Paternity Unknown

by Barrett, Jean

  “I don’t want to be left with him!”

  “He’s not going to hurt you, because he knows what will happen to his girlfriend if he touches you. He’s going to be a good boy while I hand over the baby and get the money. Aren’t you, Cousin?”

  “But it’s all gone bad, hon. How can we get away now?”

  “The same way we got up here. You and I, Mol, are going back in the cable car. Brand and his woman stay here. As long as I keep this remote, they won’t try to stop us. And once we’re down the mountain—” He shrugged. “Well, the remote won’t work at any distance, so everybody ends up safe.”

  The cunning Anthony had anticipated all obstacles. Supported by the explosives, a weapon as vicious as the mind that that had crafted it, his ultimatum left Ethan without a choice. He had Sara’s life to preserve, as well as Lauren’s.

  “You’d better not come back here alone, Johnson.”

  “That’s up to you, Cousin.” He turned to Lauren, tugging at the handcuffs with a sharp “Come on, it’s time to go.”

  Helpless and hating it, Ethan watched him lead Lauren out of the building. At the doorway, she looked back at Ethan over her shoulder. The expression on her face was pure torment for him. He knew what she was feeling, that in order to make sure her daughter survived, she had to go out there and without a struggle hand her over to a stranger. It was killing him, too.

  They weren’t gone more than a few seconds when he was seized by a wrenching regret. What have you done? But he knew what he had done. He had let them go. He had trusted Anthony Johnson to keep his promise, a man without conscience who had already murdered two people. And if he didn’t try to stop him before it was too late—

  Without hesitation, Ethan clambered down from the roof of the car. Molly backed away from him.

  “What are you doing?” she cried.

  “I’m going after them.”

  “You can’t! You heard what he said. He means it!”

  “I know what he wants us to believe, but I think it was a lie. He’s not coming back for you, Molly. He realizes if he goes down that mountain the law will be waiting there to grab him, if they’re not already on their way up here. He’s leaving you and going out on that helicopter.”

  Unless the occupants of the helicopter agreed to remove Anthony from the scene, and this already could have been arranged, it was not a certainty. It was, however, a strong possibility. And if Johnson didn’t take Lauren along as a hostage, then he would leave her dead. Either way, now or afterwards, her life was bound to be sacrificed. It would be his last, perfect act of vengeance against the grandson of the man who had rejected him.

  Ethan intended to make sure that didn’t happen.

  The helpless, timid Molly made no effort to stop him when he charged out of the building. There was no sign of Lauren and Johnson, but there was only one way they could have gone.

  The terrain both straight ahead and to the right was far too rugged to manage on foot bearing a baby. That left only the other direction where a trail winding around the side of the mountain had been hacked out of the rock. Since the drop in most places was deep and precipitous, a strong guard rail had been erected all along the trail’s outer edge to prevent any mishaps. At intervals, there were overlooks that commanded spectacular views.

  But Ethan wasn’t interested in the scenery, only in overtaking Lauren and Johnson. Sprinting along the trail, immune now to the biting cold, he was careful to check around each bend before proceeding. He didn’t want to suddenly run into them, not when Johnson had his finger ready to depress the button on that remote.

  He must have traveled a quarter of a mile when, peering around a shoulder of rock, he sighted them. They had stopped where the trail ended. This had to be the site of the rendezvous. Beyond the barrier, where it turned back from the drop and joined the mountain, there was a natural flat area. Large enough, Ethan thought, for a helicopter to set down, though he could see stretches where ice had formed on the ground.

  There was no sign yet of the chopper Johnson was waiting for. Unless Ethan acted before it arrived…

  Ducking back out of sight, he searched his mind for some means of rescuing both Lauren and his daughter. Anything he tried would put them at serious risk, but he was determined to save them. How?

  Maybe if he got above them, waited for his chance…was that possible? Turning his head, he could see enough clefts and knobs of rock to provide him with a means of scaling the wall to a ledge that ran parallel with the trail.

