by Elle James
He had dumped a pile of her clothes into the suitcase and gone back to the closet for more. “I can’t believe I’d forgotten about this.” Matt shoved aside several dresses on a hanger and stared at the wall in the back of the closet.
Aubrey had always loved that the closet was lined with cedar paneling.
“Forgotten what?” Aubrey’s eyes narrowed and she moved to join him at the open doors. “Did the bullets damage this room as well?”
“No.” He leaned in and pressed against one of the panels. A small door sprang open and a light blinked on. The door was just big enough for Matt to squeeze through as he turned sideways and slipped inside. Then he disappeared and the door closed automatically behind him.
Aubrey gasped, her heart pounding. “Matt?”
Chapter Six
Matt descended the narrow metal staircase into a concrete bunker no bigger than eight by ten feet. One wall was lined with shallow shelves filled with canned goods and pantry staples. At the end of the room were several army cots folded neatly. Beside them was a larger shelf filled with blankets, clothing and shoes in a variety of sizes.
Matt studied the supplies, his heart swelling. He knew now why they’d called this the house of angels.
The secret panel above opened and Aubrey called out, “Matt?”
“Come down,” he said. “I think this might explain some things.”
Her footsteps sounded on the metal treads as she descended into the bunker. “Oh, my, what is this place?”
Matt shook his head. “I’d forgotten about this old storm shelter. On a few rare occasions when my mother came down to clean, I’d play in here as a kid. As I grew older, I didn’t hang out at the house much. I completely forgot about this space.”
“Apparently, your mother didn’t.” Aubrey ran her fingers along the rows of canned goods. “She had this place fully stocked. Was she expecting Armageddon?”
Matt stared across the small space at Aubrey and held up clothes and shoes that could only fit a small child. A girl. Nothing a younger version of Matt would have worn. “I think she was hiding people in the shelter.”
Aubrey’s eyes widened. “La casa de los ángeles.”
“The house of angels.” Matt laid the clothing and shoes back on the shelf.
“This cottage must have been a haven for the people trying to escape human trafficking.”
Matt ran a hand through his hair. “Mom, what were you doing?”
“You didn’t know about any of this, did you?”
He shook his head. “I joined the Marine Corps right after high school. I’d been gone with only a few holiday and birthday visits in the eleven years I was on active duty. She never said a word.”
“And if she had, what would you have done?” Aubrey asked, her voice soft and warm.
Matt shot a frown her way. “Stopped her.”
“Imagine the people whose lives she saved,” Aubrey said. “Where would they be now?”
“I don’t know. If my mother hadn’t gotten into the business of rescuing lost causes, she might be alive today.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Why couldn’t she be like normal mothers and stick to gossip and baking cookies?”
Aubrey laughed. “Now, that’s a sexist thing to say. Most mothers I know are working full-time, raising children and taking care of a household. They wear multiple hats and still manage to make their families happy and stay sane.”
Matt sighed. “Sorry.” He looked around again. “My mother never played by society’s rules. She worked at the feedstore instead of taking a job as a secretary or office staff. She liked helping customers find the right vitamin supplements for their ailing livestock, or the best tools to use to trim a horse’s hooves. She grew up on a farm, but she dressed and acted the lady always, even in the male-centric environment of the feedstore. She was a single mother, raising a boy on her own. She didn’t want me to grow up to be lazy or unable to defend myself. She insisted I get a job while I was in school, and she made me take self-defense classes when other kids bullied me. I guess that’s when I established myself as a badass with attitude. No one bothered me after that.”
“She must have been an amazing woman.”
Matt nodded, his heart hurting. “She was. And I didn’t spend nearly enough time with her. If I could do it over...”
“I bet she wouldn’t have had it any other way. She probably knew you needed to get out of Whiskey Gulch, and that the Marine Corps was the place where you could build a career and prove yourself.”
“Prove myself to whom?” His gaze captured hers. “By then, I didn’t give a damn what the people of Whiskey Gulch thought about me.”
Aubrey touched his arm. “Perhaps you needed to prove yourself to you.”
He covered her hand with his. “The point is, I should have known what was going on here. I might have been able to keep her safe.”
“From the other side of the world? You were in the Marine Corps,” Aubrey said. “What could you have done?”
“I could have gotten out and come back to be with her. She might have been doing what she was doing out of loneliness.”
“I doubt that’s why she did it,” Aubrey said. “She probably just wanted to help those who were being preyed upon.”
“Well, we’re not helping Isabella by standing in a storm shelter. Let’s get out of here, have breakfast and find Juan. Maybe he knows something about my mother’s secret activities.” He balled his fist. “It galls me to think that strangers knew about my mother’s activities, and I didn’t.”
He waved toward the stairs. “Do you want to go first, or do you want me to?”
“I’ll go.” She spun toward the stairs and started up.
After another glance around, Matt followed.
When she reached the top, Aubrey pushed on the panel. It opened outward with a gentle swish. “I can’t believe I’ve been here for two months and this is the first I’ve noticed the panel in the back of my closet.” She stepped out into the bedroom and waited for Matt.
