Daddy Bombshell

by Lisa Childs

  But Mark wasn’t with him. Did that mean her son had gotten away? Had Thad rescued him?

  Because if the man had Mark, why would he have come for her? To kill her?

  She swallowed a squeak of fear, but he must have heard her.

  A gun clutched in his hand, he whirled toward the stairwell. And her. She grabbed a lamp from the hall table and hurled it down at him. The porcelain struck his shoulders, eliciting an oath from him as it cracked and broke.

  He fired the gun, embedding the bullet in the wall behind her head. She screamed and ran for her bedroom. And the gun Thad had left her.

  But could she use it?

  She slammed her door and turned the lock, which was probably too flimsy to keep out anyone. So she rushed toward her dresser and pushed the heavy oak piece of furniture toward the door, which was already rattling under a pounding fist.

  Then, sitting on the floor, she used just her legs and shoved the dresser against the door. But since she could move it, so could he. It wouldn’t even take him as long or as much effort.

  Her hand shaking, she reached for the bedside table and pulled out the gun. Because she was shaking so badly, she fumbled with the safety before getting it off.

  But would she be able to get off a shot before he got her? The doorjamb splintered as the lock broke the wood. And then the door slammed into the back of the dresser.

  Again and again, like an axe swinging at a log.

  The piece of furniture rocked back and forth before finally, slowly, falling forward. The mirror struck the floor and shattered, sending a shower of glass flying at Caroline like confetti on New Year’s Eve.

  She doubted she would see New Year’s, though, or even Christmas.

  Unless she fired first.

  So she raised the barrel of the gun toward the door and pressed her finger against the trigger.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Each shot sent a bullet of fear through Thad’s heart. He vaulted through the shattered picture window and staggered across the floor, stumbling over the fallen Christmas tree. Regaining his balance on all the broken glass and ornaments, he ran across the living room and up the steps to the second story.

  To Caroline.

  The trim around her bedroom door had splintered. Some pieces of wood lay on the floor in the hall while others had been pushed inside with the door. Fearful of what he might find—like at Turner’s house—Thad edged closer to the opening.

  But it wasn’t open—not entirely. A turned-over dresser blocked half the doorway. Thad leaned in just as a bullet whizzed past his head and struck the wall behind him. He lifted his gun to fire back but, as he zeroed in on the shooter, he lowered the barrel. “Caroline!”

  “Oh, my God!” she shrieked as she dropped her gun. “Did I shoot you? Are you all right?”

  She climbed over the back of the dresser, reaching for him. He knelt on the wood and clasped her tight in his arms.

  “Are you all right?” he asked, pulling back to stare at her face. Nicks and cuts marred the silky perfection of her skin. “You’re hurt.”

  She shook her head. “It was the glass from the mirror.”

  The mirror of the dresser she’d been strong and smart enough to push across the door, to buy herself some time to retrieve the gun.

  He couldn’t have been more proud of her.

  “Is he gone?” she asked. “Did I shoot him?”

  “He’s not dead,” he said, almost regretful that he’d found no body lying in the hall.

  But Turner may have still been inside the house. Thad had left Ash outside, to guard what else mattered most to him.

  He grabbed up his weapon again. “Stay here. I’m going to finish searching the house and then go back outside.”

  She reached out, clutching at him. “Don’t leave me.”

  She wasn’t talking about just physically. She didn’t want Turner attacking him as he had her.

  “I’ll be right back,” he promised her.

  Unless Ed Turner waited somewhere in the house, ready to ambush him.

  HOW LONG HAD HE BEEN GONE?

  She hadn’t heard any more shots, but she hadn’t heard anything else, either. Just the eerie silence that had reigned before the glass shattered.

  She lifted her head, straining for a noise, any noise. And finally, she heard footfalls on the steps. Someone was coming back upstairs. She grabbed the gun again.

  But she couldn’t fire it and risk almost hitting the wrong person. Almost hitting someone she loved. Instead, she tucked the weapon back inside the drawer of the bedside table.

  She was just heading toward the bathroom to lock herself inside there when she heard a soft voice. “What happened to the Christmas tree? Will Santa still be able to put presents under it?”

  Thad carried their boy down the hall toward her. She ran to greet them, pulling Mark into her arms to squeeze his warm little body tight.

  Her voice shaking with tears, she asked, “Are you all right, sweetheart?”

  “I missed you, Mommy,” he said, winding his arms around her neck. “My new friend, Ed, was going to come get you for me.”

  She shivered and not just because cold winter air blew through her broken picture window. “That man is not your friend, honey,” she corrected him. “He’s a stranger.”

  “Ed told me that he’s Aunt Natalie’s dad,” Mark said, “and that makes him family.”

  And all Mark had wanted for Christmas. Even the shopping mall Santa had been surprised that he hadn’t asked for a toy or a video game.

  Thad patted his son’s back. “That man didn’t tell you the truth.”

  The little boy’s blue eyes widened with shock.

  Maybe Caroline shouldn’t have protected him so much from the realities of the world.

  “Ed lied?” Mark asked.

