Untouchable

by Jayne Ann Krentz

  “Well, damn,” Anson said very softly. “Just what kind of information do you have in mind?”

  “Thanks to Xavier we know Zane was adopted shortly after he was born. I think there is a possibility that Zane is Tazewell’s biological son. What’s more, I don’t think Zane himself knew that until sometime in the past year. Maybe he found out because Jessica Pitt discovered that her ex-husband had a son he had never acknowledged. After the divorce she went looking for the kid online.”

  “Because she figured she could use him to get revenge against her ex?”

  “Maybe. She might have intended to blackmail Tazewell with the information. Who knows? Whatever the plan was at the start, Zane turned the tables on her.”

  “That’s a reach, Jack. If Jessica Pitt did figure out that Quinton Zane was Tazewell’s son and if she searched for him online—a couple of big ifs—she would have run up against the same brick walls that we hit. Officially Zane died over twenty-two years ago. I still can’t see how she could have found him if we weren’t able to locate him.”

  “She wouldn’t have had to find him,” Jack said. “As soon as she started looking for him, he would have been alerted. He’s bound to have trip wires out there on the Internet. I’m sure he knows that Max and Cabot and I have been searching for him for the past couple of decades. That’s why he’s stayed out of the country.”

  “So Zane is alerted to the fact that someone named Jessica Pitt is looking for him and he gets curious,” Anson said, walking through the logic.

  “Yes,” Jack said. “He’s more than curious. It’s safe to say he is very worried. After all, it’s a threat coming from an entirely unexpected direction. So he starts digging into Jessica Pitt’s personal life, trying to find out what set her on his trail. One question leads to another. He wants answers, so he decides to make contact.”

  “That’s when he discovers the truth about his birth?”

  “Right. He probably sat on the information for a while, trying to decide how to deal with it.”

  “Then the Night Watch case goes down here in Seattle and he decides to make his move.”

  “Yes,” Jack said. “The timeline works now. Jessica Pitt is the butterfly that flapped its wings and triggered the hurricane that hit Tazewell Global.”

  “All right, I’ll admit you’ve got a theory, but it’s just a theory. Meanwhile, I was just about to call you. I’ve got news from this end. Easton and Rebecca Tazewell have disappeared.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Max and Cabot are trying to find them,” Anson said. “The Tazewells were last seen late last night. They were leaving a big charity affair here in the city. They got into a limo but they never arrived at their home on Lake Washington.”

  “Are the cops looking for them?”

  “No,” Anson said. “Max and Cabot talked to the couple’s housekeeper. She told them Mr. Tazewell had sent her a text message saying that he and his wife had decided to slip away for some time together.”

  “Zane grabbed them.”

  “Given the timing, I think we have to assume that, yeah. And there’s something else. I’ll let Xavier tell you.”

  Xavier spoke, his voice crackling with excitement. “I told you that a few weeks ago, Grayson Tazewell pretty much dropped out of sight. The dude owns five houses—well, one is an apartment in New York. The others are in the Hamptons, Beverly Hills, Hawaii and Sonoma. Sonoma is the closest and I’m pretty sure that’s where he went.”

  “How did you figure it out?” Jack asked.

  “Process of elimination,” Xavier said. “The Tazewell Global jet is still sitting at the San Francisco airport and the yacht is still in the harbor there. That indicates that wherever Tazewell went, he probably drove.”

  “And the nearest place he could go where he could be assured of privacy would be his house in Sonoma,” Anson concluded.

  Jack tightened his fingers around the obsidian. “I was going to pay a visit to Tazewell Global early this morning but I think I’ll learn more if I get inside the Sonoma house. I need to choose one or the other, because I can’t afford to waste time.”

  “You really think they’re headed toward Seattle with Winter?” Anson said. “And that they’re driving?”

  “That’s the best lead I have at the moment. They’ve got no choice but to drive. They can’t carry a hostage onto a commercial flight and they can’t use the Tazewell Global jet because they’d have to explain the hostage to the pilots.”

  “And even if they came up with a convincing explanation, those pilots would have to file a flight plan,” Anson said.

  “Why would Zane bring his hostage to Seattle?” Xavier asked.

  “Maybe because the other two hostages, Easton and Rebecca Tazewell, were already here,” Anson said. “Zane probably figured it would be easier to transport one more here rather than try to move the other two across a couple of states. Besides, he knows the territory up here. Remember, he grew up in the Pacific Northwest.”

  “Maybe,” Jack said. Something did not feel quite right about that theory but he let it go for the moment. “What we do know is that the kidnappers left Cassidy Springs around nine p.m. tonight. Assuming they are driving straight through with no stops except for gas, the earliest they could arrive in the Seattle area is about fourteen hours after they left, depending on traffic. But there is always traffic, so we’ve got a window of maybe sixteen hours, max.”

  “That’s our clock,” Anson said.

  “What clock?” Xavier asked.

  “That’s how long we’ve got to find the location of the hostages and figure out how to rescue them,” Jack said. “Because somewhere between fourteen and sixteen hours from now I’ll get a message telling me where I need to be if I want to save Winter and the others. As soon as Zane’s got me he won’t need the hostages.”

