Читать книгу Cowboy Undercover - Alice Sharpe - Страница 10
ОглавлениеFor twenty-one minutes, according to the clock in the foyer, Jeremy kept them waiting. Lily had no choice but to accept the fact she wasn’t getting past McCord, but that didn’t keep her gaze from repeatedly traveling to the second floor and the open balcony railing that surrounded it. She was so nervous and stressed her hands trembled in her lap and she had to clench them together to keep herself from exploding. More than once, she caught McCord casting her a distasteful glance.
What exactly had he been told about her?
At last Jeremy’s voice told them to come into his study.
“You can leave,” he told McCord as they entered. McCord turned and left, closing the door behind him.
Looking straight at Lily, Jeremy trotted out what she called his campaign smile. “Well, look who came home,” he said. He did not get to his feet. His sandy-colored hair showed a few gray streaks, his eyes were so blue she knew he wore contact lenses to boost the color. He was dressed for the office in a custom-made gray suit. It was one of the more expensive worsted wools, which probably meant he had been in court that day.
Was he handsome? Not in the way Chance was, not with classic features, broad shoulders and a devilish smile that ignited the color of his eyes. But he was commanding. His cold eyes could look warm when he put in the effort and he knew how to twist words more adroitly than a clown manipulating balloons into giraffes.
She stepped to the far side of his desk. “First of all, this is not my home. Secondly, of course I came. You stole my son.”
“The law sees it the other way around.” He nodded at his phone. “I should warn you. The police will come as soon as I ask them to. They have a warrant—”
“I know about that.” She’d had twenty-one minutes to cool her heels and face reality and what she’d decided was that she was going to have to do the whole thing the legal way and that meant going through the system. “Listen, Jeremy,” she pleaded. “Just let me see Charlie. I have to know he’s okay.”
Jeremy chuckled. “How very melodramatic. Of course he’s okay. He’s back where he belongs and no longer at the mercy of his unpredictable mother.”
Lily’s chin tilted. “You might be able to fool other people, Jeremy, but you can’t fool me. I’m the one who lived here. I’m the one you set up to look like a lush. I’m the one you knocked unconscious. And then there’s that minion you sent to kill me, Jodie Brown.”
“You’re delusional,” he said. “I think you always have been. Well, you know what they say drugs and alcohol will do to a person.”
“I found the barbiturates in your desk.”
“So what? The prescription is in your name, prescribed by your physician to relieve anxiety. I was very troubled when I discovered you were mixing them with booze. I even talked to him about it. He was going to hospitalize you for observation, but you disappeared about then. I swear, getting custody of Charlie was a walk in the park.”
“If it was such a walk in the park then why did you employ Jodie?”
“I knew nothing about what he did,” Jeremy insisted.
“Did you kill him when he failed?”
“I believe he died in a drunk driving accident. Surely you’re not blaming me for that, too?”
“You think you’ve covered all the bases, don’t you? Let’s try this one. I know about your affair with Valentine Richards.”
He leaned back in his chair, a man in his domain, a confident man who could lie without effort. “I suppose you found out about her when you snooped through my files.”
“It doesn’t matter how I know about her. You were cheating on me. I wonder what your precious community would think of you if they knew that.”
“As usual, you have it wrong. Valentine was an intern in my office. Sweet girl. Lost her grandmother while she worked here. I wanted to cheer her up so I sent her flowers.”
“You hate flowers.”
“But she loved them.”
“I love them, too. That never made a difference to you.”
“Are you jealous?”
“Oh, please. I just find it interesting that you’ve finally met someone who makes you think beyond yourself. Maybe you’re ready to give me a divorce now.”
“No,” he said.
“Why?”
He smiled. “Because you want it so badly.”
“I don’t need your permission,” she said.
“If you’re hiding from me, it’s going to be tricky to show up in court. And oh, then there’s that nasty warrant.”
Bantering with Jeremy was wasting time. Maybe that was the point. Maybe the police were about to arrive. If that was the case, then she was going to at least see Charlie before it was too late. She walked across the room, grabbed the doorknob and advanced on the staircase.
