Ultimate Heroes Collection

by Various Authors

  “Let me answer it.” Doug took the phone from her and glanced at the caller ID before depressing the receive button. He shook his head, indicating the caller’s ID wasn’t displayed, and said, “Hello.”

  He listened for a second, then offered the phone to her. “It’s for you.”

  Fear, as cold as ice, slid through her veins. She took the phone and pressed it to her ear. “Hello.”

  “Buttercup, it’s Harold.”

  Shock paralyzed her. She couldn’t speak. It was her uncle’s voice. No one else ever called her by that nickname, not even her father.

  “We have to meet. At my place. Come as soon as you can.” The voice of her dead uncle added, “Don’t let me down, Scout. I can explain everything.”

  The call was disconnected.

  She lowered the phone and simply stared at it, unable to deal with the emotions whirling inside her.

  “Who was it?” Doug took the phone from her hand and punched a few buttons. He shook his head. “The call log reads ‘caller unknown.’ It won’t let me do a dial-back.”

  “This can’t be,” she mumbled.

  Her knees buckled, and all that saved her from an up-close-and-personal encounter with the fancy Italian marble was Doug’s swift reaction.

  “Let’s sit down,” he suggested, supporting her entire weight in his capable arms. He lifted her effortlessly and carried her to the great room. After depositing her carefully on the sofa, he sat down on the table in front of her. “Who was it, Scout?”

  She looked at him, knowing that she was glassy-eyed and on the verge of fainting. “It was my uncle. Harold Atkins.”

  If the news startled him he recovered too quickly for her to notice. “You know that’s impossible.”

  She nodded. “I know.” Her gaze locked with Doug’s. “But it was him.” She shook her head and lifted a shoulder in an attempt at a shrug. “It was!”

  MAX PAUSED AT THE GATE to the guest house and entered the access code. He drove through, then out of habit watched as the gates closed behind him. Parking his SUV near Doug’s, he reviewed one last time all that Regis Brandon had said. Alexon’s goal was to keep Scout, thus the baby, safe. Biogenisis was the real enemy—the ruthless ones who would go to any means to get access to the antidote.

  Though he couldn’t be certain, Max was ninety percent sure that Brandon was telling the truth about that part. Max had watched for signs of deception and found none. As the new CEO of Alexon, Brandon wanted to set to rights the mess the former man in charge had left. The whole story felt right to Max.

  What gave him pause was Brandon’s hedging toward the end of the conversation, as well as his comment that Max and Scout should discuss things and make a decision. Though Max considered himself wholly responsible for Scout’s safety, whatever she decided regarding the baby was beyond his influence. He just couldn’t fathom why Brandon thought he’d have some say in the matter. Maybe he figured that, since Max and Scout had been intimate, Max’s opinion carried more weight than it did. Man, was he wrong.

  Emerging from the vehicle, Max admitted that he and Scout had made some progress on a personal level. But neither of them could pursue it until the case was resolved. Still, he felt confident that she wanted, as he did, to explore the option of a relationship when this was over. She was pregnant with another man’s child, but that didn’t change what Max felt for her, not really. Except he had to tread cautiously here. She might choose to go back to the baby’s father. The image of Gage Kimble abruptly loomed large in his mind and Max immediately squashed it. The case wasn’t over. He couldn’t dwell on the what-ifs of their personal lives until this situation was resolved.

  He paused midway up the front steps and wondered for a moment if this odd calm about the baby was what his sister had felt when she’d married her husband. Her new stepdaughter had been four years old at the time, but Fiona had accepted the child without hesitation, as if she was her own. Other than the initial outrage at discovering Scout had been with another man since their time together—which was none of Max’s business, since he’d had no hold on her anyway—he felt strangely at ease with the whole situation.

  As soon as possible he intended to pursue this thing between them … if she was willing. He knew the connection to the baby’s father would be strong under any circumstances. Max would simply have to learn to live with seeing the jerk from time to time.

  Killing him wasn’t an option.