  “You’re sure?” Xavier asked. He sounded stunned.

  “One hundred percent probability,” Jack said.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  Jack stood in the shadows of the night-darkened vineyards that surrounded Tazewell’s Sonoma estate and studied the gated mansion. A great sense of emptiness shimmered in the atmosphere.

  There was no visible security but that didn’t mean there wasn’t a hell of a lot of the electronic kind, he thought. There was enough light from the full moon to reveal the closed doors of the half dozen garages that lined the courtyard inside the gates. There was no way to know if there were any vehicles inside.

  He walked up to the wrought iron gates and examined them closely. There was an electronic security box but the alarm was off. He tested one of the gates. It swung open without protest.

  He took out his phone and punched in Anson’s number. “The place is deserted. Looks like someone left in a hurry and didn’t bother to reset the security system.”

  “That doesn’t sound right,” Anson said. “Please tell me you managed to pick up a gun somewhere.”

  “We both know I’m not a very good shot.”

  “I’ve told you before, very few people are good shots, not when they’re in a real-world shooting situation. The idea is to scare the hell out of the other guy.”

  “Under the circumstances I think I can do that without a gun. I am not in a good mood.” He walked into the courtyard. “I’m inside the gates. No alarms.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” Anson said. “Why would a wealthy man leave his house unprotected?”

  “I’ll find out,” Jack said.

  He moved across the moonlight-splashed courtyard and tried the front door. It swung open, inviting him into the shadows of the big house.

  “I’m in the front hall,” he said into the phone. “All the lights are off. I’m going to need my penlight. I’ll clip the phone to my belt and put you on speaker.”

  The rooms on the ground floor resembled a series of eleg
ant hotel lobbies. They were large spaces furnished with oversized chairs, sofas and consoles. They looked like rooms that had been designed to be photographed for spreads in glossy magazines. Everything was on a grand scale. Everything looked expensive. But there was virtually nothing of a personal nature. They were not the sort of rooms that invited you to sit down and read a book. You didn’t have a drink with a friend in rooms like these.

  He knew all about rooms like the ones he was touring tonight, he thought. They were the glitzy, high-end version of the rooms he had been living in for the past few years. Temporary places. Nothing about them spelled home.

  He gave up on the ground floor and climbed the elaborate staircase to the next level.

  The scale of the upstairs rooms was somewhat more normal. He sifted through closets and drawers and came across things—a single sock, a tube of toothpaste, a used drinking glass in a bathroom—that told him the spaces had been used by actual humans.

  He hit the jackpot when he opened the door of the master bedroom. The clothes in the closet and the array of masculine toiletries in the bath told its own story. Someone had been staying in the big house recently.

  “Whoever was here took off in a hurry,” he said to Anson. “He left a lot of his stuff behind. There’s a third floor in the other wing. I’m going to check it out now.”

  “I don’t like the feel of this.”

  “I’m pretty sure there’s no one here now.”

  “You never say things like ‘pretty sure,’” Anson said. “You always go with precise percentages. Are you telling me you’re one hundred percent sure you’re alone?”

  “No,” Jack said.

  “Then what the hell are you saying?”

  Jack reached the top of the stairs. There was only one room on that floor. The door was closed. He put his back to the wall, wrapped his fingers around the knob and gently opened the door.

  The miasma of death wafted out of the opening.

  “You asked me if I was sure I was alone,” Jack said. “It depends on your definition of alone.”

  “Body?” Anson asked.

  “Yes.”

  He walked into the room and aimed the penlight down at the face of the man sprawled on a limestone floor that was covered in a spill of dried blood.

  “Not Zane,” he said. “Not Easton Tazewell and not one of the pros who attacked Winter and me. An older man. Ninety-seven percent probability that it’s Grayson Tazewell.”

  “I’m betting he didn’t die of natural causes.”

  “No, gunshot fired at close range,” Jack said. “Looks like there was a struggle. Lot of broken glass. Chair tipped over. Papers on the floor.”

  Cautiously he nudged the body onto one side and plucked an expensive leather wallet out of a rear pocket. He flipped it open and studied the driver’s license.

  “ID confirms it’s Grayson Fitzgerald Tazewell,” he said.

  He let the body fall and got to his feet. The flashlight caught the glint of gold on Tazewell’s hand. Not a wedding ring, a signet ring. The image carved into it was that of a phoenix rising from the ashes.

  Jack speared the light around the office.

  “Something went very wrong in this room,” he said.

  “I’d say so, given that you found a body there,” Anson said.

  “No, it’s more than just the body.” Jack paused while he cataloged all of the things that were not right in the space. “Someone didn’t just walk in and pull a trigger. This wasn’t a professional hit. There was a fight. Grayson Tazewell lost. They tried to set the scene.”

  “They?” Anson prompted.

  “Zane and, very probably, those two bodyguards he’s got with him. Tried to make it look like a home invasion.”

