Sable took a sheet of engraved stationery from her desk drawer and wrote a short list of names. It was the least she could do. She’d always believed in rewarding loyalty. And Brad had been loyal, if not patient.
Not that Sable blamed him.
She’d been impatient to humble Ross Collingwood, too, to ruin his life as he’d ruined hers. Even though Ross and his oh-so-sweet wife were dead, Sable was still impatient to regain complete control of the company that she’d created with her blood, sweat and ambition.
Sable reread the list. She’d have her secretary provide the store contact numbers and fax it to that to-die-for writer, Evan Mitchell. Now there was a man, like Ross, who’d be a challenge worthy of her.
Sable had never walked away from a challenge. She had to know if Brad had left behind any evidence that was fueling Stephanie’s fears.
ALTHOUGH THE SHELTONS had moved, it didn’t take the kidnapper long to locate their new address in Logantown, Pennsylvania, on the Internet. The cute message from “Stef and Keely” on the answering machine confirmed it.
After lurking in the shrubbery outside the modest house for more than an hour, the kidnapper was convinced that no one was home. Maybe the kid went to day care.
It was child’s play to gain access to the house. The kidnapper found a key tucked in the decorative bird-house nailed to the wall of the garage.
Silence greeted the opening of the front door. So much the better that there were no dogs or other four-legged creatures to get in the way. The kidnapper threw the dead bolt back into place.
Handgun at the ready and heart thundering at the possible risk of discovery, the kidnapper moved through the house, learning the layout of the rooms and planning the best route to get inside late tonight to snatch the child.
On the mantel in the living room, the kidnapper discovered a cluster of photos. Saw a laughing, dark-haired child taking her first steps, blowing out a candle on her first birthday cake and filling a bucket with sand on a beach. Keely. Riana.
The kidnapper swiped the beach photo.
The little girl’s bedroom was located beside the master bedroom. The kidnapper paused inside the door of the pastel-striped room and noted the proximity of the sliding-aluminum window to the twin bed piled with kitten-theme pillows. The kidnapper unlocked the window, then lowered the pink Roman blind a few inches to cover the latch.
Now all that was needed was a DNA sample. The kidnapper went into the bathroom and took one of Keely’s hair elastics that had several strands of Keely’s hair knotted around it.
The kidnapper had pocketed the elastic and was about to leave when the sound of a key being inserted into the front door lock snickered through the house.
A palm damp with sweat gripped the handgun more tightly. The kidnapper hid in the bathtub behind the folds of a Paris in Springtime shower curtain. Maybe an opportunity to snatch Keely had just presented itself.
HER DAUGHTER was playing princess and having a tea party in a swank hotel and Stef was coming home without her to search for evidence that her husband had been a criminal. Stef knew she was hanging on by a thread with a little help from Mitch.
She took a deep breath as she entered her home, remembering the salty citrus scent of Mitch’s skin when he’d held her in the taxi earlier. He was wrenching Keely from her life but she’d found unexpected comfort and strength in his arms. How incongruent was that?
An image of Keely decked out in a princess dress rooted in Stef’s mind as she stood in the entryway and saw her home through fresh eyes. Saw the plump cushions, the books and the splashes of color that she loved. Her home was comfortable, but nothing compared to what the Collingwood riches could provide. Her chest grew unbearably tight. She couldn’t let thoughts like this overtake her!
She felt the warm squeeze of Mitch’s fingers on her shoulder. “You still with me, Stef?” he asked.
She squared her shoulders and opened her eyes, her breath catching in her throat when she saw the cobalt of Mitch’s eyes reflect concern. He was so handsome, his skin a rich mocha against the crisp blue collar of his shirt, which still bore the stains of her tears. She knew every muscle beneath his navy suit jacket was rock-solid.
“Yes, I’m with you.”
“Good girl.”
“Sexist pig.”
Mitch laughed, his mouth easing into a grin that she found incredibly irresistible. “That’s more like it, spit-fire. Stay tough. Where are these boxes of yours?”