  A smile tugged at Max’s lips. He had a plan. All he had to do now was see Scout safely through this uncertain period and get to the bottom of who had threatened her and her child.

  Easier said than done, since he still had no proof of anything.

  The door opened as Max reached it.

  His instincts went immediately on point.

  “We have a situation,” Cooper said, his expression grim.

  Max entered the foyer half expecting to find Scout missing. But that couldn’t be the case. Doug would have informed him via his cellphone if things had gone that wrong.

  When Cooper had locked up and reactivated the security system, he explained, “Scout received a package while you were out.”

  Confusion slammed into Max’s brain, exacerbating the headache that had been nagging at him. “From whom?” No one had followed him, he was certain. Both he and Doug had pulled out all the stops, taken all the right precautions. Impossible, he thought, shaking his head in adamant denial. “No one outside the agency knows we’re here.”

  Cooper spread his hands. “Someone does.”

  “What was it?” Max plowed a hand through his hair. Dammit. This would necessitate making another move. If their previous precautions hadn’t foiled their pursuers, nothing would.

  “A cellular phone. A few minutes after it was delivered, a call came in for Scout.”

  “What?”

  Cooper nodded. “It gets even better,” he added, knowing full well what Max must be thinking. “The caller was—”

  “My uncle,” Scout interrupted as she stepped into the foyer. “He needs me.” She glanced at her watch. “It’s time to go.” She looked from Max to Cooper and back. “You’re either with me or against me.”

  Chapter Twelve

  He’d tried to reason with her. But Scout didn’t want to listen to reason: she wanted answers.

  A part of her wanted desperately to believe that somehow her uncle was alive and waiting for her at his house. She peered through the car window, staring at the darkness. At the fat raindrops sliding across the glass as Max drove through the night. She hadn’t wanted to wait until dark, but Max would have it no other way.

  Her uncle—the voice on the phone—hadn’t given her a specific time. He’d just said that she needed to come as soon as she could.

  Another part of her, the saner, more rational part, told her it wasn’t possible. Her uncle was dead. She’d seen his murder with her own eyes. She’d visited his grave at the cemetery. Still, she hadn’t looked closely at his supposedly fatal wound. She’d had to run for her life when the shot was fired. But she’d seen him fall, seen the blood. He was dead.

  But the voice … It was him.

  And no one, absolutely no one, used that old nickname. He’d dubbed her that when she was fourteen and taking riding lessons for the summer. Her father had been away on another of his secret missions, and she’d spent the long, hot summer with her uncle Harold in Texas. He’d insisted that a girl couldn’t live in Texas and not know how to ride a horse. She had been thrilled with the lessons, but not with the nickname. Still, it had stuck. The only time he’d teased her with the nickname as an adult was once in a while when he called and was feeling especially sentimental. She always knew when he’d been reminiscing.

  Who else could possibly know?

  She shifted in the seat and stole a glance at Max. He didn’t like this one bit. But he’d gone along when she’d sworn that she would find a way to ditch him if he didn’t. The grim set of his profile in the dim glow of the dash lights to
ld her he still wasn’t happy.

  Doug Cooper and Ryan Braxton followed a few car lengths behind. They planned to take an alternate route to her uncle’s house once they reached the city. She and Max would approach by the usual route, Doug and Ryan from the rear, so to speak.

  Not for the first time since the ordeal began, Scout said a quick, silent prayer. She’d never been afraid—not once in her entire life. Her father had called her fearless and had laughed when his special forces buddies suggested she should join up. But now safety was about more than just her own well-being. She had the baby to think of. But she had to do this. If there was even a remote chance her uncle was alive, she needed to help him. The only reason he would have faked his death would have been to fool Alexon or to bait her into a trap with the company. She frowned, forcing that thought away. Her uncle wouldn’t hurt her, she knew. So if this was a trick, it had to have been engineered by Alexon.

