Every Breath You Take (29 page)

“Very certain,” Mitchell snapped. “Send someone down there immediately.”

“I’m happy to be able to allay your fears, Mr. Wyatt,” Orly said cheerfully after a moment. “The phone in villa six isn’t being answered because the villa is unoccupied.”

“What do you mean it’s unoccupied?”

“I mean that the party occupying villa six checked out at three o’clock today. Is there anything—”

Mitchell closed the cover on his cell phone, disconnecting
Orly in midsentence, but his brain refused to process the obvious implications of what he’d heard. Paralyzed with disbelief, he stood where he was, gazing blindly at the horizon, his phone hanging loosely from his hand.

Not once since Kate had waved good-bye to him this morning had he ever considered that she’d leave him standing there at the wharf. She was in love with him, and he was in love with her. Their feelings for each other were deepening with every hour they spent together. They were meant to be, and Kate had realized that even before he had. Kate wanted magic, and they had it in unbelievable abundance. She didn’t have that with her boyfriend. She would never have checked out of the Island Club and gone home with him.

The obvious answer was that the boyfriend had checked out and gone home alone. Kate was probably on her way to Mitchell right now, as eager to kiss him hello as he was to return her kiss. There was a way to find out. … Slowly, Mitchell pulled his wallet out of his pocket and removed the slip of paper he’d put there yesterday with the veterinary’s address and phone number on it. Looking at it, he flipped his cell phone open again with his thumb, his heart beginning to beat with dread.

“This is Mitchell Wyatt,” he told the vet when he answered the phone. “I was wondering if Miss Donovan came by to pick up Max yet.”

“Yes, she did. She picked him up several hours ago, and he was very happy to see her. I had all the documents ready that she needed to get him into the States.”

“That’s good …” Mitchell said, his chest constricting in pained disbelief. “Did she bring someone along to help with him?”

“Yes, a nice gentleman.”

Standing beside their car, Childress and MacNeil watched Wyatt’s jet taxiing away from its hangar. Minutes later, it roared down the runway; then it lifted off and vanished swiftly into the darkness, its presence in the sky marked only by tiny flashes of light.

U
NLIKE HIS TRADITIONALLY FURNISHED APARTMENTS
in Europe, the interior of Mitchell’s plane resembled a luxurious Art Deco living room, and the color scheme of silver, black, and chrome was enlivened with splashes of color from the period art pieces he’d carefully collected. A stylish oyster-gray leather sofa, long enough for him to stretch out on, was positioned between a pair of round end tables with black granite tops and polished chrome lamps in the stepped profile of the Art Deco period.

Two oversize gray leather swivel recliners were across from the sofa. Beyond that was a Macassar ebony desk and credenza where he frequently worked, another row of seats, and a doorway opening into a compact but elegant bedroom-and-bathroom suite.

Normally, when Mitchell boarded for a flight of several hours, he went either to his desk or to the bedroom, depending on the time of day. Tonight, he went straight to the curved ebony bar near the front of the cabin and poured brandy into a crystal tumbler instead of a snifter.

From the sofa, he watched the twinkling lights of St. Maarten vanish; then he stretched his legs out in front of him and lifted the glass of brandy to his lips, eager for the fiery liquid to start dulling the ache in his chest.

He’d turned off the cabin’s lights and switched on a table lamp.

Slowly and methodically, he began reviewing the last
three days, searching for some clue that should have alerted him to the fact that he was overestimating the depth of her feelings for him.

An hour later, all he’d come up with were haunting memories of an irresistible redhead with a heartwarming smile who’d kissed him and set him on fire—memories that all led him to the same unanswerable question: How could she have left with her boyfriend, without at least meeting Mitchell at the wharf to tell him good-bye?

How could she have done that when she’d been so candid and brave about her feelings:

I think fate may have intended for us to meet the way we did and to become friends—that it was predestined. … I like you very much, and I think you like me, too. … If I’m going to be disappointed, I don’t want it to happen with you
.