  Thad uttered a ragged sigh. “Aunt Natalie’s dad and mine died a long time ago.”

  She waited, worried that he might tell the little boy more than he was ready to learn about the world. But he stopped himself and met her gaze over Mark’s head.

  “And I need to go catch the man responsible for his death,” he continued. But he was talking to her now, not their son.

  She nodded in complete understanding.

  “I searched the whole house before I took Mark from Ash and brought him inside. Turner isn’t here. But I want to take the two of you to the estate,” he said. “To make sure you’ll be safe.”

  She shook her head. “He’s been through too much already.”

  “Exactly.”

  “It’s getting late,” she said. Afternoon had slipped into evening. Her son had been gone too long. “He’ll sleep better in his own bed.”

  “But the window—”

  “Can be repaired tonight.” Being a single mom and home owner, she’d made certain to find a trusty handy-man long ago.

  “But what about security?”

  “Is the estate any more secure?” she asked. “It’s been broken into, too.” Twice. But she didn’t need to remind him of that.

  He sighed again. “You’re right. There’s only one way to guarantee the security of the people I love.” He leaned forward and pressed a kiss to Mark’s forehead. Despite the excitement he’d had that day, the little boy’s eyes were already drifting closed.

  Then Thad kissed her, too, brushing his lips across hers. None of the danger she and her son had gone through was really his fault, yet she held on to her resentment against him. It was the only way to protect her heart from breaking when he intended to put himself in danger to apprehend their son’s kidnapper.

  When he pulled back, hurt flashed in his eyes that she hadn’t responded to his kiss. “I’m sorry,” he said, “about everything. I don’t blame you for being mad at me. I’m mad at myself. I thought for sure that I shook whoever might have followed me, but instead I led him right here—” his chest rose with an agitated breath “—to you and Mark.”

  She opened her mouth, ready to absolve him. But before
she could, he continued, “I’ll do what I should have the day after Mark was grabbed at the mall. I’ll make sure the St. Louis PD has a unit in the driveway until Turner’s caught.”

  “Done,” Ash assured them as he climbed the stairs. “And we’ll get someone here to fix your window.”

  “Thank you,” she said to Detective Kendall. But her gratitude was for Thad because he’d brought her son home just as he had promised.

  Now if only she could get him to promise to bring himself safely home to her.

  But this man, Turner, may have gotten away with murder twenty years ago, if he was the one responsible for Thad’s parents’ deaths. So she knew Thad would not rest until the man had finally been brought to justice.

  Her arms aching with the weight of her soundly sleeping son, she turned for his bedroom. The brothers talked behind her.

  “We have units sitting on Turner’s house, too,” Ash said. “In case he goes back, thinking the boy’s still there.”

  “This guy is good,” Thad said. “He’s been looking over his shoulder for twenty years, worried that his past would finally catch up with him. He’s not going to walk into a trap. I suspect that he even got training…where I got training, when he was setting up those defense contracts.”

  “I don’t care how damn good he is. He won’t get away again,” Ash said, his voice gruff with anger.

  “No, he won’t,” Thad said. “He doesn’t intend to.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’ll meet you downstairs,” Thad said, dismissing his brother to follow Caroline into Mark’s room. “I can’t believe he’s out.”

  Thad pulled back the blankets for her to lay Mark onto his bed. She slipped off his boots and pulled the blankets back up to his chin, which was damp from the drool trailing out of the corner of his open mouth.

  “Kids are resilient,” she assured him. She’d seen some of her students bounce back from tragedies. “And thankfully he’s too young to really understand what happened.”

  In case they were going to discuss what happened, she walked from her son’s room and, when Thad followed her into the hall, pulled his door shut. She hated losing sight of him for even that minute, but Thad had thoroughly checked the house before bringing their son inside. So the bogeyman wasn’t waiting in his closet, ready to grab him the minute she stepped away.

  If only she really believed that.

  She needed to get rid of the other danger to her son now. So she walked the short distance down the hall to her room, stepped over her dresser and retrieved the gun from her bedside table. Careful not to point it at him again, she extended the handle toward Thad.

  Instead of taking it, he busied himself with righting her dresser and pushing it back where it had been.

  “The department people need to clean up the glass in here,” he remarked. “Or you’re going to get hurt.”

  It was too late for that.

  “I’m more worried about me or Mark getting hurt if I keep this gun in the house,” she said, hating the weight and coldness of the weapon in her hand.

  “But if you insist on staying here, you’ll need that for protection.”

  She shook her head.

  “You must have scared off Turner with it,” he pointed out.

  “But I nearly shot you.”

  “It’s not like I didn’t have it coming,” he said with a halfhearted grin.

  “Just take it,” she urged him. “I don’t want it in the house with Mark.” She’d heard too many stories about what happened when guns were left around curious children.

  “I didn’t scare him…with what I told him about Turner?” Thad asked as he finally grabbed the handle of the gun.

  She shook her head. “He needs to know the man is not his friend.”

  Because she understood what Thad’s brother did not—Ed Turner was not done with them. Maybe she should have kept the gun.

