Chapter Seventeen

“Well, son, you’ve sure made a mess of everything as usual. I’m getting tired of having to clean up after you.”

Ket Junior had just walked into his father’s office and the uneasy feeling he’d had all day suddenly swallowed him whole as he saw a white-faced Alfred Morris slumped in a chair in front of his father’s desk.

Even so, he found it easy to paste an innocent look on his face. After all, he really didn’t have a clue what Alfred had done to spark his father’s wrath. “What’s going on, Father? What’s the bookkeeper doing here?”

Morgan Senior snorted. “Alfred here says he was just following your orders when he kidnapped my grandson.”

Ket gaped. “What the fuck is he talking about? I had nothing to do with this! The bastard phoned me and asked for $5 million in exchange for the boy.”

Morgan’s attention swung back to Alfred, who cowered even further his chair. “Is that true? You tried to barter my grandson’s life for cash?”

The little man suddenly drew on a hidden well of courage. “Yes…yes, it is. That ransom was money you owed me. Money you stole from the employees’ pension fund.

“I asked your son for a loan to help with Ma’s medical bills, and he laughed in my face. So I went to the bank for a loan and wanted to use my pension fund as collateral. That’s when I was tipped off that it was worthless. I got to thinking five million was a fair price for all I’d done for you over the years, the loyalty, fixing the books…but your tight bastard of a son wouldn’t cough up.”

Morgan Senior gave a snarl of anger, which tapered off into a groan as he clutched his chest. Ket stepped forward, instinctively responding to his father’s obvious distress. But the older man waved him away, fury evident on his face as he raised the gun he held and pulled the trigger. The bullet took Alfred in the chest, knocking him sideways and toppling him and the chair to the floor.

The room was enveloped in shocked silence, punctuated by Morgan’s gasping breaths. His face turned deep puce as he understood what his son had done, that his scheming had set in motion a chain of events that might leave his grandson dead.... He was beyond reason now, his gun aimed at Ket.

Ket’s face drained of color as he backed away, his head swinging from side to side in denial, just as his secretary rushed into the room.

“I heard shots and…” Andrew blanched as he took in the tableau. “What’s going on…? Oh, my God!” A sharp look from Ket silenced him.

“Do you mean to tell me…?” Morgan’s voice was deadly quiet. “Do you mean to tell me you had a ransom note and didn’t tell me, didn’t make any effort to pay it? You’d have let my grandson die?”

Ket gave a mirthless smile. “You’ve just killed the man who kidnapped him. You’re the reason the kid will die! He’ll probably starve to death.”

Morgan and Ket stared at each other, neither looking away even when the door was kicked open and Ben rushed in, his gun drawn, followed by Kathryn. Outside, sirens wailed in the distance.

“Drop your weapon, Morgan!” Ben demanded, taking in the prone, bound figure of Alfred and the gun in Morgan’s hand. Kathryn gasped and ran across the room to kneel beside the bookkeeper.

Morgan lowered the gun. “That man kidnapped my grandson, Sheriff Asher. If you’d been doing your job…”

“He’s not your grandson!” Kathryn cried, tears streaming down her face. “Alex is my son and—”

She didn’t get to finish her sentence as Morgan aimed at her and pulled the trigger. Fire burned through her arm and the panelling behind her splintered as the bullet missed its target. Morgan raised the gun again and Andrew threw himself at Kathryn, knocking her to the floor. The gun barked and blood bloomed on the front of his shirt.

“Oh, dear Lord, Andrew.” Kathryn screamed. She knelt beside him and pressed her hand over his wound in a futile effort to staunch the bleeding. “You saved my life,” she sobbed.

“Go save your son, Kathryn,” Andrew murmured on gasping breaths. “Ket and I have taken too much away from you all ready.”

“Not your fault. Remember, you said we both wanted what we couldn’t have.”

Andrew’s breathing was ragged and he reached out one pleading hand toward Ket. The movement galvanised Ket out of the shock that had paralysed him. He pushed Kathryn aside and gathered Andrew up in his arms.

His face turned deathly pale as he took in the man’s wounds, and he wailed in anguish. “No! Andrew, you can’t die.” He cradled his lover in his arms.

“Put the gun down, Morgan!” Ben raised his weapon, edging around the room to drop on one knee beside Kathryn. His heart thudded as he saw the first bullet had grazed her; blood was dripping from her wounded arm and mingling with Andrew’s on the deep pile carpet.

“I’m okay, thanks to Andrew.”

Andrew groaned and coughed up a great gout of blood. His hand rose to grasp Ket’s tightly as a spasm of pain shot through him.

Ket let out a wild sob of heartbreak as his lover drew a final breath. Grief contorted his handsome features into a mask of hatred as he turned to face his father. “She’s right. Alex isn’t my son. I married the bitch because she was pregnant with another man’s child and the ultrasound said it was a boy. I thought it would get you off my back, always going on about wanting an heir!”

Morgan surged to his feet, dropping the gun on the desk as he rose. “You’re lying,” he screamed.

