Dreamveil (29 page)

There was, however, shattered glass and splashes of red wine all over the kitchen floor.

“Looks like someone had a party last night.” He didn’t have time to worry about whatever had pissed off Dansant; he had to track down Alana King. If he didn’t find her by that afternoon, he’d stop looking and focus on getting Rowan out of harm’s way. He wasn’t sure yet how he’d smuggle her out without tipping off King’s surveillance team, but whether he had to stuff her in a garbage bag or roll her up in a carpet, he was getting her out of the city.

Sean spent the day following up with every witness who had seen Alana King, but no one had remembered any new information. His canvass of the surrounding area also turned up nothing. He spent hours showing the age-progressed photo of Alana to everyone who worked around the coffee shop where she had been spotted, and it was then that he struck gold.

“Yeah, I know this kid,” the owner of a small electronics store said. “She don’t come out during the day much, but at night I seen her plenty. Skittish as hell. She flops over at that hotel they boarded up. You know, the one with the family that’s suing each other over ownership. Greedy bastards.”

Sean wasn’t convinced. “If she’s so skittish, how did you get close enough to see her face?”

The shopkeeper smiled and hefted a complicated-looking pair of goggles. “Night vision lenses. I use them when I do nighttime shoots. Keeps me from running into trouble in dark alleys.”

He wondered just what sort of photos the man was shooting. “Did you happen to take any pictures of her?”

The man shook his head. “I post mine online for my, ah, Web site. You can’t put up any of people unless you get a signed release from them.” He winked. “Unless you blur their faces.”

Sean would have gone to the hotel to check out the man’s claim, but he was running out of daylight. He drove instead to the restaurant, and called his answering service on the way to check in.

“Hey, Sean,” Rita greeted him happily. “How’s it going? You got the best messages tonight. We’re all talking about them.”

“They’re that good, huh?” He slowed down to stop at a red light. “So read them to me.”

“First one’s from Mr. Dansant, and it’s a scorcha. He made me write it all down, exactly like he said. He sounded really pissed off.”

Sean grinned. “So what did he say?”

“The message is, ‘I know you slept with Rowan, and now she believes that she is in love with you. If you agree, tonight I will tell her everything, Miami.’ Oh, wait. Diane wrote that wrong. It’s ‘
mon ami
.’ ” Rita sighed. “I know I’m not supposed to ask, Sean, but are you in love with this girl, or is this just a fling?”

He spoke without thinking. “I’m in love.”

“Oh, jeez, that’s so romantic.” Rita sounded as if she was on the verge of an orgasm. “You are the best guy in the city, I swear to God. Is she gorgeous? Are you buying her a ring? Can we meet her? Speaking of which, when are we going to meet you?”

“Let’s hold off on planning the wedding until I get the rest of my messages,” he told her drily. “What’s next?”

“This one said her name was Taire,” Rita said, her voice a little more stern. She spelled the name out. “You say it like it’s short for Theresa or something. Anyway, she wants to meet you at the restaurant. She says she knows where the girl you’re looking for is. I hope you’re not keeping a honey on the side, Sean. Not a good idea if you want things to work out with Rowan, you know?”

“She’s just business.” Although he couldn’t recall speaking to anyone named Taire since he’d taken the King case. “Anything else?”

“Someone called from your home number, but they hung up without saying anything. We just logged the call-in number a couple of hours ago.” Rita sounded disappointed. “Maybe it was Rowan.” She caught her breath. “You don’t think she knows about you meeting this girl Taire, do you?”

“I don’t know.” He pulled into the alley behind the restaurant. “I’ve got to go, Rita. Hold my calls for today.”

“What if Mr. Dansant calls again?”

He grunted. “Tell him I said he can fuck off.”

Rita chuckled. “Sean, I could get like so fired for saying that.”

“All right. Tell him Rowan is my business now.” He saw a young girl waiting by the back door of the restaurant. “Talk to you later, sweetheart.” He climbed out of the car, and when he drew close to the girl he saw she matched the description Rowan had given him of the homeless girl. “Is your name Taire?”

She nodded. “You’re the guy who lives upstairs, right?”

“Yeah. How did you get my number?”