Jeremy caught her arm and pulled her around. She stumbled on the stair and fell against him. A visceral wave of distaste filled her body as she struggled to stand on her own. He slapped her face so hard her neck snapped to the side. She put a hand up to her stinging cheek and stared into his flat eyes. “Get away from me.”
He lowered his head until his mouth was close to her ear. “I could kill you tonight and explain it away however I want. No one on earth would give a damn, not even Charlie, not after a while.”
“You never give up, do you, Jeremy. Stop trying to bait me. It doesn’t work anymore.”
Pounding footsteps from the top of the stairs broke a stalemate. They looked up to see a young woman rushing across the open mezzanine. She stopped short at the head of the stairs and looked down at them.
“What’s going on?” Jeremy said.
“It’s the boy,” the woman responded.
Lily tore herself from Jeremy’s gasp and ran up the stairs. Jeremy was right behind her. “What about Charlie?” Lily demanded as she reached the quivering woman who glanced at Jeremy, then back at Lily.
“I’ve looked everywhere,” she said. “He’s not in his bed. I don’t know... I don’t know where he is.”
Lily tore down the hall. She entered Charlie’s room. It was filled with toys, many of them still in their boxes. The bed was empty. The other two appeared in the doorway as Lily stared at the rumpled sheets. She set her palm against the pillow. It was cool to the touch.
“Is he hiding somewhere? Did he run away?” Jeremy asked.
“I don’t know,” the woman responded. Lily walked to the window and examined the sill. Then she looked at the wooden window casing. Scratch marks clearly revealed the window had been pried open from the outside. She looked out the open window and saw nothing but the blackness of night. The light that should have illuminated this side of the yard wasn’t burning and the moon hadn’t yet risen high enough to help.
Her baby had been taken from this room. Had Chance done it? It was possible and if so, at least Charlie was safe. She’d been inside the house for more than thirty minutes, so he could have had time to do this. Her heart slammed against her ribs. Was Chance that rash and impulsive? Yes, at times. But he was smarter than that, she was sure of it. The thought of him trying to help her and actually jeopardizing his freedom—for surely if he had done this and was caught he would wind up in jail—well, it made her sick inside.
“Damn that spoiled brat,” Jeremy said under his breath. “If he ran away—”
Lily whirled around, ready to slap him as hard as she could. “How dare you call Charlie—”
“How dare you?” He caught her raised hand and twisted it down to her side but didn’t release it. For the first time he seemed to be interested in what she’d been staring at. He pulled her out of his way and turned to examine the window in silence. She knew the gouges on the wood were unmistakable. At last, through clenched teeth, he addressed the other woman. “I employ you to watch my son. You’re his damn nanny. Where the hell were you while this was going on?”
“In the other room,” she admitted. “I know you said to sit here with him, but my eyes kept drifting closed. I don’t know why I’m so blasted sleepy. I knew I had to do something so I went to my room to find a book. I guess I sat down on the bed. The next thing I knew I was yawning myself awake. I wasn’t out that long, I swear I wasn’t.”
“You were gone long enough for this to happen, you nitwit.”
“Yes, sir,” she said, looking down at the floor. She bent and picked up a piece of paper. “I didn’t see this before,” she said. “Maybe it fell when I threw back the blankets. Oh, my gosh! It says: A son for a son. White—”
Jeremy snatched the paper from the nanny’s hand before she read another word. “Give that to me,” he said as he released Lily’s wrist.
“What does it mean?” Lily demanded. She couldn’t believe Chance would leave a message as inflammatory as that. In fact, she knew he wouldn’t. That meant someone else had taken Charlie. But who? “Who is White?” she asked.
Jeremy met her gaze but didn’t respond, at least not to her. Instead he turned to the nanny. “Get downstairs and tell McCord to search the grounds. I want to know exactly how my son was taken from this room.”
She nodded nervously and began to turn. Jeremy cleared his throat. “And Janet? Don’t say a word about this to anyone else, do you understand? Not even the police. It’s your fault the child is missing. Don’t make it worse for yourself by blabbing to anyone but McCord.”
“Yes, Mr. Block,” she said as she scurried away.
