Operation Nanny

by Paula Graves

  “Listen, I know you’re not looking for a bodyguard, and I don’t imagine you care to tell a virtual stranger where you’re going and who you’re seeing, so I’m not going to ask you to tell me that.” Katie had started wriggling in his arms, so Jim set her on the floor, not missing a beat. “But could you leave that information somewhere here in the house so that I can find it if you don’t get back on time and I can’t reach you?”

  She narrowed her eyes. “You mean so the cops will have somewhere to start looking when you call it in?”

  His brow furrowed. “Well, I hadn’t planned to put it quite that bluntly.”

  She smiled. “It’s a smart idea. I’ll leave the address where I’ll be on the message board in the kitchen. Will that work?”

  “That works.” He returned her smile, and she felt an unexpected twisting sensation in the center of her chest. Damn, he was awfully cute when he smiled. She didn’t need to start thinking about him as a tall, attractive man instead of her niece’s nanny. Definitely needed to nip that in the bud.

  “There are some jars of peas and carrots in the cabinet,” she told him, leading him back to the kitchen. “And some creamed chicken in the fridge. She likes her food lukewarm. Not hot, not cold.”

  And she liked to throw her food around and make a mess, which Jim would find out soon enough.

  “She’s still eating food from jars?” he asked, sounding surprised.

  “Marianne used to cook, and I think Katie was eating some regular table food, but I’m not quite that domestic,” she admitted, guilt tugging at her chest. “I guess I’m going to have to buy a cookbook or something.”

  “I can cook,” he said. “I don’t mind.”

  “I don’t expect you to be a housekeeper and chef, as well as a nanny.”

  “I like to cook. I like to eat. You’ll be buying the groceries, so it’s not like you’ll be taking advantage.” He crouched as Katie toddled up to him, smiling at the little girl. “We’ll see if we can find the fixings to make a chicken potpie tonight. How does that sound, Katiebug?”

  “Pie,” she said in a tone of approval.

  Damn it, Lacey thought. Great body, adorable dimples—and he cooked?

  Even Mary Poppins couldn’t touch that.

  “Should I save you a plate? Or will you be eating out?”

  “I was planning on grabbing something while I was out, but you’re making this potpie sound tempting.”

  He slanted a smiling look at her. “Don’t get too excited. We’re talking about canned vegetables and crumbled-cracker topping here.”

  She really needed to get out of here before he tempted her to change her plans and stay. “Save me a plate. If I don’t eat it tonight, I’ll eat it tomorrow.”

  She grabbed her purse from one of the hooks in the small mudroom off the kitchen. “Don’t start calling the police and hospitals until after ten,” she said, keeping her tone light, even though she knew her safety wasn’t really a laughing matter.

  But she couldn’t afford to live in fear. She had to find a killer before he struck again. She had to do it for Marianne and Toby. For her orphaned niece.

  For herself.

  Outside, night had fallen completely, and the first grains of sleet peppered her windshield as she started Marianne’s Chevrolet Impala. With Katie still small enough to fit easily into a car seat buckled to the sedan’s backseat, Marianne and Toby hadn’t yet seen the need to upgrade to an SUV or minivan. But it wouldn’t be long before Lacey would have to start thinking about getting a more family friendly vehicle.

  Stopping at the end of the long driveway, Lacey rubbed her temples, where the first signs of a headache were beginning to throb. How was she supposed to be Katie’s mother? Katie had had a good mother. A great mother. A mother Lacey didn’t have a hope of emulating. Marianne had been a natural. Chock-full of maternal instincts and glowing with the joy of motherhood.

  And now she was gone, and all Katie had left were memories that would fade with time and an aunt who had no idea how to be a mother.

  “Stop,” she said aloud, gripping the steering wheel tightly in her clenched fists. “You’ll learn what you need to know. You’ll do your best.”

  And you’ll start with finding the son of a bitch who killed Marianne and Toby.

  A call had come early that morning from Ken Calvert, a source in the State Department, an analyst in the department’s South and Central Asia division. She’d dealt with Calvert several times following up on the stateside elements of her investigative report on the rejuvenation of al Adar. Calvert claimed to have new information about a possible domestic al Adar connection, but he didn’t feel comfortable telling her about it over the phone. He wanted to meet her at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial at seven.

  Maybe she was crazy to go out there alone. But she needed to know if it was possible that al Adar had put out a hit on her here in the United States. At least the Vietnam Veterans Memorial was a public place. It might not draw hordes of tourists on a snowy night in January, but Lacey had never been to the sleek reflective memorial wall when there weren’t plenty of visitors around. She should be safe enough.

  She went east on River Road, heading for the highway that would take her into the capital. It was an hour’s drive from Cherry Grove to DC. She hoped Ken Calvert really had come across something useful for her. She didn’t look forward to driving home in the snow.

  For the first third of the drive, traffic was moderate and, at times, light. But the closer she got to DC, the heavier it got. Headlights gleamed in her rearview mirror like long strands of Christmas lights stretching out along the highway behind her.

  Any one of those vehicles could be carrying the man who had attacked her in Frederick, she thought. Or whoever had set the bomb in her car.

