so that she could have a child of her own, but by that time it was too late. Her sterility couldn't be reversed. "
Jack stared at him, disbelieving. "And you thought that gave you the right to steal someone else's child?"
Lake's shoulders lifted. An expiration seemed to weaken his voice. "Jillian believed it would save her life. She actually believed she couldn't die if she had something important to live for, something as precious as a baby. So I had some adoption papers falsified, and I gave her Bridget. "
Jack's hand formed a fist. Unfortunately he didn't have another trick up his sleeve, nothing taped to his palm. It was just him against this demented man, who clearly thought that his name and his privileged existence put him at the front of the line where human needs were concerned.
"She was my sister." Lake's voice dropped to a softness that asked, even begged, Jack to understand. "She was dying. Bridget was her last chance. I had to give her that. "
"My wife died. She killed herself because of what you did. Or they killed her, I don't know which. It hardly matters now. "
Lake seized upon that. "But it does matter! It's all that matters, don't you see? They were the ones who came up with the plan and executed it. They were—they are—the kidnappers, the murderers, not me. I can supply you with their names, " he offered. "I can tell you how to find them. "
Rage shook through Jack—black, blinding rage that he had to strangle off before it could find its way into his reflexes. He wanted to kill the bastard, crush him where he stood. It would be easy enough to do. Lake had no resources but a gun that he might not have the courage to use, and the odds were that Jack could take him down before he got a shot off.
But the five-year-old child who was watching Jack's every move had terror rising in her eyes, and Jack would not let himself contribute to that. He'd already lost her once trying to be a hero. Now he was sworn to protect her no matter what that required him to do, even if it meant bargaining with a moral monster like Lake Featherstone.
He pulled a breath, aware that he had to have some answers before he could do anything else. "How much did Gus know about this? Did she know Bridget was mine?"
Lake used the question to further justify what he'd done. "She knew Bridget was adopted and that it wasn't done through the normal channels, but that was all. She didn't speak of it, none of us did. We were a family, trying to save one of our own. Can't you understand that?"
Gus didn't know. That brought Jack a moment of relief, the first he'd had in days. Now he was free to believe, just as she was, except there was a man holding a gun on him, a man holding his heart hostage. "What about Calderon?" he asked. "How is he involved?"
"Calderon?" Lake seemed genuinely startled at the question. "Calderon is involved in everything, but don't ask me how. The man is a total enigma. The art world calls him a dealer and a buying agent, but he's a great deal more than that. He wields enormous power, frightening power. It wouldn't surprise me if he were running the black market in art—"
It was all Jack could do not to spin and kick the bastard's head off. "Save the tribute, " he bit out. "I want to know whether he was behind any of this. "
Lake's crooked smile turned into laughter—weak, cracked laughter. "I couldn't possibly tell you. I imagine he's in on everything in one way or another. He came to my aid once years ago when I found myself in possession of stolen artifacts and was in danger of being prosecuted. He took the merchandise off my hands. He handled everything. "
"Did he take the Van Gogh off your hands?"
"No! Oh, no, I wouldn't part with the still life, not for any price. My father wanted it, you see. All his life he coveted that painting. He actually told me once that nothing he'd accomplished mattered because he'd never been able to acquire the Van Gogh for his collection. He'd had his chance, too. He was in the bidding at Christie's, but he lost his nerve. I didn't—"
Lake indicated a hastily rolled canvas lying on a storage shelf near him. The Van Gogh, Jack realized.
Lake's mouth shook as he spoke. "I didn't lose my nerve."
Jack could see the signs. The man was on the edge. It wouldn't take much to push him over, but Jack would have to be careful. Push too hard and Bridget went with him.
He softened his voice. "Your sister's been trying her damndest to kill me, but I guess you know all about that, don't you, Lake. I guess you know about her and McHenry. "
Lake's head lifted. His eyes narrowed, glinting. "What do you mean? Lily? McHenry? What are you saying?" Jack merely smiled.
"Tell me, godammit!" Lake lurched forward, jerking the child with him. "What about Lily and Ward?"
"They didn't share their grand plan with you?"
"What grand plan?"
"They were going to get rid of me and Gus, assume control of Gus's voting stock, and take over the company. Interesting that they didn't tell you, Lake. I wonder why? Maybe because you were going to be next?"
"Lily?" he breathed his sister's name as if it were part of a religious litany, something mystical. His expression took on a desperate, bewildered quality, as if he couldn't possibly assimilate what Jack had told him. "Lily with Ward McHenry? I don't believe you. "
The twins both harbored a fatal flaw, Jack realized, but that was where the similarity ended. Lily coveted power, while her brother coveted Lily. He was obsessed with her.
"You don't believe me?" Jack said softly. "Go upstairs and check Gus's bathroom. Your sister and Ward McHenry are tied up there. Together. "
Fury shook Lake's body. The gun jerked in his hand.
Bridget made a strange sound and shrank away, and as Lake yanked her back, Jack knew terror beyond his darkest nightmares, terror beyond all reason. Lake was losing it. He was even crazy enough to pull a trigger without even realizing it. The man holding his daughter hostage was having a nervous breakdown, and there was nothing Jack could do. Nothing he dared do.
"Let her go, " Jack said.
Rage flared, and with it came Webb Cald
eron's voice. Virtu spirituale. It stormed Jack's senses with deafening chaos, but in the eerie silence at the back of his mind, he heard a dream-like sound—the scrape of footsteps in the hallway.
Lake heard them, too, and whirled. "You?" he cried softly. He stumbled back, revealing the figure who'd crept up behind him. It was Gus and she had the gun. Jack doubted she had the strength to use it, but her presence alone gave him what he needed, an opening.
"Gus, watch out!" Bridget cried. She twisted out of Lake's hold and ducked down, scrambling toward her aunt.
In the confusion Jack lunged for Lake and caught him by the head and shoulders. The two men crashed to the ground and rolled, the Walther firing repeatedly, wildly, as if Lake's finger was convulsing on the trigger.
The gun was frozen in Lake's fist, and Jack knew he had a madman on his hands. Gus or Bridget could have been hit by a stray bullet! Fury made him violent. He slammed Lake's arm to the ground with a force that shook the small room. The weapon flew free, but Lake reared up in a frenzy, swinging and slashing with the strength of the possessed.
Jack blocked the wild blows and connected with a single savage uppercut that knocked Lake cold and sprawled him out on the floor. Half-hoping he'd killed him, Jack sprang up and searched the room.
Gus and Bridget were in a heap by the door. Something near terror gripped him, but by the time he got to them, Jack realized they weren't hit, just badly frightened. He scooped Gus into his arms, then reached out for Bridget, and the three of them clung to each other, heads bowed, hearts flooding out their fear and relief. It was probably only moments, but it seemed a very long time before Jack began to feel himself calming. Still, he didn't know if he could ever let go of them, either one of them.
"Thank you," Gus whispered.
"For what?" he asked.
"For not dying."
He wanted to laugh, but all he could do was shake his head.
Blush Page 39