  As silently and as swiftly as possible, Ethan climbed the wall until he was standing on the wide ledge. Hunched over and dodging from boulder to boulder to conceal his presence, he worked his way around the shoulder until he was looking directly down on his objective.

  He could hear an impatient Johnson, as he searched the sky out over the barrier, complaining about the delay. Then Ethan, who had already assumed his familiar position of a fighter waiting to attack, with crouched body and coiled hands, got his break.

  “I’m gonna be busy when that chopper gets here,” Anthony said to Lauren. “Think maybe we’d better see to it you stay put, just in case you get any cute ideas about trying something. This ought to hold you.”

  Head lowered, he busied himself clasping the dangling bracelet of the handcuffs around the pole that formed the horizontal bar of the guard rail. Ethan didn’t know whether Lauren sensed his presence or whether, hating the sight of herself being locked to the barrier, she looked away and up.

  There was a startled expression on her face when she glimpsed Ethan looming above them. Then, quickly composing herself, she used the moment to both distract Anthony and to provide Ethan with his opportunity.

  “Please,” she implored, “take Sara and put her down somewhere safe away from me and the bomb. You don’t want to risk her now that you’re so close to getting what you want.”

  Good girl, Ethan told her silently, admiring her courage.

  Anthony considered her request. Then, apparently deciding there was nothing suspicious about it, he slipped the remote into a pocket of his jacket in order to free his hands.

  Praying Johnson wouldn’t look up and discover him on the ledge, Ethan watched him remove the baby from Lauren’s arm that had held her against her breasts. Johnson took Sara several yards away from the railing, found a sheltered spot in a mossy hollow behind a boulder, and placed her there.

  Satisfied, Anthony started back toward his captive. Ethan waited until he was passing underneath him. Then he leaped from the overhanging ledge, smashing into his target and knocking him flat. The impact of his attack stunned Anthony, but only briefly.

  In the next second, clawing at Ethan in a ferocious rage, he fought to get one of his hands inside his pocket. Ethan had him pinned down with his weight and had succeeded in seizing both of his arms. He longed to render Anthony unconscious with a blow to his jaw but knew he couldn’t release either hand long enough to deliver it. He had to keep Johnson from getting one of his fingers on that button.

  Anthony twisted and heaved. In his struggle to throw Ethan off, the remote slid out of his pocket with such force that it went spinning across the flat surface of the trail in Lauren’s direction. Ethan dived after it, missed it and watched in horror as the remote skidded over the sharp edge and went sailing into space. He waited in helpless terror for the explosion that would destroy the woman he loved, but to his vast relief nothing happened. Wherever it had landed below failed to trigger its signal or was too distant for the signal to be effective.

  Whatever the explanation, Ethan knew he had to get that pack off of Lauren’s back. He sprang to his feet, prepared to deal first with Anthony. But Anthony’s fury had been diverted by the roar of an approaching engine.

  The three of them looked up as the helicopter came swinging into view from around the back side of the mountain. When it reached them, it hovered low over the scene for a moment.

  Its occupants, looking down, must have realized immedi ately that something
wasn’t right. Two men and a woman when there should have been one man. Not trusting the situation, the chopper started to retreat.

  “Nooo!” Anthony howled.

  Ducking under the barrier that divided the trail from the open area where the craft had been meant to land, Anthony ran after it. In his fury and frustration, he was oblivious to everything but the helicopter that was deserting him.

  When, in his headlong charge along the brink of the precipice, he struck a patch of ice, he was unable to save himself. One second, he was there; the next, he went tumbling with a scream of terror into the void.

  “Dear God!” Lauren cried.

  “Forget him,” Ethan commanded. “It’s too late for him.”

  It was too late for Anthony Johnson’s soul long ago, he thought, reaching Lauren’s side. By now, the helicopter had sped away and was no longer in sight.

  “Sara,” she said.

  “She’ll be all right for a few minutes. The three of us are going to be just fine. Let me get at that pack.”