  “Think Zane’s security people shot Tazewell?” Anson asked. “Maybe to protect their boss?”

  “No. They’re pros. This doesn’t look like a cold-blooded execution-style killing. Feels like a struggle over the gun.” Jack aimed the flashlight at the floor. “And the gun is still here, which means it’s probably Tazewell’s. This explains why the alarm system was down.”

  “What do you mean?” Anson asked.

  “Whatever occurred here, it wasn’t part of the plan,” Jack said. “They had to improvise. They switched off the alarm system so that, eventually, when the body was found, the police would assume that someone hacked into it in order to break into the house.”

  “You need to get out of there, Jack. You can’t afford to get arrested, not now. We’re on the clock.”

  “Soon,” Jack said.

  But he didn’t head for the door. There was a very real possibility that Quinton Zane had been in this room; a possibility that Zane had been involved in the struggle that had ended with Tazewell’s death. There was information in this office. Impressions. He needed every bit of data he could collect. Winter’s life depended on it. So did the lives of Easton and Rebecca Tazewell, assuming Zane hadn’t already murdered them.

  He forced himself to take the time to go through the desk drawers and then he picked up some of the papers that had fallen onto the floor. For the most part he found himself looking at spreadsheets and other kinds of financial documents.

  One file was unlabeled. Jack flipped it open. Inside was a report from a private investigator dated forty-six years earlier. The paper was yellowed with age. Jack read through the details quickly and then summarized them for Anson.

  “Forty-six years ago a woman in Seattle tried to blackmail Tazewell,” he said. “She claimed to have had his son and she wanted money to keep quiet.”

  “That wasn’t smart,” Anson said.

  “In the report, the investigator assures Tazewell that the woman is no longer a problem, as she recently died of an overdose.”

  “What about the baby?”

  “The investigator states that shortly before her death the mother evidently sold the baby to another couple. The investigator was unable to confirm the sale but assumes that the infant disappeared into the black market and is unlikely to ever be a problem. That’s the end of the report but there’s a handwritten note in the file that looks new. It’s just a name. Lucan Tazewell.”

  “Damn,” Anson said very softly. “You might be right. Zane may be Tazewell’s son. Anything else?”

  “Yes. A photo of a woman.”

  Jack studied the image of a woman with long dark hair and a face that was so spectacularly beautiful as to seem unreal.

  “I think I just found a picture of the woman who was Quinton Zane’s mother.”

  “You’re sure.”

  “Zane takes after her, not his father. There’s a note underneath the image. Date of death and cause. The woman died forty-six years ago of an overdose.” He picked up another page in the folder. “Just came across the results of a DNA test stating that there is a very high probability that subject number one is a close relative or the son of subject number two.”

  “All right, either Zane really is Tazewell’s son or he’s managed to convince Tazewell of that. Comes down to the same thing.”

  “Yes.”

  Jack put down the folder and prowled the room, searching for additional information.

  A glass case that held four bottles of a very exotic and no doubt very expensive hundred-and-fifty-proof brandy was positioned in one corner. The dust marks indicated that two bottles had recently been removed but there was no indication that they had been opened in the study.

  The pictures on the walls were mostly photographs of Grayson Tazewell with celebrities and an assortment of VIPs that included a couple of senators. There was also a photo of a sleek, modern-looking yacht. The name on the hull was The Phoenix IV.

  Jack was about to move on when he noticed the photograph in the center of the display. The mansion in the image was old, a relic of another century’s idea of grandeur. It was the k
ind of over-the-top summer place that established East Coast families had built in the Hamptons or Newport.

  But the rugged landscape in the scene did not look like the East Coast. The trees and the cliffs had a Pacific Northwest vibe. There was a dock in front of the mansion. An old-fashioned yacht was tied up at one of the slips. In the beam of the penlight it was just possible to make out the name. The Phoenix.

  Jack took the picture down off the wall and smashed the glass against the edge of the desk.

  “What the hell was that?” Anson asked. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes,” Jack said. “Looking at another photograph.”

  He removed the photo from the frame and turned it over. Someone had scrawled the words Azalea Island House and a date from nearly four decades earlier.

  “Get out of there, Jack,” Anson said.

  “Heading downstairs now. Tell Xavier I need him to do a property records search.”

  “What’s going on?” Anson demanded.

  “Hang on until I get back to the car.”

  Jack went out of the big, empty house that had never been a home and made his way through the designer-perfect vineyards.

  He found the rental car where he had left it on a side road veiled by trees.

  “Talk to me, son,” Anson said.

  “It’s okay, Anson, I’m back in the car. Ninety percent sure I know where to look for Zane.”

  “Listening.”

  Jack glanced at the photograph sitting on the passenger seat.

  “I think he’s trying to go home.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  “You were right,” Xavier said. “There was a sixth house and it is in the Pacific Northwest, specifically a private island in the San Juans. Azalea Island. Looks like it was named after Tazewell’s first wife. But he sold it over thirty years ago. It’s been through three other owners since then.”

  “What was the date of the last sale and who is the current owner?” Jack asked.