by Lisa Childs
“Is Mark all right?”
“Yes, yes, all the children are all right. But I felt I needed to call and let you know…”
Caroline’s heart rate quickened with the nerves in the director’s voice. “What?”
“There was a man hanging around earlier. He never approached the center or the children,” the director assured her, “but he was standing around outside as if he was watching the place.”
“Was he about thirty?” Caroline asked. “Good-looking with brown hair and blue eyes?”
The director chuckled. “No, it wasn’t Mark’s father.”
“You know who Mark’s father is?”
“Thad Kendall,” the director said then sputtered, “but he didn’t tell us that. He came by earlier with his brother, Detective Ash Kendall, and Mark called him Daddy.”
“Thanks for letting me know that he came by,” Caroline said.
And he’d brought Ash, too?
“He asked that we call him or his brother if we saw anything suspicious around the day care,” the woman continued. “If he hadn’t stopped by today and said that very thing, we might not have thought anything of that man standing outside. This is a busy area after all, so it’s not unusual that someone stand outside the coffee shop across the street waiting for someone.”
So Thad’s suspicious nature had unsettled them, too.
“That’s why I’m not certain we should even call them about the man,” the director continued. “We may just be overreacting. He was an older gentleman and very well dressed. I’m sure he was just waiting to meet someone.”
“No,” Caroline said. “You should call them about it. Actually, just call Detective Kendall. He’ll know whether it’s anything to worry about.”
Or just his brother’s paranoia.
Why was Thad so certain that their son was in danger?
What the hell was he keeping from her?
HE WAS LOSING HIS MIND. Ash had told him as much, and so had Caroline. He had panicked when she and Mark hadn’t been home after work. She hadn’t appreciated his calling while she and their son were at her friend’s house baking cookies for the Christmas parties at both her school and Mark’s day care.
Needless to say, she hadn’t invited him to join them despite her friend, in the background, shouting out an invitation. He smiled at Tammy Stehouwer’s obvious matchmaking. The woman had been right, though, that he and Caroline would hit it off. They had four years ago.
And if Caroline would give him a chance, they would again. But she wasn’t about to give him a chance, not until he was ready to tell her everything. No one deserved the burden of knowing everything about his life, about the things he’d seen and done. But he wasn’t at liberty to reveal the things he’d seen and done or even what he really was. He would lose his job for certain and maybe even his life, given that the people he’d spied on were usually prone to vengeance.
But Caroline, being Caroline with her big heart and her maternal instincts, had assured him that she and Mark were safe. They were spending the night at Tammy’s, and Steve Stehouwer had already turned on the security system.
Thad would have to trust that they were safe for the night. So, ready to give in to the need for the sleep he’d been denying his body, he climbed the stairs to his and his siblings’ wing of the house. His was the only occupied suite at the moment. Ash and Devin had their own places, and Natalie had officially moved in with Gray. Guilt and regret tugged at him.
Did she not feel as if she belonged on the Kendall estate since she wasn’t biologically a Kendall? Or did she just need the comfort and protection of her fiancé now? Thad would call her in the morning to make certain she was all right. She had acted so tough when he’d told her the truth. But maybe she’d only been acting.
Yawning, he reached the door to his suite and pushed it open, using his bandaged hand. Despite his protests, Ash had taken him to the emergency room last night and had his wound flushed out. He’d forgone the stitches and could probably lose the bandage when he showered. It hadn’t been as bad as Caroline and Ash had worried it was.
He’d been hurt far worse than that before. And probably would again if he ignored his instincts. They were niggling at him now. His door hadn’t been shut tight.
But maybe Aunt Angela had had someone clean the room today, which would have been kind of pointless when he’d actually spent so little time in it. Ever since the incident at the mall, he’d spent most nights in his car outside Caroline’s house.
Maybe that was why his windows had been smashed, so that he couldn’t spend the night protecting them. His guts tightened with fear and anger; someone was definitely after his son.
He stepped forward and in the semidarkness of the room, tripped over something on the floor. Whoever had cleaned up had done a half-assed job. He cursed and fumbled along the wall for the light switch. The lamp came on, but it wasn’t sitting on the bedside table. Instead, it lay on the floor, its shade bent and the base cracked.
It wasn’t the only thing broken in the room. Like his window, the mirror above the dresser was smashed, all the toiletries swept to the floor. And the photo albums that he’d borrowed from the library were strewn across the floor, the pictures torn or crumpled with the same rage that someone had destroyed his car and Mark’s snow family.
Someone had been inside his room. Inside the house, just like they had the night his parents had been murdered. Natalie was gone. But Uncle Craig and Aunt Angela would be home.
He reached for the gun that he’d tucked into the waistband of his jeans. And, with his weapon drawn, he stalked around his own house as if he were in another country checking for insurgents.
His wing was empty. The first floor was deserted, too. So he headed up the stairs to the other wing of the house, where Aunt Angela and Uncle Craig used the master suite that had once been his parents’…until they had been murdered there.