Lily planted her fists on her hips. “What does that note mean, Jeremy? Who is White?”
He looked at the paper again, then folded it in half. “Don’t you have enough problems of your own?”
Had he always been this much of a nutcase? Did he really think anything that happened to her mattered in the face of what was happening to their son? “Why aren’t you calling the police? And you shouldn’t be touching that paper. There may be fingerprints—”
“I will handle this my own way,” he interrupted.
“You know something, don’t you?” she said in a burst of understanding. “You know who took him and why. Someone named White. Tell me.”
The hateful look in his eyes as he raked her over went straight to her gut. He tore the note into pieces and opened his hand to let them flutter to the carpet. She wanted to catch them and paste them back together. She couldn’t understand how he could destroy the only link they had to Charlie’s abductors.
“It’s some enemy of yours, isn’t it?” she implored. “Oh, my poor Charlie. How can you stand there and let this happen? Don’t you care anything about him? Please—”
He grabbed her shoulders and shook her. “God, you’re annoying. I’ll get Charlie back safe and sound but I’ll do it my own way in my own time. No police. Not unless you want Charlie dead.”
Lily swallowed a lump of air. She wasn’t sure what to do except get out of that house.
“Now I have to figure out what to do about you,” he added.
“No, you don’t. I’m leaving.”
He stepped in front of her. “I don’t trust you. You aren’t going anywhere.”
“Move out of my way.”
“So you can run to the police and in some misdirected gesture of sacrifice, tell them everything you’ve seen and heard? I’ll have to waste time quieting them down and by then it will be too late for Charlie. If you want him to live, you’ll stay out of this and you won’t involve the police. For now, I have things to do and you’re in the way.”
His fist connected with her cheekbone and she stumbled backward. Grabbing her arm, he pulled her from the room and all but ran her down the stairs, his fingers digging into her arm. He propelled her into his office, opened the closet, tore her purse from her shoulder and pushed her inside. The door slammed in her face, encasing her in blackness. The click of the lock echoed in her ears.
And then it was silent.
* * *
CHANCE WAITED UNTIL he heard the front door close behind Lily and the man she’d called McCord, then jumped over the gate. He dashed to the cover of the trees and hunkered down for a minute as his eyes adjusted to the dark. It seemed odd to him that the outside was so poorly lit but at least he didn’t think he had to worry about cameras picking up his every move.
The gun constituted a last-resort measure not to be taken lightly. Bravado aside, he had no intention of shooting anyone if there was any other choice.
Eventually, he knew his sight was as good as it was going to get and he made his way across the manicured lawns to the house where he carefully peered in through a low window. It turned out to be the kitchen—empty. The next window opened onto a dining room that was dominated by a black lacquer table and the most pretentious-looking candelabra he’d ever seen. For a second he stared inside, wondering what bothered him so much, and then he had it. There were two chairs at the table, one at either end, like on a movie set when they wanted you to understand that the people who dined there didn’t have much to say to one another.
Had Lily endured dinners in this setting? Chance, who had grown up with four other men and a rotating roster of stepmothers, couldn’t imagine the numbing silence and the thought that Charlie might soon eat a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich in this mausoleum was just flat-out depressing.
Farther along, he found a living area that looked as though it had never been lived in, and then popped his head up to find himself peering into a smaller room that seemed to be a den or a home office. It, too, appeared empty and he was about to turn away when the chair in the corner suddenly spun around and a man appeared.
Chance immediately ducked out of sight, but the impression of the man stayed vivid behind his eyes: late forties, stern, arrogant. Blue eyes like Charlie’s. He held a cell phone in one hand and avidly tapped a pencil against the wooden arm of the chair with another. The window was slightly open, but try as he might, Chance couldn’t make out what was being said. He scampered away, careful to keep his head down.
That had to be Lily’s husband. But where was Lily? And where was McCord? He decided to skirt the entire perimeter of the house. The harvest moon that had seemed to illuminate the world on his ranch in the middle of the night was subdued here by the massive size of the house and the shadows it cast. Maybe in a couple of hours it would rise high enough to overcome this obstacle, but Chance fervently hoped he and Lily were back in the motel room by then.
