Egan Cassidy's Kid

“Thank you.” The receiver dangled from Maggie’s fingers. Every nerve in her body screamed. This couldn’t be happening. Not to her child. Not to Bent, the boy she loved more than life itself.

Janice took the telephone from Maggie and returned the receiver to its cradle, then she wrapped her arms around her best friend. Maggie hugged Janice fiercely as she tried to control her frazzled emotions. This was a parent’s worst nightmare. A missing child. She kept picturing Bent hurt and alone, crying for help. Then that scenario passed from her mind and another quickly took its place. Bent kidnapped and abused—perhaps even killed.

Maggie clenched her teeth tightly in an effort not to scream aloud.

Egan Cassidy poured himself a glass of Grand cru Chablis as he watched the salmon steak sizzling on the indoor grill. As a general rule, he dined alone, as he did tonight. Occasionally he had beer and a sandwich at a local bar with another Dundee agent. And once in a blue moon he actually took a woman out to dinner. But as he grew older, he found his penchant for solitude strengthening.

He liked most of his fellow Dundee agents, but except for two or three, they were younger than he. Perhaps the age difference was the reason he had very little in common with most of the other employees of the premiere private security and investigation firm in the Southeast, some said in the entire United States.

And as for the ladies—he’d never been a womanizer, not even in his youth. There had been special women, of course, and a few minor flirtations. But it had been years since he’d dated anyone on a regular basis. He had found that most of the women close to his age, those within a ten-year-span older or younger, were often bitter from a divorce or desperate because they’d never married. And he found younger women, especially those in their twenties, a breed unto themselves. Whenever he dated a woman under thirty, he somehow felt as if he were dating his daughter’s best friend. Of course, he didn’t have a daughter, but the fact was that at the ripe old age of forty-seven he easily could have a twenty-five-year-old daughter.

Egan turned the salmon steak out onto a plate, then carried the plate and the wine to the table in his kitchen. Although the kitchen in his Atlanta home was ultramodern, his table and chairs were antiques that he’d brought here from his apartment in Memphis. Over the years, while he’d traveled the world as a soldier of fortune, he had always returned to the States, so he’d maintained a place in his old hometown. But two years ago, after joining the Dundee Agency, he’d bought a home in Atlanta and moved his furniture, many priceless antiques, into his newly purchased two-story town house.

The salmon flaked to the touch of his fork and melted like butter when he put it into his mouth. He ate slowly, savoring every bite. He enjoyed cooking and had found that he was a rather good chef.

Egan poured himself more Chablis, then stood, picked up the bowl of fresh raspberries on the counter and headed for the living room. He could clean up later, before bedtime, he thought. As he entered the twenty-by-twenty room, he punched a button on the CD player and the strains of the incomparable Stan Getz’s saxophone rendition of “Body and Soul” filled the room. The stereo system he and his friend and fellow Dundee agent, Hunter Whitelaw, had installed was state-of-the-art. The best money could buy. Everything Egan owned was the best.

Easing down into the soft, lush leather chair, he sighed and closed his eyes, savoring the good music as he had savored the good food. Maybe growing up on the mean streets of Memphis, with no one except an alcoholic father for family, had whetted Egan’s appetite for the good things in life. And maybe his lack of a decent upbringing and his brief tenure in Vietnam when he’d been barely eighteen had predisposed him for the occupation to which he had devoted himself for twenty-five years. He’d made a lot of money as a mercenary and had invested wisely, turning his ill-gained earnings into quite a tidy sum. He had more than enough money, so if he chose to never work again, he could maintain his current lifestyle as long as he lived.

Two hours later, the kitchen cleaned and the bottle of Chablis half-empty, Egan made his way into his small home office. The bookshelves and furniture were a light oak and the walls a soft cream. The only color in the room was the dark green, tufted-back leather chair behind his desk. This was the one room in the town house that his decorator hadn’t touched. He smiled when he remembered Heather Sims. She’d been interested—very interested. And if he had chosen to pursue a relationship with her, she would have been only too happy to have filled his lonely hours with idle chitchat and hot sex. Three dates, one night of vigorous lovemaking and they had parted as friends.

