Читать книгу Rock-A-Bye Rescue - Karen Whiddon - Страница 14

Chapter 3

Dean’s body hummed with the tension he sensed from Lila’s end of the phone call. Her expression was already bereft when she dropped onto a bar stool and the color drained from her cheeks.

“K-kill them? Why? They’re just babies!”

Dean jerked his back erect and balled his fists. What the hell? Handcuffs? Killing babies? What was she talking about?

He’d thought he’d left the violence and ugliness behind in Iraq.

He stepped closer, his gaze intent on Lila as he tried to decipher—

A loud crack, followed by a crash, sounded outside as the lights flickered off. Dean flinched, his pulse slamming into high gear, a gut-level reaction left over from one-too-many roadside bombs while deployed.

Lila gave a startled yelp, and the baby, who’d been settling down, cranked up her whine again.

“Agent Dunn?” Lila said, the panic in her voice rising. “Agent Dunn?” She pulled the phone away from her ear and stared at the receiver with wide, anguished eyes.

Dean drew a slow breath, shoving down the nightmares that now crept into his daytime hours. Moving to the front window, he fingered back the sheer curtain and searched the yard. He spotted the large branch that had snapped off under the weight of the ice and brought down Lila’s power line as it fell. “Do you have a generator?”

She didn’t answer, and when he turned toward her, she was staring at near space, clearly not seeing anything. Her whole body trembled like the vibrations from the street as a Bradley tank rolled past. His protective instincts roared to life. The same loyalty and determination to defend his fellow soldiers, his country and the vulnerable citizens in the foreign lands where he was deployed now spiked in his veins for Lila. Whatever had upset her would not have a chance to hurt her as long as he had a breath in his body. He gritted his teeth in resolve as he watched her.

“Lila?” No response. “Lila?”

She gasped as she woke from her daze and met his eyes. She almost seemed surprised to see him standing there. “I, uh—”

Without finishing her sentence, she hurried to her front door and threw the dead bolt. Pushing aside the checkered curtains on the door window, she searched her property.

“It was a branch,” he said. “Brought down your power line.”

She cast a confused look toward him. “What?”

“The cracking noise. Ice brought down a branch.” Then without waiting for an answer, he added, “But that’s not what you’re looking for, is it?”

She moistened her lips, still staring at him with a look of terror shadowing her face.

“Who was on the phone?”

“Y-you should go. I’ll get the sh-shed key.” She turned back toward the kitchen and took two wobbly steps before he caught her arm, steadying her.

“Forget the damn key. Who was on the phone? What did they say?”

Her throat worked as she swallowed. “The FBI. Sp-special Agent Dunn.”

His grip tightened on her arm. “Why is the FBI calling you? What’s going on, Lila?”

“They got away. They escaped, and...th-they want to kill the baby.” She shook her head, her gaze still distant, troubled. He felt the tremor that shook her, and he put an arm around her as she started to sink to the floor. Leading her by the arm to the sofa, he pushed her down on the cushions before she fell over from shock.

He tried again. “Start from the beginning, Lila. What did the guy on the phone say?”

Her attention went to the baby, whose cries were growing louder.

She tried to get past him, batting at his restraining hands. “I have to get Eve. I h-have to protect her.”

The conversation was going nowhere fast. He pushed her back onto the cushions and aimed a finger at her nose. “Stay. You’re too shaken to even stand upright.”

When he was sure she’d comply, he crouched by the baby carrier and lifted Eve into his arms. After a few pats on the back, the baby calmed a little, and he carried the infant back to the sofa with him.

Lila held out her arms, her expression reflecting eagerness and concern. As she drew the infant close, Lila began rocking from side to side to soothe Eve. Or maybe herself. She seemed as in need of comfort and calming as the infant.

Dean settled beside her, sitting at an angle so he could see her face. In the thin light from the window, she seemed especially wan. “Talk to me, Greene. What did the FBI want? Who got away?” He waited for her to say something, but when she met his eyes, she seemed unable to verbalize the horror gripping her. “Are you in some kind of danger?”

The answer to the last question was obvious, but he needed to get her to open up.

Lila bobbed her head, and tears bloomed in her eyes. “Did you...s-see the news this morning?”

Dean frowned. Her response struck him as odd, but he said, “No. I don’t have a TV or internet at my cabin.” And that was how he liked it. Unplugged from the world.

She closed her eyes and rested her cheek against the baby’s head. The tender, loving gesture hit him like a punch to the gut and jacked up his protectiveness a thousand degrees.

“There was a raid this morning...on a cult compound outside of town.” Her voice was as thin as mist and filled him with the same sense of foreboding. “The cult leader k-killed two young girls.” She paused for a shaky breath and cut a quick glance at him. “One of them was Eve’s mother.”

He muttered an earthy obscenity. “And this cult leader, this killer, got away from the FBI?”

She nodded stiffly. “He and his brother. They s-stole weapons from the injured guards.” Her gaze went to the empty gun rack over the fireplace, where he’d bet she’d gotten the shotgun she’d aimed at him a little while ago.

