Читать книгу A Father For Her Baby - B.J. Daniels - Страница 13

The sound of a phone ringing pulled Kit from a less-than-peaceful sleep. She sat up, disoriented, instantly afraid. Then she remembered where she was and realized the phone she heard was the cellular Sanders had given her. She reached into her purse.

“Hello?” Her son stirred beside her, stretching, his small fists reaching out, his sleep-wrinkled face so adorable and sweet. She leaned over and kissed his warm cheek.

“Kit.” Sanders sounded far away. “Where are you?”

She glanced out at the passing landscape, at what appeared to be a tiny fishing village. She sat up a little straighter, surprised by what she was seeing. “I’m not sure.” The sun had sunk beyond the front of the limo into scrub and sand. Off to her left, she caught a glimpse of a large body of water beneath a bank of dark clouds. The Gulf of Mexico? But Huntsville was to the north.

“Kit, I don’t want to alarm you, but—”

She heard a thunk, then another voice.

“Is my son all right? What’s going on? Where are you?”

Kit recoiled. “Derrick.”

“Yes, your husband. I’ve been worried about you. You and the baby.”

She swallowed, unable to force down the fear that threatened to choke her. And the revulsion. He was acting as if nothing had happened. “I told Sanders I didn’t want to see you,” she said.

“I know. Kit, you’re confused. I don’t want to argue about it. I want to see my son.”

She closed her eyes. “No, Derrick.” Her voice came out hoarse. “I saw you kill that man.”

Silence. “You’re wrong. You just made a mistake. But we can fix it. As soon as I see you.”

“I want you to leave me alone,” she demanded, glancing at the driver’s outline through the privacy window. He had his back to her, his head facing forward, and seemed unaware of the drama being played out in the back seat. He must have the intercom turned off.

“Leave you alone?” Derrick repeated, sounding calm. Only someone who knew him the way Kit did could hear the rage behind his words. “For months you’ve denied me my son. You’ve made me look like a fool, marrying a woman who’d run off like you did.” He took a breath. “And yet, I’m willing to forget and forgive, for my son’s sake.”

“He’s not your son,” she snapped, tired of the charade.

“Like hell.” All pretense of calm was instantly gone from his voice. “Maybe you’ve forgotten, but my father’s a judge. It shouldn’t be too hard to convince him that my wife’s unstable and an unfit mother—a woman who takes off nine months’ pregnant, then starts spreading some insane story about her husband being a murderer.”

She could barely hear her own voice above the thunder of her heart. Hadn’t this been her worst fear—that Derrick would somehow get Andy? “Running away from you wasn’t insane and you know it.”

He laughed; the sound had a bite to it. “It was insane for you not to take the limo Sanders hired for you. We could have worked this out.”

She closed her eyes. What game was he playing now? “You know I took the car he sent.”

“You stupid woman. You got into the wrong limo.” He sounded confident that she’d just made the biggest mistake of her life. “Now who knows where you are or where you’re going or what’s going to happen to you. But I promise you this, Kit. I’ll end up with my son.”

Her gaze flew up. She stared at the back of the driver. He tugged at the collar of his white shirt with his index finger. Alarm knifed through her as she remembered the way his uniform looked on his powerful-looking athletic build, the jacket too snug in the shoulders, the pants too short. But it wasn’t just the ill-fitting uniform, she thought, remembering the cowboy boots, the way he moved, the hidden power beneath his clothing and the wariness she’d sensed in him.

She noticed now that his dark blond hair needed trimming. It fell beneath the back of his cap to plaster damply against the tanned nape of his neck. And his hands—large, sun-browned, weathered and worn, like a pair of used leather gloves. Not the hands of a chauffeur.

She felt panic race through her veins. Hadn’t she thought he looked like a bodyguard—or a thug? Only she’d believed Sanders had hired the man to protect her and Andy. Her heart pounded in her ears. “Who hired this limo?” she asked, her voice breaking.

Derrick made a pitying sound. “You were so busy trying to save yourself from me, you’ve gotten yourself into even worse trouble.”

She turned her face to the side window and looked out at the miles of sand spit, feeling hot tears scald her eyelids. The line of clouds she’d noticed earlier now hung on the horizon above the darkening waters of the gulf. The driver had been following the coastline, not heading north, not going to Huntsville.

“Are you ready now to put all this foolishness behind us?” Derrick demanded as the telephone connection grew more faint. “Otherwise, what do I care what happens to you?”

He was just trying to scare her. He’d hired this limo and driver to confuse her, to bully and berate her—to frighten her into coming back to him, into forgetting she’d seen him murder a man.

She glanced over at her son. His eyes sparkled as he smiled up at her and waved his dimpled arms in the air. Anger, and her inborn need to protect her child at all costs, overpowered her fear and gave her a false confidence.

“You’d better hope nothing happens to me,” she snapped. “I can prove that you murdered Jason St. John.” The lie passed her lips before she could stop it. “I have evidence. And if anything happens to me or Andy—”

She didn’t hear the privacy window slide down, didn’t even realize the driver had seen her on the phone, not until he reached back and ripped it from her fingers. With a curse, he turned it off and tossed it onto the seat beside him as the window closed again.

She sat in stunned silence for a full minute, her anger spent, fear making her tremble.

“Who are you?” she demanded, pressing the intercom button. “What do you want with me and my baby?”

He pushed back his cap and met her gaze in the rearview mirror. A pair of startling steel gray eyes glared at her from a ruggedly handsome male face. His good looks surprised her. But the fury she saw in his expression left her stunned.

Her terror escalated. She was trapped in the back of a limo, racing along the two-lane at sixty-five miles an hour, with this man, who was no hired bodyguard, headed where? “Where are we?” she pleaded. “Where are you taking us?”