  But the thought of Mark getting a hold of it…

  She shuddered. She had nearly lost him once, and she wouldn’t survive if something happened to her son. Or Thad.

  She stared at him, committing his every handsome feature to memory. She worried that when he left her this time, he would never be coming back.

  Thad met her gaze, as if he were ready to flinch at what he’d see there. “I don’t blame you for hating me. I hate myself for putting you two in danger.”

  Tears burned her eyes, so she shut them to clear away the sting. And when she opened them, Thad was gone. He wouldn’t hear her words, but she uttered them anyway. “I don’t hate you.”

  She just loved him too much to lose him again.

  TURNER WASN’T SURPRISED to find police cars parked along his street. They were unmarked, but by just being late models, they stuck out like sore thumbs among the rust buckets parked in front of the run-down houses. He should have maintained the house better. Simply keeping it hadn’t been enough to honor Emily.

  But that was all he’d ever done. Kept her but never really taken care of her. It wasn’t surprising that when she’d finally gone to the doctor, she had been sick too long for treatment. He’d loved her. But, just like this house, he’d ignored her.

  Because she hadn’t been as pretty or charming or vivacious as Marie Kendall. And he had been a bewitched fool instead of a man.

  Joseph and Marie had been so rich and beautiful and powerful. They had reminded him of the characters Tom and Daisy from The Great Gatsby. And just like Tom and Daisy, they had been careless people. Joseph hadn’t cared whom he’d used to build his company, destroying other businesses to build his. And Marie hadn’t cared whom she’d hurt in her endless quest for attention. She’d destroyed marriages and families and neglected her own children.

  He recited aloud a quote from the book. “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.” Twenty years ago, Ed had cleaned up their mess when he’d killed them, and he’d saved their children and future victims from their vast carelessness.

  And how had Thad Kendall repaid him? By killing his son.

  “Wade…”

  Poor Wade. The kid had never had a chance. He’d never had a father. Ed had been too obsessed with building his company, with trying to prove to Marie Kendall that he could be every bit as rich and successful as Joseph.

  He could have never built his company big enough or his houses opulent enough to impress Marie, though. Or for her to let him claim his daughter….

  Emily hadn’t cared about the money Ed had made or all the houses Ed had built. She had always loved this first one best. She had always loved Ed best.

  Maybe that was why, of all the condos and homes Wade could have lived in, he had chosen his mother’s favorite house. He had been a good son to his mother. And in the end, he had been a good son to Ed even though Ed had never given his son what he’d deserved from his father.

  He’d never given him love or attention.

  Now it was too late. But Ed had made him a promise. Justice. He had promised to avenge his death, and this time Ed would not fail his son. He’d gotten away with murder before. He probably wouldn’t this time, but he didn’t care anymore. He had nothing left to care about, and soon, neither would Thad Kendall.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Thad had commandeered the St. Louis PD interrogation room for his personal interviews. He’d talked to everyone he’d been able to round up who’d ever known or spoken to or just passed Ed Turner on the damn street.

  Ruthless businessman.

  Generous philanthropist.

  Inventive genius.

  Loving husband.

  Supportive father.

  Those were the statements he hadn’t bothered to write down, having already committed them to memory. Along with every other thing he had learned about Ed Turner in the past twelve hours. But those statements were super
ficial, from people who’d really never known Ed Turner at all.

  Just as so many people had really never known Thad Kendall. Except for Caroline. She knew him.

  And Ed’s recently deceased, long-suffering wife of thirty-five years had known Turner best. Thad hadn’t been able to bring her into the interrogation room. But he’d found the next best thing in the house where Mark had been held.

  Her diaries. She had recorded all her hopes and fears. She’d known everything about her husband, even why he was an alcoholic.

  “We’ve got all his usual bars and liquor stores staked out,” Ash said, pressing his fist over his mouth to stanch a yawn. He had been awake all night, too, at Thad’s side for every interview, probably because he hadn’t trusted his younger brother to conduct them without resorting to torture.

  But in the end it had come down to what they’d read, not what they’d heard. Ash tapped the cover of the journal he’d just finished. “Eventually he’ll run out of whatever liquor he had with him,” Ash said, “and he’ll go for more.”

  Thad shook his head. His gut told him that Ed Turner had quit drinking…the day Thad shot and killed his son. Otherwise he wouldn’t have been clearheaded enough to follow a spy without being detected and to figure out what mattered most to Thad.

  His heart clutched at the image he’d burned into his mind—Mark with his arms wound tight around his mother’s neck and Caroline clinging to the baby she’d thought lost to her forever.

  Because of Thad.

  He really wouldn’t blame her if she hated him. He hated himself for putting them in danger. “You’re sure they’re safe?”

  As he had every other time Thad had asked him, Ash assured him, “I have my best men sitting on her house. They won’t let Turner get to your son or your…” He peered up at Thad, who was too agitated to sit down. “What is Caroline to you? Just the mother of your child?”

  “What is Rachel to you?”

  “The love of my life,” Ash answered automatically and from his heart.

  Thad rubbed his hands over his face, which was rough with stubble. “That’s what Caroline is to me. It’s what she was four years ago.”