Every Breath You Take Read online

  Also by Judith McNaught

  SOMEONE TO WATCH OVER ME

  NIGHT WHISPERS

  PERFECT

  PARADISE

  ALMOST HEAVEN

  DOUBLE STANDARDS

  A KINGDOM OF DREAMS

  ONCE AND ALWAYS

  REMEMBER WHEN

  SOMETHING WONDERFUL

  TENDER TRIUMPH

  UNTIL YOU

  WHITNEY, MY LOVE

  To Holly and Clay,

  with all my love

  Acknowledgments

  To Michael Bublé, my favorite singer, with gratitude and affection; Dana and Richard LeConey, two beautiful people who make everyone else beautiful; Dick Smith, pilot and friend; James and Nicole Trussell III, whose wedding I missed in order to get this book out; Tamara Anderson, my legal consultant, fellow writer, and wonderful friend; Joe Grant, my other legal consultant and dear friend; the Genest family—Jordan, Michael, Genevieve, Alexandra, and Anastasia—who sacrificed Thanksgiving together and a lot more for the sake of this book; Dick Huber, Bob Smith, and Ed Willis, three trustworthy real-life heroes who came to my rescue when I needed them most … and, most especially, the production department at Ballantine, which will never fully recover from the effort required to get this book out on schedule.

  Most of all, my heartfelt gratitude to three Ballantine employees, who accomplished the impossible by getting this book done on time: Charlotte Herscher, Daniel Mallory, and my editor of twenty years, Linda Marrow. And a very special thank-you to Linda’s new twins, Callie Virginia and Matthew Clifton, whose feeding schedule was frequently disrupted because of me, and an equally huge thank-you to new daddy Jim Impoco, who is used to having his schedule disrupted by my deadlines.

  Chapter One

  HIGH ATOP A SNOW-COVERED HILL, THE WYATT MANSION perched like a regal crown, its Gothic stone spires pointing skyward, its stained-glass windows glowing like jewels.

  A mile away, limousines and luxury cars paraded in a slow stream toward a uniformed security guard posted at the gated entrance to the estate. As each vehicle reached him, the security guard checked the occupants’ names off the guest list; then he issued a politely worded edict to the driver: “I’m sorry, because of the snowfall, Mr. Wyatt does not want any vehicles parked inside the gates this evening.”

  If a chauffeur was at the wheel, the guard stepped aside, allowing the chauffeur to turn into the drive, proceed through the gates, and deliver his passengers to the house before returning to the main road to park and wait.

  If the vehicle’s owner was at the wheel, the guard motioned him toward a line of shiny black Range Rovers parked up the hill at a cross street, wisps of exhaust curling from their tailpipes. “Please pull forward and leave your car with an attendant,” the guard instructed. “You’ll be shuttled up to the house.”

  However, as each new arrival soon discovered, that process was neither as simple nor as convenient as it sounded. Although there were plenty of helpful attendants and available Range Rovers waiting within sight, large snowbanks and parked cars had encroached on the winding residential lane so that it was almost impassably narrow in places, and the steady procession of slow-moving vehicles had churned four inches of unplowed snow from earlier that day into thick slush.

  The whole ordeal was unnerving and annoying to everyone. … Everyone except Detectives Childress and MacNeil, who were in an unmarked Chevrolet that was backed into a driveway one hundred and fifty yards uphill from the entrance to the Wyatt estate. The two detectives were part of a handpicked team, formed earlier that day, assigned to keep Mitchell Wyatt under twenty-four-hour surveillance.

  At eight PM, they had tailed him here, to Cecil Wyatt’s estate, where he swerved around the security guard who was trying to wave him down, then turned into the private drive and disappeared from sight. Once Wyatt vanished, there was nothing for Childress and MacNeil to do but park and make a record of whom he was associating with. To facilitate that, Childress was observing the scene through a pair of night-vision binoculars, reporting license-plate numbers and miscellaneous information to MacNeil, who wrote it down in a notebook.

  “We have a new contender approaching the starting line,” Childress murmured as another pair of headlights reached the security guard at the gate. He read the vehicle’s license plate aloud for MacNeil; then he described the vehicle and driver. “White Mercedes AMG, this year’s model, or possibly last year’s. Driver is a Caucasian male in his early sixties, passenger is a Caucasian female, early thirties, and she’s snuggled up against her smiling sugar daddy.”

  When MacNeil didn’t reply, Childress glanced at him and realized MacNeil’s attention was focused on a pair of headlights slowly descending the hill from the right. “Must be someone who lives up here,” Childress remarked. “And he’s not only rich, he’s curious,” he added as the black Lincoln Town Car came to a full stop and cut off its headlights directly in front of the driveway where they were parked.

  The back door opened, and a man in his late thirties wearing a dark overcoat got out. Childress rolled down his window, intending to make an excuse for their presence, but as the man paused and put his cell phone to his ear, Childress recognized him. “That’s Gray Elliott. What’s he doing out here?”

  “He lives nearby. Maybe he’s attending the party.”

  “Or maybe he wants to pitch in and do some surveillance with us,” Childress joked, but there was admiration in his voice. After only one year in office as Cook County’s state’s attorney, Gray Elliott was a hero to the cops—a brilliant attorney who wasn’t afraid to take on tough, risky cases. The fact that he was also a wealthy socialite who’d dedicated himself to public service rather than the pursuit of greater wealth added another facet to his heroic image.

  MacNeil liked him for all of those reasons but MacNeil had always liked Gray—even when he had been a carefree, reckless teenager whom MacNeil had busted for several minor youthful offenses.

  Elliott finished his phone call, walked over to the car, leaned down, and looked inside. “You must be Childress,” he said by way of greeting; then he shifted his attention to MacNeil. “I’d like a word with you, Mac.”

  MacNeil got out and joined him at the back of the car. The wind had died down, and the engine was running, pumping warm exhaust at their feet. “I asked that you be assigned to this case,” Gray told him, “because you headed the investigation into William Wyatt’s disappearance, and you’re familiar with all the players.”

  “Not all of them,” Mac interrupted, unable to keep his curiosity in check. “I never heard of Mitchell Wyatt until today. Who the hell is he, and why are we watching him?”

  “He’s William Wyatt’s half brother, and I believe he’s responsible for William’s disappearance.”

  “His half brother?” MacNeil repeated, his forehead furrowing into a doubtful frown. “When William disappeared, I interviewed all his family members and all his friends. No one ever mentioned a half brother. In fact, when I interviewed Cecil Wyatt, the old man repeatedly told me how important it was that we find his only grandson, and bring William home to his wife and kid.”

  “You were deliberately misled by an arrogant, devious old man who wasn’t ready to admit he had a grandson he’d never acknowledged. I’ve known the Wyatts my whole life, and I never knew William had a half brother. For that matter, neither did William until this past June.

  “According to the story I was just told, William’s father, Edward, had an affair with his secretary when William was a couple years old and his mother was dying of cancer. The secretary got pregnant, and William’s mother died a few months later, but when the secretary pressed Edward to marry her as he’d promised, he stalled, then denied the baby was his. Sh