Matt exited the hidden storm shelter, turned and watched as the door closed automatically. “It blends in well with the surrounding cedar paneling. My mother told me it was here when she moved in. Whoever lived here before she bought the place was afraid of tornadoes and had the storm shelter built into the house.”
“It’s made like one of those cold war bunkers you read about. I imagine it would withstand the harshest tornado.”
Matt finished loading her clothing, hangers and all, into her suitcase and threw in several pairs of shoes. When the case was past full, he closed it and leaned down on the bulging mass to drag the zipper around.
Aubrey was just zipping her own suitcase. “I’ll grab the stuff from the bathroom.” She hurried into the bathroom and scooped toiletries into a large bag she’d retrieved from the closet shelf.
While she was in the other room, Matt looked around the bedroom. At the back of the house, it was relatively untouched by the war the attackers had waged on the front of the dwelling. Most of the decorations were what his mother had left behind. A single photograph stood on the nightstand.
Matt lifted it and stared into Aubrey’s beautiful, happy face. She held a little girl with strawberry blond hair and green eyes so much like Aubrey’s, it had to be her child.
Aubrey emerged from the bathroom with a sigh. The circles beneath her eyes were indicative of the sleepless night she’d had. “I think that’s all. The rest was here when I arrived.” When she saw what he held in his hand, she paused, drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly.
“She looks so much like you,” he said.
Aubrey nodded. “Everyone said she was a miniature version of me.” She held out her hand.
Matt placed the photograph in her palm, his knuckles brushing against her skin. A shock of electricity passe
d up his arm and spread throughout his body, warming him all over.
Aubrey’s pupils flared briefly, before her gaze dropped to the image of herself and her daughter.
“She’s beautiful,” Matt said. What else could he say?
Aubrey nodded. “She was a happy child, always singing and dancing around the house. When she disappeared...all the light left our home.”
“I can’t say that I know how it feels to lose a child, but it must have been hard.”
A single tear slipped from Aubrey’s eye and dropped onto the glass cover of the picture frame. She reached out to wipe it away. Then she looked up, her lips pressing into a firm line. “I’m ready.”
Matt could tell she was holding herself together by a thin thread. Dwelling on her loss wouldn’t change the outcome for Katie. Moving on might change the outcome for Isabella. “Let’s go.”
He led the way from the house and to the shed out back where he’d parked his motorcycle beside her Jeep earlier that morning. The shed had several bullet holes in it but wasn’t nearly as damaged as the exterior of the front of the house.
“I’d like to take my Jeep,” Aubrey said. “I’m almost afraid if I leave it here, those killers might come back and trash it like they trashed the house.”
Matt nodded. “Okay. How about you follow me to my shop? You know where that is?”
“On Main Street?” she asked.
“That’s it.” He rocked the motorcycle off the stand. “I’ll lock up my motorcycle at my shop and we can go to the diner in your Jeep.”
She smiled. “I like that plan.”
His heart warmed at her smile. She needed to smile more. If he had any say in the matter, he would see to it she had more reasons to smile. Losing a child had to leave a permanent hole in her heart. He hurt for her.
Matt rolled his bike out of the shed and waited for Aubrey to back out her Jeep. After he’d closed the shed door, he took off for his shop with Aubrey following. Once there, he locked up his bike before joining Aubrey out front.
She stood beside her Jeep. “Do you want to drive?”
“Only if you want me to,” he said.
“If it’s all the same to you, I’d like to drive. It might be the only thing I have in my control right now.”
“By all means. It leaves my trigger finger free, should I need to fire my gun.”
Her lips pinched. “I hope we don’t have a need for it anytime soon.”
“You and me both. Since I got out of the Marine Corps, I thought I wouldn’t need to shoot at another individual, that I’d only use my handgun to shoot at rattlesnakes and wild boar.” He shook his head. “I didn’t realize just how many bad guys resided on US soil.”
“Makes you wonder what the world is coming to.” Aubrey climbed into the driver’s seat.
Matt settled in the passenger seat and secured his safety belt.
With Aubrey driving, he had a chance to study her in the gray light of early morning.
“How long have you been in Whiskey Gulch?” he asked.
“Two months.”
“I’d seen you around, but I hadn’t realized you’d moved into my mother’s old house.”
“Do you still own the house?” she asked.
“I do. I use a leasing agency to rent it and let them handle the details. But I haven’t been inside it since my mother was murdered. I just couldn’t bring myself to go inside the house I grew up in. She wouldn’t be there. It wouldn’t be the same.”
Aubrey shot a glance his way. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know it would be that painful.”
“Actually, it wasn’t. You made it better.”
She smiled, the gesture fading immediately. “And now it’s destroyed.”
He shook his head. “It can be fixed. Besides, it was about time to do some remodeling.”
Her brow furrowed. “But your mother’s things...”
“They’re just things,” he said.
