Every Breath You Take Read online

  Mitchell followed in his wake, his expression carefully neutral, while cameras tracked his progress and a barrage of shouted questions assailed him from every angle. …

  “Mr. Wyatt, why are you here?”

  “Is your nephew Billy involved in this?”

  Another reporter scored a direct hit: “Are you Danny’s father?”

  Mitchell ground his teeth against the urge to say, “Yes!” He’d grown up wondering who his own father was and overhearing adults speculating about his origins behind his back. Because of Kate, his son was in the same humiliating position now, and the entire city of Chicago was doing the speculating. The only thing that kept him from telling the reporters that he was Danny’s father was fear that it might somehow put his son in more jeopardy.

  One of the cops guarding the entrance reached for the ornate brass handle on the heavy wooden door and shoved it open just enough for Mitchell, Calli, and the cop escorting them to squeeze past. It closed behind them, shutting out the uproar outside. In comparison to that, the interior of the large restaurant seemed almost tomblike, but it was far from deserted.

  Two long rows of tables had been set up on the far left of the main dining room, and at least two dozen people were seated there, answering ringing phones that were obviously newly installed, their cords strung haphazardly across the floor. A few restaurant employees were keeping coffee cups filled and passing out sandwiches to the task force on the telephones, while other employees looked on in watchful silence, clearly hoping for some indication that one of the people on the phones was getting a good tip.

  Pearson and Levinson were sitting at a nearby table with two black suitcases between them, openly eavesdropping on the people manning the telephones.

  “Come this way,” the cop told Mitchell, and both attorneys looked around sharply to check out the new arrival. Mitchell nodded at them but continued following the cop, who seemed to be leading him toward a pair of large doors at the rear of the restaurant that opened into a kitchen, where more employees were gathered. At the kitchen, the cop turned to the right, however, and headed down a long paneled hallway lined with offices. At the end of the hallway, a staircase led up to a landing with an open door. The cop gestured toward it, stopped, and stepped aside for Mitchell to pass. “The apartment is up there,” he said.

  Mitchell glanced at Calli, told him in Italian to stay downstairs, and continued walking. The back hallway with its staircase leading up to an apartment were the only identifiable characteristics that this restaurant shared with the one Kate had invented and used as a backdrop for her charming stories about her childhood escapades, Mitchell realized.

  However, he had no difficulty recognizing the first two men he saw when he strode into the spacious apartment’s comfortable living room. The same detectives who’d questioned Mitchell when he was a suspect in William’s death and who’d photographed him in the islands with Kate were standing in the kitchen area now, watching him. Gray Elliott walked forward, held out his hand, and said with a grim smile, “I’m sorry we’re once again meeting under very difficult circumstances—”

  Mitchell ignored his outstretched hand along with his implied sympathy. “Have you heard anything?”

  When he said that he hadn’t, Mitchell turned around expecting to see Kate somewhere in the living room, and instead found his view blocked by a stocky man with sandy hair, green eyes, and a Roman collar. “I’m Kate’s uncle, James Donovan,” the priest said, holding out his hand and studying Mitchell’s face. “You’re Mitchell, of course.”

  “Of course,” Mitchell agreed sardonically. He shook the priest’s hand and then he terminated the social niceties. “Where is she?” he asked bluntly.

  Unfazed by Mitchell’s rudeness and lack of respect, the priest turned and gestured toward a hallway at the far end of the living room. “Danny’s bedroom is the first door on the right,” he said calmly. “Kate is in there.”

  The last thing Mitchell had expected to feel when he walked into Danny’s room and saw Kate Donovan was a surge of pity, but pity was exactly what he felt. She was sitting in a rocking chair next to Danny’s bed with her eyes closed and her head tipped back, clutching a big gray flop-eared rabbit to her chest. One bare foot was curled beneath her, the other foot on the floor, gently pushing the rocker back and forth. Other stuffed animals, all of them in seemingly perfect condition, were neatly lined up on the floor behind her, but the faded, scruffy rabbit in her arms looked as if it had been dragged behind a car … or dragged behind a little boy who’d taken it everywhere with him.

  The bedroom itself had been designed to delight a child and inspire his imagination, Mitchell noticed as he looked around. Bright jungle murals covered the walls, with whimsical animals and colorful birds peeking out from tall grass and frolicking in the branches of lush trees that stretched up to and partway across the ceiling.

  On the wall to his right, two rows of long shelves were mounted within child’s reach and filled with toy trucks. On the wall to his left was a small bed with a mock picket fence for a headboard, with carved parrots, macaws, canaries, and parakeets roosting atop the white slats—all of them fast asleep.

  Trying to adjust to the reality of being in a bedroom that belonged to a two-year-old son he’d never known existed, Mitchell gazed at the woman who’d conceived his son during an unforgettable night of lovemaking. Clad in jeans and a yellow turtleneck sweater, with her red hair loose around her shoulders and her russet eyelashes lying like curly fans on her unnaturally pale cheeks, she looked painfully forlorn, totally defenseless, and very young …

  But then, Kate Donovan’s looks had always been deceptive, Mitchell reminded himself. The proof of her true nature, of her boundless arrogance and audacity, was all around him in the form of a bedroom that belonged to a son he didn’t know, and who did not know him; a son she’d intended to deprive of all contact with his father—just the way Mitchell had been raised. Those thoughts demolished Mitchell’s pity and toughened his tone as he announced his presence with two curt words: “Hello, Kate.”

  Her entire body lurched in shock, her eyes snapped open, and she stared at him in utter disbelief; then she gave him a trembling smile and gazed at him with unabashed warmth, her wide emerald eyes shimmering with tears of gratitude and suppressed anguish. “Thank you,” she whispered.

  For one of the few times in his adult life, Mitchell’s ability to remain coolly objective and logical deserted him, and he stared at her in distracted uncertainty. With her wounded green eyes lifted to his and her curly red hair lying like a mantle around her shoulders, Kate Donovan reminded him of a heartbroken Irish Madonna who was bravely trying to smile through her tears. …

  The same “Madonna,” Mitchell reminded himself cynically, who’d entertained herself in St. Maarten by taking him for a mental and physical roller-coaster ride, and then left him standing on a dock waiting for her like an idiotic, lovesick schoolboy while she flew back to Chicago with Evan Bartlett.

  Abruptly, Mitchell disengaged himself emotionally from her and from their past history, and focused solely on the present situation. “What are you thanking me for?” he asked shortly.

  Until that moment, Kate had been content to remain in the rocking chair, letting what she thought was a dream unfold in front of her, but Mitchell’s curt tone hit her like a warning slap, jarring her into the reality of his presence and doing so with nerve-wracking suddenness.

  Still clutching the rabbit, she stood up in order to more properly convey her respect and gratitude, and she answered his question by saying with earnest formality, “Thank you for lending me the ransom money. I’ve already given your lawyers an IOU and asked them to draw up a formal loan agreement. I told them I’ll put my restaurant up as collateral and pay you back over a twenty-year period—”

  She broke off when she realized that the undeniably lenient repayment terms she was suggesting were making him so furious that his eyes were turning to shards of ice and a muscle was beginning to tic