Faith, Hope and Love

by Beverly Barton

  “Worth,” Faith whispered. “Worth, where are you?”

  Worth Cordell woke from a drug-induced sleep in the ICU of an Atlanta hospital…or he assumed he was in Atlanta. He glanced around the meticulously sterile room. Pale-green walls. No windows. An array of tubes and wires hooking him to various machines. The quiet hum of nurses as they went about their duties within the intensive care facility.

  What the hell am I doing here? he asked himself.

  His brain was fuzzy. His body ached, but it was a medicated ache that told him his true pain was being masked by some high-powered medicine. Worth felt as if his right leg had been run over by an army tank.

  His right leg! Now he remembered. He’d been shot. He tried to raise himself up enough to look at his leg, to make sure it was still there. During his time in the Rangers he’d seen guys get their legs blown off and later in the hospital say they could feel their missing limb.

  A strong, feminine hand came down over Worth’s chest and gently eased his head down on the pillow. “Lie still, Mr. Cordell. Don’t try to move around. Not yet.”

  “Tell me something.” Worth looked squarely at the brown-eyed, middle-aged nurse.

  She glanced down at him and smiled. “What would you like to know?”

  “Is my leg still there?” he asked.

  “Your leg?” Her smiled widened. “Your leg is very much there and it’s healing nicely. We should be able to transfer you to a private room by this time tomorrow.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome. Is there anything else I can do for you?”

  “I’m not sure. I’m a bit crazy-headed right now.”

  “Your mind will clear up once we reduce your medication. Now take it easy and—” she pointed to a series of buttons attached to the railing on his hospital bed “—if you need anything, just punch right here and one of us will check on you.”

  Worth nodded.

  The nurse paused at the doorway, glanced over her shoulder and said, “Merry Christmas, Mr. Cordell.”

  Merry Christmas?

  “Is today Christmas Day?” he asked.

  “Yes, it is.”

  “How long have I been in here?”

  “You were brought into the E.R. three days ago, on the twenty-second, and Dr. Winthrop did emergency surgery. He saved your life and your leg.”

  “I am in Atlanta, aren’t I?”

  “You’re in Piedmont Hospital and you’ve had visitors every day, but you probably don’t remember.”

  “Visitors?”

  “Your co-workers from the Dundee agency. A Mr. Sawyer, a Mr. Shea and a Ms. Evans.”

  “Oh, yeah, my co-workers.”

  Worth tried to remember exactly what had happened to him, but his memory was messed up. He’d been on an assignment, here in Atlanta, providing private security for some rock star in town for a Christmas concert. He could recall that much, but nothing about the particulars. When one of the guys from Dundee’s came back to the hospital, he’d find out the details.

  Lying there, his leg aching and his stomach rumbling—when had he eaten last?—he suddenly remembered that he’d had a very important date on Christmas Eve. Faith! He was supposed to have met her in Whitewood, South Carolina, at eight o’clock in the town square.

  Well, by now, she realized he wasn’t going to show up. She must have been really disappointed. Hell, he’d had every intention of meeting her. He’d owed her that much. After he had rescued her from kidnappers and gotten them back to safety, she’d developed a major crush on him. And he had developed a major case of the hots for her.

  Maybe it was better for her—for both of them—that he hadn’t been able to meet her. Being laid up in the hospital this way, he had saved them both from an unpleasant scene. He had planned to tell Faith that he wasn’t the right man for her, that he wasn’t the settling-down, one-woman-man she needed. He was a man with too many emotional battle scars for a sweet woman like Faith. Plain and simple—he was no damn good for her.

  She might be crying today, but by this time next year, she’d probably barely remember what he looked like. Yeah, maybe fate had done them both a big favor. He could continue his life as it was and she could move on to that fairy tale happily-ever-after she wanted with some other guy.