The feisty woman who’d tried to chase him off her property minutes ago bore little resemblance to the terrified woman sitting next to him now. His memories of Lila were more in line with the earlier version. Whatever the FBI agent had told her had been dire enough to elicit this drastic of a response from her.

“And you think these escapees might come here? To...kill the baby?” he asked, filling in the gaps from the snippets he’d heard. He knew his tone sounded skeptical. After everything he’d seen in Iraq and Afghanistan—the disregard for human life, young or old, male or female—maybe he shouldn’t doubt her theory. But going to extreme measures to kill a particular baby? It didn’t add up.

She angled her head and furrowed her brow. “I’m not making this up.”

He raised his hands, palms out. “I didn’t say you were.”

“Your tone did.” A bit of the fire he’d seen in her earlier returned to her eyes. “And yes, the FBI believe, based on what they learned from other cult members, that the Pitts brothers want to kill the babies.” She drew and released a fast, shallow breath. “The news report I watched online earlier said the cult leader, this guy named Kent Pitts, stabbed the two teenage girls in cold blood during the raid.” She closed her eyes and was silent for a moment. He waited, watched her. Disgust soured her expression. “According to the other cult members, the guy thought he was saving the girls from a worse fate.”

“What worse fate?”

“Being subjected to the evils of our government and modern society.”

Dean grunted. He knew there were a lot of extremist groups out there that resented any kind of authority, especially the American government and law enforcement.

Lila shifted Eve to her other shoulder, still patting the girl’s back and swaying, then met his gaze. “When Miriam, the woman with foster services, brought Eve up here, she said the cult believed they had created a Utopia of some sort at their compound and only they were truly enlightened. They knew the truth about...a perfect society or some such. Swords were the weapon of choice and a symbol they all but worshipped.”

“And this Pitts dude wants to kill Eve because...?”

“To save her from the big, bad world, same as the girls he stabbed.” She hesitated, then added, “Oh, did I mention he called the teenagers his wives? He had several.”

Dean tensed and a muscle in his jaw spasmed. “Are you saying this sicko is Eve’s father?”

She appeared as nauseated by the idea as he felt. “That’s my understanding. The girls were kidnapped from their families and raped. It’s all so...black.”

“Black?” he scoffed. “Is that the worst you have?”

She scowled her irritation with his response. “What? I’m an artist. I associate things—my feelings, people, events—with color, shapes.”

He lifted an eyebrow. “As in blue for sadness and yellow for happiness?”

“No...blue is happiness. Like the sky in spring. Yellow is—” She blinked, and her frown deepened. “Are you mocking me?”

He half snorted, half sighed. “No. Never mind. The whole artsy thing is just—”

“Yes?”

He didn’t want to have this discussion, didn’t want to offend Lila or explain himself...

“What do you see in this ink blot?”

“Ink. In a blot.”

“Anything else?”

Death. Blood spatter. War...

Icy fingers clamped on his lungs, and Dean shoved aside the flash of memory. “It’s not me. I tend to see things in more straightforward terms. More cut-and-dried. Black-and-white.”

“Black and white aren’t colors?” Feisty woman was back, now a bit defensive as well. But defensive was better than totally freaked out zombie woman.

Dean scowled and looked away. “You know what I mean.”

At least the baby had settled down some now, soothed by sticking her own hand in her mouth. Dean began processing what he knew about the threat to Eve and Lila. Something had to be done, but the ice storm threw a huge monkey wrench into the situation.

“Actually, black is the result of the absence of light, and white is a combination of all the colors in the spectrum.”

He cut her a puzzled side-glance. “Huh?”

“Sorry, I prattle when I get nervous or worried.” She scooted to the edge of the sofa and angled her head to check on Eve. “She seems to be settling down, so I should try to put her to bed. Look, the shed key is in a kitchen drawer somewhere. It has a green tag on it. Can you find it for yourself?”

He gave his head a dumbfounded shake. “Forget the flippin’ key,” he said more harshly than he intended.

Lila’s eyes rounded, and she shrank back from him. The move was subtle, just a slight shift in her body angle, but he’d become highly tuned to body language in the military. A community leader who says he knows nothing about hidden weapons but can’t meet your gaze. A translator who walks a bit too stiffly and checks the sky when he thinks you’re not looking. The faint tremor in a voice over the comm that changes orders.

He raised a palm. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to bark at you. But you can’t tell me there’s a killer headed this way and think I still care anything about borrowing your saw.”

Lila flicked a hand toward him as she rose from the couch, Eve cradled against her chest. She tucked her dark blond hair behind her ear and gave her head a quick shake. “Whatever. Get the key or don’t. But it’s time you left. Obviously, I have a lot going on here today, and I don’t need you in the way.”

Following her from the living room, he sputtered and said simply, “No.”

Lila stopped short and whirled to face him with a look of dismay. “What?”

“I said, no. I’m not going anywhere.”