Every Breath You Take (54 page)

“Where are we going?” she asked, confused.

Instead of answering, he took Danny from Calli’s arms and went back inside the plane, where he sat down on a long, gray leather sofa and drew Kate down beside him. Kate forgot that he hadn’t answered her question as she watched him carefully place his sleeping son across his lap and gently lay his big hand on Danny’s cheek. His big hand … with light bruises on the knuckles. He lifted his left arm and put it around Kate’s shoulders. “We’re going to a little village near Florence, Italy.”

Calli said something in Italian, and Mitchell leaned forward, peering out the plane’s window opposite him, and picked up a telephone, talking in some language to the pilots, Kate assumed, since the phone had no dial or buttons.

A moment later, she heard an odd loud sound from the rear of the plane; then Calli came walking forward, smiling. He continued past her and settled into a big leather recliner close to the cockpit.

The plane lurched slightly; she glanced out the window and realized it was starting to move. Just beyond the window, a car with a revolving light on the dashboard was racing down the road toward the gate near their hangar. The plane’s engines revved up to a whine, then it began to pick up speed. Over the plane’s sound system, the copilot’s voice provided the answer to her question as he said to an air traffic controller, “Midway Ground, this is Gulfstream One Two Tango Fox requesting expeditious taxi if possible. We will be ready at the runway.”

“Roger, One Two Tango Fox,” an answering voice said over the intercom. “Taxi via Kilo Yankee to runway 31 center.”

Kate had arrangements to make if she was going to Italy, but they could wait until tomorrow. Right now, all that really mattered was that Mitchell wanted Danny and her with him, which meant he’d told her the truth last night about how he felt.

The other thing that mattered was that an unmarked police car appeared to be after them! Kate unconsciously held her breath, watching the car through the plane’s window while the plane made a sharp left turn and gained speed, taxiing fast toward the runways ahead.

Finally the police car slowed, dropped back, and stopped, its light still revolving. Over the intercom, a voice said, “Gulfstream One Two Tango Fox, this is Midway Tower. You are cleared for immediate takeoff, runway 31 center.”

“Midway Tower,” the copilot confirmed, “Gulfstream One Two Tango Fox Rolling—runway 31 center.” As he spoke, the plane hurtled forward on a surge of power and speed, and was airborne within seconds.

“Why are we going to this village?”

“Because there’s a little church there I want to show you.”

He remembered a flight he’d made from St. Maarten to Chicago when he’d thought she was lost to him. “Kate,” he said. “I’m in love with you.”

In response, Kate lifted his hand and pressed his bruised knuckles to her cheek.

On the road below, near the hangar, Gray and MacNeil stood outside the car, leaning against it, watching the Gulfstream roar down the runway with its landing lights on and then lift off gracefully and begin to climb. The landing lights went off, the landing gear retracted, and the plane began to fade into the night sky.

Referring to Mitchell Wyatt, Gray smiled and said thoughtfully, “That is a man with style.”

MacNeil glanced sideways and said quietly, “So are you.”

T
HE DAY AFTER
M
ITCHELL’S PLANE TOOK OFF FROM
Midway Airport, handwritten messages were delivered to certain select people.

In Chicago, Matt and Meredith Farrell received theirs at nine-thirty
P.M.
Matt read it and grinned. “What is it?” Meredith asked.

“A wedding invitation from Mitchell,” he said, handing it to her. Meredith read it and laughed. “He kidnapped Kate and Danny, flew them to Italy, got them temporary passports, and he’s convinced Kate to marry him, but he’s afraid to give her time to change her mind. The wedding’s in three days. How like Mitchell to ignore all the obstacles and do whatever it takes.”

Meredith reached for the phone and called Julie Benedict, who had just received a similar message. “Zack is canceling a shoot right now,” Julie said. “Can you and Matt get away?”

Meredith looked at her husband and held up the invitation with a smile. He nodded, and Meredith told Julie, “Of course.”

The third message was delivered to the home of Mrs. Olivia Hebert and brought to her by her elderly butler. Mrs. Hebert opened the envelope, read the message, and burst into a jubilant smile. “Mitchell is marrying Kate Donovan in Italy in three days, Granger! You and I will be flown there in his private plane.”

“I shall look forward to the trip, madam,” Granger assured her.