Egan sat, then opened his notebook and picked up a pen. No one knew that he wrote poetry. Not that he was ashamed, just that to him it was such a private endeavor. At first, it had been a catharsis, and perhaps even now it still was.

With pen in hand, he wrote.

because he was eighteen

he was considered

man enough to fight old men’s wars…

The ringing telephone jarred him from his memories, from a time long ago when he’d lived a nightmare—a boy trapped in the politicians’ war, a boy who became a man the hard way.

Egan lifted the receiver. “Cassidy here.”

“Well, well, well. Hello, old friend.”

Egan’s blood ran cold. He hadn’t heard that voice in years. The last time he’d run into Grant Cullen, they’d both been in the Middle East, both doing nasty little jobs for nasty little men. When had that been, six years ago? No, more like eight.

“What do you want, Cullen?”

“Now, is that any way to talk to an old friend?”

“We were never friends.”

Cullen laughed and the sound of his laughter chilled Egan to the bone. Something was wrong. Bad wrong. His gut instincts warned him that this phone call meant big trouble.

“You’re right,” Grant Cullen agreed. “Neither of us has ever had many friends, have we?”

Cullen was playing some sort of game, Egan thought, and he was enjoying himself too damn much. “You want something. What is it?”

“Oh, just to talk over old times. You know, reminisce about the good old days. Discuss how you screwed me over in Nam and how I’ve been waiting nearly thirty years to return the favor.”

“You want me, you know where to find me,” Egan said, his voice deadly soft.

“Oh, I want you all right, but I want you to come to me.”

“Now why the hell would I do that?”

“Because I’ve got something that belongs to you. Something you’ll want back.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Egan clutched the phone tightly, his knuckles whitening from the strength of his grasp.

“Remember Bentley Tyson III, that good ol’ boy from Alabama who saved your life back in Nam?”

“How the hell do you know about Bentley?”

“You’ve been paying for flowers to be put on his grave every year ever since he killed himself fifteen years ago.”

“Get to the point,” Egan snapped, highly agitated that a man like Cullen would even dare to say Bentley’s name. Bentley, who’d been a good man destroyed by an evil war.

“The point is I know that when you paid your condolences to Tyson’s little sister fifteen years ago, you stayed in Parsons City for a week. What were you doing, Cassidy, screwing Maggie Tyson?”

Egan saw red. Figuratively and literally. Rage boiled inside him like lava on the verge of erupting from a volcano. How did Cullen know about Maggie, about the fact that he’d spent a week in her home?

He’s guessing about the affair you had with her, Egan assured himself. He wants to think Maggie meant something to you, that she still does.

“I don’t know where you got your information,” Egan said. “But you’ve got it all wrong. Bentley’s little sister was engaged to a guy named Gil Douglas and they got married a few months after Bentley’s funeral.”

“Oh, I know sweet Maggie was engaged, but she didn’t marry Gil Douglas until five years later. What Maggie did a few months after Bentley’s funeral—nine months to be exact—was give birth to a bouncing baby boy.”

Egan felt as if he’d been hit in the belly with a sledgehammer. His heartbeat drummed in his ears. He broke out in a cold sweat. No, God, please, no! He’d spent his entire adult life looking over his shoulder, waiting for Grant Cullen to attack. He had denied himself the love and companionship of a wife and the pride and joy of children to protect them from the revenge Cullen would be sure to wreak on anyone who meant a damn thing to Egan.

“What’s the matter, buddy boy, didn’t sweet Maggie tell you that you have a son?”

“You’re crazy! I don’t have a son.” He couldn’t have a child. God wouldn’t be that cruel.

“Oh, yes, you do. A fine boy of fourteen. Big, tall, handsome. Looks a whole hell of a lot like you did when you were eighteen and you and I were buddies in that POW camp.”

“I do not have a son,” Egan repeated.

“Yes, Cassidy, you do. You and Maggie Tyson Douglas.”

Cullen laughed again, a sharp, maniacal sound that sliced flesh from Egan’s bones.

“You’re wrong,” Egan said, his statement a plea to God as well as a denial to Cullen.

“Run a check. Your name is on his birth certificate. And one look at a photograph of Bentley Tyson Douglas will confirm the facts.”

