Standing Guard

by Valerie Hansen

  “Tell you what,” Thad said calmly as he placed the coffee and the sack on Lindy’s bedside tray. “We’ll give your mother her sweet roll and then you can take the doughnuts out to the lady police officer like we planned.”

  Danny slid backward off the bed, feet first. He was beaming as if he’d just been given a wonderful gift. “Okay. The big one’s for Mama, right?”

  “Right.” Thad withdrew the cinnamon roll and placed it on a napkin before closing the sack and handing it to the boy. “Tell Deputy Crowe that these are all for her but it’s okay if she wants to share with you.”

  “Okay.”

  “And while you’re eating, stay in the hallway so you don’t get your mother’s bed sticky. Understand?”

  “Okay.” Danny was off at a run.

  To Lindy’s relief the door swung closed and stayed that way.

  “Now,” Thad said firmly, “suppose you tell me what’s going on.” He gestured toward the man he had thus far ignored. “What’s he doing here?”

  “I just brought Mrs. Southerland some flowers,” Reed said smoothly. “Shouldn’t you be going, too?”

  Lindy’s pounding heart felt as if it had lodged in her throat when Thad said, “Not until I find out what’s really happening here.”

  “My business is with Mrs. Southerland, not you.”

  Thad shook his head and stepped between Lindy and her other visitor. “Wrong,” he said with obvious rancor. “Anything you have to say to her you’d better be ready to say to me, too.”

  “Aah, so that’s how it is. I should have guessed a pretty widow with millions in the bank wouldn’t be alone for long.”

  Lindy found her voice. “Will you stop it. I do not have money. I can’t even bail myself out of the financial mess somebody has forced on me.”

  “That would be our friends in government,” Reed said, almost purring with satisfaction. “I know all about that. They were stupid enough to approach me recently and ask me to stop sending you checks.” He smiled snidely. “It was then that I realized just how much I’d overlooked after Ben’s death.”

  “Well, they’re wrong,” Lindy insisted. “I don’t have a spare dime. Did it occur to any of you that maybe Ben never hid anything?”

  “Oh, but he did,” Reed insisted. “The feds got as far as learning about his offshore accounts, they just can’t access them without the right numbers and passwords. You have those, Lindy, whether you realize it or not.”

  She was dumbfounded. Could she really have what he wanted and not know it? Was that possible? Her head spun. Was there anything Ben had said in the past that might indicate where the answers lay?

  Thad’s voice rumbled, drawing her back to the present. “I take it you don’t intend to turn those funds over to the feds.”

  “Smart man.” Reed chuckled. “I was hoping there might be a hidden program on Ben’s old hard drive but I figure, if the best techs the DEA has can’t find it, it’s not there. Same goes for the lady’s laptop.”

  “What do you know about my laptop?” Lindy asked.

  “I had my men download all your files when they broke into your house. Remember?”

  “That was how you got my banking information?”

  “Of course. I helped myself to what I needed before I turned an altered copy over to my so-called friends in the government. They were none the wiser.”

  “You falsified the payment records on my house, too?”

  Shaking his head, Reed laughed again. “No. I can’t take credit for that. It was the big boys who had you tossed out into the street and framed for drug possession.”

  “They wouldn’t do that,” Thad insisted.

  Reed’s smile remained. “You think not?”

  “But, why?” Lindy asked. “What can they hope to gain? If they wanted my help, why didn’t they just ask for it?”

  “Probably because they believe you’re guilty, too,” Thad told her as he took her hand. “I should have realized that a plan so far-reaching had to have originated with people who have a lot of power and influence.”

  Lindy looked back and forth between the two men. This entire fiasco was so improbable it was hard to grasp, let alone accept as truth.

  One thing and one thing only was certain. Reed had a gun in his pocket and Thad didn’t know about it. The best outcome she could hope for at this point was that no one would get killed before everything was settled.

  * * *

  Thad could tell Lindy was afraid, and well she should be, given what they had just learned. Yet her uneasiness seemed to be focused on Reed himself rather than simply on his words.

  She kept glancing back and forth with those beautiful green eyes of hers as if she could somehow impart her innermost thoughts. Thad wanted to read her mind, he just didn’t know where to begin. If only she would give him a clue.

  When she smiled pointedly at him and said, “Well, thanks for coming by,” as if she expected him to leave, he was stunned. Surely she didn’t think he’d consider abandoning her to the machinations of James Reed? Or did she?

  “Take Danny home and don’t let him eat too many doughnuts, okay?”

  Thad nodded soberly. Now she was making sense. Thanks to the stress of the past few minutes, he’d totally forgotten that they had the boy to consider. Of course Lindy wanted Danny away from there, particularly since Reed had just admitted complicity in the plots to ruin her.

  Torn, Thad squeezed her hand. “Are you sure that’s what you want?”