  Chapter 1

  Faith Sheridan locked the door to Toddle Town Day Care, the business she had opened in February, only a few short weeks after her recovery from hypothermia and pneumonia nearly ten months ago. With a bank loan, cosigned by Margaret Tompkins, and seventy-five percent of her savings, Faith had purchased a downtown building that had once housed a dry goods store that had gone out of business a couple of years ago. Located on Hickory Avenue, a back street in Whitewood, the two-story building was ideal. Her office and nursery were upstairs, where the infants were kept away from the toddlers on the ground level. Out back Faith had cleared off the empty half lot and put in playground equipment.

  Opening a day-care center had seemed the perfect choice for Faith since her background was in child care; plus she had the added bonus of being able to keep Hope with her all the time. But today, her baby daughter was running a fever and she couldn’t risk exposing the other children to what the doctor had said was a twenty-four-hour virus. Luckily Lindsey Dawson had become like a grandmother to Hope, as had Margaret, and today Lindsey was looking after Hope.

  Life wasn’t perfect, but Faith was content. She had a new business that was thriving, good friends all around her in Whitewood and best of all, four-month-old Hope. Her baby was the absolute joy of her life. But despite everything being well with her, she hadn’t forgotten Worth Cordell. How could she, when Hope was a living, breathing reminder of the man Faith still loved? She never talked about Worth anymore, not to Lindsey or Margaret—and certainly not to Jody, who was convinced Worth Cordell was a low-life scum.

  As Faith headed toward her car, the November wind whipping chillingly all about her, she paused on the sidewalk and glanced around at both sides of the back street already decked out in holiday gear; not quite as elaborately decorated as Main Street, but shimmering with white lights. And each shop door on Hickory Avenue held a festive wreath. Every year, the decorations went up earlier and earlier. Here it was a few days before Thanksgiving and already the town was in Christmas mode.

  The turn-of-the-century reproduction streetlights cast a mellow golden glow over the entire scene. Since she kept the day-care center open until six-thirty and all the other shops on Hickory closed at five-thirty, she was quite alone. But she never felt afraid, not here in Whitewood. Their crime rate was one of the lowest in the state.

  Hitching her shoulder bag higher, she reached inside her coat pocket for her car keys, then headed straight for the used SUV she’d bought from one of Lindsey’s sons who lived in Columbia. The back seat held Hope’s infant seat and an array of toys scattered about, even in the floorboard. She couldn’t wait to pick up Hope and head straight home. She was unaccustomed to being away from her child all day and she longed to hold her baby in her arms.

  Faith unlocked the driver’s door of the Chevy Blazer. Just as she stepped up to get inside, someone grabbed her from behind. She gasped, startled by the unexpected hand on her shoulder. When she tried to turn to face the person, she felt something hit her on the head. For a couple of seconds her vision blurred. What was happening? Was she being attacked? She opened her mouth to scream, but no sound came out. Oh, God, help me! Whoever had hit her was dragging her away from the car. She tried to struggle, tried to put up a fight, but she felt so weak. When she managed to squeak out a protest, something struck her head again.

  Suddenly everything went black!

  Worth Cordell finished the paperwork on his most recent assignment for Dundee’s, pushed the print button on the computer and leaned back in his plush office chair as he waited for the information to print out. This job had lasted nearly a month and ended with the apprehension of a stalker who’d been obsessed with her college professor. The twent
y-year-old coed had finally moved beyond threatening behavior to actually trying to kill the professor’s wife. Worth had come damn close to taking the bullet meant for Marcia Hallmark.

  After snatching the pages from the printer, he slipped them into a manilla file folder and laid it on his desk, then started to get up; but a sharp pain splintered through his bad leg. Hell! Leaning slightly to the left, he rubbed his thigh. The bullets he’d taken in that leg nearly a year ago had left him with a slight limp. For months after he’d been released from the hospital, he’d used a cane just to get around, but now, after endless therapy, he was about eight-five percent back to normal. He relied on the cane only when he’d been on his feet for too many hours and his limp grew decidedly worse. His life had pretty much returned to normal, but he’d have both the scars and the limp to always remind him of what had happened. He’d taken three bullets—two in the leg and one in the side—when a crazed fan had decided to become famous attempting to kill a rock star who had been in Atlanta for a concert.

  “Worth Cordell,” Dundee office manager, Daisy Holbrook, called as she knocked on the door, then stuck her head into Worth’s office. “Mr. McNamara wants to see you right this minute. It’s urgent.”