“I don’t believe anything you’ve told me. You’re a lying son of a bitch!”

“Well, believe this, buddy boy. As we speak, your son is in my hands. I had him flown in from Alabama this afternoon. So just think about that for a while. And you have a good night. Bye now.”

Chapter 2

It couldn’t be true. Maggie’s child couldn’t be his. She would never have kept the boy a secret from him all these years. Not Maggie. She would have come to him, told him, expected him to do the right thing.

Don’t be an idiot, Cassidy, an inner voice chided. You ended things with her rather abruptly once you realized she was in love with you. You gave her a hundred and one reasons why a committed relationship between the two of you would never work. You broke her heart. Why would she have come to you if, later on, she’d discovered she was carrying your child? You had made it perfectly clear that you didn’t love her or want her.

And there was another reason he couldn’t be the father of Maggie’s child—he had used condoms when he’d made love to her. He never had unprotected sex. The last thing he’d ever wanted was to father a child—someone Cullen could use against him.

His thoughts swirled through time to the week he’d spent with Maggie Tyson. She had been in mourning, torn apart by Bentley’s suicide. And she’d reached out to someone who had known and cared for her brother. Someone who had lived through the same hell, who understood why Bentley had been so tormented. She’d realized that Egan was on a first name basis with the same demons that had haunted her brother for so many years, had shared the same nightmares that finally had driven Bentley to take his own life. Maggie had reached out to Egan and, for the first time in his life, he had succumbed to the pleasure of giving and receiving comfort.

But the connection he and Maggie had shared quickly went beyond sympathy and understanding, beyond a mutual need to mourn a good man’s untimely death. Passion had ignited between them like a lightning strike to summer-dry grass. An out-of-control blaze had swept them away.

Suddenly Egan remembered—he hadn’t used protection the first time he made love to Maggie!

He paced the floor, calling himself all kinds of a fool and finally admitting that the only way to find out the truth was to telephone Maggie. God help us all if her child is my son and Grant Cullen really has kidnapped him.

Maggie escaped into the powder room, locking the door behind her. She needed a few quiet moments away from the crowd that had gathered at her house. All her friends, aunts, uncles and cousins meant well, as did Bent’s friends and their parents, who were congregated in her living room. Paul Spencer had stopped by less than an hour ago to give her an update on the local manhunt for Bent. No one had seen the boy all day and there wasn’t a trace of him or the book bag he’d been carrying. It was as if her son had dropped off the face of the earth.

The agony she’d felt earlier had intensified to such an unbearable degree that she wondered how she was able to function at all. But somewhere between the moment she realized that Bent was missing and this very second, a blessed numbness had set in, allowing her to operate with robotic efficiency.

If only she could shut down her mind, stop all the horrific scenarios that kept repeating themselves over and over in her head.

She held on to the hope that Bent was still alive and unharmed. That any minute now he would walk through the front door with a perfectly good reason for where he’d been and why he had worried her so.

She could hang on to her sanity as long as she could believe that her son was all right. If anything happened to Bent…if she lost him…

Maggie rammed her fist against her mouth to silence a gut-wrenching cry as she doubled over in pain. No! No! her heart screamed. This wasn’t right. This wasn’t fair. Bent was all she had. He was her very life. If she lost him, she would have nothing.

Her son deserved to live and grow up to be the man she knew he could be. He had a right to go to college and get a job and find a girlfriend. To marry and have children. To live a normal life and die in his sleep when he was ninety.

As Maggie slumped to her knees in the small powder room, she prayed, trying to bargain with God. Let him be all right. Let him live and have a long, happy life and you can take me. Take me now and I won’t care. Just don’t let my precious Bent suffer. Don’t let him die.

A loud tapping at the door startled Maggie. She’d been so far removed from the present moment that she had forgotten she had a houseful of concerned friends and relatives. The tapping turned into repeated knocks.

“Maggie, honey, there’s a phone call for you,” Janice said. “I told him that now wasn’t a good time for you, but he insisted. Mag, it’s Egan Cassidy.”

“What!”

“Do you want me to ask him to call back later?”

“No.” Maggie lifted herself from the floor, stared into the mirror over the sink and groaned when she saw her pale face and red eyes. “I’ll be there in a minute. I’ll take the call in the den. Would you make sure no one else is in there.”