“In the cellar.” Stef set her purse on the hall table amid a decorative arrangement of fall leaves, then removed her jacket and hung it near the door. “I kept his laptop, too. But that’s in the TV alcove. I know there are a lot of Office Outfitters files still on the hard drive. I never got around to deleting them.”
“Let’s start with the boxes in the cellar,” Mitch suggested, hanging his blazer beside her coat. “We can take the laptop back to New York with us.”
Stef warily eyed the gun tucked into the holster on his right hip. Please God, she didn’t want anybody to get hurt. She just wanted her baby back.
Mitch touched the gun. “Got a problem with my friend?”
“Not as long as you play with him by yourself,” Stef said, giving the gun a wide berth as she headed for the alcove to grab the computer bag and the laptop.
“You’re not the first woman who’s said that to me.”
“Really?” she called back over her shoulder. She couldn’t imagine many women being happy to have a loaded gun in their homes. “I’ll bet you even have a name for him.”
“Sure, it’s Scout. Which way is the cellar?”
Stef reached for the laptop and prayed it wouldn’t prove the worst fear in her heart. “Ask Scout.”
NEW YORK?
Gun still drawn, the kidnapper huddled in the bathtub until the second set of footsteps had descended the cellar stairs. Keely wasn’t with them. They said they were going back to New York. Was Keely in New York, as well? Where?
The kidnapper slowly crept out of the bathroom and down the hall toward the front door. The cellar entrance was in the kitchen at the rear of the house.
Stephanie’s purse on the hall table gave the kidnapper pause. As did the coats hanging on the rack by the door. The kidnapper searched the pockets of the jackets first. In the breast pocket of the navy blazer the kidnapper found a plastic hotel key card—for the Clairmont Hotel.
The name seemed vaguely familiar, but the kidnapper couldn’t place it.
The kidnapper reached for the purse on the table. Key cards were usually provided to guests inside a paper sleeve marked with the room number. As the kidnapper groped through the contents of the black leather purse, a tube of lipstick clattered to the parquet floor.
The kidnapper winced. Had the sound been loud enough to be heard downstairs?
Not willing to take a chance on being caught, the kidnapper propped the bag on the table so it looked as if it had fallen on its side, then quickly eased the front door open and left the house.
Armed with a key card and a picture of Keely, how hard could it be to find one little girl in a hotel?
“DID YOU HEAR SOMETHING?” Mitch froze, his head cocked to one side as his ears strained to identify the sound he’d just heard.
“I—”
He silenced Stef by laying a finger over her lips.
The floorboards overhead creaked. Was that a footstep? It was different from the first sound.
“Stay here. I’m going up,” he mouthed to Stef.
Pulling the Smith & Wesson Chief’s Special from his holster, he moved up the basement stairs, keeping to the outer edge of the treads.
Stef had left the door open into the kitchen. Mitch paused at the top for a half beat, listening, then, with his back to the door frame, he moved in a slow semi-circle into the kitchen at a crouch, arms extended ready to fire, his eyes scanning the room.
Moving with the silent grace of a predator, he stole across the kitchen and peered around the corner into t
he hall. A tube of lipstick lay on the parquet floor as if it had fallen from Stef’s purse on the table above. Was that what he’d heard? Unwilling to take a chance on being wrong, Mitch stealthily moved through the house to sweep each room for intruders….
Stef was going crazy waiting for Mitch to come back. An eerie silence stretched over the house like the drawn-out squeak of a hinge. The thought of Mitch being armed and confronting an intruder was almost as frightening as the thought of someone breaking into her home. What if she and Keely had been home alone this morning?
Her knees wobbled. What if the intruder was armed? Mitch was alone upstairs. Shouldn’t he have backup?
Stef looked for a weapon. Brad’s softball bat projected from a box. She eased it free and crept toward the stairs. She could call the police from the kitchen.
She’d made it halfway up the stairs, moving as carefully as Mitch had, when his frame suddenly filled the doorway. Stef had never thought she could be so glad to see him. His gun was back in the holster.