  The thought that she might be sharing the road with a killer made her stomach tighten. She forced herself to take deep breaths past the sudden constriction in her chest.

  Stay focused, she told herself. Keep your eyes on the goal.

  It was a relief when she reached the outskirts of Dulles, Virginia, and the relentless darkness of the highway gave way to well-lit civilization. The endless stream of lights behind her became vehicles she could recognize—eighteen-wheeler trucks, expensive sports cars, sturdy SUVs and the occasional pickup truck.

  Including a familiar-looking blue pickup just a few cars behind her.

  Her heart skipping a beat, she checked her rearview mirror again to be certain.

  It was the same truck she’d seen following her on the highway into Frederick yesterday.

  She didn’t like using her cell phone when she was driving. But she found herself reaching for the phone anyway. She shoved it into the dashboard holder and pulled up the farmhouse number on her contacts list. The phone rang twice before Jim Mercer answered, his deep voice instantly reassuring. “Hello?”

  “Jim, it’s Lacey Miles.” She glanced at her mirror and saw the blue pickup keeping pace with her, staying a couple of vehicles back. Swallowing her fear, she forced the words past her lips. “I think I’m being followed.”

  Chapter Four

  The fear in Lacey’s voice caught Jim by surprise. She normally seemed so composed and competent that her shivery words made his chest tighten with alarm. “Tell me what’s happening. What makes you think you’re being followed?”

  “The other day, before I got to the employment agency, I thought I saw a blue pickup truck following me. I left the highway early, and it passed on by, so I didn’t think about it again. But the same truck is behind me right now.”

  “Are you sure it’s the same truck?”

  There was a brief pause. “I think it is.” Her voice took on a sheepish tone. “I guess I’m not sure. It’s dark out. Maybe I’m wrong about the color. I’m sorry. I’m probably overreacting.”
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  “Where are you?”

  “I just passed the exit to Dulles.”

  Dulles? She was nearly to DC. “I don’t suppose you could cancel whatever you had going on tonight and come back here?”

  There was a long pause on the other end of the line, and Jim realized the question was entirely inappropriate coming from a nanny she’d just hired that day on a probationary basis.

  “I’m sure I’m overreacting,” she repeated. “I shouldn’t have called.” She hung up without saying anything further.

  Jim pressed his head against the wall, feeling stupid. He had to remember why she’d hired him. She was expecting him to take care of Katie, not protect her from whoever was trying to kill her. He couldn’t come across as overprotective of her.

  Katie looked up at him from her seat on the floor, where she was playing with brightly colored letter blocks. “Wacey?” she asked.

  “Yeah, that was your aunt Lacey,” he answered, settling himself on the floor in front of Katie, trying to decide what to do next. If he called Lacey back, she’d be suspicious. But what if that blue pickup really was following her? And why was she going to DC in the first place? A date? A meeting with the network?

  Or had she been lured into a trap?

  He bit back a curse, pulled his phone from his pocket and dialed Lacey’s number.

  She answered on the first ring. “What?” she asked, her voice tight. He couldn’t tell if she was worried or impatient. Maybe both.

  “Look, I know you think you’re overreacting, but at least stay on the phone with me until you get where you’re going safely.”

  There was a long pause on the other end of the line. For a moment, he thought she’d hung up on him, but then she said, “The truck’s still back there.”

  “Has it gotten any closer?”

  “No. It hasn’t turned off or fallen back, either.”

  “Wacey?” Katie queried, looking up at him with troubled gray eyes.

  “Yes, Katiebug.”

  “Don’t worry her,” Lacey said quickly. “Kids can sense things.”

  “I know.” He pasted a smile on his face until Katie’s expression cleared and she went back to playing with her blocks. He spoke calmly into the phone. “I know you don’t want to tell me where you’re going—”

  “I’m meeting someone at the Vietnam memorial.”

  He started to frown but froze his expression before Katie could pick up on his anxiety. “There’s no parking near the memorial.”

  “I know. I’m going to park at my apartment in Arlington and take a cab into the city.” She released a soft sigh. “I thought it would be safe. There are always tourists at the memorial. A wide-open public place.”

  “Maybe not in this weather. And you have to get there first.”

  “I know. I should have thought it through more.” She sounded angry, but Jim knew it was self-directed. “I’m not used to being afraid of my shadow. I don’t want to get used to it.”

  “Maybe you should call and reschedule whatever this meeting is.”

  “I can’t. It might be something I need to know.”

  Jim lowered his voice, even though Katie didn’t seem to be listening to him any longer. “About the bomb?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe about the bomb. I got a message from one of my State Department contacts. Said he had some information I could use. I didn’t get the details, but I’ve dealt with this person before. He’s been reliable.”

  “Was meeting at the war memorial his idea or yours?”

  “His.”

  “And you’re sure you can trust this guy?”

  “I’m not sure about anything right now,” Lacey answered, her voice taut with frustration. “Sometimes I think my whole life has been turned upside down and I don’t know where to go or whom to trust.”

  Anything he could say in answer to that lament would probably make her suspicious, he knew. So he fell silent a moment, waiting for her to speak.