Swallowing over the unfamiliar constriction in his throat, he drew a long breath and leaned his head back, willing himself into a state of pleasant numbness where he could think about her without this gnawing sense of bewildered loss. Instead, he remembered the quiet joy of sitting up in bed, drowsy and contented, watching the sunrise together, and the inexplicable pleasure of seeing her hand resting next to his on the table in the casino.

She’d made her decision to stay with her boyfriend, and thanks to his glib description of their “roles” that morning, he was stuck with that decision and bound by the very role he’d described and intended for her boyfriend to play:

As soon as he understands that you’re serious about wanting to be with someone else, he is obliged to accept defeat gracefully and wish you well and then to get the hell out of my way
.

About those rules
—she’d asked—
What would you do if I were to vacillate a little about breaking up with my boyfriend?

Under those circumstances, you would be required to telephone me to tell me that you’re having doubts, and then I would simply switch roles with him
.

On his way to the airport tonight, he’d phoned the Enclave to see if she’d left a message for him there, but she hadn’t.

Briefly, Mitchell considered the possibility that her disappearance was a sophomoric attempt to prove she could make him jealous enough to come after her. If so, she wasn’t the woman he thought she was.

He knew how to find her—she wasn’t lost to him. If she wasn’t listed in the phone book, he could trace her through her father’s newspaper obituary.

Several times he considered the possibility that something dire had happened that made her leave without a word.

Each time, he squelched that thought, along with the temptation to use it as an excuse to find her. She’d had the time, and the presence of mind, to pick up a stray dog at the vet. She’d intentionally left him to wait at the wharf.

The telephone on the table beside him began ringing and he ignored it.

“Why isn’t he answering the damned phone?” Matt Farrell asked his wife. Shoving his hands into his pockets, he turned and gazed out the living room windows of their penthouse apartment overlooking Lake Shore Drive. “I know he’s on the plane.”

Meredith laid aside the agenda she was supposed to be preparing for the next board of directors meeting of Bancroft & Company, a chain of luxury department stores founded by a Bancroft ancestor, and which she now headed. “He’s probably in bed,” she said, but Matt heard the apprehension in her voice, and he remembered something that made Mitchell’s situation seem less grim.
“Speaking of that …” he said, and raised his brows, letting the sentence hang unfinished.

Meredith studied his expression but couldn’t connect it with anything other than possibly a hint that they should go to bed, which seemed unlikely given his urgent need to contact Mitchell and warn him that police on two continents were searching his apartments. “Speaking of what?” she prompted finally.

“Speaking of Mitchell being in bed,” Matt provided unhelpfully.

“Yes?” she said in smiling exasperation when he merely lifted his brows and left her hanging again, without any information.

Satisfied that she was fully engrossed in this new topic, he said, “When Zack called tonight to tell me Mitchell’s apartment in Rome was being searched, he also mentioned that Mitchell had phoned him earlier today from St. Maarten with a very interesting request—It seems that Mitchell has met someone down in the islands, and since he needed to come back here to be with Caroline and Billy for a few days, he wanted to be sure the lady would have a
very
pleasant time cruising the islands on the
Julie
while he was in Chicago.”

Tipping her head to the side, Meredith looked at him, puzzled. “That doesn’t sound particularly significant.”

“That’s not the significant part. The significant part is that
Mitchell
intended to fly back to the islands every night to be with her on the yacht. Hence,” he finished, with satisfaction at his wife’s look of surprised interest, “the connection between Mitchell being in bed on the plane and this discussion. I’m thinking maybe she’s with him and that’s why he hasn’t answered my calls. Her name is Kate, by the way.”

Meredith’s smile faded and so did Matt’s, for the same reason. “I hope she’s on the yacht and not on the plane,” Meredith said, putting both their thoughts into words.
“It would be awful for him if she’s there and the police are waiting to talk to him when the plane lands, like Zack thinks is going to happen.”

“Zack may be leaping to conclusions,” Matt replied, walking toward the telephone.

“But you don’t think he’s leaping to conclusions, do you?”

“No.” He hesitated, reluctant to worry her, but unwilling to lie to her.