“False alarm,” he told her, nonchalant. “Your purse tipped over on the table and something fell onto the floor. I checked the house and there’s nobody lurking in the closets or under the beds. But I locked a few windows just for kicks.” He paused as she lowered the bat and sagged against the hand railing. “What were you planning to do with that bat?”
“I was going to protect you,” Stef said stiffly.
She clenched her teeth as Mitch’s rich laughter echoed down the stairwell. “With that little bat?”
He jogged down the stairs and snagged the bat from her fingers. Although laughter lit his face, his eyes were dark and solemn. “I appreciate the thought, truly I do. But seriously, I could have seen the mean end of that bat before I saw you. Keely would give me a handful of black jelly beans if I hurt her mommy.”
Stef found herself laughing. He was incorrigible and cocky and totally capable of protecting himself and her, and Keely. She hadn’t felt this safe since her father had carried her to the hospital after she’d fallen off her bike and broken her ankle. “So you don’t think I’m ready for the police academy, huh?”
He lightly traced the curve of her cheek, the pad of his thumb warm and calloused against her skin, and Stef felt her pulse race to meet his touch.
“Don’t sell yourself short.” His mouth slid into an appealing grin, part devil, part seducer. “You’d be great in undercover assignments. No one could look at your face and not think you were on the up and up. That was an ingenious cover story you laid on Sable this morning.”
Stef felt a glow light within her. Okay, she had done one or two things right to help find her daughter. And she’d never countermand another of Mitch’s orders.
She tucked her hair behind her ears and scooted past him down the stairs. “There are a couple of boxes near the workbench that we haven’t checked yet. I gave away Brad’s clothes but I kept a lot of his personal things. He was estranged from his parents. I thought if they ever made contact I could share some things with them, too.”
She threaded her way around Keely’s old crib and her highchair, aware of Mitch following close behind. The cellar’s low pipe-lined ceiling made him seem larger than life. Goose bumps prickled her arms as she pointed at two sealed cartons. “These had Brad’s briefcase, tools and unidentified male stuff in them.”
Mitch’s eyebrows rose as he lifted one of the boxes onto the workbench. “‘Unidentified male stuff’?”
“You know, boy toys. Gadgets that look like tools but you can’t figure out what they could possibly fix. Brad got a lot of promo gifts from suppliers.”
Mitch opened the carton with a box cutter. Stef pulled an object out of the box. “Like this, what is it?”
He laughed. “It stamps your initials on golf balls.”
“If you say so. How about I just remove the known objects and let you deal with the rest?”
“Works for me.”
They worked in silence for a few minutes. Stef wondered what was going through Mitch’s mind as he sifted through her husband’s belongings. Did he see a man who’d loved his family? Who’d clung to a job he’d lost because it was part of his identity and he didn’t know who he was without it? Mitch paid particular attention to Brad’s portable CD player and played the CD. “That’s one of Brad’s motivational sales tapes,” she explained when a slick male voice expounded on brand and company image.
His concentration intense, Mitch sifted through the other CDs in a plastic case, then set them aside. Handling Brad’s things reminded Stef of happier times when she and Brad had lived in New York City. The people, the divergent cultures and the ever-changing face of the city had been an exciting switch from the small town near Philadelphia where she’d grown up and where her parents still lived when they weren’t exploring the country in their camper.
Her memories were brought to a painful halt when Mitch pulled Brad’s briefcase from the bottom of the box. Stef had bought it to celebrate his promotion to regional sales manager four years ago. Shortly after Brad had gotten the job, they’d decided to start a family. Or was she the one who’d decided? Stef pressed her hand to her mouth. Ever since Mitch had arrived on her doorstep she’d been questioning her marriage. Questioning her love for her husband.
Her heart clenched as Mitch’s strong brown fingers released the twin locks on the retro metal case. She must have made a small sound, because Mitch looked at her intently, the kindness in his eyes belying the hard set of his jaw. “I’ll need photos of Brad and the date he bought his insurance policy. It would save time if you took care of that while I finish up here. I know you’re anxious to get back to Keely.”
