Every Breath You Take Read online

  He studied the scribbles on the chalkboard and concluded that his son was probably not an artistic prodigy. Since no one seemed to be paying any attention to Mitchell, he leaned over and opened one of the window seats. It contained an assortment of toy trucks and cars. From that, Mitchell concluded that Danny’s future might be in the transportation industry. He didn’t realize he was hoping his son might share his love of airplanes until he looked inside the second box: there were at least half a dozen toy planes.

  Mitchell straightened and looked at his watch, wondering why it was taking so long to get confirmation that the boy in the guesthouse was Danny. Fifteen minutes later there was a commotion on the stairs, and Elliott got off his stool, striding swiftly to the door. “Why in the hell didn’t you call us?” he said, but underneath the reprimand he sounded excited, and Mitchell automatically tensed.

  When Elliott walked back into the room, he was carrying a little boy and grinning from ear to ear. Kate’s uncle walked a few steps toward the bedroom hallway and called, “Kate, come out here right away. There’s someone who wants to see you.”

  Elliott lowered the child to the floor as Kate rounded the corner from the hallway. People began crowding into the room from the stairwell, and the scene exploded with joy and motion. “Danny?” Kate cried, and the child laughed out loud at the same time his mother burst into tears and dropped to her knees in front of him. “Danny!” she whispered, running her hands over his face and chest, then dragging him into a crushing embrace, weeping while she chanted his name like a prayer. “Danny, Danny, Danny.”

  It was an exhibition of maternal love beyond anything Mitchell had ever imagined. It imprinted itself on his mind and touched something deeper as he came to terms with the reality that the weeping, joyous mother who was holding her son in a fierce embrace was the same woman he had held in an even fiercer embrace in bed in St. Maarten.

  She swept her son up and carried him to the doorway to show him to the crowd gathered there, and it dawned on Mitchell that the people in the doorway were mostly dressed in white, like kitchen staff, or in black suits, like waiters.

  “Kate?” Father Donovan whispered. “I’m going to leave now. I’ll handle the press downstairs and make a public statement on your behalf, thanking everyone for their prayers.”

  “I should do that myself,” Kate said, clutching Danny more tightly, and stepping forward. “While I’m doing it, will you call Holly and leave a message on her cell phone that Danny is back? I want her to know he’s okay as soon as her plane lands. And I need to phone Molly at the hospital right away, too.”

  “I’ll take care of all the phone calls, and I’ll tell the reporters that you’ll make a personal statement outside in a little while,” her uncle said firmly. “Right now, Mitchell has a right to some private time with Danny and you.”

  Kate stared at him blankly and slowly emerged from her mindless euphoria. “I forgot,” she said aloud, her voice filled with disbelief that she could actually have forgotten Mitchell was there. Or that he’d dispatched lawyers with $10 million to pay Danny’s ransom within two hours of her phone call to Matt Farrell. Or that she’d told him to get out of Danny’s bedroom.

  Filled with shame, she searched the faces in the doorway and stairwell, looking for a hard, unsmiling face, but he wasn’t there. She turned around with Danny in her arms and saw Mitchell standing motionless at the far end of the room, his hands thrust in his pockets, watching for a clearer glimpse of Danny … waiting there to meet his son. Danny’s safe return was unquestionably the happiest moment in Kate’s life. Oddly, this moment felt very much like the second-happiest one. She’d never allowed herself to hope that she’d ever see Mitchell again or that he’d want anything to do with Danny, but he was here, and he did.

  With her mind on Mitchell, Kate thanked everyone in the stairwell for their prayers and waited while her uncle followed them out. Gray Elliott and Detective MacNeil were the last to leave. Gray reached out to ruffle Danny’s curls, and grinned when Danny intercepted the gesture and gave him a “high five” instead. He continued smiling at Danny as he chose his words carefully and addressed Kate and Mitchell in a deceptively lighthearted tone. “Danny spent the day with Rebecca Crowell, watching cartoons and having fun in the guesthouse on the Crowell estate. She made popcorn for Danny and they had lots of strawberry ice cream after dinner tonight. Rebecca is Billy Wyatt’s girlfriend and he convinced her that Danny was his biological offspring, so she agreed to help him this morning. Rebecca is a very softhearted girl, whose emotional problems have nothing to do with violence—just the opposite, in fact.”

  Instead of cloaking his next topic in innuendo, he transferred his gaze directly to Kate, but he kept his tone mild. “I’ll keep police officers at all the entrances downstairs tonight, but as soon as you reopen for business, this place will become a security nightmare. You’re either going to have to keep the restaurant closed so we can protect him until Billy Wyatt is apprehended, or else you’re going to have to stay somewhere else, ideally someplace with limited access and good security of its own in addition to what we’ll provide.”

  “I’ll figure something out,” Kate promised, but her mind was on Mitchell, and she was desperately anxious to put an end to his wait to meet his son. She conveyed that to Gray Elliott by giving him a quick hug and a kiss on the cheek; then she turned to Detective MacNeil, bestowed a kiss on his cheek, too, and ushered them both out into the hall. She closed the door behind them, and lowered Danny to the floor.

  He looked sleepy and rumpled, so she deliberately kept him out of Mitchell’s sight for a few more moments while she crouched down to tuck his red shirt into his coveralls and tug the cuffs into place over his shoes. “Before I introduce you to your son,” Kate said as she combed her fingers through Danny’s tousled curls, “I want to tell you two things.” Behind her she heard Mitchell move forward, and she stole a glance over her shoulder, actually looking at the handsome face she’d barely seen through her tears in the bedroom.

  “What are they?” he asked, and her heart swelled a little at the sound of his well-remembered deep voice, devoid now of anger.

  “First, I am very sorry for the way I treated you in the bedroom. I was hurting so badly that I couldn’t think or see or hear. I was in such a horrible daze that I actually forgot you were here until a moment ago.”

  “What you said in there was true,” he replied unemotionally.

  “The second thing I want to tell you,” Kate said as she stood up, still blocking Danny from his view, “is that you’re in for a bit of a shock.”

  “Why is that?”

  Danny was trying to peer around her legs to see who she was talking to, but Kate managed to keep him behind her while she turned toward Mitchell. “Mitchell, this is Daniel,” she said with a smile. “I think you’d recognize him even without an introduction,” she added, and then she stepped aside so that Mitchell could see what she meant.

  The tableau that followed was so poignant that Kate felt her throat constrict. With an expression resembling awed disbelief, Mitchell gazed down at a miniature version of himself, while Danny tipped his head way back and stared up at Mitchell with much the same expression until Mitchell’s intense blue stare suddenly unnerved him. His chin began to tremble and he looked worriedly at Kate. Mitchell looked worriedly at her, too.

  “It’s okay,” Kate assured Danny lightly. “How about shaking hands?”

  To her amusement, Mitchell thought she was reassuring him, and he nodded gratefully, stepped forward, and held out his large hand to Danny. Danny solemnly laid his small hand in Mitchell’s large palm, and Mitchell’s fingers tightened and relaxed reflexively as if he was having trouble controlling his grip. Another awkward lull ensued, but before Kate needed to intervene with a new suggestion, Mitchell suddenly crouched down as if inspired and gave Danny a grin. “I have an airplane,” he confided.

  “Me, too!” Danny replied, giving Mitchell back his own grin.

  “I li