  She obliged him by turning sideways. The thing was a bitch, Ethan thought. Harnessed on her so that the straps passed across her chest and both over her shoulders and under her arms. In the back, they were tied in a series of tight knots intended to defeat any easy removal.

  He was angrily starting on those knots when Lauren halted him, a quaver in her voice. “Ethan, wait! Look down!”

  He followed the direction of her lowered gaze, his heart stopping when he saw it. The remote hadn’t landed somewhere far down the mountain. It was only a few feet below them, caught on the lip of a tiny shelf of rock.

  Poised as it was, it looked ready at any second to lose its balance and go bouncing off the shelves below it. Ethan knew he had to get that remote before it detonated the explosives.

  Flattening himself on the ground, he stretched his arm to ward the shelf, straining to reach the remote. No good. There were too many inches between his fingers and the device. Nor could he try to climb down there. The face of the cliff was too sheer, the shelf too small to accommodate him without disturbing the remote.

  His only choice was to get rid of the bomb pack, because the railing was so strong that he could never break through it in time to remove Lauren a sufficient distance from the signal. Surging to his feet, he fiercely attacked the knots. His fingers by now were numb with the cold, hindering his frantic effort.

  It was coming, though, the straps beginning to loosen. He hurried. “Hang on, I think—there!”

  The straps slid away, allowing him to lift the pack out of its harness. Handling it carefully, bearing its weight in the palm of his right hand, he drew his arm back and hurled it with all the strength he could command over the side of the mountain. At that instant, the remote must have slipped off the shelf. He could hear it crack against the rocks below.

  There were a few seconds of silence, long enough for Ethan to wrap his body protectively around Lauren. His ears rang with the blast that followed. He could feel pebbles raining down on his hunched shoulders. But nothing else. The explosion had occurred too far below them to do more than kick up dust and bits of rock that were already settling.

  “You okay?” he asked Lauren.

  “Yes,” she said, releasing her breath on a long, shaky sigh. “Or I would be if I weren’t handcuffed to this rail.”

  Turning her around so that she faced him, he grinned down at her. “That’s all right. This way, you can’t get away from me.”

  He proceeded to take advantage of her captive state by framing her face with his hands and covering her mouth with his in a long, molten kiss.

  He would have gone on kissing her if their daughter hadn’t reminded them of her presence with a loud wail that said she had been ignored long enough and didn’t like it. Releasing Lauren, Ethan went behind the boulder, picked up Sara, made sure the blanket was still tucked around her warmly and carried her back to the railing so that her mother could see she was unharmed.

  He could hear shouts back along the trail in the direction of the cable car station. “Sounds like the cavalry has finally arrived,” he said to Lauren. “Let’s hope they know where to lay their hands on some tools to get you unlocked, because now that I know how much I love you, I’d sure hate having to leave you up here on this mountain.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  “They’ll be sending up the first rockets in just a bit,” Donna Cardoni said to her. “Are you sure you wouldn’t like to go out and watch?”

  Lauren turned her head in the direction of the French doors. All of them had been left open to ease the flow of the guests onto the terrace. People had been streaming through the lobby for the past twenty minutes. Both the terrace outside and the lawns below it were packed now with spectators waiting to be dazzled by the display over the lake.

  “It’s quite a show,” the hotel manager encouraged her. “Windrush’s traditional way of ending each season.”

  Donna was a kind woman. Lauren knew she was concerned about her. But mingling with the crowd on the terrace to watch the fireworks, no matter how spectacular, was not going to relieve her anxiety. Only Ethan could do that.

  “Thanks, but I think I’ll just wait here.”

  She had no longer been able to endure the awful vigil up in their room and had come down to the lobby. Besides, the easy chair she occupied offered her a view of the front entrance. She wanted to be right here to meet Ethan when he walked through that door. And if he didn’t—well, she didn’t want to think about that.

  Lauren leaned toward Donna seated in the chair next to hers. “I don’t suppose you’ve heard anything?”

