He eased the car to the curb, stopped and turned to face her. “What do you suggest?”
“We pick up the rest of the money and go directly to the packing house. If the kidnapper’s holding Chip there, I can make the trade sooner.”
“Bad idea.” The understanding in his tone and eyes indicated he recognized her pain. “We don’t want to upset his plan. The kidnapper is probably jumpier than water on a hot griddle. We don’t want to spook him.”
“But—”
“We’ll go back to Dolphin Bay and withdraw the money from my bank. Then I’ll scout the packing house area alone. I don’t want us stumbling around tonight in unfamiliar territory in the dark.”
“I’m going with you.”
“If the kidnapper is around and recognizes you, he could panic and run.” Or worse, his expression told her. “You can wait at my house.”
“Dylan—” Fear for her child clogged her throat. She swallowed hard. “Thank you.”
An unreadable expression flicked across his stolid features, and he released her hand. “I’m a cop. I’m just doing my job.”
He drove away from the curb, headed north, and she shivered from the coldness she’d seen in his face. Tonight, God willing, Chip would be back in her arms.
And she would never intrude on Dylan Wade’s life again.
HEATHER TAYLOR HAD him tied in knots.
Dylan stuffed the department-issue navy-blue T-shirt into his jeans and yanked the zipper closed.
One minute he wanted to drag her into his arms and kiss her until he couldn’t breathe. The next, he remembered her betrayal and wished he’d never laid eyes on her again. If it hadn’t been for the missing boy, he’d have sent her packing this morning the minute she’d arrived.
If it hadn’t been for the boy, she wouldn’t have been here.
He tucked up the leg of his jeans, slid a small revolver into its ankle holster and jerked his pant leg down to cover it.
Blasted woman. It had taken two years, but he’d nearly purged her from his system. Until she showed up today and stirred up all his old feelings, both his love for her and his resentment at the way she’d left him. She’d tied him in knots, all right, then torn him apart, until he couldn’t tell love from hate or anger from desire.
He holstered his gun at the back of his waist and shoved an extra clip of ammo into one pocket. The other pocket held his cell phone.
“Concentrate on what you’re doing,” he muttered aloud, “or you’ll cause a royal screwup and jeopardize that little boy.”
He hefted his nineteen-inch Maglite, useful for both illumination and as a weapon, checked its batteries and looked at the clock.
It was time.
In his living room, Heather lay asleep on the sofa. She had refused to eat, and when he’d returned from casing the packing house where they were to make the exchange of cash for Chip, he’d found her pacing like a caged animal. He’d convinced her to take a sedative, prescribed for him when his partner had been wounded, and she had finally dropped off to sleep.
The rest of the day, drawn like the proverbial moth to a flame, he’d spent too much time sitting across from her, studying the sleeping face he remembered so well and trying to puzzle out what had happened between them that made it all go bad.
He had grabbed an hour’s nap. He should have slept longer, but every time he closed his eyes, he longed for the sight of her again.
He leaned over, grasped her shoulder and shook her gently. “Heather, it’s time.”
Long, thick lashes fluttered against sleep-pink cheeks, and she opened her eyes and smiled in the slow, dreamy way he remembered from years past when she had lifted her face to his kiss. Desire flooded him until her expression crumpled, as if she’d suddenly remembered where she was and why.
Cold determination replaced his longing. He resumed their running argument. “It’s not too late to call the police. They could surround the packing house and grab the kidnapper as soon as you’ve made the switch.”
If the boy was there. He didn’t have the heart to state the possibility that the kidnapper didn’t intend to return her child. Her emotions were ragged enough already.
“If he were my son,” he said, “I’d want the bastard caught.”
Her eyes widened with a reaction he couldn’t name. “No police.”
He grimaced and acknowledged her decision with a nod. Moving a mountain with a spoon would be easier than changing her mind.
