Always Read online

  The two agents cuffed the man to a chair that was bolted to the floor, then took their places beside him.

  “You may go,” Greg Ryerson said.

  “He’s—” one of the agents began, but Ryerson stopped him with a look.

  Silently, the agents left the room, closing the door behind them.

  Greg went to the big window and closed the blinds. He wasn’t at a high enough level to rate an outside window, but one wall of his office was glass and looked down over the enormous lobby below. He could close the blinds to slits and secretly observe the comings and goings of everyone—something he’d rather do than watch a bunch of birds in a bunch of trees.

  Turning back, Greg looked at the man cuffed to the chair. He’d been roughed up. The corner of his mouth was bleeding and the cut over his eye might need a few stitches. Other than that the man looked good. For a second, memories flashed through Greg’s mind: a van rolling down a cliff; a man’s body flying through the air; a man in a hospital bed, his face covered in bandages.

  “So, Jack,” Greg said conversationally, “how are you?”

  “Bleeding to death. You want to get these things off of me?”

  “Think I’ll be safe?”

  “You won’t be if you leave me tied up for another two minutes.”

  Smiling, Greg opened a box on his marble-topped desk, withdrew a key, and unlocked the handcuffs. As Jack rubbed his wrists, Greg opened a small closet to reveal a sink with glasses above. He took a cloth from a drawer, wet it with hot water, and handed it to Jack. “Want me to get a doctor?”

  Jack raised an eyebrow as he held the cloth to his temple. “I’m still recovering from the last time you got me a doctor.”

  Again, images flashed across Greg’s mind: Jack’s smashed face, unrecognizable, as he was wheeled into an operating room. “Yeah, I did a good job that time,” Greg said, watching Jack relax and smile. The man sitting in front of him bore no resemblance to the boy he’d grown up with. That boy had inherited his father’s big, hooked nose and the protruding brow. But that face had been crushed and rebuilt. Out of necessity, Jack had had an “extreme makeover,” and he’d come out looking a great deal better than he’d gone in.

  “You know, Greg,” Jack said slowly, “if you’d wanted to see me, you could have called. Left a message. We could have had lunch. You really didn’t need to do all…this.” He waved his hand to indicate his injured face.

  “Where’s the fun in that? Besides, all your numbers are tapped.”

  “By you guys.”

  “Us guys. You’re one of us, remember?”

  “I try to forget.” Jack folded the cloth and wiped the blood from his lip. “So what do you want?”

  Greg went to the bar and removed a small glass from behind some junk glasses purchased at the local home store. It was Waterford crystal and only Jack drank from it. Bending, Greg removed a bottle of twenty-year-old port from beneath the sink, then poured the glass three quarters full and handed it to Jack. “I need a progress report. How are you doing? What have you found out? Ready to make any collars?”

  Jack didn’t answer for a few moments as he sipped his port, seeming to weigh Greg’s words. “You never were good at lying,” Jack said. “Remember how I always found out the truth when we were kids?” Lifting his head, he looked Greg in the eye. “What’s happened and what do you need me for?”

  Nervously, Greg moved behind his desk, putting a barrier between him and Jack. “Your father was kidnapped about six weeks ago.”

  “And here I thought it was something important,” Jack said lightly. “By the way, now that you have me in here, how do you plan to get me out? Those boys you sent after me think I have a record going back to when I was nine!”

  Greg didn’t smile, nor did he answer Jack’s question. “I know what your father did to you. I know what he did to my mother after Dad’s death. More than anyone else on earth I know what a cold, selfish bastard J. Barrett Hallbrooke is. I lived with it for years, remember?”

  Jack sipped his port and studied the glass. “Why do I feel that there’s a ‘but’ in this?”

  “There’s a big one. But the president wants him. Needs him.”

  “Needs the Hallbrooke money,” Jack said, his jaw rigid. “Good ol’ dad can write a check but he can’t forgive or—”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know all that,” Greg said impatiently.

  “John Barrett Hallbrooke is the coldest bastard on earth. Drop him in a volcano and he’d freeze it. He can’t go fishing because he freezes the water for three miles around the boat. The cook stores the frozen food in his bed. I was there, remember? I helped make up the jokes.”

  “You forgot the one where he kissed my mother and she froze to death. Not the Midas touch, the ice touch.”

  “Jack,” Greg said in a tone of great patience, “I’m not asking you to forgive the man. I just need for you to find him.”

  “If he’s been gone six weeks, he’s probably dead.” Jack finished his port and set the glass on a table in front of the window, then stood up and looked through the blinds, his back to Greg.

  “He’s still alive. He’s confined, but not being tortured. The people holding him want something other than money.”

  “Couldn’t be any of my relatives then,” Jack said, turning back to Greg. “Look, I’d really like to help you on this but I can’t. This project I’m on is nearly completed. If you hadn’t dragged me out to play jewel thief I would be a lot closer to the end. Did they tell you that I got chased into an alley by some cops? I had to hide facedown on a filthy ledge with a bunch of pigeons on my back. If I hadn’t shown them where I was they would have given up. Which reminds me.” Jack reached into his pocket, withdrew a ruby and diamond necklace, and put it on Greg’s desk. “That girl you planted? Cute but not much upstairs.”

  Greg glared at Jack. “You’re avoiding me.”

  “Should I take the elevator or the stairs to get out of here?”

  “You do know, don’t you, that all I have to do is push a button and you’ll be locked up? There are only three people in the bureau who know you’re working for us, and I’m the only one who knows what you look like now.”

  Even though Greg had put on his most threatening scowl, Jack just smiled at him. “Pistols at dawn?”

  Deflated, Greg sat down in his chair, put his face in his hands for a moment, then looked back up at Jack. “This case is driving us crazy! It’s top secret and every day it’s getting harder to keep it a secret. Your father—”

  “Mr. Hallbrooke.”

  “Yeah, okay. Iceberg Man. Whatever. He was a joke to us as kids, but he’s not a joke to a whole lot of people. He practically supports half a dozen charities by himself. And stop looking at me like that! His money helps a lot of people.” Greg grabbed a piece of paper off his desk. “This is a letter from the White House. Signed by the president. It’s an official command for us to get off our butts and find J. Barrett Hallbrooke the third and get him back at his checkbook.”

  Grimacing, Jack looked away for a moment, then back at Greg. “Okay, so tell me what you know—not that I’m interested, mind you, but maybe I can tell you which of my relatives has him.”

  Greg moved to the front of the desk. “We’ve checked out Gus and Theo and that man she married. Clean, as far as we can tell. We have them bugged and under surveillance. We put a maid in there and they’re on camera all day long.”

  “They’re in the house?”

  “Sure. They were contacted by us and—”

  “Back up. Why you? Who got the ransom note?”

  “I have no idea who was told your father was missing and how he or she was told. No one’s told me a ransom has been asked for. The only civilians who know about your father’s disappearance are his siblings,” Greg said.

  “And let me guess. The minute you told them they started crying and begged to be allowed to be as near as possible to their beloved brother.”

  Greg chuckled. “Exactly.” Pausing, he s