  Finally, she said, “I’m in Arlington now. I should be at my apartment in a couple of minutes.”

  “Is your parking place outside or in a garage?”

  “Private garage. Lots of security. I should be okay until I leave the garage.”

  “You want me to hang up so you can call a cab?”

  “No. I’m going to go up to my apartment. I need to grab a few things anyway. That’s why I left an hour early. I can call the cab from my landline. Listen, I’m at the garage entrance. I always lose cell coverage in the garage, so I’m going to hang up. I’ll call you back in five minutes, when I get to my apartment.”

  “Be careful,” he said softly, smiling at Katie, who had looked up sharply at his words.

  “Five minutes,” she said and ended the call.

  “Five minutes, Katiebug. We can handle waiting five minutes, can’t we?”

  Katie gazed back at him, her expression troubled.

  He held out his hands, and she pushed to her feet and toddled into his arms. He hugged her close, breathing in the sweet baby smell of her, and settled his gaze on the mantel clock.

  Five minutes.

  * * *

  THERE HAD BEEN a time when her apartment had been nothing short of a sanctuary. It was her home base, the place where the craziness of the world she traveled as part of her career couldn’t touch her. Here, she was just Lacey Miles, sister and aunt. Good neighbor and, when she could find time to socialize, a halfway decent friend and girlfriend.

  Until the night Marianne and Toby had died.

  Just a couple of days ago, she remembered, she’d wanted nothing more desperately than to come home to this condo and try to recapture that sense of safety and calm. But as she walked through the apartment, listening to the silence enveloping her, she felt as if she’d walked into a strange world she’d never seen before.

  Furniture she’d spent weeks shopping for looked alien to her, possessions that belonged to a different person from a different time. The vibrant abstract painting on the wall she’d found in a little art studio a few blocks away seemed lifeless, stripped of its beauty and meaning.

  She pushed the thought aside and headed to her bedroom. When she’d moved into the farmhouse, it had been an impulsive choice. An attempt at escaping reality, if she was brutally honest with herself. The apartment was a vivid reminder of that night, of the phone call and the police visit that had shattered her life. She’d packed in haste, almost frantic to get out of this place, away from those memories. The farmhouse was a connection to her sister, but one without any memories to haunt her. She’d never even been there. Marianne and Toby had still been living in the city when the bombing happened. The farmhouse had still been a project, not a home.

  Surveying the contents of her closet, she looked past the sleek, vividly colored dresses she wore on air. They had no place in her life at the moment. Pushing them to one side, she selected several sweaters and coats, the fleece-lined outerwear that she’d need, since the weather forecasters were predicting a snowy late winter. Rolling them up, she packed them in a medium-sized suitcase and set the bag by the front door so she wouldn’t forget it.

  She picked up the phone sitting on an antique cherry table by the door and called for a cab. A car would be there in ten minutes, the cab company promised. It would make her a few minutes late for her meeting with Ken Calvert, she realized, but it couldn’t be helped. Meanwhile, it gave her time to pack the bag in her car for the trip home.

  She was halfway down to the garage when she realized she hadn’t called the nanny back.

  Jim Mercer answered on the first ring, his voice tight with tension. “Is something wrong?”

  “No,” she said quickly, surprised by his tone.

  “You were in the garage a long time. Longer than five minutes.”

 
“I got busy. I packed a few things I’m going to need at the farm and I had to call a cab.” She felt guilty, which was ridiculous. The man was her nanny, not her keeper. Why did she feel the need to explain herself to him? “I think you may be right. That truck was probably just headed to town like I was.”

  “I’d still feel better if you stayed on the phone until you reach the memorial.”

  “I’d feel better if you were concentrating on Katie.”

  “She’s right here,” Jim said. “We ate while we were waiting for your call. Now she’s half-asleep in her high chair.”

  “Did she make a mess with her food?”

  “No more than the average two-year-old. I’ll clean her up before I put her to bed.”

  Lacey felt a quiver of envy. Most of the time, she felt completely out of her element with Katie, but the one thing both of them enjoyed was that brief time between dinner and bedtime, when Katie was drowsy and at her sweetest. She loved bedtime stories, and Lacey loved telling them. They’d cuddle in the rocking chair in Katie’s pretty yellow nursery while Lacey spun the familiar old tales of princesses and evil queens, wicked wolves and hapless pigs, evil old crones and two hungry children lost in the woods.

  “Give her a kiss for me.” She reached the elevator to the garage. “I’m about to lose my connection again. I’m heading to the garage to put my bag in the car so I don’t forget it.”

  “I’ll get Katie cleaned up and in bed while I’m waiting for your call back.” Jim’s voice was firm.

  “I think we need to have a talk about who’s the boss and who’s the nanny,” she muttered.

  “You were attacked a couple of days ago, and now you think you’re being followed by the same blue truck that followed you that day. On top of what happened to your sister—” Jim’s voice cut off abruptly. “I’m sorry.”

  “You said the guy who attacked me drove off in a van.”

  “He was the passenger in the van. But when he attacked, he came from the opposite direction, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Maybe he had the blue truck parked nearby.”