“A girl gave me this.” She produced one of his business cards. “She said you’re looking for Alana King.”

“You know where she is?”

“No, but that girl who works here, Rowan, she knows,” Taire said. “She was just in your apartment for a while before she left.” She glanced at the windows. “I saw her up there.”

Sean was tempted to run upstairs, but he had to find Rowan and get her stashed someplace safe. “Which way did she go?”

She shrugged. “She probably went down to this place where she goes by the river.”

“What’s the address?”

“I don’t know, but she walks down there a lot,” Taire said. “I followed her a couple times.” She gave his car a hopeful look. “If you drive I can show you where.”

“All right.” He went to the car and unlocked the passenger door. “Get in.”

As he drove toward the river, Sean glanced at the girl, who had flipped down the visor to look in the mirror while she brushed out her tangled curls and fluffed her bangs. “You’re sure Rowan walked toward the river?”

Taire nodded as she searched in her bag and retrieved a lipstick. “She probably went to meet Alana. They’re friends, you know.”

“Are they?” Sean recognized the lipstick; it was one Rowan left on the shelf in the bathroom they shared. The brush belonged to her, too. “How did Rowan become friends with someone like Alana King?”

“She used to live in her house.” She pouted at the mirror before turning and smiling at him. “Do you think this is too red for me?”

“It makes you look very grown-up.” Sean recalled the age progression he’d done on Alana King’s childish face. Taire bore a faint resemblance to what Alana would have looked like as a teenager, but there was something off about her features. Her nose was a fraction too short, and her eyes weren’t the exact same shape. “Do you know Alana King?”

“No, but I’ve seen pictures of her.” She smoothed back her curls, revealing a long, faint scar running just along the curve of her jawline. “She was the most beautiful woman in the world.”

He saw the dark roots at the base of her blond hair that she was trying to disguise by fluffing it. “Was she.”

Taire nodded. “She was perfect. I mean, she is.”

“Who showed you the pictures?” he asked carefully.

She sighed as she tucked away the lipstick. “Father did. He wanted me to grow up to be just like her. That’s why he had them dye my hair blond, and do all the operations. My face and my body, they weren’t good enough.” She turned to him. “Do you know Rowan doesn’t even need operations? She can just change into Alana anytime she wants.”

The girl was obviously unbalanced, and Sean’s mind raced as he tried to decide what next to do. “Taire, maybe I should take you back to the restaurant. You could wait there while I find Rowan.”

“She loves you,” Taire said, sounding forlorn. “That’s why I need you. To make her do it for Father.”

Sean felt something slam him back into the driver’s seat, an unseen force that held him pinned even as it took over controlling the wheel and the accelerator. “What are you doing?” he said, trying to free himself.

She turned to look through the windshield. “I’m going home.”

A thin, older man dressed in a dark suit opened the door a moment later. “Welcome, miss,” he said as he stepped back.

She walked past him into the long hall. The air inside was warmer but smelled sterile, as if she’d just stepped into a void. Hepa-filters in every duct, she guessed, along with electronic dust-zappers and God only knew what else. A speck of dirt wouldn’t survive long within these walls.

“May I take your jacket?” the butler was asking.

“No.”

“As you wish. Mr. King is in the master suite.” He gestured toward the hall to the right. When she didn’t move, he added, “He’s expecting you, miss.”

“Thanks.” She shoved her hands in her pockets and strode down the hall, which ended at the double steel doors of a private lift. That took her up five flights to the top floor, where she stepped out into one of the most beautiful rooms in Manhattan.

The antiques dated back to the turn of the century, but the art hanging on the polished cherry wall panels was much older. She eyed the brooding masterful Renoir hung between a complicated da Vinci sketch and a serene Raphael Madonna before walking across priceless Syrian rugs to the open arch leading into the next chamber.

With all the pricey, impressive stuff displayed in the receiving room, the master suite seemed almost bare. A plain four-poster bed stood against one wall, and a complicated computer system neatly arranged on an extended black worktable took up most of another. There were no chairs, tables, or other furnishings; the only other objects in the room were various bits of portable medical equipment crowded against both sides of the bed.