The house looked nothing like it had before their deaths. As if to erase their memories of that horrible time, Aunt Angela had redecorated the whole house. While it was elegant, it was also as warm and vibrant as the woman herself.
His heart thudded in his throat as he approached the French doors to the bedroom where his parents’ bodies had been found.
Where they’d been murdered.
His gun clutched tight in his bandaged hand, he pushed open the doors. And a scream rent the air.
Aunt Angela pressed her hand against her heart, which was dangerous as she held a pair of scissors. She’d been wrapping presents on the bed. “What are you doing?”
With a sigh of relief, Thad lowered the barrel of his gun. “Are you all right?”
She nodded. “Except for the ten years you scared off my life.”
He glanced around the bedroom. “Where’s Uncle Craig?”
“At work yet,” she replied, hurt dimming some of the usual warmth of her brown eyes. “He’s been working a lot lately.” She focused on the gun again. “What are you doing with that? What happened to your hand?”
“I’m okay,” he assured her.
“What’s going on?”
“Someone’s been in the house,” he said. Pitching his voice low, he added, “They could still be here.” He grabbed his phone, but instead of punching in Ash’s number, he dialed 911. He needed the closest available unit for backup.
After dropping the scissors atop the unwound roll of paper, Aunt Angela reached out for his hand, hers shaking. “Stay with me.”
“Of course.” After pushing aside the wrapping stuff, he settled beside her on the bed. It wasn’t the same bed where his parents had been murdered but it brought back those same horrific memories.
She squeezed his hand. “I’m sorry.”
“What are you sorry about?” he wondered. His aunt had never done anything wrong.
“I thought it was all over for you—that the man who’d gone to prison was the killer. I thought we were all safe here.” She shivered. “But I was wrong. He’s back, isn’t he?�
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He’d thought the threat might have come from someone from his other life, from another country—but not now.
“Yeah, he’s back.”
And he was proving to them that he could still get inside the house as easily as he had the night he had killed Joseph and Marie Kendall.
He shivered, too.
“How do you know he was here?” she asked, trembling as she glanced around her room as if remembering that it had once been a crime scene.
“He was in my suite,” Thad said. “I’m surprised and very glad that you didn’t hear him.” If Aunt Angela had heard anything and gone to investigate… Thad blocked out the images of everything that could have happened to her. “He really tossed the place.”
“I left this morning after the cleaning staff had been here, and then I was gone all afternoon,” she said. “Christmas shopping. I just got back a little while ago.”
“Maybe he waited until after you’d left to break in.” Maybe he hadn’t wanted to hurt Angela Kendall. Thad glanced around his aunt’s room again, which was untouched, as was the rest of the house. Maybe he was the only Kendall this guy wanted to hurt.
He remembered the pictures then. “I should have put those albums back right after I looked through them.” Because now they were destroyed.
“We can figure out a way to replace pictures,” she assured him. “We can’t replace family.”
“You did,” he said, so grateful that she hadn’t been harmed and so grateful for what she’d done for him and his siblings. “You were a better mother to us than she ever was.”
“Thad,” she gasped at his pronouncement. “You shouldn’t say that.”
“The truth?” He wrapped his arm around her. “It is the truth. You were always there for us, like she never was.”
“Your mother was so beautiful,” Aunt Angela murmured wistfully. “And your father was so driven. She needed attention.”
“And when she didn’t get it from him, where did she get it?” If anyone knew, it was Aunt Angela. While she and his mother hadn’t had much in common, they had been family, if not friends.
She shook her head. “I can’t speak ill of her.”
“Because she’s dead?” He’d never understood that. Since the person was already dead, what did it matter if anyone spoke ill of them?
“Because she was your mother,” she said, “and you should have only good memories of her.”
“She was pretty and she always smelled nice,” Thad said. “That’s what I remember about her. You’re the one who came to all our sports events and school plays and pageants. You’re the one who made us dinner every night and baked us cookies.”
Tears streaked from her eyes, which she squeezed shut. “Oh, you were always the charmer, Thad Kendall.”
“I realize that you’re trying to protect me from the truth about my mother,” he said, loving her for her sensitivity, “but I need the truth so that I can protect this family from a killer.”
She sighed wistfully. “Your mother was so beautiful and charming. You get your charm from her. I used to think she might have been just a flirt…?.”
Thad shook his head. “A friend of Devin’s worked at a hotel where she used to meet some guy. Or guys.”
“Your mother flirted a lot,” she said, “especially at the company functions we attended before your uncle and I moved to California.” After their son had died in that tragic auto accident, Craig had sold his half of Kendall Communications to his older brother, who he’d known would have never let him have any real control of the company.
“So you think the guy—or guys—may have actually worked for Dad?”
“Marie liked to be flattered,” Angela said. “And no one is as good at flattering someone as a salesman.”
“So Mom liked the salesmen at Kendall Communications?”
Aunt Angela nodded. “Yes. At every company function, they fought for her attention, jumping around like puppies and bringing her drinks. But I don’t know what ones it might have gone beyond flirting with.”
“Ones?”
