‘‘Not gonna be a problem any longer, Noah,’’ Kurtz said into the empty room.
From the machine, Kincannon’s voice continued. ‘‘I’m on my way there. It’s been one travel delay after another, but the weather finally lifted in Atlanta, so I’ll arrive by lunchtime. Anyway, I need you to do a favor for me and stay home until I get there. I’ve sent someone over to keep an eye on things until then, so don’t be nervous when you see him sitting outside.’’
‘‘They won’t be nervous,’’ Kurtz told the phone. ‘‘They were dead before the pitiful excuse of a security guard you hired arrived. Really, Noah, I know the pickings are slim around here where muscle is concerned, but you could have done better.’’
‘‘Mom? Dad?’’ Noah Kincannon let out another heavy sigh. ‘‘Good-bye. See you soon.’’
‘‘Yep. Yes, you will.’’ And Ron Kurtz chortled.
He returned to the kitchen, where he set out ingredients for cookies and imagined Kincannon’s arrival. God, this was fun. So much more fun to drag it out, to make them suffer before he killed them, than to off them outright.
While he creamed shortening, sugar, and eggs in a stand mixer, he pictured Noah Kincannon wailing and gnashing his teeth. He’d measured out a cup of flour when an unexpected sound caught his attention. The doorbell. Someone was at the door.
Quietly, Kurtz moved to a window that allowed him to see the front porch. A woman. Mid-thirties, attractive, classy. She dressed well in a tailored jacket and slacks. Definitely not Florida-casual attire. She could be a neighbor woman on her way to work. More likely, she could be another security person. Maybe even a cop. That jacket was unnecessary for the temperate weather this morning. It could be concealing her weapon.
The bell rang again. Kurtz debated whether to invite her in or wait her out and see if she went away. He decided it was better to speak to her. He could deal with one person easily. If she yanked out a cell phone and called in a squad of cops, he’d be up shit creek.
He turned the mixer on low, grabbed a tea towel to wipe his hands, then walked to the front door. ‘‘Hello, can I help you?’’
The woman smiled. ‘‘May I speak with Mr. or Mrs. Kincannon, please? I’m an old friend of their son’s.’’
Kurtz flipped the towel over his shoulder and smiled broadly. This wasn’t a cop. He opened the screen door, saying, ‘‘Sure, come on in. I’m Jack Watson with Comfort Keepers Elder Care. I hope you weren’t standing here long. I’m in the kitchen baking cookies. Mr. K. sure does have a sweet tooth.’’
The woman stepped inside and glanced around with polite curiosity. ‘‘Are the Kincannons in the kitchen, too?’’
‘‘No, they’re at their morning water-aerobics class.’’ He made a show of glancing at the clock. ‘‘They’ll be home in another twenty minutes. Would you like to wait in the kitchen with me? I just made a fresh pot of coffee.’’
‘‘That will be lovely. Thank you.’’
Kurtz led her toward the kitchen, saying, ‘‘So, you are a friend of Noah’s? I’m sorry, I don’t believe I caught your name.’’
She offered a friendly smile and said, ‘‘I’m Annabelle. Annabelle Monroe.’’
A warm rush of excitement washed through Ron Kurtz’s blood, the predator on the scent of prey. This woman wasn’t Annabelle Monroe. How interesting that she would claim otherwise. Who, then, could this person be? What did she want with Noah’s parents?
In the kitchen, Kurtz motioned for her to take a seat at the table. He removed an ironstone cup from a cabinet and poured her a cup of coffee. ‘‘Cream or sugar, Annabelle?’’
‘‘Neither, thank you.’’
‘‘Let me get these cookies in the oven—then we’ll chat,’’ he told her as he set her cup on the table and returned to the mixer. With the motor turned to low, he quickly and efficiently added the dry ingredients to the bowl and then the chocolate chips. When his cookie dough was ready, he removed the bowl from the mixer and carried it to the table. ‘‘Would you like a spoonful of dough? I have to admit it’s my favorite part.’’
‘‘No, thank you.’’ Again, she gave a polite smile, then added, ‘‘The coffee is delicious.’’