The old man lay under the plain white linens, his balding head and thin face the color of ash. A few tufts of white hair stuck out over his ears, and the white bristles of an uneven beard tried to cover his lantern jaw and the lower half of his hollowed cheeks. Although his labored breathing rasped audibly, his chest barely moved. Only his eyes, two little espresso beans floating in bloodshot whites, showed any signs of real life.

Rowan walked up to the end of the bed but didn’t touch it. “I’m here, old man.”

“So you are.” The corners of his mouth tried to dig into his jowls. “I never thought I would see you again.”

“I thought you’d be dead by now.” She studied the equipment keeping him alive. “Maybe if I hang around for dinner.”

“I regret that I’ve disappointed you.” He lifted a hand with effort, and gestured toward the heart monitor. “As you’ve guessed, I don’t have much time left. It’s an aggressive form of brain cancer, if you are interested.”

“I’m not.” She shoved her hands in her pockets. “What do you want?”

“My dear.” His smile was a ghastly thing, a skull’s grin. “What have I always wanted? Only your happiness, and my own.”

She produced the photograph she’d taken from Sean’s apartment. “You didn’t waste any time in looking for me, or in replacing me.”

“No one could ever take your place in my heart,” he countered. “You know that.”

Nothing he said would move her. “I’m sure you got my phone message, but in case I wasn’t clear enough, here’s the deal. You call your guns off Sean Meriden, and I’ll do whatever you want.”

“That’s a very generous offer.” He inspected her face. “Seeing as you don’t know what I want.”

“Oh, I know, old man.” She would have all the time in the world to puke over it later, when he was in the ground. “But I’m not doing it until I know that Sean is safe.”

The old man pushed aside the linens and rose from the bed. The difficulty of the task seemed beyond him, and his face blanched as he placed his feet on the floor. He rested for a minute before straightening, and held on to the bed-post while he gasped in air.

Rowan didn’t move a muscle. If he dropped dead on her now, she’d ring down for champagne.

“As you’ve surmised, I stopped searching for you several years ago,” Gerald told her as he shuffled around the end of the bed. “I had resigned myself to the situation and, with some alternative arrangements, made the best of it.”

Rowan wanted to hit him. “I know all about your ‘alternative arrangements.’ How could you do all that to another kid? She could never be what you wanted, and you knew it.”

“I had hoped she would prove a reasonable substitute. Besides,” he chided, “it wasn’t as if she had any sort of future. Her birth mother abandoned the girl a few hours after her birth. She would have spent her childhood in foster care. I gave her the life children only dream of having.”

“While you hacked up her face and tried to make her into a dead woman.” Now she
was
going to puke. “If you found someone else to play Alana, why did you come after me?”

“I discovered—much to my consternation—that while some things can be altered, others cannot.” He propped himself against the end of the bed. “Such as the cancer my physician discovered growing in my brain. It was only after I was diagnosed as terminally ill that I realized what a mistake I had made by giving up the search for you.”

“You thought I’d come back here and hold your hand? Stay with you to the end? Are you out of your fucking mind?”

“I see your language has suffered immensely since leaving my care.” He sighed. “The fact of the matter is that I did not appreciate the other gifts you possess. There is no one like you, my dear, and there never will be again.”

The sick smell rolling off him—a stomach-twisting blend of chemicals and rot—didn’t make her step back. The greed in his eyes did. “Where is the kid?”

“I haven’t the slightest notion.” His upper lip curled back from teeth pasty with plaque. “She doesn’t matter anymore. You’re home again, my princess. You can give me what I want and need.”

Princess.
If he touched her, she was going to scream, and she wasn’t sure she would ever stop. “I want to hear you make the calls to pull your men off Sean. Now.”

He nodded. “Of course I will. Just as soon as the nurse arrives and begins the procedure.”

She glanced over her shoulder. “What are you talking about? What procedure?”

“A very simple blood transfusion,” he told her. “It shouldn’t take long. Thirty minutes or so.”

Rowan looked at the medical equipment again, and saw the two long tubes that hadn’t yet been used, and the tray of needles, swabs, and tape. “You want my blood?”

“I want to live,” he corrected, “and your blood is the only thing that can save me now.”