She pushed her fingers through her hair and picked up her purse and the small satchel that held ten thousand dollars in consecutively numbered bills. If he didn’t stop the kidnapper tonight, the ransom would provide a trail of numbered twenties to lead police to him.
“The plan,” he said with more grimness than he’d intended. “Let’s hear it.”
“Can’t we just go? We’ve been over it a dozen times.”
“You’re dealing with a criminal, not the PTA. You can’t afford a mistake.”
She nodded with uncharacteristic meekness, and when her chin trembled before she clenched her jaw, he could have kicked himself for his bluntness.
“I’m to drive north on Highway 19,” she said, “to the entrance to the grove. You’ll follow in your Jeep. I’m not to look back or give any indication that I know someone’s behind me.”
“So far, so good.”
She took a deep breath. “When I come in sight of the packing house, I’m to park my car on the edge of the grove, in the clearing at the front of the building. You’ll park closer to the highway and follow on foot.”
“And what’s most important?”
“I’m not to give anyone the money until they hand me Chip. Once I have him, I’m to run to my car and get out fast.”
Her veneer of bravery barely covered her terror, and he longed to crush her to him, to vow that neither she nor Chip would be harmed. But honesty kept him silent, and old resentments kept him at arm’s length.
She pivoted and marched out the door.
Twenty minutes later, under cover of darkness, Dylan crept through the citrus grove toward the packing house. A light on the loading dock of the distant building guided him to his destination. His footsteps in the soft sand of the cultivated rows between the trees made no sound. When he reached the edge of the clearing, he hid behind a thick growth of Brazilian pepper and drew his gun.
The naked bulb on the loading dock cast a puddle of weak light on the wooden floor below, where a small child, tied around the waist to an upright support, played silently with a push toy.
Bait, he thought bitterly, just like a goat hobbled to attract a bear.
Instinct and experience warned him of a plan gone sour.
At the edge of the clearing, several yards to his right, Heather, satchel in hand, stepped out of her car and began a slow walk toward the building. The boy looked up from his play and saw her.
“Mommy, Mommy.” He dropped his toy, held out his arms to her and began to cry.
Dylan riveted his attention to the far left of the boy, at the gaping maw where the packing house’s large doors slid back, exposing an inky interior. One person or a dozen could be hiding there.
“It’s okay, Chip. Mommy’s come to take you home.” Heather, halfway to the dock, lifted the satchel. “I have what the man wants.”
Her voice rang above the child’s whimpers, strong and unwavering, as if she faced kidnappers in the dark every day. She was only a few feet from Chip now.
Inside the open doors in the darkness of the ware-house, a telltale glitter of light reflected off metal.
“Hit the dirt!” Dylan shouted. “He’s got a gun.”
His warning reverberated through the stillness, a fiery blossom erupted inside the packing house, and the crack of gunfire split the night.
Aiming at the spot where the shots originated, Dylan fired and raced toward the building.
Chapter Three
At Dylan’s warning, Heather tossed the satchel, but she refused to follow his ord
er to hit the ground. Instead, she darted past the open door, flung herself onto the loading dock and covered Chip with her body.
Bullets whined through the air and thudded into the wooden planks of the building. A lightbulb shattered, raining glass. Chip jerked at each report, and his screams drowned all other sounds.
“It’s all right, baby. Mommy’s here,” she murmured, with her lips pressed against his tiny ear.
Hunched over him, her fingers clumsy with fear, she fumbled in frantic haste at the knot that tied him to the post. After an eternity, the restraint fell free and she scooped him up, lunged from the dock and scampered beneath it. With her pulse pounding in her ears and Chip whimpering in her arms, she realized the gunfire had finally ceased.
Fear gripped her throat like a vise, and she struggled to breathe. Was Dylan all right? Or had Chip’s abductor won the exchange? Was he now coming for her and her son?