Meredith wasn’t certain what to expect. Years before, Matt had watched his friend Zack Benedict get wrongly convicted of murdering his actress wife, and the bitter experience had left both men intensely mistrustful of the criminal justice system. As a result, Matt had already arranged for his chauffeur to be ready to head for the hangar at O’Hare with two attorneys from the law firm that handled both Matt’s and Mitchell’s corporate affairs in Chicago.

The telephone next to the sofa began ringing again, and Mitchell ignored it, but very few people had the plane’s phone number, and all of them were important to him for one reason or another. Since the brandy he’d been drinking had only made him sink deeper into a state of confused longing for Kate, he finally reached for the telephone to give himself a distraction. “Whoever you are,” he said aloud when he answered, “you’re persistent as hell.”

“It’s Matt,” his friend said after a startled pause. “Zack called an hour ago to say the police were swarming all over your apartment, searching for something. He also said your assistant in New York called because NYPD was searching your New York apartment.”

Mitchell straightened slowly to an upright position. “What are they searching for?”

“Your assistant said the search warrant was for a
man’s outdoor coat or jacket, black in color, and any item of apparel with buttons bearing a particular symbol on the back. The cops had a picture of the symbol. I have no idea what the Italian warrant was for, but Zack faxed me a copy of it.”

“Read it to me,” Mitchell said, as anger began to replace some of the desolation he was feeling. He listened to Matt struggle through the Italian words, mispronouncing most of them. “That’s what they’re looking for,” Mitchell said, halting Matt’s recitation.

“What is it?”

“A man’s black outdoor coat or jacket, and anything with buttons bearing a particular symbol.” Standing up, Mitchell ran his hand around the back of his neck. “I have no idea what this is about.”

“Zack and I both think it’s related to the discovery of your brother’s body.”

Mitchell shook his head in denial. “My nephew said the police already have a confession from an old drunk on a neighboring farm.”

“That’s what the police told your nephew, because that’s what they want
you
to think,” Matt argued. “Listen to me very carefully, because I’ve been through this before, and I know how the police operate. The searches of your apartments are occurring immediately after the discovery of your brother’s murdered body, which undoubtedly means you’ve become a suspect in his death. If so, the police want you back in Chicago, where they can either question you or arrest you. I think they’ll be waiting for you when your plane lands, and so does Zack.”

He paused, waiting for that to sink in, before he continued, “I’ve phoned Levinson and Pearson and put them on standby to meet you at your plane. Joe O’Hara is ready to leave with the car and pick them up as soon as you give me the go-ahead. Zack disagrees with this plan. He doesn’t think you should land in Chicago at all.
He thinks you should land somewhere else, out of U.S. jurisdiction tonight; hire criminal defense attorneys tomorrow; and then let them arrange with Cook County for you to voluntarily return. Zack is probably right.”

Mitchell stood up, walked over to the bar, and put his glass down on a tray. “I’m not going to run for cover. I’ll call Levinson and tell him to find out who is in charge of this fiasco. Levinson can then let this person know that I’m aware of what’s going on and that I’m still going to land at O’Hare. That may not convince the police that I’m innocent, but it will at least give me the enormous satisfaction of embarrassing them.”

Despite the grimness of the situation, Matt Farrell chuckled. “And then what?”

“Then the police can either rush out to grab me at the airport, or they can let Levinson arrange for both of us to stop by in the morning for a civilized discussion. Personally, I hope they choose the second option.”

Mitchell phoned Dave Levinson at home and told the attorney what he wanted him to do. He hung up, glanced at his watch, and realized it was still set for St. Maarten time. With his thumb and forefinger, he pulled out the stem to set the time back two hours, and reality struck him with painful force: less than sixteen hours ago he’d been lying in bed watching the sunrise over the Caribbean with Kate snuggled up beside him, telling him a funny story about how she got the “dent” in her chin. Before he’d finally fallen asleep, he’d decided they would dine aboard the yacht tonight and go for a starlight cruise.

Instead of that, she was in Chicago with a man she preferred to Mitchell, and he was trying to avoid being arrested for the murder of a brother he had loved.