"Why are you here?"
Private Investigator Harry Dickenson felt a shiver roll
down
his spine at the sound of Wyatt Shaw's quiet, raspy voice.
Shaw stared at him from ruthless gray eyes, his lean,
powerful body coiled behind a stone-and-glass desk, like a
silent predator stalking unsuspecting prey.
Harry wondered if the rumors he'd heard were true. Was he
alone with a brutal killer? Someone who'd, literally,
gotten
away with murder?
Harry's blood felt like ice in his veins, despite the heat
of the April sun streaming through a wall of windows. He
was
standing on the top floor of the newest, and by far
grandest, Shaw Tower, a combination hotel, condominium and
office building in downtown Houston, Texas. From his
vertigo-inducing perch, Harry could see the far-reaching
geographic boundaries of the city, nearly forty miles away.
It was hard to believe how much of that real estate was
controlled by the indecently wealthy man sitting before
him.
Was it so wrong to want a little piece of that pie for
himself? This was Harry's first venture into extortion, and
he was a little nervous. But he was certain Shaw would
pay—and pay well—to learn the tantalizing
secret
he'd come here to sell.
Harry tried to meet Shaw's piercing gaze as he made his
demand for cash, but he couldn't quite raise his eyes that
last six inches. He focused instead on the crisp collar of
Shaw's white shirt, the smooth knot of his patterned blue
silk tie and the lapels of his dark blue blended wool suit,
as he said, "I have information of vital interest to
you."
"I'm listening," Shaw said.
Harry saw a flicker of movement over his shoulder and
realized they were no longer alone in Shaw's office on the
Tower's 80th floor. He started as a man two or three inches
taller than Wyatt's reputed 6'4", and maybe fifty
pounds heavier, stepped into his line of sight.
"You wanted me, Boss?" the man said, speaking to
Shaw as though Harry wasn't there.
Harry wondered how the gargantuan man in a cheap brown
suit—who reminded him of the enforcers he'd seen in
Mafia movies—had been summoned and realized Shaw must
have hit some button on his desk. He thought back to the
female secretary in the outer office. The older,
benign-looking lady in a skirt that fell two inches below
her knees and sensible pumps had made him feel perfectly
safe coming into what he could now see was a cage of steel
and glass from which there was no escape.
Harry licked at the sweat above his lip, recognized it for
the anxious gesture it was and stiffened his spine. He was
the best at what he did precisely because he didn't allow
himself to be intimidated.
Nevertheless, he felt his bowels shift in an instinctive
animal response to mortal danger.
"I'll be with you in a minute," Shaw said to the
big
man he'd summoned. Then he fixed his steely gaze on Harry.
"You were saying?"
Harry watched as the big man guarding the door, who had an
ugly scar on his cheek and a crooked, many-times-broken
nose, took a pose that reminded him of a military man
"at ease," his meaty hands behind his back, his
tree-trunk legs spread wide. The enforcer's dark eyes,
under
heavy black brows, stayed focused on Harry as though he
were
some lower form of life, a bug this big man would like to
squash.
Harry mentally shook his head. He was anticipating trouble
where there might be none. Shaw had done nothing overtly
threatening. It was the information Harry had dug up on the
man sitting across from him that was scaring him shitless.
Harry fought the urge to turn tail and run. He chided
himself again for letting his imagination run wild. Surely
Shaw would be grateful to hear what Harry had discovered,
even if he was also shocked by the revelation.
"I want your agreement to pay before I tell you what I
know."
Harry waited for Shaw to ask what it was or how much he
wanted or refuse to pay or say something that
would
give him an idea where to go from there. He'd never
suspected, when Governor Pendleton had hired him to hunt
down the biological father of her daughter-in-law's twin
sons, that his search would lead him to this enigmatic man.
He'd brought a picture of Lucky and Chance, in case Shaw
asked to see them. The boys had blue eyes and black hair
like their mother, Kate Pendleton. And were long and lanky,
with square chins, strong noses and high cheekbones like
their father, Wyatt Shaw.
Harry hadn't believed his luck when he'd finally stumbled
on
the truth. The governor had mentioned a reunion her son and
Kate had attended in Austin at the Four Seasons. The trip
would have been around the time of the twins' conception,
nine years ago. Shaw hadn't been as well-known then, but
the
brand-new receptionist at the hotel, who'd taken his
American Express card at the Austin, Texas, Four Seasons
that fateful night, had become the current manager of the
hotel.