And maybe Charlie, too. Maybe Jeremy Block would come to his senses and be reasonable.
Sure. And pigs could fly.
Careful to avoid the patches of light that shone through the windows, he almost tripped when he turned the corner and came across something in the grass. He knelt down to investigate. Someone had left a metal ladder lying on the grass. By the feel and heft of it, a long one.
Why would anyone leave a ladder lying on the grass? He looked up at the bank of windows overhead and saw two lights placed far enough away from each other to suggest two different rooms. Probably upstairs bedrooms; one of those might be Charlie’s. He played around with the possibility of raising the ladder and checking it out but decided against it.
Besides, maybe someone had been washing second-story windows today and got lazy or put the ladder down flat so a small boy wouldn’t be tempted to climb it and fall. Who knew?
Like a moth drawn to a flame, he retraced his steps to the office window and chanced another peek. This time the door was opening. He shrank back against the rock siding, then slowly inched his face close enough to see inside. Lily stood in front of the desk, her body so taut she almost vibrated. Block stayed seated and managed to look bored as she spoke.
Did he dare nudge the window open farther? No, he decided, too risky. Besides, he could pretty much guess what they were saying. One thing was clear: there was no love lost between them.
After several minutes, Lily turned on her heels and rushed to the door. She ripped it open and slammed it behind her. That was his girl, temper, temper. But Block was out of his chair in a flash, hurrying after her and the look on his face chilled Chance’s blood. The door swung closed behind them so whatever happened next occurred without Chance witnessing it. And in his gut he knew nothing good was going on inside that house.
Self-preservation kicked in and he began to wonder where McCord was. If the older man did carry out a cursory patrol of the yard every once in a while, shouldn’t he be showing up soon? And exactly how was he going to get out of this yard when the time came to escape? He found the answer to that when he literally ran into a tree growing close to the tall fence. He could shimmy up the trunk and jump down on the other side.
Desperate to know what was going on, Chance crept around to the garage side of the house and smelled smoke. The lights were still off, but he stopped short when he saw the glow of a cigarette as someone sucked on it. Squinting, he could just make out the figure of a man leaning against a white car, an acrid pale cloud hanging in the air around him.
A door opened from the house into a nearby carport. A woman stood framed in the light. “Mr. McCord?” she called with an edge of panic in her voice. She flipped on a weak outside light and McCord pushed himself away from the car and swore.
“Turn the damn light off,” he said.
“The little boy is missing! There’s a note and everything. Mr. Block said you should find out how the child was taken or if he’s still on the grounds. And we’re to tell no one about this.”
“Have you called the cops?” McCord asked as he emerged into the light. He was a stocky man with an almost bald head.
“Mr. Block insisted no police. He’s furious with me.”
“What about the kid’s mother?”
“Is that who she is? He’s furious with her, too. I think he hit her. I better get back inside. Hurry, check the grounds.”
She ran back inside the house. Chance expected McCord to turn on the outside floodlights if they had them and sure enough, within seconds the yard jumped from black to living color. He moved at once into one of the few remaining shadows but he had the feeling McCord had witnessed the movement. The older man would come looking and chances were he packed a firearm.
Even more to the point, Lily was apparently trapped inside the house. The maid said Jeremy had hit her. His fists clenched. How badly was she hurt? How could he get her out of there?
Slinking behind a grape arbor still thankfully covered with drooping yellow leaves he could hide behind, he pulled his gun, but paused to try to think.
Who in the world had taken Charlie?
* * *
LILY GRASPED OVERHEAD for a light cord to pull. She couldn’t find one and there was nothing on the wall. Then she remembered the switch outside the door. The shelves behind her felt like they were covered with office supplies. What could she do when Jeremy returned? Give him a bad paper cut?
She kicked at the door until her foot hurt. She pounded her fists against the heavy wood panel to no avail. She yelled and shouted and had the horrible feeling no one could hear her or that if they did, they would simply ignore her.
