Annette pointed the gun straight at Juliana’s heart. “Of course, I understood. Lexi always came first. She was their princess and her marriage to Ross was my parents’ crowning achievement. Now, keep your hands up and keep moving!”
Juliana’s heart folded in two as she resumed walking. “Did you take Riana?”
“No, I only wish I had! For the first time, Lexi’s life wasn’t so perfect. She had to wallow in misery like the rest of us. Except Lexi’s misery killed my parents. The doctor told me mother’s heart attack was probably stress-induced because of Riana’s abduction. And father, the police said he hadn’t been paying attention while driving due to grief over Mother’s death. Lexi took everything from me! Now I’m taking everything from her.”
“By killing Cort?” They were nearing the fountain. Juliana could hear the splashing of water. “How can you kill him? He’s never done a thing to you. I know what it feels like to be the least favored child. I had a brother whom my father still has on a pedestal even though he’s been dead for twenty years. But Cort is just a baby. You’re his only living relative. He’ll grow up knowing you, loving you, maybe more than anyone has loved you in your life.”
“But he’s her baby. Besides, I’m not going to kill him just yet, thanks to you. If Hunter was willing to marry you to give Cort a mother, he’ll be willing to marry me. He’s very handsome don’t you think? More handsome than Ross—and he has the sexy alter-ego thing going.”
Annette’s voice curled with disdain. “You were just Cort’s nanny. I’m his godmother. And if Cort happens to die in a tragic accident a few years from now, no one will be the wiser. I can’t inherit the Collingwood estate until Riana’s been missing at least seven years and been declared legally dead. Marrying The Guardian will suit me just fine. The Collingwood estate was nice, but this is a castle and I’ll be the undisputed queen. Mother and Daddy would be so proud.”
Cold fury raced through Juliana’s blood. She wasn’t about to let this woman harm Cort or claim Hunter’s bed.
A male voice drifted across the garden. “Where are you?”
“Here,” Annette called.
Juliana’s heart pounded in terror as the lights in the shrubbery revealed the approaching figure of a man clothed all in black. He had a gun in his right hand.
“Kill her.”
Juliana dived behind the boxwood hedge, reaching for the gun hidden at her waist as shots fired in the night. Rolling onto her knees, she took a wild shot at them and followed the hedge west toward the woods as Hunter had told her.
“Where’d she go?” Annette screamed.
“Over there. I’ve got her.”
Juliana heard two shots and a grunt of surprise.
“You bitch. You shot me? What’d you do that for?”
Annette’s voice was cold and unemotional. “Yeah, life is a bitch, isn’t it?”
Another shot rang through the night. Followed by a chilling, horrifying silence.
Juliana kept her head low and made a straight cut across the path into the woods on the other side toward the shoreline. The police were coming. If she could beat Annette to the cave, she could survive. At least Cort was safe.
Four strides off the path, she tripped over a log and fell headlong to the ground. The gun flew from her grasp.
She patted the ground, looking for the gun. Where had it gone? Her hands found something. Cold fingers, attached to a body. She shrieked, nausea burning in her throat.
Oh, God, it was Ty! She could make out the white streak of skin at his neck. She thought he was dead.
She heard crashing in the underbrush somewhere behind her. Annette was coming.
Juliana rose, running blindly through the woods in the dark. Trying not to sob. Shots fired around her, instilling her with more terror. Annette was too close. Juliana wasn’t going to make it to the cave.
The trees parted ahead of her. Juliana saw the rapid movement of the river and two police boats approaching the island, emergency lights flashing and floodlights blazing. A bullet whizzed past her head.
Juliana didn’t think twice. Hunter and Cort needed her. She dived into the river and swam for her life.
HUNTER FOUGHT TO CONTAIN the panic roaring through him as the chopper neared FairIsle. Juliana was missing. The troopers had already landed on the island and found Annette bleeding from a stab wound in her left arm, screaming hysterically that an intruder had attacked them and Juliana had shot him. But she didn’t know where Juliana, the baby or the intruder was. The troopers had searched the house and the island. They’d found Lars barely alive in the butler’s panty. Hunter had given them instructions to the safe room where they’d found Cort safe and sound, sleeping. But there was no sign of Juliana.
The troopers were searching the other buildings on the island and the woods. Hunter counted off the last few minutes until the helicopter would reach the island, praying the troopers would find Juliana in the cave.
“Sorry, sir,” a trooper told Hunter over the cell phone. “We just checked the cave. She’s not there. But we found both guards in the woods.”
Fear gripped Hunter’s heart. “Are they alive?”
“One of them is. He’s in pretty bad shape. African-American male in his thirties. He’s been stabbed, too, like the butler. Looks like he crawled a considerable distance to try to get help.”
Del. Oh, no!