The incident had remained fixed in her mind because it was
the first of the new Centurion Cards—a black AMEX
card
with supposedly unlimited credit— she'd ever seen,
and
it had been handed to her by an extraordinarily good-
looking
young man with silver wings in his black hair.
The manager told him that when she'd recognized Wyatt Shaw
with his infamous father on TV less than a year later,
she'd
marveled at how close she'd come to flirting with a
dangerous criminal. She'd admitted to being jealous, that
long-ago evening, of the strikingly beautiful woman holding
the handsome man's hand.
And yes, she'd confirmed, the lady in the photo Harry had
shown her was the same woman Wyatt Shaw had taken with him
on the elevator to the penthouse suite he'd booked.
Harry had quickly realized he'd stumbled onto a gold mine.
He could get paid again and again to keep his mouth shut
about the information he'd discovered: Mob Boss Dante
D'Amato's bastard son, Wyatt Shaw, was the father of Texas
Governor Ann Wade Pendleton's grandsons.
Governor Pendleton, who'd hired him, would pay, of course.
He could also sell his willing silence to the twins' very
wealthy great-grandfathers, who'd probably fork over a hunk
of money to keep the world from knowing who their
granddaughter had screwed while she'd been married to
another man.
Jackson Blackthorne, Kate Pendleton's paternal grandfather,
owned a ranch the size of Vermont in South Texas called
Bitter Creek. Kate's maternal grandfather, King Grayhawk,
owned an equally impressive ranch called Kingdom Come in
Wyoming, where he served as that state's governor. The two
men were lifelong enemies, a fact Harry was sure he could
use to his advantage.
The mind boggled at what the tabloids might pay for such
juicy gossip.
In the end, Harry had decided that the man who stood to
gain
the most—the knowledge that he had eight-year-old
twin
sons—was the man who'd be willing to pay the most. So
even before he told Governor Pendleton what he knew, or
approached either of Kate's influential grandfathers, or
phoned the first tabloid magazine, he'd come here to
confront Shaw.
Considering the menacing man standing just inside the door,
and the even more dangerous one sitting behind the desk,
Harry knew he was walking a tightrope over an abyss.
Greed gave him the courage to take the next step.
Harry glanced at the hulking figure by the door, and said,
"I want half a million."
The demand was met by silence.
Harry struggled not to fidget while he waited for Shaw to
speak. He'd thought long and hard about how much he could
ask Shaw to pay. He'd dreamed of a million, but realized if
he got half of that, with what he'd already saved, he could
buy a small fishing boat and a condo on the gulf near
Corpus
Christi and be set for the rest of his life. With a net
worth over half a billion, half a million was a drop in the
bucket for Shaw.
"I'm sure whatever it is you think you know isn't worth
that kind of money," Shaw replied at last.
"This information has nothing to do with your…
uh… business activities." Harry had nearly said
illegal business activities. The U.S. Justice
Department had been unable to prove Shaw had ill-gotten
gains under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt
Organizations (RICO) Act, although they'd taken him to
court
at least once to try. And the Houston cops hadn't yet found
enough evidence—despite the woman found strangled in
Shaw's bed six weeks ago—to charge him with murder.
Wyatt Shaw seemed to walk between raindrops.
But Harry knew the rich man's life hadn't always been so
blessed.
His mother had been Dante D'Amato's mistress until her
death, under suspicious circumstances, when Shaw was
twelve.
The child born on the wrong side of the blanket, so to
speak, had succeeded so spectacularly that the
government—read FBI—refused to believe he'd
done
it without help from the mob.
Harry was pretty sure the Feds monitored every dollar in
and
out of Shaw's many business activities, looking for enough
evidence to bring down his empire. Which only convinced
Harry that Shaw would know how to pay him the half mil
without raising any red flags for the IRS.
"Has to be a woman," Shaw said in disgust.
"What
is she claiming?"
Harry had expected the dismissive look on Shaw's face. The
man had never been married and didn't have a steady
girlfriend, though there was no shortage of women in his
life. Harry had discovered from a lady lawyer Shaw briefly
dated that he always took precautions to ensure there was
no
unwanted child.
Which made Harry wonder if the dead woman found in Shaw's
penthouse suite might have been pregnant. And trying to
extort money from Shaw. As he was.
Harry shuddered. The medical examiner's report on the
murder
victim hadn't been released to the public yet, and Harry's
usual connection in the M.E.'s office had been too spooked
to leak it to him. Which meant anything was possible.