‘‘Thanks. I’m afraid I am a coffee snob. The first thing I did when I went to work for the Kincannons was to dig out their coffee grinder from the depths of the pantry. At least they kept beans in the freezer.’’
Kurtz filled a cookie sheet with little balls of dough, then slipped the pan into the preheated oven. He set the timer, washed his hands, and carried the cookie jar over to the table. He smiled warmly at ‘‘Annabelle’’ as he reached into the glazed pottery jar with his right hand.
He pulled out his gun. Took aim at her head.
As her eyes widened in alarm, he dipped the index finger of his left hand into the mixing bowl. His mouth made a popping sound as he sucked chocolate-chip-cookie dough from his finger. ‘‘Now, Ms. Whoever-You-Are. It’s time for you to come clean. I need to know who you are and what your connection is to the Fixers. I suggest you be truthful and talk fast and convincingly.’’
He chambered a round and added, ‘‘You see, when my timer goes off, I’ll decide whether you live or die.’’
The stress caught up with Annabelle. She had an awful time getting to sleep, but once she finally drifted off, she didn’t awake until midmorning. ‘‘Oh, great,’’ she muttered when she caught sight of the time. She’d catch grief from the sibs for this. She couldn’t believe nobody woke her.
Rolling out of one of two twin beds in the bedroom she’d shared with Amy while growing up, she quickly showered and dressed, all the while wondering what she would find downstairs.
Maybe the reason no one woke her was that everyone was busy with their normal daily activities. Although her sisters did not intend to reopen their bakery until Dad was released from the hospital, Amy had mentioned something before she went home last night about bookkeeping issues that needed tending. Lissa had planned to spend the morning at the hospital and Adam had a million things to do here at the farm. That left Mom, who was probably chomping at the bit for Annabelle to get downstairs and take her into town to visit Dad.
And she couldn’t forget Mark. Knowing that man, she would bet he’d rolled out of bed by six a.m. and started working the phones before his first cup of coffee—never mind that he’d worked late into the night and had less sleep than she over the past few days.
She wondered how long he and Tag had continued to work after she’d thrown in the towel and gone to bed last night. While Tag had been outlining a surveillance plan to the leader of the Texas team who Mark had brought in, her ex had been cursing her dad’s computer equipment while he attempted to hack into databases in search of Ron Kurtz.
Downstairs, all was quiet. She peeked into her father’s office first and found it empty and the computer turned off. Her mother was not in the ruins of the kitchen or in the master bedroom or bath. She did, however, find a note to her from her mother lying on the dining room table.
Annabelle: Your friend Tag is taking me to visit your father. You’ll find a load of towels in the washer. Please put them in the dryer for me. Mark told me the news. I’m so excited!! See you this afternoon. Love, Mom.
‘‘News?’’ she murmured. ‘‘What news?’’
And where was Mark?
She walked out onto the porch and scanned the area. She waved to one of the men from Texas assigned to patrol the farmhouse. The chug of an engine drew her gaze to the field to the west, where she spied Adam perched atop the seat of the John Deere tractor. Still no Mark.
Back inside, she called, ‘‘Callahan?’’
No response. Frowning, she gave the first floor another quick search, then climbed the staircase. She found him in her mother’s sewing room, sound asleep in her grandmother’s old padded rocking chair, one leg propped upon the matching ottoman, the other sprawled out on the floor. A magazine lay open on his lap. He held his cell phone clutched in his right hand.
/> He let out a soft snore.
The sight and the sound suddenly catapulted Annabelle back to a moment in their past when he was working out of DC and she was based in San Diego.
For a change of pace, when it was his turn to choose the spot for one of their getaway weekends, Mark had forsaken the glitz and glamour of the city and rented a cabin on a lake in the Ozark Mountains. Her flight had been diverted due to weather and she was late arriving. Four or five hours late, as she recalled. She had arrived midafternoon and instead of finding him fishing like she had expected, she’d walked into the cabin and interrupted his afternoon nap.
Ordinarily when they were together, whether on a mission or later during their marriage, Annabelle dropped off to sleep first. She had never caught him napping, never heard him snore. That day, she achieved both. He’d been stretched out on a couch with the sports page draped across his chest, sawing logs so loudly that he didn’t hear her come inside. It was the first time, the only time, she ever managed to sneak up on him.