  Worth rose to his full six-four height, nodded to Daisy and said, “Tell him I’ll be right there.”

  “Will do.” Daisy beamed that thousand-watt smile of hers and scurried away.

  The young woman ran the Dundee office in downtown Atlanta with unequaled efficiency and had for the past year, since she’d been hired to replace the retiring former office manager. Daisy had been the first employee that new Dundee CEO, Sawyer McNamara, had hired when Sam Dundee had asked Sawyer to take over the top job when Ellen Denby married and left the business. Sawyer was the right kind of guy to run Dundee’s. He was smart, shrewd, and hard-nosed, as well as fair-minded. He was a no-nonsense type of man who instilled confidence and loyalty in his employees. Well, everyone except Lucie Evans. Worth had thought one of two things would happen when Sawyer took over the reins: either Lucie would resign or Sawyer would request her resignation. The two had been former FBI agents and the animosity between them apparently had deep roots. No one in the business knew the particulars; they only knew Lucie and Sawyer didn’t like each other. But to everyone’s surprise Lucie remained a Dundee agent and despite an occasional flare-up between the two, Sawyer and she somehow managed to coexist whenever they were both at the downtown office.

  When Worth walked through Sawyer’s open office door, he heard the voice of a newscaster coming from the television housed in a compact entertainment center in Sawyer’s office suite.

  “Come in. I thought you’d want to see this.” Sawyer motioned for Worth to come over to his desk. “Wasn’t Faith Sheridan the name of the Constantines’ nanny?”

  A shiver of apprehension raced up Worth’s spine. He hadn’t heard that name spoken in nearly a year, but he had thought about Faith more often than he liked to admit, even to himself.

  “Yeah, that was her name. Why?” Worth made his way over to the side of Sawyer’s desk.

  “When the noon news first came on, they said something about a report coming up on a missing person named Faith Sheridan. I thought since you rescued Ms. Sheridan and took care of her after she and the Constantine child were kidnapped, you might be interested in finding out what’s happened to her.”

  “It might not be the same Faith Sheridan,” Worth said.

  “Might not be. The report is coming from someplace in South Carolina.”

  Worth’s heart skipped a beat. “Whitewood, South Carolina?”

  “Yes, I think that’s—”

  “Faith told me she was going home to Whitewood when she handed in her resignation to the Constantines last year.”

  “Well, this news story must be about her. Take a seat.” Sawyer indicated a leather wing chair to the left of his desk. “We’ll check out the report together.”

  Just as Worth eased down in the chair, the local noon anchorman said, “Now to Connie Beck in Whitewood, South Carolina, where a young mother has been missing for the past thirty-six hours and feared to be the latest victim of the Greenville Slayer, who has murdered two women and left two others close to death in the Greenville, South Carolina area.”

  Every muscle in Worth’s body tensed. Faith dead? No, it wasn’t possible. Not sweet little Faith. An overwhelming sense of grief sucker punched Worth, then he recalled something that the newsman had said. He’d said Faith was a young mother. Did Faith have a child? Was it possible that when he hadn’t shown up on Christmas Eve last year, she’d turned to another man? But if her name was still Sheridan, she wasn’t married. Faith was the old-fashioned sort of woman who would take her husband’s name when she married.

  The face of the attractive brunette reporter, Connie Beck, appeared on screen. Beside the reporter stood a somber young blonde holding a baby in her arms.

  “This is Connie Beck, coming to you from Whitewood, North Carolina, where Faith Sheridan, the owner of a local day-care center and mother of a four-month-old child, has been missing for the past thirty-six hours and is feared dead.”

  Four-month-old child? Mentally Worth counted back. God in heaven! That meant Faith had given birth in late July or early August, which would mean she had conceived sometime in November.

  Was it possible the child was his? No! He wouldn’t believe it. Couldn’t believe it. Faith knew how to contact him through the Dundee Agency; if she’d been pregnant, she could have gotten in touch with him.