She drew in a deep breath and finally uttered a few names, which Thad had her jot down on a piece of her floral stationery. “They were the good-looking ones,” she said as she passed him the paper. “The ones she actually seemed interested in, too.”
“Did any of them have a son named Wade?”
She shrugged. “Twenty years was a long time ago.”
Sometimes. And sometimes, as the anniversary of their murders approached, it seemed like just hours ago. He could remember the crime-scene techs and detectives all descended on his house, like they probably would be soon.
“I don’t remember their kids’ names,” she said. “I barely remembered their names—just thought of one when your brother Devin mentioned him a few days ago.”
“Devin mentioned him?”
She shrugged. “Something about business…”
So maybe some of them still worked for Kendall Communications. “I’ll call Devin and have him check company records. They would have had their kids listed as dependents on tax and insurance documents.”
He would have him check not just sons named Wade but any in the approximate age bracket. Thad reached for his phone again, but as he did, the bedroom doors burst open, and he was the one staring down the barrel of a gun.
This time his brother’s.
Aunt Angela gasped and touched her heart again. “You boys…”
“I heard the call come over the radio,” Ash said. “What the hell’s going on now?”
“Check out my rooms,” Thad ordered him. “They were vandalized like my car.”
Ash looked from him to Aunt Angela, who’d gone deathly pale. “Are you both okay?”
Thad nodded and assured him, “I’ll stay with Auntie.”
“I’m fine,” she said shakily as Ash rushed off to search the rest of the house.
Thad could have told him he’d already done that, but he figured a detective wouldn’t trust a reporter to have done a thorough job. Even an armed reporter.
“We’ll just stay here until Uncle Craig gets home.” He was sure that Ash would call him, too, if he hadn’t already.
“I’m sorry,” she said, laying her head on his shoulder. “I should have told you about your mother earlier.”
“You were trying to protect us,” Thad said. “I understand that.”
She patted his hand. “You do, now that you have your own son. I lost mine…?.” Her breath audibly caught. “But then I got all of you. And you became my children. I would do anything to protect you, like you will Mark.”
“I will,” he agreed.
But what he’d realized when he’d found the damage in his room was that the best way for him to protect Mark was to let him go.
Chapter Eleven
The beeping of a breaking news bulletin drew Caroline’s attention to the television in the teacher’s lounge. She stepped away from the buffet table of goodies where everyone had congregated and walked over to the TV, which flashed an image of the infamous Kendall estate behind the female anchor.
“Police were called to the Kendall mansion last night, just days before the twenty-year anniversary of the Christmas Eve Murders of Joseph and Marie Kendall.”
Tammy gasped and grasped Caroline’s arm in silent support. “Steve took off this week and next so he could spend the holidays with me and the kids, so I didn’t know about this yet.”
Otherwise she knew her friend would have warned her. Why hadn’t Thad warned her? Or at least called to assure her that he was all right? Because they weren’t the happy family Mark—and she—wanted them to be.
Caroline shook off her flash of pain and focused on the anchor’s report.
“The Kendall family would not make an official statement to the police, but an inside source confirms that acclaimed photojournalist Thad Kendall called 911 to report a break-in at the estate.”
The woman smiled at the mention of Thad but then pulled her face
back into a serious mask. “Could it be that the killer, who authorities just learned in the last few months is free, has returned to the scene of his crime?”
Tammy reached up and shut off the television. “That’s ridiculous,” she said. “There have been a lot of break-ins lately. There always is around Christmastime but given the poor economy, there are even more this year.”
Caroline nodded, but she felt sick, the sweets she’d eaten rising up in her throat. Ignoring the party, she rushed out into the quiet hallway. The children had already been dismissed at noon to begin their Christmas break.
“He’s okay,” Tammy said as she followed her out. “They would have said had anyone been hurt.”
Caroline nodded again. “I know.”
But she wasn’t worried about just Thad. She hurried into her classroom, dug her cell out of her purse and punched in the number for the day care.
“This is Caroline Emerson,” she said. “Is Mark all right?”
The young assistant, who had picked up, laughed. “He’s having a great time. We’re playing games and eating the cookies you and Mrs. Stehouwer brought this morning.”
Regret tugged at Caroline but she said, “I’m going to pick him up in just a few minutes.”
Tammy had followed her into her classroom. “Let Steve do it,” she said. “He already picked up Steve Jr. from his half day of school, and he’s picking up Bethany from day care in just a few minutes.”
“But I can—”
“You have company,” Tammy said, stepping back to allow Thad into the room. In jeans and a leather jacket, he was as sexy as ever.
Caroline clenched her hand around her phone, so that she wouldn’t throw it down and run to wrap her arms around his neck. What if he’d been injured or worse during the break-in?
“Okay.” She focused on her call. “Uh, Mr. Stehouwer will be picking up Mark today along with his daughter.”
That was good. Mark would be safe with Steve.
She was the one in danger now…because Thad didn’t look like the man who had built a snow family with their son and who had held her throughout the night. He looked as cold and distant as the man who’d walked away from her without a backward glance four years ago.