He’d looked boyish in sleep that day, softly relaxed, a lock of hair curling down over his brow. Then he’d opened his eyes and smiled at her, a slow, steamy flash of teeth.
There was nothing of the boy in that smile, in that look in his eyes. No softness in the man whatsoever.
He had crooked his finger at her. That’s it. Just lifted a hand and wiggled that index finger and put her into some sort of sexual trance that had pulled her like the moon pulls the tides.
He never said a word. The entire time, everything he did to her, everything they did together, was accomplished without a single word being spoken between them.
She closed her eyes, remembering. The ripple of muscle beneath naked bronzed skin. The earthiness of his scent. His salty, masculine taste. The dark power of his touch as he compelled her to respond, as he freed her of all her inhibitions.
It had been rough, raw, and erotic. Fantasy sex. Forbidden sex. The kind of sex she could never have admitted she wanted. The kind of sex that brought shivers to her skin even now at the memory of it.
My God.
Now years later, here in her mother’s sewing room, she felt herself sway as she experienced that pull once again. Opening her eyes, she found Mark awake and staring at her. This time there was no wicked smile of welcome, but the look in his eyes, the heat in his eyes, was as familiar to her as . . . her dreams.
‘‘What are we going to do about this, Annabelle?’’ he asked.
She might have tried to deny she understood him, but she didn’t have the energy to lie. ‘‘Nothing has changed. We can’t keep rolling the dice. I don’t want to be a single mother.’’
He put his feet on the floor and sat forward, his elbows propped on his knees, his head resting in his hands. Annabelle took a step backward, preparing to retreat. They could start this day over again later downstairs, where the mood wasn’t so personal. Then he stopped her with a pair of world-rocking words. ‘‘You won’t.’’
Everything inside her tensed. ‘‘What do you mean?’’
After a long moment, he lifted his head. Still, his eyes didn’t quite meet hers. ‘‘If you’re pregnant, we’ll remarry. I don’t run from my responsibilities.’’
For a long moment, she felt nothing. Then pain whipped through her like a windstorm. Did the man intentionally mean to hurt her, or was he simply stupid like a . . . a . . . a man? ‘‘Why do I suddenly feel like the Irish waitress in Caddyshack?’’
Callahan blinked, obviously caught off guard. Then she could see him mentally reviewing the movie, saw when he recalled the scene where the waitress’s period was late and the caddy took the news on the chin, then stoically said, We’ll just get married.
‘‘Gee, Noonan,’’ she said, sarcasm dripping from her tongue as she continued in Caddyshack-speak. ‘‘You hit that right in the lumberyard, didn’t you?’’
Now she’d made him mad. He shoved to his feet. ‘‘Dammit, Annabelle, don’t—.’’
‘‘No.’’ She cut him off. ‘‘You don’t. I’m tired of your attitude, Callahan. This hot and cold thing simply doesn’t work for me.’’
‘‘Attitude has nothing to do with it. We’re talking about a child here. Our child.’’
‘‘You mean the child you didn’t want two and a half years ago? The child you still didn’t want yesterday up on that mountain? That child?’’
‘‘Yes, that child,’’ he fired back. ‘‘Look, you are right. I admit it. I am a coward. The idea of fatherhood scares the crap out of me.’’
That shocked her. She never dreamed he would admit it. The Mark Callahan she knew would never admit to such weakness. For some weird reason the fact that he had admitted it only stoked the fires of her temper hotter.
‘‘But guess what?’’ he continued, his voice frustrated and accusing. ‘‘The thought of giving you up again is almost as frightening. Been there, done that. Hated it. I’m in a bind here, Annabelle, and I don’t know what to do about it because I haven’t had the chance to think about it. I’ve been too busy trying to find a killer to even sleep, much less solve my relationship psychoses.’’
‘‘Is that what I am?’’ She put her hands on her hips. ‘‘A relationship psychosis?’’
He froze. Seconds ticked by. The he blinked and flashed a grin that laughed at them both. ‘‘Honey, you are not a psychosis—you are a disease.’’
He reached out and grabbed her wrist, then yanked her against him. ‘‘You are in my blood, in my bones, and I have finally realized that you are there to stay.’’