  Scout didn’t care what Max thought; Regis Brandon was lying. His people had held her against her will. They were the ones trying to find her, to take her back into so-called protective custody. She knew what they wanted and she wasn’t about to give it to them. But she couldn’t prove any of it. She couldn’t stop them without proof.

  Still no one would take this baby from her.

  Max eased the SUV over to the curb and shifted into Park. She sat up a little straighter. “We’re not there yet.” She squinted through the darkness. Her uncle’s house was still a few blocks away.

  “Listen to me, Scout.” Max searched her face for a moment before allowing his gaze to meet hers. “I know you want to believe that voice was really your uncle’s, but it couldn’t have been. He’s dead and you know it.”

  She exhaled heavily. “I realize that this could be a trick. Probably is. But I can’t risk the possibility that it’s not. I have to know.”

  To her surprise, he said, “I understand.” He looked deeply into her eyes for a long while before continuing. “I just don’t want you to be hurt, that’s all. So let’s do this my way. Let me go in first.”

  A tiny ripple of awareness went through her. He really did care about her … He wanted to protect her. And she definitely sensed that it was more than his assignment. She should tell him the truth now. Just blurt it out.

  “You can trust me, Scout,” he added when she would have spoken. “I won’t ever break my word to you. It’s my first rule in life—you’re only as good as your word. You don’t have anything if you don’t have trust.”

  A new kind of anxiety took root deep inside her. Not only had she failed to trust him, she’d lied to him. Lied by omission. Broken his trust by keeping this secret from him. If there’d been any doubt in her mind as to whether he would hold her decision against her, there wasn’t now.

  He would never forgive her.

  He put the SUV into motion again and parked a block north of the house. She pushed away the hurt that wanted to take center stage in her thoughts. She had to focus right now. There would be time to grieve this newest loss later.

  At least she hoped there would be.

  If this was a trap …

  Max moved along the hedge between Atkins’s house and the closest neighbor. There was no vehicle in the driveway, but that didn’t mean anything. Whoever had lured Scout here could have parked anywhere. During the four hours he’d insisted they wait before coming here, Max had asked Ryan Braxton to gather background intelligence on Biogenisis. The corporation was not as large as Alexon, but appeared extremely aggressive in their business tactics. They had been involved in two lawsuits and a federal investigation in the past three years. Each time, they’d skated out of trouble by the skin of their teeth. Biogenisis, in Max’s opinion, was run by ruthless people who would go to any lengths to accomplish their goals.

  Like getting their hands on Scout’s baby.

  Braxton had also passed on the results of the document analysis. The papers found at Harold Atkins’s house were from a different manufacturer than the correspondence stock the Colby Agency had received from Alexon. Though that wasn’t absolute proof in itself, it added to Max’s growing certainty that Alexon was not the worst of the bad guys in this.

  When he rounded the corner near the garage, a figure stepped out of the shadows.

  Gage Kimble.

  With his weapon cocked and leveled on target, Max hissed a curse and glared at the man. “What’re you doing here?”

  “I could ask you the same thing,” Kimble plied just as smugly. His gun was drawn, too. He and Max stood three or four feet apart, weapons aimed at each other.

  “Gage!” Scout lowered her own weapon and moved closer. Max had insisted she stay well behind him. Good thing she hadn’t been too far behind him, she mused, because these two seemed ready to shoot each other on the spot just for the hell of it.

  Gage glanced at her, then did a double take. “What happened to your arm?” Max took advantage of his distraction and made an aggressive maneuver, ultimately disarming Gage.

  Scout rolled her eyes. Men. They just had to outdo each other. “Someone shot me,” she said in answer to Gage’s question. “What’re you doing here?”

  Belatedly, confusion assailed her. Why would Gage be hanging around her uncle’s place? Max had said he’d shown up here before, told him that lie about the baby…. Things had been too chaotic for her to dwell on anything related to Gage ever since.

  But now she wondered why he would say such a thing or how he’d even known about the baby.

