Shattered
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 where 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’Amato. 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.
He shouldn’t have been surprised when the anonymous woman disappeared or when she was impossible to find. He’d felt the rings on her finger the moment she’d grasped his hand. He’d known she was someone else’s wife, that she’d chosen him at random for a night of sex. He hadn’t asked her reasons and she hadn’t offered any.
He hadn’t asked her name or given her his.
She’d nearly chickened out when the elevator doors opened on the penthouse floor. Her chin had wobbled, and she’d looked up at him with anxious blue eyes. He’d led her directly to the bedroom, hoping that her nerve would hold a little longer.
The bed had already been turned down, and the only light on the pure white sheets had come from the full moon outside. He’d taken her in his arms while she was still fully clothed and felt her tremble in his embrace. She’d made a mewing sound as he slid his open hand down to her hips and pulled her close enough to feel the heat and hard length of him.
But she didn’t try to pull free. Instead, she breathed in the scent of him as she slid her palms up over his shoulders. He could remember feeling gooseflesh rise on his arms as she teased her fingers through the hair that fell onto his nape and then tugged his head down toward hers.
He remembered the soft weight of her breasts, and then their pebbled tips against his chest, as she leaned into him and raised her lips for his kiss.
That first kiss—
“Wow!” Chance said, tugging on Wyatt’s hand and putting an abrupt end to his erotic daydream. “We could probably go all the way to China in this plane!”
“Yes, we could,” he agreed. Before he could say more, the boy was off to investigate more of the plane.
Wyatt’s gaze shot to the door. He’d boarded after the twins but before Kate, who’d stayed behind with Bruce to remove some items from her luggage before it was loaded into the baggage compartment. He wondered what was holding her up.
He’d taken off his suit jacket and tie, loosened the top couple of buttons on his shirt and folded up the sleeves. He was standing slightly hunched near the cockpit door, so his head didn’t hit the 6’2” ceiling. It was the only thing he didn’t love about the sixty-million-dollar jet, which had actually taken him to China and back several times over the past six months. Unfortunately, the next size up jet with the headroom he needed was a Boeing 737.
Kate suddenly appeared in the doorway. She glared at him—a far cry from the yearning look he’d been remembering—then glanced over her shoulder at Bruce, who was bringing up the rear, a massive obstacle Wyatt had put there to keep her from grabbing the boys at the last minute and making a break for it. Now that he knew Jack McKinley was the man Kate had expected to protect her, it was even more important to keep her behind high stone walls. Jack had already proved his willingness to kill for Dante D’Amato by eliminating a snitch.
“Mom, wait’ll you see this!” Lucky said from the aft section of the 550. “There’s a whole kitchen. And a bathroom with a counter and a mirror and a closet for clothes.”
“The kitchen on a plane is called the galley,” Wyatt said.
“Mom, come see the galley.” Lucky scampered back to grab Kate’s hand and tugged her all the way inside the plane, then got behind her and literally shoved her down the aisle so she could see the galley, which was designed for hot meal service. For the very short flight, Wyatt had stocked hot Papa John’s pizza and ice-cold Cokes for the kids and chilled Cristal Champagne he planned to offer Kate.
“Lucky, look!” Chance exclaimed as he spotted several screens mounted near a tabletop. “A computer! And a DVD player!”
Lucky pounded back down the center aisle between the couch and a row of two facing seats with a table between them, to the front of the jet. He looked up at Wyatt, his blue eyes bright with excitement, and said, “Do you have any games we could play or movies we could see, Mr. Shaw?”
“I have both,” Shaw said. “They’re in that cupboard.” Wyatt pointed to a cupboard built in along the wall near the tabletop above which the DVD screen was mounted. “I think there might be a few movies in there you’d like.” He’d picked them out himself, based on what he remembered liking as a kid and what the reviewers said were appropriate movies for young children.
The two boys dropped to the carpeted floor, yanked open the cupboard door and riffled through the games and DVDs.