But she wasn’t ready to let it go. Petulantly, she muttered, ‘‘So I’m an incurable disease. Lovely. I—’’
He swooped down and hushed her with a kiss—a long, deep melding of mouths that drained her of her temper and left her feeling raw and confused.
‘‘It will be okay, Belle,’’ he said against her temple.
‘‘I promise. We will figure it all out. We just need to give it a little time.’’
‘‘Nothing is easy, is it?’’
‘‘You and I aren’t the type of people to go for easy. We are all about challenge.’’
She nuzzled against him, inhaling his familiar scent, enjoying the comfort of his arms. They stayed that way for a good five minutes before a rumble from his stomach made her laugh. ‘‘Do you need breakfast, Callahan?’’
‘‘Lunch. I had breakfast with your mother.’’
With that, the moment of intimacy was behind them and Annabelle returned her attention to matters that required immediate attention. Like her own need for coffee.
‘‘Speaking of my mother, what ‘news’ did you tell her and why were you sleeping in her sewing room?’’
‘‘Oh.’’ Mark snapped his fingers. ‘‘I almost forgot.’’
He scooped up a magazine and his cell phone off the floor beside the rocker. ‘‘The kitchen she likes is in this issue and the magazine was up here. I sat down to make my calls and that’s all it took. That chair, Annabelle. It doesn’t look all that comfortable, but once you sit down . . . wow. Do you think she’d sell it to me?’’
‘‘She’d rather sell one of her children,’’ Annabelle replied, a note of dryness in her tone. ‘‘What calls? Something about Ron Kurtz?’’
‘‘No. The kitchen. Turned out to be pretty easy, since the exact setup was already assembled and ready to ship to a builder in Florida. All I had to do was change the receiving address and expedite shipping.’’
She put the clues together. The news her mother’s note referred to was kitchen news. Always interested in countertops herself, Annabelle grabbed the magazine. ‘‘Which one is it?’’
‘‘Page twenty-seven.’’
She flipped the pages to a beautiful French country kitchen. ‘‘What part is she getting?’’
‘‘The kitchen.’’ Mark pressed by her and exited the sewing room.
‘‘What part of the kitchen?’’ Annabelle asked as she followed him downstairs, mentally reviewing just
what in the kitchen was salvageable. The fridge was fine. She needed a new stove and one entire section of cabinets.
‘‘The whole thing.’’
Annabelle mentally tallied the costs, then frowned. ‘‘My parents can’t afford this.’’
‘‘The unit’s insurance will pay for it.’’
‘‘What unit insurance? There is no unit insurance.’’
‘‘Sure, there is. It’s private insurance.’’
Private insurance? Then suddenly, she knew. Callahan Casualty, no doubt. ‘‘But—’’
‘‘Annabelle, think.’’ His green eyes bored into her. ‘‘Your mother told me that your father is a proud man. The damages to your mother’s kitchen happened because of the unit. I’m the unit commander. I’m the head Fixer. Let me fix this.’’
‘‘Head Fixer? You?’’ She snorted even as a warm rush of affection flowed over her. For all his faults— of which there were many—Mark Callahan had always had a generous heart. ‘‘I guess that when it comes to kitchens, the Fixers could follow a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy.’’
‘‘Exactly.’’ He grinned at her, then added, ‘‘Well, except when one Fixer tells another where to find the kolaches your mother mentioned before she left?’’
A short time later she sipped from her cup of freshly brewed coffee and refused his offer of ten dollars for the last fruit-filled pastry, the single one she’d claimed from the entire plate now empty but for crumbs. Only then did she feel up to facing the day.
‘‘Were you able to find out anything more about Kurtz after I went to bed last night?’’
He nodded. ‘‘I prepared a dossier. Made a copy for you.’’ He pushed back from the table, saying, ‘‘Let me get it.’’
Annabelle watched him walk away, knowing she should keep her mind on the business at hand, but unable to look away from his very fine butt. She took a bite of her sweet roll and sighed.
A minute later, he tossed a butterfly-clipped, two-inch-thick stack of papers in front of her. ‘‘Whoa. All this? What time did you go to bed last night?’’
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