“Sure thing.”

Maggie turned on the faucet, cupped her hands to gather the cold water and then splashed her face. After drying her face and hands, she unlocked the door and stepped out into the hall. She made her way through the throng of loving, caring, wall-to-wall people, as she headed toward the den. Slowed down by hugs and words of encouragement, it took her quite some time to finally reach the small, cosy room that she considered a private sanctuary.

Janice waited by the mahogany secretary, the telephone in her hand. Maggie hesitated for a split second, then took the phone, breathed deeply and placed the receiver to her ear. Janice curled her fingers into a tiny waving motion as she started to leave the room, but Maggie shook her head and motioned for her friend to stay.

“This is Maggie Douglas.” She was amazed by how calm her voice sounded.

“Hello, Maggie. It’s Egan Cassidy.”

“Yes, Janice told me.”

“I know you’re probably puzzled by this phone call.”

“Yes, I am. After fifteen years, I never expected to hear from you.” Why was he calling now? she asked herself. Today of all days?

“I need to ask you some questions,” Egan said.

“About what?”

“About your son. You do have a son, don’t you? A fourteen-year-old son named Bentley Tyson Douglas.”

“What do you know about Bent?” She couldn’t hide the hysteria in her voice. Had Egan found out that he had a son? Had he somehow talked Bent into going away with him? Was that why Egan was calling, to tell her that he had claimed his son?

“Then you do have a son?”

“Yes, I—is Bent with you? Did you find out that—”

“Bent isn’t with me,” Egan told her. “But your son is missing, isn’t he?”

“If he isn’t with you, then how do you know—”

“How long has he been missing?”

“Since this morning. I dropped him off at school and no one has seen him since.”

“Damn!”

“Egan, please, tell me what’s going on. How did you know about Bent and how did you find out he was missing?”

Long pause. Hard breathing. Although they were physically hundreds of miles apart, Maggie could feel the tension in Egan, could sense some sort of emotional struggle going on inside him.

“Egan, you’re frightening me.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice deep and low and the sentiment truly genuine. “Maggie, I need to know something and it’s important that you tell me the truth.”

The rush of blood pounded in her head. Her heartbeat accelerated rapidly. Adrenaline shot through her like a fast acting narcotic. “Ask me.”

“Is Bent my son?”

Maggie closed her eyes. A tear escaped and trickled down her cheek. Janice rushed to her side and draped her arm around Maggie’s waist.

“Are you all right?” Janice whispered. “Do you want me to talk to him?”

Maggie shook her head, then opened her eyes, her vision blurred by the sheen of moisture. “Yes, Bent is your son.”

Egan groaned. Maggie bit down on her bottom lip. The sound from Egan that came through the telephone was that of a wounded animal. A ferocious hurt. An angry growl.

“Listen to me very carefully,” Egan said. “I know what has happened to Bent—”

Maggie cried out.

“Don’t panic. For now, he’s safe. Do you hear me? He hasn’t been harmed. But in order to keep him safe, you’re going to have to let me handle things. Do you understand?”

“No,” Maggie said. “No, I don’t understand anything. Where is Bent? What’s happened to him?”

Janice gasped. “He knows where Bent is?”

“Who’s that?” Egan asked. “Who’s there with you?”

“Janice Deweese. In case you’ve forgotten, Janice is my dearest friend and my assistant at Rare Finds.”

“Then you can trust Janice?”

“Yes, of course I can trust her.”

“With your life? With Bent’s life?”

“Yes.”

“I assume you’ve alerted the local authorities,” Egan said. “But what I’m going to tell you, I want you to keep it to yourself. Or at least between you and Janice.”

“God in heaven, Egan, will you just tell me what’s going on?”

“Bent’s life could depend on your following my instructions, on letting me handle things without involving any law enforcement other than the ones I chose to bring in on this.”

“Bent’s life could—” Maggie choked on the tears lodged in her throat. Her son’s life was in danger and Egan knew from what or from whom that danger came. How was it possible that Egan was involved in Bent’s disappearance when he’d never been a part of Bent’s life? She didn’t understand any of this. Nothing made sense. It was as if she’d suddenly passed through some invisible barrier straight into the Twilight Zone.