Wyatt was entranced by their exuberance. He glanced up and met Kate’s stark gaze at the opposite end of the plane. He saw the flicker of panic in her eyes and followed her gaze to where Bruce was locking the door to the Gulfstream, barring Kate’s last avenue of escape before they landed at the private airstrip near his compound north of Houston.
“Folks, we’re cleared for takeoff,” the pilot drawled over the intercom in a thick East Texas accent. “Please take your seats and buckle your seat belts.”
The twins ignored the announcement.
“You boys need to buckle in so we can take off,” Wyatt said, tapping each boy on the shoulder. “The pilot will let us know when it’s safe to move around again.”
The twins each had a handful of DVDs when they stood.
“I’ll hold those for you.” Wyatt held out both hands.
Lucky looked to his mother, who nodded, before he handed over his loot. Chance followed suit. Wyatt stowed the DVDs they’d selected in an overhead compartment.
“Where should we sit?” Lucky asked Wyatt.
“I want you both where I can see you,” Kate said, pointing to facing seats on the same side of the plane as the couch. Each boy grabbed one of the seats on opposite sides of a table and reached for the seat belt. Kate helped Chance, while Wyatt helped Lucky.
Kate shot him an aggravated look but didn’t say anything.
She took a seat across from the twins. Wyatt took the seat opposite her, with a table separating them.
Bruce headed to the back of the plane, where he sat on one of the four club seats around what would be the dining table near the galley.
Wyatt tried to meet Kate’s gaze, but she turned her face toward the boys and ignored him. She’d barely spoken a word since he’d given his ultimatum at her home, except to explain to the boys that they were going on a little vacation. Which suited him fine. At least she wasn’t saying or doing anything to make Lucky and Chance dislike him.
Once they were at altitude, he got the boys settled watching WALL-E, where they were quickly engrossed. Bruce was in the galley fixing plates of pizza and handed Wyatt a can of soda for each of the boys.
Kate stepped into the aisle and intercepted him close to the galley. “I don’t allow them to have carbonated beverages.”
Wyatt grimaced. “What do they drink?”
“Water. Or lemonade, if you have that.”
“It’ll have to be water. Even with pizza?” he asked.
“Water is the perfect beverage, Mr. Shaw.”
He set the Coke cans down on a nearby table and stuck his hands on his hips. “Mr. Shaw?”
She flushed. Her voice was low and intense and full of resentment. “How about Mr. Kidnapper? That fits.”
“Look who’s talking,” he shot back, keeping his voice equally low, fighting the rage that rose every time he thought of all the years he’d lost with his sons. “You’re the one who kept my children hidden from me.”
She didn’t excuse herself again. Or argue the point. “What am I supposed to call you?”
“Wyatt. It’s my name. Or Shaw, if it suits you.”
“All right, Shaw. There, is that better?”
“Much. And I’d like my sons to call me something besides Mr. Shaw.”
“Please, Shaw, don’t tell them you’re their father,” she pleaded. “Not yet. They’re too young to understand all of this.”
“I don’t want the twins upset or frightened any more than you do. I can wait.”
“Thank you.”
He saw another flash of resentment before she lowered her gaze. Before he could express the resentment he was feeling at her resentment, she raised her eyes to his and said, “Why not have them call you Shaw, too, without the mister?”
He supposed that was a good compromise. “All right,” he said grudgingly. At least until they knew the truth. By then he hoped they would want to call him Dad or Papa or Daddy. Because he was planning to spend the rest of his life being their father.
“Make yourself comfortable,” he said to Kate, indicating one of two seats on either side of the table near the galley. He waited until she sat, then traded the Cokes for bottled water, crossed back to the boys, took off the caps and dropped the bottles into the recessed glass holders on each side of the table between them.
“Pizza’s ready, Boss,” Bruce called from the galley.
Kate rose. “Can I help?”
“Bruce and I can handle it,” Wyatt said, returning down the aisle and putting a hand on her shoulder to encourage her to sit again.
She jerked away from his touch, crying out as she hit her hip against the table.
Lucky turned around in his seat. “Mom, are you all right?”
