He should go up, spare her that. But he poured a second mug of tea and lingered in the soft light and quiet. And nearly dozed off.
The buzzer on his security panel made him jolt. His first reaction was annoyance. But when he blinked his eyes clear and looked at the view screen, the image of his son brought him a quick rush of pleasure.
He rose out of his wide leather chair, a man of slightly less than average height, with the bare beginnings of a potbelly. His arms and legs were well muscled, and hard as brick. His eyes were a faded blue with webs of lines fanning out from them. Though it had gone stone gray, he still had most of his hair.
He looked his age, and eschewed any thought of face or body sculpting. He liked to say he’d earned the lines and gray hair honestly. A statement, he knew, that caused his fashionable and youth-conscious son to wince.
He supposed if he’d ever been as handsome as Trevor, he might have been a bit more vain. The boy was a picture, Steve thought. Tall and trim, tanned and golden.
And he worked at it, Steve thought with a little twinge. The boy spent a fortune on wardrobe, on salons and spas and consultants.
He shook off the thought as he reached the door. It didn’t do any good to poke at the boy over things that didn’t matter. And since Trevor rarely visited, he didn’t want to spoil things.
He opened the door and smiled. “Well, this is a surprise! Come on in.” He gave Trevor’s back three easy pats as Trevor walked past him and into the entrance hall.
“What’re you doing out this time of night?”
Deliberately, Trevor turned his wrist to check the time on the luminous mother-of-pearl face of his wrist unit. “It’s barely eleven.”
“Is it? I was dozing off in my den.” Steve shook his head. “Your mother’s already gone up to bed. I’ll go get her.”
“No, don’t bother.” Trevor waved him off. “You’ve changed the security again.”
“Once a month. Better safe than sorry. I’ll give you the new codes.” He was about to suggest they go into the den, share the pot of tea, but Trevor was already moving into the more formal living room. And helping himself from the liquor cabinet.
“It’s good to see you. What’re you doing out and about and all dressed up?”
The casual jacket, regardless of label and price, was hardly what Trevor considered dressed up. But it was certainly a step up from his father’s choice of Mets T-shirt and baggy khakis.
“I’ve just come from a party. Dead bore.” Trevor took the snifter of brandy-at least the old man stocked decent liquor-swirling it as he sprawled into a chair. “Cousin Marcus was there with his irritating wife. All they could do was talk and talk and talk about that baby they made. As if they were the first to procreate.”
“New parents tend to be wrapped up.” Though he’d have preferred his tea, Steve poured a brandy to be sociable. “Your mother and I, we bored the ears off everyone who couldn’t run and hide for months after you were born. You’ll do the same when it’s your turn.”
“I don’t think there’s any danger of that as I’m not the least bit interested in making something that drools and smells and demands every minute of your time.”
Steve continued to smile, though the tone, and sentiment, set his teeth on edge. “Once you meet the right woman, you’ll probably change your mind.”
“There is no right woman. But there are any number of tolerable ones.”
“I hate hearing you sound so cynical and hard.”
“Honest,” Trevor corrected. “I live in the world as it is.”
Steve let out a sigh. “Maybe you need to begin to. It must be meant to be that you came by tonight. I was thinking of you before you did. About where you’re going with your life, and why.”
Trevor shrugged. “You’ve never understood or approved of my life because it doesn’t mirror yours. Steve Whittier, man of the people, who built himself from nothing. Literally. You know, you should sell your life story. Look how well the Gannon woman has done with her family memoirs.”
Steve set his snifter down, and for the first time since Trevor had come in, there was a warning edge in his tone. “No one is to know about any of that. I made that clear to you, Trevor. I told you because I felt you had a right to know, and that if, somehow, through that book’s publication the connection was made to your grandmother, to me, to you, you’d be prepared. It’s a shameful part of our family history, painful to your grandmother. And to me.”
“It hardly affects Grandma. She’s out of it ninety percent of the time.” Trevor circled a finger at his ear.
Genuine anger brought a red flush to Steve’s face. “I don’t ever want to hear you make light of her condition. Or to shrug off everything she did to keep me safe and whole. You wouldn’t be here, swilling brandy and sneering, if it wasn’t for her.”
“Or him.” Trevor inclined his head. “He had a part in making you, after all.”
“Biology doesn’t make a father. I explained to you what he was. A thief and a murderer.”
“A successful one, until the Gannons. Come on now.” Trevor shifted, leaned forward, the brandy snifter cupped between his knees. “Don’t you find him fascinating, at least? He was a man who made his own rules, lived his life on his own terms and took what he wanted.”
“Took what he wanted, no matter what it cost anyone else. Who so terrorized my mother she spent years running from him. Even after he died in prison, she kept looking over her shoulder. I know, whatever the doctors say, I know it was him and all those years of fear and worry that made her ill.”
“Face it, Dad, it’s a mental defect, and very likely genetic. You or I could be next. Best to live it up before we end up drooling in some glorified asylum.”
“She’s your grandmother, and you will show respect for her.”
“But not for him? Blood’s blood, isn’t it? Tell me about him.” He settled back again.
“I’ve told you all you need to know.”
“You said you kept moving from place to place. A few months, a year, and you’d be packing up again. He must’ve contacted her, or you. Come to see you. Otherwise why would she keep running?”
“He always found us. Until they caught him, he always found us. I didn’t know he’d been caught, not till months afterward. I didn’t know he’d died for more than a year. She tried to protect me, but I was curious. Curious children have a way of finding things out.”
Don’t they just? Trevor thought. “You must’ve wondered about the diamonds.”
“Why should I?”
“His last big job? Please, you must’ve wondered, and being a curious child… ”
“I didn’t think about them. I only thought of how he made her feel. How he made me feel the last time I saw him.”
“When was that?”
“He came to our house in Columbus. We had a nice house there, a nice neighborhood. I was happy. And he came, late at night. I knew when I heard my mother’s voice, and his, I knew we’d have to leave. I had a friend right next door. God, I can’t remember his name. I thought he was the best friend I’d ever have, and that I’d never see him again. And well, I didn’t.”
Boo-hoo, Trevor thought in disgust, but he kept his tone light and friendly. “It wasn’t easy for you, or Grandma. How old were you?”
“Seven, I think. About seven. It’s difficult to be sure. One of the things my mother did to hide us was change my birth date. Different names, a year or two added or taken away on our ages. I was nearly eighteen when we stuck with Whittier. He’d been dead for years, and I told her I needed to stay one person now. I needed to start my life. So we kept it, and I know she worried herself sick because of that.”
Paranoid old bat, Trevor thought. “Why do you suppose he came to see you there and then? Wouldn’t that have been around the time of the heist? The diamonds?”
“Keeping tabs on me, tormenting her. I can still hear him telling her he could find her wherever she ran, that he could take me from her whenever he wanted. I can still hear her crying.”