“Guess who will be flying with us,” Olivia said dreamily as she pressed the message to her bosom and sighed.

“I haven’t any idea, madam.”

“Zack Benedict!” she exclaimed.

The fourth message was delivered the following morning to the rectory of St. Michael’s Church in Chicago. Father Mackey, the young assistant pastor, answered the door, accepted the envelope, and then carried it down the hall to Father Donovan’s office.

“This envelope is for you, father.”

“Just put it on my desk. I’m working on the budget for next month.”

“I promised the man who delivered it that I would hand it to you personally and at once.”

“Very well,” Father Donovan said, laying down his pencil and reaching for the envelope. “Have you made the changes I suggested on your sermon for Sunday?” he inquired of the young priest, who’d been sent to St. Michael’s to work under his tutelage.

“Some of them,” Father Mackey replied as Father Donovan slipped his thumb beneath the flap and opened the envelope.

His reply made Father Donovan sigh. “You’re a dedicated priest, Robert, and you write an excellent sermon, but you have a tendency to take a hard line when you should bend a little bit. Conversely, you bend a little too easily when you ought to take a hard line. I particularly notice that tendency when I listen to you trying to counsel parishioners who come to you for advice with their problems. As time goes by, I suspect you’ll learn when to be inflexible and stand up for principles and church doctrine, and when you need to relax and respect the realities of a parishioner’s life.” As he
spoke, Father Donovan extracted and unfolded a single sheet of paper bearing the initials
MW
at the top right-hand corner. He read what it said and half rose out of his chair, his mouth open in indignation.

“Not bad news, I hope?”

“He has lot of a nerve!” Father Donovan said when he recovered his power of coherent speech. Since the newspapers had already broken the story about the identity of the father of Kate’s baby and his sudden arrival in Chicago to pay the ransom, Father Donovan had no compunction about telling Father Mackey the contents of the letter in his hand. “Mitchell Wyatt apparently took my niece and her son, Danny, to Italy, and now he is summoning me there to perform their wedding in a little village near Florence the day after tomorrow! That man has b—gall,” he corrected himself.

Snatching up the telephone, he dialed the operator. “I need to place a call to Rome, Italy, immediately,” he said, and then he read her the telephone number printed on the bottom of Mitchell Wyatt’s personal letterhead. “Is this going to be an expensive call?”

“Excellent,” he replied when the operator quoted him what seemed an exorbitant per-minute rate. “Make sure it’s a
collect
call. Really? … A collect call is even more expensive? Excellent!” he replied vengefully.

“What’s that?” Mitchell asked Kate as she began unwrapping a package that had just been delivered to her by overnight international mail.

“I don’t know, but it’s from Gray Elliott,” Kate said.

“Be careful, it’s probably bugged.”

“It’s a wedding gift,” she said, reading the card.

“We should call the bomb squad.”

Ignoring that, Kate lifted the lid off the inner box and folded back the tissue. It was a beautiful antique
photograph album. Carefully, Kate lifted the album’s cover; then she looked up at Mitchell with shining eyes. Inside the album were enlargements of some of the photographs taken by MacNeil and Childress.

The first one was of Kate and Mitchell on the balcony of the hotel in St. Maarten. They were standing very close, smiling at each other, and a kiss was just a moment away.

“Mr. Wyatt?” Mitchell’s secretary said as she walked into the living room of his apartment. Out of deference to Kate, who was sitting beside him on the sofa, she explained in English, “The collect call you’ve been expecting is on your private line. He sounds … upset.”

Mitchell took his arm from around Kate’s shoulder. “This will be your uncle,” he said mildly as he stood up and walked over to a large, comfortable upholstered chair that was positioned in front of the windows overlooking Via Veneto. He sat down in the chair, glanced out the windows at one of his favorite views, and lifted the receiver of the phone next to it. “Good morning, Father Donovan. I assume you’ve gotten my letter?”

Father Donovan focused his gaze on the young priest he was trying to coach while he launched his opening verbal salvo at Mitchell Wyatt in an angry, no-nonsense voice. “Mitchell, do you honestly think for one moment that I would bind Kate for the rest of her life, with the sacred vows of holy matrimony, to a man who won’t allow her to have children?”

“No.”

“Then what is the purpose of sending me this—this outrageous ‘invitation’ to perform the ceremony in Italy?”