“Just bumped into the table,” she called back in a falsely cheerful voice.
Wyatt was amazed that the boy was so aware of his mother. Not nearly so surprised that Kate had kept her injury from her sons. She was still obviously in pain, holding her lower lip in her teeth to keep from crying out again.
“You’re hurt,” he said softly.
She shook her head. “I’m fine. It’s nothing.”
He glanced at the spot on her hip she was rubbing gently with her fingertips. He could remember what that exact spot of skin near her hipbone looked like. He’d kissed it. And caressed it.
He met her gaze and saw from the troubled look in her eyes that she remembered, too. She shook her head as though to deny what she was feeling. Or perhaps to warn him that she had no intention of letting what had happened between them once happen ever again.
She sank back down, but he could feel her eyes on him as he headed the few extra steps to the galley to get the plates of pizza Bruce had prepared for the boys.
He wondered if Kate would be more amenable to the idea of him being a father to Lucky and Chance if she knew that he intended to spend the rest of his life with her as his wife.
Probably not.
Everything she’d said or done had made it clear that the sooner she was shed of Wyatt Shaw, the better. So how was he supposed to woo her? How was he supposed to win her heart?
Especially when he’d been accused of murder.
He wondered what she would do if he told her who he believed had actually strangled the woman found dead in his bed.
Likely call him a liar.
Until he found enough evidence to cast a giant shadow on that other party, he was going to remain the prime suspect in a murder investigation. So he could understand how she might be leery of him. He was ready for the fight he knew was coming when she realized what their sleeping arrangements were going to be at his ranch.
“How did you know pepperoni’s my favorite, Mr. Shaw?” Lucky asked.
“It was a ‘Lucky’ guess,” he said, ruffling the boy’s hair. Amazing what a little detective work of his own had turned up about his sons. “And you can call me Shaw, without the Mister.”
Lucky pointed with his pizza, which he’d picked up in his hands and said, “Oh, I get it. A ‘Lucky’ guess. Very funny, Shaw.” He glanced at his mother and said, “That’s all right, Mom, isn’t it? He told me I could just call him Shaw.”
“It’s fine, sweetheart,” Kate said.
Her voice sounded choked to Wyatt, and when he looked, he saw tears had brimmed in her eyes. What was that all about?
“You’re missing the movie,” Chance warned his brother.
Wyatt crossed back to Kate and said, “Hungry?”
“I think if I ate anything right now I’d throw up.”
“How about something bubbly to settle your stomach,” he suggested.
“Club soda sounds good.”
He smiled wryly. “I was thinking of a glass of champagne.”
She looked at him stony-faced and said, “I can think of nothing—nothing—about this moment I want to celebrate.”
He leaned down and said through tight jaws, “There were two of us in that bed. You were as much responsible as I was for what happened there. We became parents that night. And you are not going to make me feel guilty for wanting to be a father to my sons!”
He stood up and said, “Bruce, pop open that bottle of champagne.” When he looked down, he saw her eyes were once more brimmed with tears. He swallowed past the sudden lump in his throat and said, “I feel like celebrating.”
8
The impressively high river-rock walls that separated Wyatt Shaw’s ranch compound from the outside world were every bit as daunting as Kate had feared they would be. Her sons seemed not to notice when the beautiful black wrought iron electric gates, with the elaborate S in the center, closed behind them.
Lucky and Chance sat on either side of Shaw in the black stretch limousine that had picked them up at his private airfield, talking a mile a minute as they quizzed him about what he had planned for their “vacation.”
“I have a stable full of horses,” she heard him tell the boys. “But we can have your horses—”
“Big Doc,” Lucky interjected.
“And Little Doc,” Chance supplied.
She watched Shaw smile indulgently as he finished, “Big Doc and Little Doc can be trailered here from San Antonio by tomorrow, if you’d rather ride your own mounts.”
“You’d do that? Really?” Lucky asked.
“Of course,” Shaw said.
As though it cost nothing to trailer a couple of quarter horses halfway across the state. It was nothing to a wealthy man like Shaw, Kate realized.