The Missing Heir(2)
“Cute kid,” Luca added.
Cole didn’t answer. He hadn’t seen the picture, and he had no plans to look at it. He wasn’t about to engage in the Henderson tragedy on any level.
Luca leaned forward, putting his face closer to Cole’s. “You do get it, right?”
“What’s to get?” Cole took a sideways step and started walking toward a hallway that led to the airline’s offices. November might be Aviation 58’s quietest month, but there was still plenty of work to do.
Luca walked beside him. “The kid, Zachary, is the sole survivor of that entire family.”
“I’m sure he’ll be well cared for.” For the first time, Cole felt an emotional reaction. He wasn’t proud, but it was resentment.
Immediately after their secret marriage in Vegas, Samuel had succumbed to his parents’ pressure to divorce Lauren. As a young woman, she’d walked away, newly pregnant. With only a few thousand dollars to her name, she’d boarded a plane for Alaska, terrified that the powerful family would find out about her baby and take him away from her.
Hidden in Alaska, she’d scraped and saved when Cole was young. Then he’d worked night and day to put himself through flight school and to build his own airline. Zachary, by contrast, would have an army of nannies and protectors to ensure he had everything a little boy could need—from chauffeurs to private schools and ski vacations in Switzerland.
“He’s all alone in the world.” Luca interrupted Cole’s thoughts.
“Hardly,” Cole scoffed.
“You’re his only living relative.”
“I’m not his relative.”
“You’re his half brother.”
“That’s just an accident of genetics.” There was nothing at all tying Cole to Zachary. Their lives were worlds apart.
“He’s only nine months old.”
Cole kept on walking across the cavernous hangar.
“If the Hendersons are as bad as Lauren said they were...” Luca’s voice trailed off again, leaving the bangs and shouts of the maintenance crew to fill in the silence.
Cole picked up his pace. “Those Hendersons are all dead.”
“Except for you and Zachary.”
“I’m not a Henderson.”
“You looked at your driver’s license lately?”
Cole tugged the heavy hallway door open. “You know what I mean.”
“I know exactly what you mean. The jackals in Atlanta might very well be circling an innocent baby, but you’d rather walk away from all this.”
“I don’t have to walk away from this. I was never involved in it to begin with.”
Cole’s operations manager, Carol Runion s, poked her head out of her office. “One seventy-two has gone mechanical.”
Cole glanced at his watch. Flight 172, a ninety-passenger commuter jet, was due to take off for Seattle in twenty minutes. “Is maintenance on board?” he asked Carol.