by Lisa Childs
Myron Webber lifted his hands above his head. “Don’t shoot.”
It wasn’t cute when he said it, like it had been cute when Lars had. She hesitated for just a moment before reholstering her weapon. This man, and his beady eyes, made her incredibly uneasy.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t realize you were here.” She’d hoped he wouldn’t be around very much.
“I left the office early when the nanny service called,” he said.
“Yes, the woman who was here got sick,” Nikki said. Maybe she got sick of Nikki second-guessing her nurturing skills. “They are supposed to send someone else, though.”
He shook his head. “I canceled that.”
“Why?”
“Do you think it would be wise to bring in a stranger given that someone is trying to kidnap my son?”
My son. The words echoed hollowly in the room. They just didn’t ring true to Nikki. Lars looked more like the baby’s father than this man. But Lars was right. She’d looked it up after he’d left. The baby’s eyes probably wouldn’t remain the same startling pale shade of blue as Lars’s. They would darken. His bone structure would change as he grew.
“I would have checked her out,” Nikki said, “before I let her anywhere near…” She glanced down at the infant. “What is his name?”
The nanny hadn’t known, which had been another mark against her with Nikki. But the man who claimed to be his father hesitated a long moment.
“You haven’t given him a name?” she asked.
He sighed. “There wasn’t time…with his mother passing away like she had…to decide on what to call him.”
“But he’s a few weeks old,” she murmured. And he deserved a name.
He shrugged now. “I’m not sure I’m going to keep him anyway.”
Her arm tightened protectively around the child. He wasn’t a puppy. He couldn’t be brought to the pound because he wasn’t potty training fast enough. “What?”
“I feel like he would be better placed with a family,” he said. “So he’d have a father and mother.”
Nikki released the breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. “You’re right,” she agreed quickly. The baby would be better off with anyone other than this slimy little man. “He deserves a family.”
Myron smiled and stepped closer. He gazed down at the child. But he didn’t look at him with awe like Lars had. He looked at him with something else, something Nikki couldn’t quite name, but it was as if he was admiring a work of art or bar of gold. He wasn’t seeing a child. He was seeing money. Whatever family got this baby wouldn’t be getting him for free, she suspected.
He held up a bottle. “I brought this up for him.”
“You’re going to feed him?”
He chuckled. “I’m an adoption lawyer. I’ve fed babies before.”
“Of course.”
“And with the nanny being gone…”
“I’ll stay,” Nikki offered.
He smiled. “Really? You’ve already worked one shift.”
She shrugged. “It wasn’t hard work. With the new security force in place, no one can get to him.”
Myron’s shoulders lowered as if a burden had been lifted from them. “That’s good.”
“I’m not sure about that,” Nikki admitted.
“You want someone to kidnap him?” He sounded horrified.
“I want someone to try,” she said. “So we can catch whoever is trying to take him.”
The lawyer tilted his head as if considering it. But he shook his head and not one of his perfectly coifed hairs moved. “I wouldn’t want to risk his safety.” He reached out and stroked his finger along the baby’s cheek, which was uncomfortably close to her breast. He glanced up at her face. “Or yours…”
Nikki was beginning to think it was too late for that. She’d already risked her safety by staying in Myron Webber’s house. But she didn’t care that he was Cooper’s first real job. If he tried anything, she would take him down.
Instead she reached out and took the bottle from him. “I’ll feed him,” she said. “I’m sure you have work to do.”
He kept staring at her and must have picked up on the fact that she was trying to get rid of him. Offending him probably wouldn’t be the smartest thing for her to do. If he fired Cooper, Cooper might fire her. She didn’t have an excuse to be outright rude, unless the guy tried something. Then her brother wouldn’t care if she took him down. Knowing her brothers, Cooper would probably do it himself.
She forced a smile and reminded Webber, “You have a family to find for this little guy…” Taking the baby and the bottle, she stepped back and sat down in the rocking chair near the crib.
“You look like a natural with him,” Myron remarked. “Maybe you’d like to apply to be his adoptive parent.”
She laughed, albeit uneasily. “Not me…”
“Because you’re not married?” He was clearly fishing for information now.
“My boyfriend and I aren’t ready to start a family yet,” she said, easily uttering the lie. She had no boyfriend. But for some reason she saw Lars’s handsome face, the intensity and passion in his pale blue eyes…
And she shivered.
The lawyer nodded. “You’re young,” he said dismissively.
He probably knew she wouldn’t have the kind of money he might ask for this baby. Would he sell his son to the highest bidder?
When he left, she breathed a sigh of relief and murmured, “I hope he’s not your father.”
Because if he was…the best thing the guy could do for him was to give him up.
“What’s your name, sweetheart?” she murmured. “You can’t go without a name.” Without an identity…
He blinked those blue eyes as he stared up at her as if totally cognizant of what she was saying.
“You remind me of Old Blue Eyes.” Her mom had always been such a Sinatra fan. She’d played his albums all the time. “But you’re new blue eyes,” she said. “A little Frankie…”
He began to scrunch up his face to cry. Maybe he didn’t like the name.
“No, you’re right,” she hurriedly agreed. “You’re no Frankie. I’ll just call you Blue—short for Blue Eyes.”