Who had taken Charlie and what did they want with him? Her stomach clenched into a knot as she pictured his eyes filled with fear. How could Jeremy be so cavalier about his child’s safety? If Jeremy wasn’t blowing smoke, then going to the police might prove deadly for Charlie... How did she chance that her lying, cheating husband might actually be telling the truth for once?
She swore under her breath.
A sound on the other side of the door froze her solid for a second and then she frantically started patting the shelves again, feeling for something, anything she could use as a weapon. Her fingers brushed the cool metal of an aerosol can. She grabbed it and another one next to it. She depressed the nozzle sprays and was rewarded with nothing but puffs of air. That’s what they were: compressed gas meant to blow the dust from a computer keyboard. Their contents were useless, but they were heavy enough to buy her a moment or two if she used them as projectiles.
The lock clicked and she jumped. This was it. Raising the cans to face height, she squinted against the sudden infusion of light and threw the cans as hard as she could. She opened her eyes in time to see one strike a dark head while a tanned hand caught the other.
“Damn!” Chance said. “Ouch.”
“Chance! I’m sorry, I thought you were Jeremy!” She threw herself against him and he caught her, hugging her close for a second, then he raised a hand and gently touched the uninjured part of her cheek. “When I get my hands on that man—”
“Not now,” she said. “How did you get in here?”
He gestured at the window. The yard beyond was brilliantly illuminated. “But I don’t know how we’re going to escape,” he said. They heard a yell from outside. “I bet they found the ladder over on the far side of the house. Is that how they took Charlie? Through the window?”
“Yes.” She wasn’t sure how he knew Charlie was missing but now wasn’t the time for conversation.
“We’ll have to make a dash for that tree over by the fence. Are you up to it?”
His gaze studied her face and she could imagine what he saw. She knew one eye was swollen because she could feel it with her fingers and she suspected the warm sticky substance on her cheek was blood from Jeremy’s last punch. “Don’t worry about me,” she said. “But Chance, if I’m stopped and you’re not, promise me you’ll find Charlie.”
“Lily...”
“Promise me.”
“I promise. Come on.”
He stuck his head out the window, then turned to look back at her. “The tree is about twenty feet to your right. Can you climb trees?”
“If I have to.”
“Then go. I’ll be behind you. I have something to do here.”
“What?”
“Lily. Go.” He picked her up, and swung her outside.
“See if you can find my purse,” she whispered. “It has the car keys.”
“Will do.” He released her. She dropped to her feet and took off at a dead run. She found the fence and kept going until she got to the tree. Chance showed up earlier than she’d anticipated and hoisted her onto a limb over her head. She scrambled along until she got close to the top of the iron fence and threw herself to the ground on the other side, landing facedown, all but knocking the wind out of her lungs. Chance landed a few seconds after her, but he came down on his feet and absorbed the shock in his legs. He immediately stood and pulled her upright. She saw with relief that he held her purse in one hand.
They ran across the street, thankful to be out of the light.
“I don’t know how we avoided being seen,” Chance said as Lily led them to the nature trail.
“I don’t, either. What did you do in Jeremy’s office besides find my purse?”
He pressed her bag into her hands. “Wiped my prints away and kicked in the closet door from the inside. I didn’t want your husband knowing you had outside help. You didn’t tell him I was with you, did you?”
“No,” she said as she extracted the car keys. Would Jeremy believe she was capable of kicking open a door? Maybe, maybe not, but at least he’d wonder.
Lily took the passenger seat. A few seconds later, Chance directed the car onto the quiet road. “Where’s the nearest police station?” he asked. The moon illuminated the pavement and they drove without lights for several seconds before they’d turned away from Jeremy’s neighborhood and traffic began to appear. The headlights went on and they sped up.
“We’re not going to the police,” she said.
“But the man hit you, Lily. He locked you in a closet...”
“I’m not important. It’s Charlie we have to worry about. Jeremy says if the police get involved, the kidnappers will kill Charlie.”
“And you believe him?”
“I don’t know what to believe,” she said. “But for now, no police. I have to find out who took Charlie. It’s someone named White, I think.”
“We’ll find him,” Chance said.
Too caught up in her thoughts, she didn’t respond. A son for a son... That implied revenge. It had to be tied to Jeremy.