“I have promised Kate that she can have as many children as she wants whenever she wants to have them.”

Father Donovan nodded encouragingly to Father
Mackey, but in his enthusiasm over his success thus far, he pressed for added assurances instead of accepting what was already a clearly worded assurance from Mitchell. “And you won’t oppose her in any way?”

“On the contrary—I will take the greatest pleasure in helping her conceive them.”

“If that was intended to be a lewd, provocative remark, I am disappointed but not shocked.” At that statement, Father Mackey leaned forward worriedly in his chair, but Father Donovan smiled and dismissed the young priest’s concern with a silent wave of his fingers; then he moved on to the next skirmish he faced with the man on the telephone.

“Are you Catholic? … Yes, being baptized as one qualifies as being Catholic. … Have you been married before in a religious ceremony? … Well, if you haven’t been in a church, or near a cleric, in fifteen years, then I guess it’s safe to assume you haven’t been. However, I cannot make assumptions about anything as important as this, so I have to ask you to answer that question with a yes or no.”

Father Donovan repeated Mitchell’s curt negative answer for Father Mackey’s benefit, and then he braced himself for a major skirmish, but first he offered a little reassurance—in order to soften Mitchell up a little. “In that case, Mitchell, I see no insurmountable obstacles to my participating in your wedding to Kate. I gather from your note that you’ve already made arrangements for the ceremony with the local village priest and that he’s rushing the paperwork through proper channels. Is he willing to let me participate?”

Father Donovan nodded at Father Mackey, indicating that Mitchell’s answer to the last question was yes. “Well, that’s very good,” Father Donovan said delightedly; then he smoothly added, “If you haven’t been near a priest in fifteen years, then it’s been at least that long
since you went to confession. Naturally, you’ll need to take care of that matter before the ceremony—”

He stopped because Mitchell cut him off with a clipped, annoyed question; then Father Donovan responded in a tone meant to convey understanding and patience—but slightly strained patience: “No, Mitchell, I assure you I was not ‘joking.’ When you and Kate stand before me in God’s house on your wedding day, prepared to take your sacred vows, I want you to have souls as clean and shiny as you had when you were babies. That means you will both have been to confession beforehand. That is not a request, it is a requirement.”

After a pause to let that sink in, Father Donovan said much more kindly, “Children frequently dread going to confession because they associate it with guilt and embarrassment, but the sacrament of confession is actually intended to offer forgiveness and understanding, to help us feel truly absolved.”

He paused again, waiting for a reaction, but the line was dead silent, so he forged ahead. “If there’s a language barrier, or some other reason you don’t want to make your confession to the local village priest, then I’ll hear your confession myself if you’d like—”

That offer got an instantaneous response from Mitchell, one that made Father Donovan’s shoulders shake with laughter. Clamping his palm over the phone’s mouthpiece, he whispered to Father Mackey, “He just told me I could take that fantasy with me all the way to hell.”

Recovering his composure with an effort, Father Donovan said almost gently, “Mitchell, I’m not going to hell and neither are you. You may confess to any priest you like, so long as you’ve taken care of the matter before the ceremony. Now, please put Kate on the phone. Your future wife and I need to have a little talk.”

In Rome, Mitchell jerked the phone away from his ear and handed it to Kate, who had perched on the arm of his chair. “It’s your turn,” he said irritably, and got up to fix them both a cocktail. As he listened to Kate’s end of the conversation, however, a little of his ire began to transform into amusement, because she apparently wasn’t getting off any easier than he had. In fact, whatever her uncle was saying to her caused her to frequently murmur, “Yes, I know,” and “Yes, you’re right,” and “Yes, I will.”

It was at least five minutes later when she finally said, “Good-bye, we’ll see you in a couple of days,” and hung up the phone.

Mitchell handed her the drink he’d fixed her, then sat down beside her and pulled her onto his lap. “Your uncle is a self-righteous, pompous, sanctimonious, petty tyrant—” he announced irritably.

Smiling softly into his eyes, Kate pressed her fingers to his chiseled lips to silence him. “He was giving me a lecture on the need to give you the benefit of the doubt in the future and reminding me about my part in what went wrong with us before. He was telling me that you’re a man of tremendous character and personal integrity, a man who is capable of loving Danny and me deeply and forever with gentleness and strength.”