  The manager, looking sympathetic, shook her head. “No, but try not to worry. These things drag on, and they did have a lot to cover.”

  It was taking all day, Lauren thought. And she couldn’t help being worried. She had been apprehensive about the outcome ever since they had taken him away long hours ago.

  Two RCMP officers had arrived from Kingstown early that morning. After questioning Lauren and taking her statement, and because Ethan had insisted on it, they had permitted her to remain here at Windrush with Sara.

  But the Mounties weren’t that easily satisfied where Ethan was concerned. There was the matter, not just of Anthony’s death, but of Ethan’s involvement with Buddy Foley’s death. He had been forced to accompany the suspicious officers back to Kingstown for an intensive, in-depth interrogation.

  Dick Frazier had turned Charlie Heath over to his superiors. The lawyer, together with Molly Janek, had also been transported to Kingstown.

  They’ll hold Molly and Heath. But Ethan…what if they don’t release Ethan? What if they drag up all the business about his grandfather’s murder? Don’t believe what he tells them because of his connection with that, even though he was acquitted? What if they arrest and charge him?

  Lauren couldn’t stand it!

  “I tried phoning Kingstown,” she said to Donna, “but they wouldn’t tell me anything or let me talk to Ethan. They said I’d just have to be patient. But all this time, and being so late now…”

  “It’s a long way back from Kingstown. Give him time to get here. He’ll come. He won’t want to spend a night away from you and Sara.” Donna gazed at the sleeping baby in Lauren’s arms. “You must be tired holding her. Wouldn’t you like me to take her for a bit?”

  Tired? No, Lauren wasn’t tired holding her. Now that she had Sara back in her arms, thankfully unharmed and healthy after yesterday’s horrendous events on the mountain, she couldn’t bear to be separated from her.

  “I’m fine,” Lauren assured the manager. “And I appreciate you for sitting with me like this, but you must have a million things to do. Wouldn’t you—”

  “Look!”

  Lauren’s head swiveled in the direction Donna indicated. There, coming at last through the front entrance, was the tall figure of Ethan. She was so weak with sweet relief that she staggered when she pushed to her feet.

  Donna had also risen from her c
hair. “Here,” she said, “you’d better let me take Sara. I think you’re going to want both of your arms free.”

  Donna was right. Lauren surrendered her daughter to the manager without an objection this time. Then, steadying herself, she flew across the lobby and into Ethan’s waiting arms.

  She no longer had to live off the memory of the love he had declared for her yesterday on the mountain, which was exactly what she had been doing throughout this eternal day. He was here in reality, and she couldn’t get enough of that love as she wound her arms around him. Pressed herself against his solid length. Lifted her head to welcome his hungry kiss.

  She was reluctant to end that kiss, but she needed to know if he was all right. Leaning away from him just far enough to look up at him, she searched his strong face. He looked tired, but he was smiling.

  “Was it very bad?” she asked him.

  “It took forever,” he explained, “because they had to check out everything I told them, first with the police back in Seattle, then the sheriff and Agent Landry in Elkton, and after that the crew on the train. But in the end, they put it all together and believed me.”

  “Thank God. And Charlie Heath and Molly?”

  “The lawyer will certainly stand trial, maybe both here in Canada and in the States. As for Molly Janek, I don’t know. She’s in a state of shock over the loss of Anthony. Could be she’ll end up in some psychiatric facility.”

  Poor Molly, Lauren thought. Even though the young woman had played a major role in Sara’s abduction, Lauren couldn’t bring herself to feel anything but sorrow for her.

  “What about the baby broker?” she wondered.

  “They’ll try to find and prosecute him, but that won’t be easy when they have so little to go on. As for you and me…” Ethan took a quick breath, then released it slowly. “Well, we’re going to be all right, Lauren. We’re going to be just fine.”

  “Yes,” she said.

  Ethan looked around. “Sara?”

  Lauren linked her arm with his and led him across the lobby to where Donna was waiting with their daughter. The manager, with a grin on her face, transferred the baby to her mother.