“I don’t think the other guard knew what hit him, sir,” the trooper continued.
Hunter worked his jaw silently, grieving for Ty, praying he wouldn’t be burying Lars and Del and Juliana, too. Where was she? Why hadn’t they found her yet?
“We’ll keep searching the woods near the cottages. That’s where she was when she talked to the emergency dispatcher.”
“Wait a minute!” Hunter said suddenly, his head shooting up. If Juliana had gone as far as the cottages to call for help, she’d have tried to make it to the safety of the cave from there. Unless she couldn’t make it. Annette might have caught her off guard in which case Juliana would have fought back, perhaps have done something brave and unexpected to save herself.
Dread burned in his soul. He knew exactly what she’d done.
“Get a boat out on the river. I think she’s in the water, and she’s not a good swimmer.” He turned and tapped the pilot on the shoulder. “Bring us down low and approach the island from the east. The current will pull her that way.”
The pilot nodded and brought the chopper down.
Hunter and Investigator Bradshaw scanned the dark flowing water for signs of life.
ONE, TWO, THREE, BREATHE.
With a froglike motion of her arms and legs, Juliana popped her head out of the water and fought back fear. The current was rapidly pulling her farther and farther into the main river channel. Though she’d tried to draw attention to herself, the engines of the police boats had drowned out her cries for help.
But she wasn’t giving up. Something glowed white in the water a hundred or so yards ahead of her. One of the markers that delineated the international border, she thought. At any rate, it would be something to hang on to until daylight. Tomorrow was Saturday. There would be plenty of boats passing that could come to her rescue. She was not leaving Cort and Hunter to Annette’s mercy.
She and Hunter had unfinished business. Words and feelings still left unexplored between them. She didn’t want to miss out on any of it—especially the joy of hearing him admit he loved her.
Juliana moved her arms through the water and lifted her head out to take another breath. A strange whipping noise reached her ears. What was that? Then, blessedly, she saw it. A halo of light descending from the sky, sweeping over the river. She lifted her arms, waving them over her head, and tread water. “Over here! Over here, please!”
The beam caught her in its glare a second before she caught a mouthful of river water that had her gagging and sinking into the water’s powerful embrace.
No! She flailed her arms like she was spreading peanut butter and
kicked her legs like they were egg beaters, pulling herself to the surface again.
“Help!”
To her great joy, a figure dropped out of the helicopter and into the water. Seconds later, he surfaced and swam toward her.
“Juliana!”
Even beneath the roar of the helicopter she recognized that voice and swam toward the man she loved. Hunter had come. He’d saved her!
Relief and joy broke through Hunter when he covered the last few yards and stretched a hand through the water, grabbing Juliana’s arm. “I’ve got you,” he said, pulling her into an embrace. “This is one hell of a way to pick up where we left off.”
She pressed her cold lips to his, her fingers clutching his shoulders. “I love you. Annette was going to marry you and hurt Cort. She wanted to destroy everything Lexi had.”
He didn’t know what the hell she meant about Annette planning to marry him but it didn’t matter. She was safe. They had a lifetime together to sort out Annette’s twisted schemes. He held his cherished wife close in his arms. “I love you, too, sweetheart. So much it scares me.”
For the first time since he’d found his mother’s lifeless body, Hunter found real peace.
EIGHT SOMBER DAYS LATER, Hunter took Juliana’s hand as she was preparing to leave for the hospital to visit her father and asked her to come out into the garden with him.
It was early October and the deciduous trees were showing their yellow and scarlet colors against the backdrop of the dense pine woods. In the last eight days they’d buried Ty and rejoiced at both Del’s and Lars’s recovery. And they were steadily weathering the media storm.
Surprisingly, Annette hadn’t breathed a word about Cort’s true parentage or Hunter’s identify as The Guardian. Hunter suspected that Annette probably thought drawing attention to Lexi’s son and his legal guardian would be like putting Lexi in the spotlight again.
And Annette wanted all the attention for herself. She was already mounting her defense in the media. The prosecutor was asking for the death penalty and Annette was granting interview after interview, proclaiming her innocence and insisting that her sister’s and brother-in-law’s killer was still at large.
She claimed that the intruder on the island had attacked her as well, and that Juliana had shot and killed him. It was Juliana’s gun. And it was her word against the word of the butler’s daughter.
But Annette’s story gathered more momentum when the intruder’s body was identified and the police discovered he had connections to the Mafia. Annette insisted that the intruder had been hired by one of the higher ups in the Collingwood Corporation and she was being framed. Hunter knew that even if his identity leaked out, he’d continue on as The Guardian. He’d protect Cort. And protect Juliana.
Grateful that Annette was securely behind bars, Juliana had devoted as much time as she could to being at her father’s bedside and helping Hunter cope with the invasion of his beloved island and the loss of one of his men.