“I’d rather stay,” she insisted, battling the weakness in her knees that Mitch’s consideration of her feelings evoked. He was searching her husband’s belongings for proof that Brad was a kidnapper.
“You sure? They aren’t handing out any prizes for bravery today.”
They weren’t handing out awards to cowards, either. She wanted her baby back. It was the only thing she had to live for if Keely was taken from her. “Darn, I thought today was my lucky day.”
Her gaze fell to the interior of her husband’s briefcase. Whatever Brad kept in there had always been a mystery to her. She’d never been a prying wife. She pointed at what looked like a compact TV remote control. “Now why would a man have a TV remote in his briefcase?”
Mitch frowned as he picked it up. “It’s not a remote control. It’s a tape recorder.” He pressed a button.
Sable Holden’s voice suddenly purred into the basement, laced with seductive overtones, “Ross, you came. I was afraid that annoying secretary of yours wasn’t going to cooperate. You’re a hard man to find.” She paused for a sexually charged beat. “Very hard.”
A male voice, feral with a warning note in its tone replied, “I didn’t come for lunch, Sable.”
Was that Ross Collingwood?
Heat climbed in Stef’s face. Judging from the clinking of cutlery in the background, the recording had been made in a restaurant and she could picture Sable sliding a hand beneath a pristine linen tablecloth to gauge the hardness of a certain part of Ross Collingwood’s anatomy.
Nausea stirred in the back of her throat at the thought that Brad must have been nearby, recording the conversation. She gripped the edge of the worktable as Sable’s laughter spilled into the gloom of the basement.
“What a delicious choice of words, Ross. I can see we’re of the same mind. I’ve reserved a room upstairs.”
“Sable, I’m married. I love my wife.”
“Yes, and how long has it been since you slept with her? A man like you has physical needs and desires, and so do I.”
Ross cursed sharply and the tape went eerily silent.
Stef started to shake as she met Mitch’s stony gaze. What had Brad planned to do with that tape?
Chapter Six
Mitch saw the significance of the tape recording explode in Stef’s eyes.
“I t
hought we weren’t going to find anything,” she said in a small voice.
Mitch found himself coming dangerously close to losing the control he’d been holding in check since he’d held her in his arms in the taxi earlier this morning. No, who was he kidding? Since he’d met her last night.
This woman got under his skin in a thousand ways he couldn’t resist. He liked that her house wasn’t magazine perfect because she was too busy spending time being Keely’s mommy. He liked that she fought him every step of the way because he was threatening the one thing she held most dear. Despite the fact that she hated him, she’d even been willing to put herself at risk to protect him a few minutes ago. It humbled him to think she believed he needed protecting.
He did. From her.
Even though his mind warned him to step back and detach before it was too late, Mitch deliberately snared Stef’s chin in his hand, forcing her to look at him. Desire, fear and an emotion that left his stomach doing somersaults jolted through him as he drowned in her pain, tried to absorb it, shoulder it and make it his own. Her skin was so incredibly soft, incredibly tempting, he wanted to touch his lips to it to see if it tasted as divine as it felt beneath his fingertips.
He wanted to kiss her. Needed to kiss her in a way he’d never needed to kiss another woman. It had nothing to do with finding her child.
It had to do with finding himself.
Sweat chilled his skin. Somewhere in the logical half of his brain he knew kissing Stef would be a mistake and might have disastrous consequences, but the decision was made somewhere deep inside him and was stronger than his willpower. He couldn’t fight it any longer.
He meant for it to be gentle. Comforting. But the instant he tasted the sweetness of her mouth, he was beyond controlling it. The kiss happened. Wild. Deep. Searching. Escalating from, This isn’t a good idea to I want you in three seconds flat.
Incredibly she kissed him back, her softness moving against him, her fingers digging into his shoulders. Mitch growled low in his throat, kneading her buttocks with his fingers, falling victim to the intoxicating scent of her hair, to the honeyed taste of her on his tongue and the pressure of her fingers urging him closer. Sensations rampaged through him in vibrant images, igniting him, tormenting him, soothing him. He couldn’t get enough.
Operation Bassinet Page 8