“No, he’s not,” Kathryn got slowly to her feet, leaning on Ben’s arm. “Ket never loved me. Andrew is the one Ket loved. He never wanted me, just a child to appease you. Your attitudes, the way you never let Ket be who he was, twisted him into the evil he became.”

Ben stepped forward, his gun leveled at Morgan, but he was too late. With a last kiss to his lover’s cheek, Ket sprang forward, scooped up his father’s gun, and raised it his temple. “You have no heir, Father. The Morgans end here!”

“Son, don’t…”

The shot was deafening in the room. The bullet tore away the back of Ket’s head in his final vengeance against his father. Kathryn screamed and buried her face in Ben’s shirt while Ketler Morgan, Senior, his eyes fixed on his dead son, grasped his chest, his face reflecting pain and despair.

Seconds later, he crumpled to the floor.

****

It was only a short distance to the old shoe factory, but it felt like the longest journey of Kathryn’s life. She was glad she could lean on Ben’s strength as they roared through the streets, lights flashing and siren blazing. Ben had tied a hurried tourniquet of cloth torn from his shirt to staunch the bleeding in her arm. She urged him to hurry, leaning forward in her seat as if she could make the car move faster by sheer willpower.

Morris had whispered to her that Alex was hidden in the shoe factory, but death had taken him before he could tell her where. As they drove, she flicked worried glances at Ben, questions raging through her mind. Had he heard what Ket had said about why he married her? Did he believe now that Alex was his son?

When his warm hand clasped hers, she had her answer.

They arrived back in the shoe factory parking with a screech of brakes, followed by a line of police cruisers with lights and sirens splitting the night. Their headlights illuminated an elderly man standing by the factory door, a flashlight in his hand.

Kathryn ran to meet him. “Dad! What are you doing here?”

Fitz hugged his daughter. “I called the station, trying to find you, and Tess said Ben had called for backup to go to the shoe factory to look for Alex. I know this factory like the back of my hand after working here for years. Thought I could make a difference with the search.”

“Yes, sir, we sure could use you!” Ben replied. He gathered the officers together and explained the situation. Then, following Ben and Fitz’s lead, the uniformed men, entered the factory and spread out in search of a frightened young boy.

Ben returned to Kathryn’s side, surprising her by wrapping his arms around her and kissing her. “Stay here, Kathryn. We’ll find him,” he promised, setting off to join the search.

“Oh, no, I’m coming with you. You’re not leaving me behind again!” She grabbed his hand. The understanding look he gave her spoke volumes.

Even with all the factory lights turned on, shadows lurked in the corners of the rooms and in the stairwells as determined officers searched. Their calls of “Alex! Alex!” bounced hollowly around the huge, empty space.

“I bet the boy’s hidden in the basement,” Fitz said. “There are small, closed rooms down there. Hardly anyone goes down because the stairs aren’t safe.”

“Can you show me?” Ben asked, and Fitz nodded eagerly. Reaching the rickety stairs that plunged downward into darkness at an alarming angle, Kathryn reluctantly agreed that with her wounded arm she would be more of a liability than a help.

“Please stay here. We’ll be faster if I’m not worrying about you,” Ben told her, kissing her forehead. “I promise, if Alex is down there, I’ll bring him back to you.”

****

The stairs led down into a deep, dark cellar smelling of mold and damp and rotting leather. Their flashlights barely penetrated the gloom in front of them and made monsters out of anonymous rusting pieces of machinery that reared up from corners as they passed. They faced a long corridor lined with closed doors. Many had locks so rusty it appeared they hadn’t been opened in years, but Ben and Jesse Rigg methodically checked each room even though they had to kick the doors open. “I hope Morris hasn’t led us on a wild goose chase as his parting revenge,” Ben said through gritted teeth as yet another room proved empty of life.

Fitz stopped abruptly, his raised finger calling for silence. “I heard something…something like a cry. There, I didn’t imagine it!”

Once more calling out Alex’s name the three men surged toward the sound, pausing only to listen again for the faint cry that seemed to come from different directions in the maze of cellar walls.

Ben’s heart sped up as he noted a door with a shiny new padlock. “Alex!” he called and an answering cry, stronger now, came to them from beyond that door. He threw himself at the door but the bolt lock held.

A quick call on Jesse’s radio brought Officer Roy Webb wielding bolt cutters. Moments later, they were in the filthy, dank room. The four men froze in shock at the sight of the small boy who cowered there. His face was filthy and tear-stained and he clasped a shard of broken glass defensively in bloodied hands.

Tears of relief and fury came to Ben’s eyes as he saw the child’s hands were torn and bleeding in his courageous attempt to cut the rope that bound him to the bedframe.

Roy used his pen knife to slash the rope and Ben scooped the sobbing little boy up into his arms. “You’ve been a really brave boy, Alex. Your mommy’s waiting for you upstairs.”

He had to fight back tears as he held the small, shivering body, knowing finally that this brave scrap of humanity was his own flesh and blood. “Let’s go find your mom, son.”

He’d never forget the look of joy and love on Kathryn’s face when she reached out to wrap her arms around her child.

Their son.