  “I’ve been watching your uncle’s house for days hoping to catch you. We need to talk.” He glanced at Max. “Privately.”

  Scout was just about to agree when Max intervened.

  “No way.” He shoved the confiscated weapon into the waistband of his jeans. “You can start talking all right. You can tell us what the hell you’re really doing here.”

  Gage scowled at Max, then looked to Scout. “I got a call a few minutes ago. From Harold. He told me to come here right away. That it was urgent. He apparently didn’t know I was already here. I’ve scarcely slept.”

  “In case you missed the funeral,” Max said, leaving no room for doubt that he literally despised the man to whom he spoke, “Harold Atkins is dead.”

  “Be that as it may,” Gage said, his own annoyance flaring, “I know Harold’s voice. It was his voice.”

  Scout’s heart was pounding now. It hadn’t been her imagination, thank God. In the back of her mind she’d worried that maybe she was losing touch with reality. That’d she’d only imagined the voice. But Gage had heard it, too. Relief surged through her.

  It still didn’t make sense.

  “I saw him murdered,” she said, thinking aloud. She shook her head. “He couldn’t have survived.” At least she didn’t think he could have. What if she was wrong?

  “Can we go inside?” Gage urged, glancing around anxiously. “I don’t like being in the open like this.”

  “Got something to hide?” Max growled. “I’ll just bet you do.”

  “Come on, Max,” Scout implored, “let’s go inside.”

  He insisted on checking out the place first. Gage was right on his heels every step of the way. Any minute now Scout expected them to start marking territory like her big old German shepherd back home. God, she missed that dog. But Donna would take good care of him until Scout got back there.

  Scout studied the photographs on the mantel in the living room while the men did their thing. She smiled as the memories tumbled through her mind. Life had been so simple when she’d been a little girl. She hadn’t had a mother, but she’d had a father and an adopted uncle who’d both loved her dearly. Harold had been in the military with her dad, but an injury had forced him into early retirement. Lucky for Scout. He’d played nanny anytime her father had to be away on a mission where she wasn’t allowed to go.

  Pain flashed through her. It would really be nice if he was still alive, but she simply didn’t see how that was possible.

  “We should get
out of here,” Gage suggested, sounding nervous as he and Max returned to the living room.

  “Enough, Kimble. First we have to come inside, now we have to leave. I want to know the real reason you’re here.” Max’s fury had not abated, but he looked every bit as worried as Gage appeared to be.

  “If Harold’s not here and we were both lured to this house …” Gage allowed the statement to fade into unspoken innuendo.

  Scout swore. “You’re right.”

  Max was already hauling her out of the house when the realization of danger made her spring into action. As soon as they cleared the door, they all ran like hell.

  As their footsteps slapped against the asphalt street a whoosh sounded behind them and then a blaze of light lit up half the block. The house burst into flames as if the whole thing had been doused with an accelerant.

  Braxton and Doug joined them near Max’s SUV.

  “What happened?”

  “It was a setup,” Max answered, his accusing gaze going directly to Gage.

  Scout shook her head. “But that’s crazy. Why would they kill me?” Her hand went automatically to her tummy. If they’d killed her they would have killed the baby. Without the baby, what was the point of all this?

  “Can we talk now?” Gage demanded. He looked straight at her, pointedly ignoring Max’s murderous glower.

  She nodded. “I guess we should.”

  MAX COULDN’T KEEP HER from talking to Kimble, but he damn sure had the final say about what the ground rules would be. They’d left the scene just as the fire department arrived and only seconds before the police had shown up. Victoria would have more smoothing over to do. Chicago PD as well as FD didn’t like witnesses leaving the scene before they were questioned.

  Kimble was accompanied to the Colby Agency by Braxton and Cooper. Max and Scout drove over together. She wanted to complain about his domineering tactics, but she’d thought better of it when she took a closer look at him as they climbed into his SUV. He was pretty sure his expression wasn’t pleasant, but he didn’t care. He didn’t want Kimble even looking at her, much less talking to her.