But Frankel? Jesus.
Jake’s claims of hard evidence were a bluff, and she knew it. Clearly, lies were not his strong suit, even after so many years of living one. Still, even though she wished with all her heart that she could dismiss his theories as crazy, she had to admit that he made a lot of sense.
What was it he asked on his way out? The question she was supposed to ask herself? Ah, yes. Frankel was the one who told her that the Donovans were coming to Arkansas. Something about a computer geek at EPA. So what was the big deal there? They put triggers on computer files all the time. If someone tried to access it, then a warning..
Then she saw it. “God damn it,” she breathed. “He knew they’d go back, sooner or later.”
Her face flushed hot as the pieces fell into place. Oh, God, this is suicide.
Now it was just a matter of proving her case without detonating her career. Fact was, she found herself liking this criminal named Jake Donovan. Much as it sickened her to think it, he seemed far nicer-and far less likely to take another life-than Peter Frankel ever had.
Moving quickly to make the most of the few hours remaining before dawn, she opened her briefcase and slid her laptop out from under the Donovan file. Damn thing took forever to boot up, but once running, the rest was a breeze. The Internet was never busy at this hour.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Despite the sprawling opulence of the mansion-in-the-meadow-Jake had it pegged at about ten thousand square feet-they remained clustered in the tiny parlor. Never much of a brandy connoisseur, Jake had developed a taste for Armagnac in the hour since he returned from the Radford, made even more discerning by Thorne’s observation that the stuff sold for four hundred dollars a bottle.
Nick had crashed shortly after they’d returned, claiming the love seat as his own and leaving the two chairs for Jake and Thorne. Harry Sinclair’s right-hand man looked exhausted, yet he remained awake and attentive while Jake recounted all that went on in Irene’s hotel room. He seemed particularly intrigued by the part about finding the “FBI lady” naked. Under different circumstances, Jake might even have considered this little chat a bonding session, but he never doubted that Thorne’s single purpose was to report everything Jake said back to his boss.
“I think Rivers is pretty sharp,” Jake concluded. “I’m sure she’ll do the legwork we need to get done.” Did I just say that? He wondered if he wasn’t trying to convince himself. The fact was, the odds were even that she’d take his information straight to Frankel, at which point Jake was screwed. No, correction-they were all screwed. Possibly even the mighty Harry Sinclair, given Irene’s question about his involvement in all this-the one detail he’d omitted from his report to Thorne.
As the big man started to doze, Jake was seized by melancholy, and the image of Travis fixed itself in his thoughts. Was there at least a safety net for his son-a level below which he wouldn’t fall? Jake wanted to believe that even if the fight to prove his and Carolyn’s innocence dragged on, the boy would be cut loose and-
What?
It worried Jake that even if he saw his most fervent wish fulfilled and Travis staged a full recovery, the likelihood was that his son would become a ward of the state.
A thought materialized out of nowhere. It was a wild one-one that was formed more from exhaustion than logic-yet in the space of seconds it grew from merely a seedling notion to a fine compromise to a question in need of speedy resolution. He turned urgently to Thorne and tapped the man’s knee, startling him from a fragile sleep.
“I’ve got a question for you.”
Thorne raised an eyebrow.
“What do you think Harry would say if I asked him to take charge of Travis while all of this business plays itself out?”
“He’d say no,” Thorne replied grumpily. He’d been enjoying his shut-eye.
“Why?” Suddenly, Jake was wide awake. He sat up straight. “I mean, he’s family, right? The courts would surely be inclined to grant temporary custody to family. Christ, Carolyn thinks the sun rises and sets with the old bastard.”
Thorne shook his head. “It’s a question Mr. Sinclair anticipated. The answer is no.”
“It’d be better than shuttling the poor kid from stranger to stranger,” Jake countered. “At least Harry could give some stability.”
“Your boy isn’t Mr. Sinclair’s problem,” Thorne said simply. “I mean, as kids go, yours ain’t so bad, but a kid’s a kid. You know of any kids Mr. Sinclair ever had? I don’t. He doesn’t like them.”
Jake wasn’t about to let it go. “But what about Carolyn? His Sunshine? I mean, she’s-”
“She’s different,” Thorne interrupted. He thought about saying something else but then stopped himself. “She’s different.”
In that instant, Jake saw a look in Thorne’s face that came as close to tenderness as a man like him could ever generate. “Tell me about her childhood,” he said softly.
Thorne’s eyes narrowed. “What do you want to know? She was a kid. Mr. Sinclair liked her.”
“But she has nightmares. Horrible ones. She wakes up screaming, yet she won’t talk about them. I know nothing of her parents. When I try to probe, she just pulls away.”
Thorne looked away, uncomfortable with the topic. “Then she doesn’t want you to know,” he said. “You should just let it go.”
“So why does she adore Harry the way she does?” Jake pressed. “What is it about that ornery old man that makes her melt at the mention of his name?”
Thorne just shook his head. These questions were not even worth answering.
“Did Harry abuse Carolyn?” Jake asked out of nowhere.
“What?”
“Did Harry abuse my wife when she was a little girl?” Jake said it again firmly, without hesitation. “There are signs, sometimes, that she was molested as a kid. She pulls away occasionally, she frequently doesn’t sleep. And the nightmares. I just thought that maybe…” His voice trailed off. He’d never verbalized his concerns to anyone before, and he was shocked by the emotions that welled up within him.
Thorne’s eyes hardened. “So you think Mr. Sinclair raped his niece? And that afterward she decided to adore him?” He leaned heavily on Jake’s word.
Jake shrugged. “I don’t know. There’s so much weird psychological bullshit you read about. I thought maybe…”
“You really got it bad for Sunshine, don’t you?” Thorne seemed surprised.
Jake looked away, embarrassed. “More than you could know,” he said.
Thorne inhaled deeply through his nose and let it go through puffed cheeks. “Mr. Sinclair’s little sister, Rebecca-she wasn’t very tough… very confident about herself,” he said softly. “She was sick a lot as a kid, and as she got older, she started into that whiny teenage shit, where she thought she was ugly and no guys would ever like her. I never knew her back then, you know, but Mr. Sinclair was very bothered by her attitude. Said she was a pretty thing, but how do you make a kid sister listen?”
He shifted again. “So when she’s eighteen, along comes a twenty-five-year-old dickhead named Mike Skepanski. Him I knew, and you could tell just from looking at him what a useless pile of shit he was. Mr. Sinclair hated him. Hell, everybody hated him. Everybody but Rebecca, of course, who fell in love with the guy and married him. Just weeks out of high school, knows nothing about anything, and she’s attached to this jerk for the rest of her life.”
As he spoke, Thorne’s story took on a momentum of its own, seeming to propel him more than he was propelling it. “Well, he does a stint as a construction worker for a while, but then the poor baby cuts his hand and doesn’t want to do that anymore. So he sits around the house for a few months until some idiot offers him a job as a security guard. He takes it, because he’s allowed to carry a gun and the gun makes him feel like a big man.
“That doesn’t work out either, of course, because he’s a worthless loser. Seems to me, he got caught sleeping on the job, or some such thing, and he got fired. It’s like this his whole life. He can’t hold a job, Rebecca’s