  Since his back was turned to the other man, he used his eyes to signal his deep concern. If Lindy sent him away he’d have to go, at least long enough to see to it that Danny was safe. He wouldn’t like it, but he’d heed her wishes.

  “Yes. Please?”

  The quaver in her voice cut him to the quick. He knew how scared she was. The question was, could he just walk away?

  Suppose he stayed? Thad asked himself. What could Reed do about it? Perhaps that question was worth pursuing before he left the room.

  As he studied Lindy’s face, he realized that his hesitation was pushing her to the brink of her already tenuous self-control. Why? He was bigger and stronger than the businessman so what was making her think he couldn’t simply overpower him and settle things once and for all?

  Suddenly realizing what might be frightening her so much, Thad squeezed her hand to draw her attention to it, then formed his into the shape of a pistol and arched his eyebrows for a second as he withdrew.

  Eyes widening, she nodded just enough to provide his answer. Reed was armed. If there was any kind of altercation in the hospital, many innocent bystanders could be hurt or killed. Lindy was making the courageous choice to clear the room and he could not argue with her logic.

  “All right,” Thad said, working to keep his voice even in spite of the fact that his heart was about to break. “We’ll see you later.”

  She blinked back tears, almost making him change his mind. He understood her motives. But that didn’t mean he had to like what she was doing. If only there was some way to tell what kind of weapon Reed had— and whether he had come to the hospital alone.

  There was that possibility to consider, too, Thad reasoned. They already knew that Reed had hired a couple thugs to break into Lindy’s house and copy her computer files. What was to say he hadn’t brought backup muscle with him this morning? Reed’s smug smirk seemed to confirm that.

  Pausing to gaze into her lovely face one last time, Thad wished he could bend and ki
ss her goodbye.

  Doing so would be more than foolish, he decided easily. Right now, Reed didn’t know how much he and Lindy meant to each other and that was the way it must stay.

  Once their foes realized what was in Thad’s heart, and hopefully also in Lindy’s, they would have another bargaining chip to hold over her head. Knowing that she loved her son with all her heart was bad enough.

  Nevertheless, he wanted her to know how he felt. Even if she didn’t return his affection he needed her to know.

  In the back of his mind was the suspicion that he might lose her forever. He refused to acknowledge those murmurings. Lindy would get out of this. He would get her out of this. Somehow.

  But until that happened he had one important fact to impart. Waiting until he was sure she was paying full attention, he mouthed a silent I love you.

  Then, he turned and strode out of the room.

  FIFTEEN

  Lindy could hardly breathe. Hardly function, let alone think clearly. She knew she had done the right thing by sending Thad away. She just felt so alone now. So abandoned. So vulnerable. She couldn’t even bring herself to be happy about Thad’s last, unspoken words.

  Had he really indicated that he loved her? It seemed so. Unless, of course, her imagination was playing tricks on her because that was exactly what she’d wanted him to say.

  Reed sidled up to the foot of her bed once again. “Smart lady.”

  So angry she was speechless, Lindy glared at him.

  “All right. This is what’s going to happen,” he said flatly. “There’s going to be a disturbance in another part of the hospital in a few minutes. As soon as your guard is called away to assist her fellow officers, you and I are going to walk out of here.”

  “I can’t just leave like that. I’m under arrest,” Lindy countered.

  “Yes, you are. And a drug dealer like you would be highly likely to make a break for it the minute she had the chance.” He grinned slyly. “That was the plan in the first place.”

  “You put the smoke bomb in the jail?”

  “Not personally,” he said. “But I did arrange to have it done. I had to get you out of there so you and I could have a private chat.”

  Lindy’s thoughts raced. She knew her chances of survival were minimal once she and Reed were away from the others, yet what else could she do? How could she hope to leave enough clues for anyone—for Thad—to follow her?

  “Where are we going to go?” she asked, trying to maintain a modicum of composure.

  “I have a plane waiting at the airport.”

  “What airport? The little runway down by Pearson Products?”

  “Yes.”

  That was a surprise. The Serenity airport was hardly more than a paved strip of asphalt with numbers painted at the ends and a stripe down the center. There was so little air traffic there that she had only noticed one or two small private planes coming and going in all the time she’d worked for Thad.

  Reed chuckled. “I can tell you don’t believe me. You’ll see for yourself soon enough.” Slipping a hand into his jacket pocket, he gestured with the gun through the cloth. “Get dressed. We need to be ready to leave as soon as the ruckus starts.”

  She gritted her teeth. “I’m not doing anything of the kind in front of you. Turn around.”

  “Not in a million years, lady. Take your clothes into the bathroom if you’re embarrassed. I’ll wait here.”

  As Lindy complied, her mind was racing. There had to be some way to escape. Something she had overlooked that would enable her to flee.

  Casting her gaze around the small bathroom while she donned jeans and a sweater beneath her denim jacket, she noted that it didn’t even have a window, let alone another normal exit.