  Worth tried to focus on what the reporter was saying. “Police aren’t revealing much about Ms. Sheridan’s disappearance, but our sources tell us the police fear she was abducted when she left the day-care center night before last, and with a serial killer—the Greenville Slayer—having recently hit in the town of Sparkman, only twenty miles south of Whitewood, there’s a good chance Ms. Sheridan is his latest victim.

  “With me today is Ms. Sheridan’s best friend since the two were childhood playmates—Ms. Jody Crenson.” Connie Beck held the microphone toward Jody. “Jody, you have something you’d like to show us and something you’d like to say.”

  Jody held up a photograph in one hand as she kept the baby, bundled in a pink blanket, poised on her hip. “This is Faith Sheridan. If anyone has seen her or has information about her, please contact the Whitewood police department. Faith’s friends are collecting reward money for anyone with information.” Jody removed the blanket from the baby’s head and the camera zoomed in on the child.

  Worth’s heart stopped beating for a split second. Fat, pink cheeks, button nose, rosebud lips. A thick fluff of dark-red hair curled atop the child’s head and a set of dark-brown eyes stared into the camera.

  She was his! He knew it the moment he looked at her. Faith’s baby was his daughter.

  “This is Faith’s little girl. Hope needs her mother, so please, if you know anything, anything at all, about Faith’s disappearance, we need your help.” Tears spilled from Jody’s eyes.

  “Thank you, Ms. Crenson.” The reporter caressed the baby’s rosy cheek, then turned back to the camera, which focused on her. “It is feared that Faith Sheridan is the fifth victim of the Greenville Slayer. This man murdered one woman and left two for dead in the Greenville area, all within the past two months. Only three weeks ago, his fourth victim was found dead in an abandoned warehouse in Sparkman, twenty miles south of here.”

  Worth shot up from his chair and bounded out of Sawyer McNamara’s office. He had to get to Whitewood as quickly as possible. Every instinct he possessed urged him to find out what had happened to Faith and to see the child he knew had to be his.

  Sawyer came out in the hallway and called to Worth, “What’s wrong with you? Where are you going in such a hurry?”

  Worth slowed for a moment, glanced over his shoulder and replied, “I’m going to Whitewood to find out what happened to Faith.”

  “I knew she had a major crush on you after you rescued her la
st year, but I didn’t think you reciprocated her feelings.”

  Worth didn’t explain himself to anyone, didn’t justify his actions to anyone, not even his boss—not unless those actions directly related to a current case. But he did owe Sawyer some sort of explanation. “I’ll need some time off. I don’t know how long.”

  Sawyer eyed Worth suspiciously. “Sure. Take however long you need. And call me if there’s anything I or the agency can do to help you.”

  “Thanks.”

  Worth hurried into his office, tossed his overcoat across his arm, then went by Daisy’s desk on his way out.

  “Call the airlines and get me the first available flight to Whitewood, South Carolina. And arrange for a rental car.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Call me on my cell phone to let me know about my reservations.”

  “I’ll take care of the arrangements for you, Mr. Cordell.”

  Ten minutes later, Worth found himself stuck in downtown traffic. Twenty minutes later just as he entered his one-bedroom apartment, his cell phone rang. Daisy rattled off details of his flight and he registered the information mentally, then set about packing. His plane left Atlanta in less than three hours.

  Margaret Tompkins and Lindsey and George Dawson sat around the table in Jody Crenson’s kitchen. Half-eaten sandwiches and empty coffee cups littered the table, along with piles of money.

  Margaret punched the final numbers into her adding machine, then announced, “We have collected two thousand, six hundred and forty-two dollars and twenty cents.”

  “George and I want to add a thousand dollars to that,” Lindsey said as she bounced a wide-eyed Hope on her knee.

  “With my thousand, that will bring our total to nearly five thousand.” Margaret wiped away a tear. “I feel as if we should be doing something more. I want to go out and search this town, house by house.”

  “The police have pretty much already done that,” Jody said. “Everyone in Whitewood knows Faith and if anyone has seen anything, this reward money—” Jody eyed the stack of bills and rolled coins in the middle of her kitchen table “—should entice even the most reluctant to come forward.”