But the little face stayed scrunched up. Maybe he was just hungry. She touched the bottle. The outside felt hot, so she didn’t dare just shove it in his mouth.
Nerves fluttered in her chest. She didn’t want to hurt him. The lawyer had been right about that. She couldn’t risk his safety, not even to flush out the kidnappers. Maybe she could fool them with a decoy, with a doll like the ones used in movies.
Remembering what she’d seen her mother do when babysitting, Nikki squirted some of the formula on her wrist. It wasn’t that hot, which was weird, like the bottle was warmer than its contents. Before it slid off her skin, she lifted her wrist and licked off the formula and grimaced at the flavor. The milk tasted sweet and a little soapy. Maybe the bottle had just come from the dishwasher. But wouldn’t the rinse cycle have gotten off all the soap?
She couldn’t give him the bottle until she knew it was safe. And she didn’t want to call the lawyer back. He obviously didn’t know any more about babies than she did despite his claims. So she called the only expert she knew.
“Yes, sweetheart, how did your first day go?” Penny asked.
The pressure in Nikki’s chest eased. Her mother drove her crazy but also somehow made her feel safe and secure, too. “It’s still going,” she said.
“You’re still working?”
“Yes, the real nanny left and the client won’t bring in a new one.”
“So you are babysitting?”
She ignored the amusement in her mother’s voice. “Yes.”
“I won’t tell your brothers that you’ll do it for a stranger but not them.”
She glanced down at Blue. Despite his scrunched face, he hadn’t started crying. He just stared up at her as if waiting for her to take care of him. He didn’t feel like a s
tranger to her. He felt like family. How the hell was she already developing a connection to a baby?
“They wouldn’t want me to watch their kids,” Nikki said. “I think I’m about to give this baby a bad bottle.”
“A bad bottle?”
“Yeah, the bottle’s hot but the contents are cold and taste kind of soapy.”
Her mom chuckled. “Sounds like someone thawed some frozen breast milk.”
“But the mom…”
“What about the mom?” Penny asked.
“She’s gone.” She’d died in childbirth. She wouldn’t have been able to pump breast milk for her son. Unless she wasn’t dead…
But why would the lawyer have lied?
His patience expiring, the baby began to cry.
“I have to go,” she told Penny. As she fed the infant the bottle, she asked, “Where is your mama?”
What had Myron Webber done to her? If she wasn’t dead, where the hell was she?
*
As Cooper studied the surveillance monitors, his hands curled into fists. He didn’t know who he wanted to slug harder—Lars Ecklund or Myron Webber. A hand settled on his shoulder, startling him so much that he turned with that clenched fist and swung.
Nicholas Rus—now Payne—ducked and cursed. “What the hell is it with this family?” he asked. “Usually Nikki pulls a gun on me and now you’re swinging.”
“Sorry,” Cooper said as he expelled a shaky breath. “I thought you were someone else.”
Nick glanced at the computer monitor and pointed toward the image of Nikki pushing Lars away from her. “Him?” And his own hands curled into fists. “Who the hell is he?”
“A friend.” Or so Cooper had thought. Now he wasn’t so sure. He knew Lars was a flirt. Hell, everyone knew Lars was a flirt. But he hadn’t thought the man would go after Cooper’s sister.
“Is he one of the guys you just hired?”
Cooper nodded. “Yeah. He just got back from my old unit’s last deployment. They all did. But Lars seems different…”
“PTSD?” Nick’s brother-in-law had come back with it. Gage was doing better now, but he had looked like a ghost of his former self when he’d first returned. Of course he’d been missing in action for six months enduring only the devil knew what tortures.
Cooper shook his head. “I don’t think so. The other guys are fine.”
“Everybody reacts differently.” Nick had been a Marine, too. He understood.
“But he’s completely different now,” Cooper said. He wasn’t the Lars he’d known in boot camp and previous missions. “Like this…” He gestured at the surveillance screen. “He would never go after my sister before.”
Nick flinched. While Gage had been missing in action, Nick had gotten his sister pregnant. So again he understood, probably better than Cooper did. “Close calls can make you want to seize every opportunity.”
“He’ll have a close call if he tries to seize my sister again,” Cooper threatened as the anger coursed through him again.
“Our sister,” Nick said. “And if Nikki had truly been upset about that kiss, she would have dropped him.”
Cooper turned fully to face his half brother. They were nearly the same age and because of the military background, he had shared an automatic kinship with the man. He respected him. And Nick respected Nikki, so much that he’d asked her to be his best man.
“You really think she can be a bodyguard?”
Nick groaned. “You don’t? She came to work for you because she thought you would give her a chance.” He shook his head. “Maybe she’s right. Maybe I need my own franchise.”
“You haven’t even quit the Bureau yet,” Cooper reminded him. “And I can’t have you stealing my most trusted employee.” Because he wasn’t sure he could trust Lars anymore. And if he couldn’t trust Lars, he wasn’t sure about the others, either.
“Most valuable employee,” Nick said. “She’s smart and strong. She saved my life and Annalise’s. She knows what she’s doing.”