  There was only one way out.

  Right into the arms of James Reed.

  * * *

  While she’d been dressing, Lindy had had little time to leave clues and even fewer ways to do so. If she’d had her purse, she figured she could have written on the bathroom mirror with lipstick. Too bad no one had bothered to bring it to her after her arrest.

  The only thing at hand that would leave a mark was the tiny tube of toothpaste she’d been issued as a patient. Squeezing a dab onto her finger she tested it on the mirror. The marks it left weren’t bright or easy to read but maybe that was just as well. If her captor glanced into the room he might not see that the smears she was leaving were clues.

  Making a P.P. for Pearson Products used up so much of the bluish gel she realized she wouldn’t have nearly enough to explain what was going on.

  The door rattled as if Reed was coming in.

  “I’m almost ready. Just give me a couple more seconds.”

  What else could she write? How could she squeeze out enough more gel to spell “airport”?

  She couldn’t. The only thing that might help was if she could make a smear that looked like an airplane.

  It didn’t help that her hand was shaking. The so-called airplane resembled a sideways letter T more than it did a plane. Taken aback, she suddenly realized that the object also looked like a cross.

  Reminded that she had been so frightened she had failed to pray the way she should have, Lindy closed her eyes, took a deep, settling breath and began to turn her life, her future, her loved ones, over to the Lord.

  * * *

  Thad hadn’t wasted time chatting with Adelaide other than to ask when she was expecting to be relieved of duty. He did want to warn her but he was afraid doing so would trigger an all-out assault on Lindy’s hospital room and result in casualties.

  Right now, his main focus had to be to remove the little boy from danger. As soon as he was sure Danny was safe, he’d go back and see if he couldn’t catch Reed unaware and disarm him before somebody got hurt. Particularly Lindy.

  Holding the child’s hand, he led him down the hallway, pausing at the first desk they came to. “Is Samantha Waltham on duty today?”

  The nurse at the station checked her computer and smiled. “Sure is. You’ll find her in E.R.”

  “Thanks.”

  Danny resisted going farther. “I don’t wanna go see her. Mama said I don’t have to anymore.”

  “She’s your mother’s friend. I saw them having lunch together.”

  “Yeah, but...”

  “No arguments,” Thad said firmly.

  He hated to be so stern with the boy but this was a situation that left no room for discussion. Nor was he going to be able to explain much to the nurse he sought. Hopefully, her instincts would be good enough to pick up on the urgency of his request.

  They found her coming out of a cubicle and stripping off latex gloves. The moment she recognized Danny she grinned.

  “Well, hello. Did you come to visit your mama? I heard she was a patient here, I just haven’t had time to drop in on her yet.”

  Thad caught her eye and shook his head as he said, “That wouldn’t be a good idea right now.”

  “Oh?” She arched a dark brow. “Why not?”

  “Trust me, okay?” He grasped Danny’s shoulders and shoved him toward the nurse. “You were his CASA worker, right? You can look after him for a few minutes?”

  “I was. And I’ll be glad to.” Her eyes narrowed. “Care to tell me what’s going on?”

  “I will as soon as I can,” Thad said, hoping his demeanor was a lot more placid than he felt on the inside. “Please?”

  Samantha gently caressed the
child’s thin shoulder as she pulled him closer. “Is Lindy okay?”

  Thad immediately said, “Yes,” but he could tell by the way the nurse tensed that she wasn’t fooled.

  “You’re sure you know what you’re doing?”

  “In this situation, yes,” Thad insisted. “As long as I’m sure Danny will be safe with you.”

  “Of course.”

  About to turn and head back to Lindy’s room, Thad heard shouting in the background.

  Thankfully, Samantha didn’t wait to see what was going on. She scooped up the child in her arms and hurried in the opposite direction.

  Three burly men clad in heavy jackets and boots burst through the automatic doors and careened into the hospital lobby. They were grappling with each other and rolling around on the polished tile floor while one of the regular security guards tried unsuccessfully to break them up.

  Sirens began to wail. Red-and-blue lights flashed through the glass of the E.R. doors and the other entrance that led to admitting.

  Thad couldn’t imagine any worse scenario, given the touchy situation in Lindy’s room. If Reed got the wrong idea and thought the police had been summoned to confront him, there was no telling what he might do! Or who he might harm.

  He whirled and headed back the way he had come at a run. Hospital staff members were rushing in the opposite direction, toward the sounds of trouble. So was Adelaide Crowe.

  Thad reached out to try to stop her. She shook him off without pausing and tore past.

  A sense of foreboding filled Thad. If Adelaide had been called away from her post before her replacement arrived, that meant there was no guard on Lindy. No one to keep her safe.

  Bursting into the room, Thad first noticed that the bed was empty. His breath caught. His heart was pounding so hard he could feel his pulse in his temples.