Egan Cassidy's Kid. BEVERLY BARTON

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СКАЧАТЬ on interest and dividends from her investments for her livelihood. So why would anyone kidnap him when there were kids out there whose parents were multimillionaires? It just didn’t make sense.

      Bent had heard about young boys and girls being kidnapped and sold on the black market, so he couldn’t help wondering if his abductors planned to ship him overseas. The thought of winding up on an auction block and being sold to the highest bidder soured Bent’s stomach. Or he could end up in some seedy brothel, a plaything for dirty old men. A shiver racked his body. He’d rather die first!

      But he had no intention of dying or of being used as a sex slave. He’d find a way to get out of this mess. He wasn’t going to give up without one hell of a fight!

      “I can’t understand where Bent is,” Maggie said, checking her watch again. “It’s ten after five. He always calls if he’s running late and he hasn’t called.”

      Janice grasped Maggie’s trembling hands into her steady ones and squeezed tightly. “He’s all right. Maybe he forgot. Or he could be goofing off with the guys or—”

      Maggie jerked her hands free. “Something’s wrong. He’s been in an accident or… Oh, God, where is he?”

      “Do you want me to check the hospital? I can call the ER.”

      “If he’d been in an accident, the police would have contacted me by now, wouldn’t they?”

      “I think so. Yes, of course they would have.”

      Maggie paced the floor, her soft leather shoes quiet against the wood’s shiny patina. “I’m going to call some of his friends, first, before I panic. He usually catches a ride with Chris or Mark or sometimes Jarred.”

      “So call their houses and find out if maybe he’s with one of them. And if he just forgot about calling you, don’t give him a hard time.”

      “Oh, I won’t give him a hard time,” Maggie said. “I’ll just wring his neck for worrying me to death.”

      Setting her rear end on the edge of her desk in the office alcove, separated from the bookstore by a pair of brocade curtains, Maggie lifted the telephone and dialed Chris McWilliams’s number first.

      Fifteen minutes and six calls later, Maggie knew what she had to do. Janice stood at her side, a true friend, desperate to help in any way she could. With moisture glazing her eyes, Maggie exchanged a resigned look with Janice, then lifted the receiver and dialed one final number.

      Paul Spencer, Parsons City’s chief of police answered. “Spencer here.”

      “Yes, this is Maggie Douglas. I’d like to report a missing child.”

      “Whose child is missing?” he asked.

      “Mine.”

      “Bent’s missing?” Paul, who’d gone to high school with Maggie, asked, a note of genuine concern in his voice.

      “I’ve contacted all his friends and even talked to Mr. Wellborn, the school principal. Although I dropped him at school this morning—early—for a student council meeting, he never arrived. No one has seen him all day. Oh, God, Paul…help me.”

      “Are you at home or at the shop?”

      “I’m still downtown at the shop.”

      “Stay where you are. I’ll be right over. As soon as you fill out the N.C.I.C form, we’ll get it entered into the computer. But I’ll go ahead and have a couple of men start checking around to see what they can find.”

      “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 СКАЧАТЬ