“We’re almost there, Mrs. Killhorn.”

She felt a fresh wave of panic. “That isn’t what I asked you. Stop this car right now and let me out. Do you hear me?”

He didn’t look back. Nor did he answer. She saw him reach for a car phone and begin speaking into it. She couldn’t hear what he was saying.

She pushed the intercom again. But when she spoke into it, pleading with him to, please, not hurt her baby, she realized he’d turned it off.

“Damn you!” she cried, beating her fists against the window between them. “Damn you, stop this car! Let me and my baby out! Now!”

Andy began to scream, a high thin wail. Kit quit screaming, realizing she was only frightening the infant. She leaned over him, stroking his face, cooing softly as she soothed his cries. She had to try to quell her own panic. If she hoped to get them out of this, she had to keep her head.

Raindrops splattered the windshield as the storm moved inland. Through a break in the clouds, she could see the gulf, its surface a gunpowder gray. The driver had hung up the car phone.

Having calmed Andy, she gained a little control herself. She tried the intercom again. “Can you just tell me this—” she asked. “Did Sanders Killhorn hire you?”

She thought for a moment that he wouldn’t answer, that he still couldn’t hear her. But then he looked back in the mirror, his eyes almost silver in the darkness of the storm.

“No one hired me,” he said.

Music suddenly filled the back of the limo. Soft but at the same time deafening to her. Christmas music.

Kit felt sick inside. Somehow, she knew, Derrick had outwitted his brother. Her mind refused to accept the possibility that Sanders had been in on this kidnapping all along.

Derrick had said she’d made a terrible mistake. And now he had her right where he wanted her.

* * *

DERRICK SLAMMED the pay phone receiver against the wall until the plastic flew in all directions. Slowly, he hung up what was left of the phone.

“Call her back,” he commanded. “I have to talk to her.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Sanders said, noticing that people were watching. “Come on, let’s get your luggage and get out of here before someone tells security about the phone you just destroyed.”

Derrick handed his brother another receiver. “Call. If I can just talk to her, I know I can make her understand. She’s just got it all wrong.”

Sanders started to argue, decided it wouldn’t do any good, and dialed.

He hung up when he got a recording saying that she was unavailable. She’d turned off the phone. “I still can’t believe she rented a limo and driver.”

Derrick swore. “She didn’t, you moron.”

Sanders stared at his brother. He had to admit he’d never seen Derrick this crazy over a woman. Not even Belinda could put him in this kind of a frenzy, and if there was one thing Belinda loved to do, it was set Derrick off. “She didn’t rent the limo?”

“Someone’s kidnapped her and the baby and she said that if anything happened to her—” He slammed a fist against the wall, once again drawing attention to them.

“Who would kidnap her?”

“How would I know that?” Derrick snapped.

Sanders reached for the pay phone. “We have to call the police—”

Derrick grabbed his wrist. “Are you crazy? We can’t chance calling the cops. I won’t risk my son’s life. We have to wait until we hear from the kidnapper and see what his demands are. He’ll call me back in Montana. I’m sure of it. I’ll have to take the next flight home.”

Sanders blinked. “You’re going to just leave Kit and the baby in the hands of some kidnapper in Texas and go back to Montana?” He couldn’t believe his brother. Couldn’t believe Kit had been kidnapped. How had the kidnapper known where she was, let alone that she’d be taking a limo?

“I’m not just leaving them,” Derrick snapped. “You’re staying here. You track that limo and driver and call me as soon as you know something.”

Sanders felt sick as he left the airport. Who would kidnap Kit and the baby? Only one man he could think of. The same man who’d known the address where Kit worked, who came up with the idea of a friend’s secluded ranch in Huntsville, who anticipated Kit would insist on Sanders meeting him at the airport instead of driving her, and who’d suggested hiring a limo and driver to take her.

Derrick could easily have set up this whole kidnapping thing. To scare Kit into coming back to him.

* * *

THE STORM SUCKED the last of the light from the day, making the sky as gray as the gulf. Rain streaked the windows of the limo as it sped along the coast. Kit fought the urge to scream and pound again on the window. She knew it would only upset her son—and accomplish nothing.

She glanced at her watch, trying to calculate where they were. She had no idea. She didn’t know Texas, never having ventured out of the house, let alone Galveston, for fear of running into Derrick. Through the rain, she glimpsed a highway sign: Brownsville, 170 miles. Dear God, they were headed south along the gulf toward Mexico.

Andy began to whimper. Kit unsnapped him from the carrier and changed his wet diaper, her hands trembling. She tried to stay calm, to think clearly, for the baby’s sake.

“It’s going to be all right,” she said to him as she took a bottle from the warmer in the bag and put the nipple to his mouth. Andy took it greedily. She looked down at him, studying his precious face, promising him silently that she would get them out of this. Whatever she had to do.

Her head jerked up as she felt the car slowing. Her pulse was deafening in her ears as she fought to see beyond the rain. Why were they stopping? She quickly unsnapped Andy’s car seat and buckled her son back into it as the driver turned onto a narrow shell road that ran through high dunes and scrub brush. Dense fog socked in the gulf. Fog and rain and night cloaked the car in darkness.

From what Kit could see, the area appeared seedy and deserted. The few shanties they passed stood on stilts like shore birds, but they too looked empty, boarded up as if anticipating a bad storm.

The driver pulled off on an even narrower side road and stopped between two tall dunes. He cut the engine. Kit grabbed for the door, planning to leap out with her son and run. The door was locked.

Her gaze jumped to the driver as she heard the whir of the privacy window and saw him turning toward her.