“You don’t want to keep anything?”
“I’ll probably keep a couple of the things she treasured most, but that’s it.”
Aubrey nodded. “Will you still rent it out? Or are you moving in?”
Matt stared across the console at Aubrey. “You’re welcome to live there as long as you like. Although, after what happened a few hours ago, I doubt you’d want to go back there.”
She shivered. “I’m not sure now whether they were after me, or there to destroy the house of angels.”
“It could have been a combination of both. If they are the ones responsible for my mother’s death, they might have decided killing her wasn’t enough to stop people from seeking sanctuary in the house of angels.”
Aubrey pulled into the parking lot at the diner and shifted into Park. “So, they wanted to destroy the house with me in it to deter anyone else from picking up the torch?”
“I can’t say for sure, but we need to treat the attack as something along those lines.” He got out, went around to the driver’s side and held the door open for her. “You aren’t safe living alone, as long as those people are still free and armed.”
* * *
MATT HELD OUT his hand and Aubrey grasped it and let him help her out of the vehicle. “I can’t take advantage of others.” With him so close and his hand holding hers, she felt secure and hyperaware all at once.
“You can. And you will.” He didn’t release her hand, nor did he move out of her way. “If staying at the ranch is bothering you, I’d invite you to stay at my apartment over my shop. The problem with that is that it’s too exposed and you’d have the same issue as you did at my mother’s cottage.”
She squeezed his hand, her chest tightening. “I don’t want what happened to your mother’s house to happen to your shop or apartment.”
He brought her hand up to his chest. “At the ranch, there’s more security available and more people who can protect you.”
“And more people I’d put in harm’s way if those men are determined to make me pay for attacking them and taking the baby they might have counted on selling for big bucks.” Her jaw hardened. “We have to find Marianna’s sister.”
“And if, in the process, we discover where the coyotes are hiding,” Matt’s jaw hardened, “we’ll put them out of everyone’s misery.”
Still holding his hand, Aubrey’s fingers tightened around his. “I like the way you think.”
They entered the diner, hand in hand and found a booth near the back, sitting side by side with their backs against the wall.
Aubrey chuckled. “Now I understand why gangsters and gamblers sit like this. I have to be able to see what’s coming.”
“Sadly true,” Matt agreed.
As Aubrey studied the people in the room, a man entered the diner, dressed in a suit. He paused at the door, his gaze taking in all the occupants of the room. When he got to Aubrey and Matt, his eyes narrowed slightly. Then he smiled and strode toward them.
“Do you know that man walking our way?” Aubrey asked.
“That’s Mr. Morrison.” His lips thinned. “He hit on my mother back when I was in high school. Asked her to go out with him a couple of times. I remember my mother giving him one excuse after another as to why she couldn’t. The man didn’t like to take no for an answer.”
“Matthew Hennessey.” Morrison stuck out his hand as he neared their table.
Matt stayed in his seat but took the man’s hand and shook it briefly. “Morrison.”
“And this is?” Morrison smiled at Aubrey.
She gave him her name, and without missing a beat, he said, “Ms. Blanchard, let me know if you want to invest in a home of your own. I have a few very nice listings you might be interested in. Just came on the market this week.”
“Thank you, Mr. Morrison, but I’m not ready for that kind of commitment, yet.”
“Wel
l, keep me in mind when you are.” He turned his attention back to Matt. “And with your inheritance, Matthew, you might want to consider converting cash into assets. You have the one rental property. Why not add a couple to generate more passive income?”
“Thank you, but I have enough assets to manage now.”
Morrison pulled a couple of business cards out of his front pocket and laid them on the table in front of each of them. “When you’re ready, give a call.”
“Thank you,” Aubrey said. “Right now, all I want is a very large coffee.”
The Realtor moved on to a table on the other end of the diner.
A middle-aged waitress stopped at the table, plunked two coffee mugs in front of them and poured steamy brew into each one. “Hi, Matt. You haven’t been in for a couple of days. Who’s your friend?”
Matt smiled at the waitress. “Hey, Barb. This is Aubrey. Aubrey, meet Barb, the best waitress in Whiskey Gulch.”
“I heard that,” another waitress called out. “And what am I? Chopped liver?”
Matt chuckled. “I stand corrected. Barb and Dottie are two of the best waitresses in Whiskey Gulch.”
“That’s more like it,” Dottie called out with a good-natured grin. “You treat that boy right, Barb.”
“I’ve got this.” Barb returned her attention to her table. “What can I get you two?”
They placed their orders for eggs, bacon and toast and sat back, sipping the hot coffee.
Aubrey sighed. “I needed this.”
“You say you’re a home health care nurse?” Matt asked.
“I am,” Aubrey replied. “I need to check on a patient today.”
“I’ll go with you.”
“That’s not necessary.”
“Sweetheart, you were nearly killed a few hours ago.” He reached for her free hand and brought it to his lips. “I’m going with you.” She didn’t know if this tender gesture was part of his act as her boyfriend, but she liked it.