“Maggie!” Egan demanded her attention.

“I don’t understand anything. None of this makes any sense to me. Explain to me what’s happening. Where is Bent? Why…why—”

“Don’t do anything. And don’t speak to anyone else tonight. If there are people in your house, get rid of them. I’ll fly into Parsons City tonight and I’ll explain everything to you when I get there.”

“Egan, wait—”

“I’ll get your son back for you, Maggie. I’ll bring him home. I promise you that.”

“Egan!”

The mocking hum of the dial tone told Maggie that Egan had hung up. She slumped down in the chair at the secretary, covered her face with her hands and moaned.

Janice knelt in front of Maggie, then pried Maggie’s hands from her face. “What’s going on?”

“I’m not sure,” Maggie admitted. “Somehow Egan found out that Bent is his son and he knows that Bent is missing. Egan said…he said that he knew what had happened to Bent and that he wanted me to let him handle everything. He promised me that he’d bring Bent home.”

“Is Bent with Egan?”

“No, I don’t think so.” Maggie stared straight through Janice. “Egan is coming here tonight to tell me what happened to our son.”

Bent glared at the plate of food his jailer had brought to him several hours ago. He was hungry, but he hadn’t touched the fried chicken, mashed potatoes and green beans. He had no way of knowing whether or not his food had been poisoned. But why his captors would choose to poison him, he didn’t know. They could easily have killed him a dozen different ways by now.

Although they had taken his book bag and his cellular phone, they hadn’t robbed him of either his wallet or his wristwatch. And other than drugging him initially in order to kidnap him and keeping him bound and gagged in the car and then on the airplane, his abductors hadn’t laid a finger on him. Of course, they had blindfolded him when they’d taken him off the plane.

He had heard one of them, the guy who’d approached him in the school parking lot, tell the other one, a younger, more clean-cut man, that the general didn’t want the kid hurt.

“He’s waiting for the kid’s old man to show up first.”

Bent didn’t understand. What did his father have to do with his kidnapping? He hadn’t seen Gil Douglas in over a year. And he hadn’t spoken to him in three months. After his parents’ divorce his relationship with his dad had slowly deteriorated. And it wasn’t as if his father was rich. Gil spent every dime he made, as a chemical engineer, on his new wife and two-year-old daughter.

Nope, it didn’t make any sense at all that his dad was involved in any way, shape, form or fashion with his kidnapping.

So what was going on? He had been abducted, flown across country to only God knew where and was being kept prisoner in a clean, neatly decorated bedroom and served a decent meal on a china plate.

Bent checked his watch. Fifteen after nine. He’d been missing for more than twelve hours. His mother must be out of her mind with worry. She’d probably called the police and had every friend and relative in Parsons City out scouring the countryside for him. And what had she done when no one had been able to find him? His mom would stay strong and hopeful. And she would go to her kitchen to think and plan. He could picture his mother now, in their big old kitchen, baking. For as long as he could remember, his mother had baked whenever she was upset, depressed or needed to make a decision.

Boy, what he’d give for some of her delicious tea cakes. And a glass of milk. And his own bed to sleep in tonight.

Eaten alive by frustration and an ever-increasing fear, Bent tried the door again. Still locked. Stupid! He scanned the room, searching for any means of escape. There were no bars on the two windows, both small rectangular slits near the ceiling. He shoved a chair against the wall, climbed onto the seat and peered out the windows. The moonlight afforded him a glimpse of the shadowy, enclosed courtyard below and the two men who seemed to be guarding the area. Scratch the idea of climbing out the windows.

He heard voices in the hallway, but couldn’t make out the conversation. His heartbeat increased speed. Sweat dampened his palms. What if they were coming for him? What if—

Footsteps moved past the door. Silence. Was someone standing outside the door guarding him? Had another someone stopped by to issue orders?

Bent balled his hands into tight fists and beat on the door. “Let me out of here! Why are you doing this? What are you going to do with me?”

He pummeled the door until his fists turned red, until they ached something awful. And he hollered while he banged on the hard wooden surface—hollered until he was hoarse. But no one replied. No one released him. It was as if no one could hear him.