Harry's investigation also revealed that Shaw usually
bedded
his dates in his—now infamous—penthouse at the
Shaw Tower, or an equivalent locale. Not one of them had
been to his personal retreat, a ranch compound north of
Houston.
Ancient live oaks, which never completely shed their
leaves,
kept the structures within Shaw's compound hidden from
Google Earth. But from county records, Harry knew Shaw had
built a modest, four-bedroom home, stables large enough to
hold a dozen sleek quarter horses and on-site housing, a
sort of bunkhouse, for his security team. To guarantee his
privacy, Shaw had surrounded the compound with
eight-foot-high river-rock walls.
His isolated compound—and his isolated
lifestyle— made a powerful statement: Shaw lived a
life without strings, a life without human connections. So
Harry expected him to resist the idea that he had twin
sons,
maybe even to dismiss Harry's suggestion as ridiculous.
Luckily, Harry had proof. DNA results made it 99.9 percent
certain that Shaw was the twins' father.
"Who sent you here?" Shaw asked.
"I want your promise to pay before I say anything
more."
"You'd take my word?" Shaw said cynically, lifting
a
brow.
Harry shrugged. "You have a reputation for sticking by
it in business deals." Which this was. Sort of.
"Bruce, escort this man from the premises."
"Wait!" Harry reached into his jacket and found his
wrist handcuffed by Bruce's gigantic hand. How had the big
man moved so fast? "I don't have a weapon," Harry
babbled, afraid the monster was going to crush his bones.
"There are papers in my jacket. And a photo."
"Let him go," Shaw said.
With a shaking hand, Harry pulled out the papers he'd been
reaching for, which had been folded in his suit coat
pocket.
They rustled as he unfolded them and took the few steps
forward to lay them on Shaw's desk.
Shaw spread the papers apart and stared at them, his brow
furrowed. "This looks like—"
"It's the results of a DNA test," Harry
interrupted.
"You can see that the first chart matches the second
two
almost exactly."
"The second two?"
"You have twin eight-year-old sons," Harry blurted.
Shaw's brows arrowed down and his lips pressed flat.
Harry was afraid to breathe, waiting for Shaw to deny
paternity despite the DNA results. He expected the
businessman to ask how Harry had gotten his DNA. It had
been
easy, since the man ate most of his meals in restaurants. A
fork he'd eaten from, a glass he'd drunk from, was all
Harry
had needed.
Instead, Shaw said, "Who's the mother?"
Harry licked his lips. "Half a million."
Shaw nodded curtly.
"Her name is Kate Grayhawk Pendleton. She's the
governor's daughter-in-law. She lives in San Antonio."
He laid a 4"x6" photograph beside the DNA results
on the table. It showed the smiling mother standing between
her identical grinning sons, one slender arm resting on
each
boy's narrow shoulder.
Harry watched several emotions flicker in Wyatt Shaw's
narrowed gaze, none of which were pleasant. The expected
shock. Anger. Disgust. And then, a great deal more anger.
"Her husband?" Shaw asked.
"She was widowed eighteen months ago. Her husband died
serving in Afghanistan."
Harry was glad for the husband's sake that he was dead. And
he wouldn't have wanted to be in the woman's shoes when
Shaw
caught up to her. For half a million, he figured he owed
Shaw a heads-up on the woman's current situation. After
all,
the businessman had been back and forth to China a dozen
times over the past six months and might not have kept up
with the local news.
"Mrs. Pendleton was shot last October by that assassin
trying to kill the governor. She was in a coma for four
months and spent about six weeks in a rehab facility. She
seems to have come out of it just fine. She went home ten
days ago."
"Tell my secretary where you want the money wired,"
Shaw said through tight jaws.
Harry couldn't believe it had been that easy. Couldn't
believe Shaw was actually going to pay.
Then he saw Shaw's glance slide to Bruce, watched his chin
drop the littlest bit, sending some kind of message to the
big man. Harry felt the sudden urge to run. For a moment he
was frozen, like a frightened rabbit, panting for breath.
Then he made his move.
His eyes darted from Shaw to the big man as he hurriedly
backed his way out of the office, leaving the test results
and the photograph on the glass in front of Shaw, letting
the heavy wooden door slide silently closed behind him. He
glanced over his shoulder, alarmed to see Bruce pass
through
the same door a few seconds later.
Harry paused at the secretary's desk long enough to say,
"I'll give you a call and let you know where to wire
the
money."
She didn't ask "What money?" She must be used to
business deals made on a handshake. Or in this case, a chin
nod.