Cooper could have wound that tape back, could have showed Nick how their sister had kissed Lars before she’d pushed him away. He wasn’t convinced she knew what she was doing.
There was only one thing he was convinced of…and the shiver raced through him again.
“You are really worried,” Nick said.
He sighed. “Yeah, I think I’ve got one of those crazy feelings you and Mom get.”
Nick shivered now. “Oh, God…what is it?”
“I can’t put my finger on it,” he said. “I don’t have a vision or—”
“I don’t get visions,” Nick said. “I just know…”
Cooper’s stomach lurched with the sickening confirmation. “Oh, no…”
“What do you just know, Coop?”
“That something bad is going to happen.”
Nick chuckled. “We’re Paynes—seems like something bad always happens around us.” He leaned closer to that surveillance screen.
“I’m not talking about the kiss,” Cooper said. “I don’t know if that’s bad or not.”
“Turned out well for me and Annalise,” Nick said with a grin. Happiness radiated off the guy. “Especially for me.” He wasn’t the same serious guy who’d showed up in River City to clean up the corruption in the police department.
“You’re a lucky…” Cooper bit his tongue. He must have been tired to make such an insensitive slip.
But Nick laughed. “Bastard. Yeah, I am.” He was the product of an affair but it clearly didn’t bother him like it used to—probably thanks to Cooper’s mom. She’d made it clear that her husband’s cheating on her had nothing to do with Nick.
Nick was still focused on the surveillance monitor.
“What are you looking at?” Cooper asked. Had he missed something?
“I’m looking at the guy,” Nick said. “He’s huge.”
“Yeah.” Lars would make a damn good bodyguard, if Cooper could trust him.
“He’s really fair-haired and his eyes…”
“They’re a very pale blue,” Cooper confirmed.
“That’s the description I got from the coroner.”
Cooper tensed. “Is he dead?” If Nikki had killed him, she’d overreacted a bit to that kiss.
“It’s not the description of a corpse,” Nick said. “It’s the one he gave me of the guy asking about a female Jane Doe. The guy had come around the morgue, checking to see if a woman—fitting that same description of pale hair and eyes—had turned up dead.”
Lars had a sister. He and Cooper had had that in common—worrying about their younger sisters while they’d been deployed. That was why he was so certain that the Lars Ecklund he had known wouldn’t have gone after Nikki. But maybe he was less sympathetic because his sister was gone. But if she was, why hadn’t he mentioned it to Cooper?
“He hasn’t said anything about it to me.” And he wondered what else Lars was keeping from him.
Nick must have wondered the same because he squeezed Cooper’s shoulder and advised him, “Always listen to that gut feeling.”
“I know something bad is going to happen,” Cooper said. “But how do I stop it?”
*
Lars didn’t want to leave the estate. But his shift was over. And there was no way he would be able to pull off the abduction tonight, not when the lawyer’s limo had dropped Webber off at the house just moments ago.
He couldn’t risk it since the other guards were patrolling the estate along with Manny and Cole.
They didn’t know what was going on, but he probably needed to bring them in if he was going to be able to get his nephew back. Not if. When. He had to rescue the infant. Holding him for that little while, Lars had been so scared and humbled. This child was the only part of Emilia left in this world. Lars needed to rescue him.
But he forced himself to walk through the gate that opened for him and head down the street to where he’d parked his truck. In addition to the guards, there were the cameras. He had to
make sure they’d seen him leaving.
Damn!
There was a camera in the nursery, too. If anyone saw that footage of him kissing Nikki…
Anyone like his boss—he might get tossed off the assignment. He had to be careful. But maybe he could talk Nikki into deleting the footage. She wouldn’t want her brother to see it, either. She wouldn’t want Cooper to question her professionalism.
Lars needed to bring it to her attention. So he reached for his phone. He didn’t have her number, though. He’d kissed her a few times, but they’d never exchanged phone numbers. Then he’d had no business kissing her. He wasn’t free to date anyone, let alone his friend’s sister. He had too much going on, too much to work through with his loss and the crime he was planning to commit.
If he was caught…
If he was arrested…
What would happen to the baby then? Where would he wind up? In foster care? Adopted?
Lars had to be careful. He also needed Nikki to delete that footage. He stopped beside his truck, torn between leaving and returning. But Nikki should be leaving soon, too. He didn’t like the idea of her being inside the house with the sleazy lawyer. He’d noticed the way the guy had looked at her—probably like he did—like he wanted to take off her clothes and take her…
Tension hummed throughout his body again, demanding release—in hers. If he turned back and talked to her again, there would be more to delete from that surveillance footage than just a kiss.
No. He needed to leave. But before he could pull his keys from his pocket, everything went black. Something covered his head and wrapped tightly around his arms. He struggled to move, to reach for his holster. But his arms were bound against his sides.
He couldn’t see. He couldn’t fight. Even his legs were trapped in whatever had been wrapped so tightly around him.
Then he was moving as someone lifted and carried him off. He had been planning an abduction. But he had never imagined he would wind up being the victim of an abduction himself.
Chapter 9
Someone grabbed Nikki, jerking her awake. She reached for her weapon, but it was too late. She’d fallen asleep on the job.