Running footsteps pounded the hard-packed dirt of the clearing, and she scooted deeper beneath the dock, fearful the armed kidnapper was searching for them. In the distance, an engine rumbled to life with a roar and a vehicle pulled away. From the opposite direction came the blare of an approaching siren. Blue lights flashed between the orange trees.
She hugged Chip tighter and smoothed his fine, silky hair, whispering reassurances she wished she believed.
A police cruiser sped into the clearing, fishtailed in the sand and stopped.
“That way,” she heard Dylan yell, and the cruiser took off again, siren screaming.
Relief flooded her at the sound of Dylan’s voice, too strong, too vibrant for a wounded man. He was unharmed, thank God, and he would protect them.
The cruiser’s headlights had ruined her night vision, but she heard Dylan’s surefooted approach. “Stay put,” he said, “until I check inside.”
She heard him swing onto the dock above them and walk into the building. Gripping Chip closer, trying not to transmit her fear, she held her breath and prayed the kidnapper had not abandoned an accomplice to ambush Dylan in the dark. She had cut him out of her life two years ago, as completely as if he’d died. She’d do it again tonight, but she didn’t want him dead. Life without him had held a special kind of misery, but at least she’d known he was alive. If Dylan was hurt or killed, she couldn’t endure the pain. Or the guilt.
She hadn’t heard his return and blinked in the unexpected glare of his flashlight.
“You can come out now,” he said. “The building’s clear.”
She tried to hand Chip to Dylan so she could crawl out more easily, but the boy gripped her neck and wouldn’t let go. With him clinging to her, she scrambled into the clearing and felt Dylan’s hands beneath her elbows, lifting her to her feet. When he released her, her knees almost buckled from residual fear.
The flashlight’s glare bathed her again. “Are either of you hurt?” Dylan asked.
Heather ran her hands over Chip, checking for injuries, but aside from the emotional trauma the child had suffered, she found no scrapes or injuries.
“We’re both—” she drew a long, shuddering breath of relief “—okay.”
Dylan draped his arm over her shoulder and guided her toward her car, lighting the way with his flashlight.
“Bad man,” Chip whimpered against her neck.
“The bad man’s gone now, and Mommy’s taking you home,” she assured her son, who still clung to her.
“Not yet.” Dylan opened the back door and cleared toys from the seat “You’ll have to answer a few questions first The crime scene unit and detectives are on their way.”
She sank wearily onto the seat and cradled Chip against her until his whimpering stopped and his grip eased. She couldn’t face the question uppermost in her mind—had the kidnapper meant to kill them?—so she asked another. “How did the cruiser get here so fast?”
Dylan leaned toward her. The car’s interior light illuminated the taut set of his jaw and the worried crease of his brow. “I asked Tom Mackey, who patrols this sector, to stay close. When the shooting started, I called the station on my cell phone and the dispatcher alerted Tom.”
“Will he catch him?”
“The car was a late-model white two-door. It was too dark to catch the make or license number. Picking it out of Friday night traffic on the highway will be tough.”
“Chip’s safe. That’s all that matters.”
“Not to me.”
She shuddered at the venom in his voice and wondered if it was directed at the kidnapper or at her. When she burst into his house this morning, his barely leashed anger had been like a third presence in the room. Only when he learned that Chip had been taken did his cool professionalism take over, shoving that fury aside. Now that Chip was safe in her arms, Dylan could give his anger full rein once more.
But she didn’t have to hang around and take the brunt of his hostility. As soon as she’d answered the detective’s questions, she and Chip were going home. She looked into Dylan’s eyes, deep brown pools of molten anger tinged with pain, and a tremor shook her.
Leaving him again was going to be even harder than the first time.
DYLAN STRODE ACROSS the tamped earth in front of the packing house, illuminated now by the white-hot lights of the crime scene unit. Behind him, Detective Sergeant Sid Bullock sat with Heather in the back seat of her car. He’d been there almost an hour, no doubt asking all the routine questions Dylan had already put to her earlier in the day—and experiencing the same frustration at her answers.