“Close your eyes,” Hunter said when they reached the fountain.
“Why?”
“Because I asked you very nicely to close them.”
Juliana obediently closed her eyes. Felt the warmth of the sun and a light southwesterly breeze touch her face as Hunter guided her with his hands. She guessed where they were going before she heard the key turn in the lock.
The squeak of rusted hinges brought tears to her eyes.
She felt the texture of cobbled stones beneath her feet and smelled the decay of vegetation.
“Open them.”
Juliana opened her eyes. As she’d suspected, they were in the greenhouse. The glass ceiling soared a good twenty feet in the air above them. Stone-edged beds curved along paths that radiated out from a small central courtyard. In the center of the courtyard, stood a cloth-covered pedestal.
Hunter cleared his throat. “This was my mother’s favorite place.
She curled her fingers around his, absorbing his strength and love. “I’m sure it was very beautiful.”
“You asked me once to tell you a secret to prove that I trusted you.”
She shook her head. “You don’t have to prove anything to me. You’ve shown me in so many ways that you trust me. That you have faith in me.” She drew a shaky breath. “If you hadn’t shown me the safe room or told me about the cave, Cort and I might not have survived. And neither would Lars and Del.”
Regret echoed in his voice. “I should have been here with you. Protecting you.”
“You were there when I needed you most,” Juliana insisted. “Besides, you were doing what you were supposed to be doing. You found out that Annette was the killer and you got the police out here in time.”
She leaned her head against his shoulder. “I don’t want you to stop being The Guardian. It’s who you are. I love that about you. And I’m still hoping that you’ll find Riana. Annette insisted she had nothing to do with her abduction. I’m not sure I believe her.”
Hunter touched her hair, his gaze solemn. “I promise you, we’ll keep looking. Bring her home with us here, with Cort. Now, back to my reason for bringing you here. Do you see that pipe there?” He pointed with his finger, his jaw tight. “That’s where I found my mother the day she died. I never told anyone until now. The gardener discovered her later.”
Juliana took his dear face in her hands, her heart breaking at the painful memories in his eyes. “Oh, Hunter, I’m so sorry. That’s an awful burden for a child to deal with.”
“I’ve locked up that memory like my father locked up this greenhouse, thinking if I ignored it, it would go away. I realize now that all it did was prevent me from being able to see the possibilities of the present and the future.”
He leaned down and kissed her. “I love you, Cinderella. You’re my present and my future. Will you accept this greenhouse as my wedding gift and bring it back to life like you’ve brought me back to life?”
Juliana’s throat swelled with emotions and a tear rolled down her cheek. “Oh, yes!”
Hunter kissed her reverently, deeply. “I was hoping you’d say yes. But just in case you didn’t, I had a backup plan.”
“Oh?”
He stepped away and pulled the cloth off the pedestal revealing a beautiful dainty sculpture of an old-fashioned ladies’ slipper. The slipper was encrusted with sequins of glass that twinkled in the morning sunshine like diamonds.
Juliana laughed. “It’s a shoe!”
“No, it’s not. It’s Cinderella’s slipper. It’s to remind you that I’m your perfect fit.”
Juliana tugged the tails of his shirt out of his slacks. “Care to show me what you mean by a perfect fit?”
Hunter laughed huskily. “Give me a second to lock the door. There are children running around.”
As if by magic, Mackensie appeared at the open door to the greenhouse, out of breath from running. “Mommy says to come quick. The hospital’s on the phone. Aunt Juliana’s father is out of the coma.”
She reached for Hunter’s hand. Hand in hand, they ran toward the house. Brook met them on the back terrace, trying to hold back tears as she held the phone out to Juliana.
Juliana gripped the phone with a shaking hand. “Papa? It’s me. I’m so glad you’re back.”
Her father’s voice was slurred but recognizable. “Me, too, little girl. Love you so much. Are you coming to see me?”
Juliana beamed up at Hunter and squeezed his strong fingers. “I’m on my way, Papa. And I’m bringing company.”
Epilogue
Four weeks later
The cursor blinked on the computer screen as Riana’s kidnapper reread the short letter:
Riana Collingwood is alive. She is a bright, pretty child with her father’s eyes and her mother’s smile. Prepare a five-million-dollar cash ransom and await further instruction.
The kidnapper printed the letter. Then printed an envelope with the address of the Find Riana Foundation.
Wearing gloves, the kidnapper opened the envelope and
slid Riana’s hospital ID into it. As a finishing touch, two fine dark hairs plucked from the child’s head were taped to the bottom of the letter.
That ought to get The Guardian’s attention.
ISBN: 978-1-4592-4088-9
THE BUTLER’S DAUGHTER
Copyright © 2003 by Joyce David
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