In the packing house, technicians from the crime scene unit scoured for fibers, empty shells, anything that might lead them to the perp’s identity. On the loading dock near the open doors lay the satchel with its payload in twenties, exactly where Heather had flung it when she leaped onto the platform to shield her son.
His gut wrenched at the memory of her throwing herself across the child, both of them too close to the crossfire. He had lost her once. And he had no illusions. Tonight she would walk out of his life as completely as she had two years ago, now that he’d given her what she’d come for. But if she or the boy had been hit…
Sid Bullock, short and squat with a face like a bulldog, stood at Dylan’s elbow, perspiring in spite of the coolness of the breeze. He jerked his thumb toward the satchel in the doorway. “You thinking what I’m thinking?”
Dylan narrowed his eyes, considered the unclaimed cash and nodded. “Did the kidnapper abandon the ransom because he panicked or because money wasn’t his motive?”
“I reckon he meant to kill the woman and kid after the payoff, to leave no witnesses.”
“Murder for a measly ten thousand bucks.”
“Lots of people been whacked for less,” Sid agreed. From the level tone of his voice, he could have been talking about the weather. “Ms. Taylor says you’ve known her awhile.”
“About five years.”
“She can’t think of anyone who might have a grudge against her. Can you?”
Dylan quickly cleared the ironic scowl from his face. He had his own resentment, a mile wide and two deep, but his personal grudge was irrelevant to this investigation. “I haven’t seen her in a couple of years. From the time before that, no one comes to mind.”
Sid’s sharp gaze skewered him. “She’s pretty closemouthed about the kid’s father. Did you know him?”
“No.” Anger boiled in Dylan like an unwatched stew. “She says he’s dead.”
“She gave me his name. The kidnapper might be connected to him, so I’ll check him out.”
Dylan clamped his jaw to keep from asking who the father was. The investigation was Sid’s, not his, and he had no need to know, except his own blazing curiosity. He glanced back to the car where Heather still sat with Chip. “Is she free to go?”
“Yeah. I may have more questions later, but not tonight.”
Dylan trudged over to the Taurus. Heather was strapping a now sleeping Chip, his angelic face blotched from crying, into the child carrier.
An
unexpected tenderness filled him as he observed the child, who had Heather’s best features without her delicacy. This kid was all boy, from his sturdy body to the determined jut of his jaw, evident even as he slept. Dylan resisted a compulsion to reach out and ruffle the boy’s silky hair, and he shoved aside images of a son of his own with dimples flashing, who toddled on chubby legs to greet his daddy. Home and family had no place in this policeman’s future.
Heather straightened, tunneled her fingers through her hair, then dropped her hands to her side. “I owe you a huge debt of gratitude. If you hadn’t been here…” She shuddered in the warm night air.
He quashed old feelings and kept his voice cool. “You don’t owe me anything. I was just doing my job.”
Her eyes widened as if he’d slapped her. What had she expected? To pick up where they’d left off, after she’d treated him like something scraped off her shoe?
Anger and attraction battled inside him. Yeah, she’d dumped him, but the time they’d spent together had been the best three years of his life. He couldn’t just throw her, and the boy, on their own, not with a kidnapper who’d tried to kill them running loose, a dangerous assailant who knew where they lived.
She turned and reached for the handle of the driver’s door, but not before he noticed the tears in her eyes. His conscience pricked him. Just because she’d ripped out his heart and stomped on it didn’t mean he had to act like a jerk.
Before he could stop himself, he cupped her cheek. “I’m glad you have your son back safe and sound.”
For a fleeting second, she leaned into his caress before tossing her head and flashing a smile that tore at his insides with its sweetness. “I knew I could count on you. Goodbye, Dylan.”
He dropped his hand and leaned against the door. Caught up in old feelings, he had been distracted from what he’d come to tell her. “You can’t go home.”
A myriad of emotions scudded across her face. “Why?”
First-Class Father Page 4