by Mallory Kane
Matt sighed. “That would work—if one of us could pass for a medium-height, slender female. But there’s another consideration. The baby. If everything goes well, which one of us is prepared to bring back a seven-month-old who needs his mother?”
He opened the door. “Have you ever been between a mother and her child? I’m not telling Aimee she has to stay behind.”
NOW CUNNINGHAM was involved.
He knew them all so well. Of course Cunningham would drop everything to help Parker. They were “brothers,” after all.
It tended to get annoying, listening to the stories of their childhood friendship, and their oath to save innocents just as that broken-down Vietnam veteran had saved theirs.
He hadn’t had time to sabotage Parker’s equipment or vehicle. He’d had to trust Kinnard to handle that part of the plan.
His job was to make sure that when Parker needed help, it wasn’t available. There were two ways he could handle that, but only one was a sure thing.
All he needed were some tools and a little private time.
FRIDAY 1430 HOURS
AIMEE BURIED HER NOSE more deeply into the high collar of her down parka. She’d rolled her balaclava up like a watch cap, ready to pull down over her face if she needed it. The vehicle was heated, but she was still cold.
The chill didn’t come from the dropping temperatures outside, though. It came from her heart. As often as she told herself that William was safe, that the kidnapper couldn’t afford to hurt him if he wanted his money, her heart remained unconvinced.
Matt’s grim expression didn’t help. He looked worried as he maneuvered the Hummer’s steel snow tracks over the rough terrain. He glanced at her. “You okay?”
“Okay?” she croaked, then pressed her lips together. Control, she reminded herself. It’s all about control. She had to hold herself together, for her baby’s sake.
“If you’re cold, there’s a blanket under your seat.”
She gave a harsh little laugh. “You think I’m worried about being cold?”
“Aimee, I know you’re afraid something’s going to happen to William. But I don’t want you to neglect your own health. You’re highly stressed and exhausted. You could become hypothermic without even realizing it. I need to make sure you’re warm and comfortable.”
“Well, don’t. I don’t need to be comfortable—I don’t want to be. I just want to get up there, get my baby back and get home.”
“That’s what I want, too,” Matt said.
She closed her burning eyes. Control. Control. She repeated it like a mantra.
“Dammit!”
She jumped and her eyes flew open.
“Sorry.” His fingers tightened around the steering wheel. “I can’t believe I let the kidnapper run the show. I should have jumped in and forced him to do it my way. It’s dangerous for you up here.”
“Where should I be? Back at home, all safe and warm? Waiting? No, thank you.”
“Yes. Back at home, all safe and warm. I don’t like putting you in danger. Plus, with you here, I can’t do everything I’d be able to do if I were alone.”
“Sorry I’m cramping your style.”
“That’s not—” he stopped and his jaw muscle worked. He kept his attention on the barely discernable path before them as the incline grew steeper, and the sky turned increasingly dark and gray.
Where they’d started out, near Sundance, spring was in the air, with new shoots of grass and fresh coverings of moss. As they’d climbed higher, the greenery turned brown, and patches of old snow dotted the ground.
Aimee hunched her shoulders in an effort not to shiver. Matt’s hands were white-knuckled on the steering wheel. His face was expressionless, but his jaw was clamped tight. He looked the way he had the last time she’d seen him. The day he’d brought her husband’s body home.
That memory spawned others. Like the argument she and Bill had a few days before that fateful day.
“It’s just a weekend, Aimee. A guy trip. You’re starting to sound a lot like my mother.”
Aimee had yelled back at him. “Well, for once I agree with Margo. You have responsibilities here. Have you forgotten that I’m pregnant? That you’re fighting cancer? Why would you want to waste even a weekend? You need to use your energy to get well. I need you to stay with me.”
At that point Bill had gathered her into his arms and kissed her. “I’ll be with Matt. He’s safe as houses. Safer. He never takes unnecessary chances.”
Then he’d looked down at her and a tender solemnity had come over his face. “Don’t ever forget, Aimee. I trust Matt as much as I trust myself. More, maybe. No matter what happens, you can count on him. Ask him anything. He’ll do it.”
Those last words had been prophetic. Bill had asked Matt for something. Matt had obliged. And Bill had died.
The doctors had said it could have been months before the lymphoma took Bill. Long enough for him to know his child. But he’d stolen those last months from her and his son. And Matt had helped.
Then, when Aimee could have used a friend, Matt had disappeared for a year.
Bill had been wrong. She couldn’t count on Matt.
“Aimee, tell me how it happened.”
She started. “What? How it—?”
“The kidnapping.”
“Didn’t Special Agent Schiff tell you?”
He nodded. “But I’d like to hear what you remember.”
Aimee closed her eyes and folded her arms. “I’ve been over it in my head a hundred times. I should have heard him. I should have woken up.” She shook her head. “How could I have slept while someone came into my house and stole my baby?”
“William wasn’t in your room, was he?”
“No. My doctor said that wasn’t a good idea, for either of us. I shouldn’t have listened to her. I should have kept him right beside me.”
“Aimee.” He put a hand on her knee. “Stop beating yourself up. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
His hand was warm. She could feel it even through her wool slacks and silk long underwear. She looked down.
He jerked away and gripped the steering wheel. “When did you realize he was gone?”
She was still looking at his hand. It was big and solid, with long, blunt-tipped fingers. “The sun was in my eyes, and I knew I’d overslept. William always wakes me up around five-thirty or so. He’s such a sweet baby.” She smiled. “He wakes up happy. I’ll hear him through the monitor, cooing and laughing—” Her voice broke and her throat closed up.
He shot her a glance. “The sun woke you?” he asked gently.
“It was almost six-thirty. When I realized I hadn’t heard him, I panicked. So many things can happen—”
“What did you do?”
“As soon as I realized I’d slept late, I grabbed the monitor. The camera points right at the head of the baby bed. But I couldn’t see him. His bed looked empty.” She took a shaky breath. “I ran across the hall. His bedroom door was open and I knew I’d left it closed. He wasn’t there. He wasn’t anywhere.”
She felt the panic rising in her chest, heard it in her voice. Just like then. Had it only been yesterday morning?
“So I called 9–1-1.”
“Schiff said there was no sign of forced entry. You’re sure it was a stranger?”
Aimee frowned at Matt. “What do you mean?”
He spread his hands in a shrug without taking them off the wheel. “I just mean, is there anything specific you’re thinking of when you say it was a stranger?”
She shook her head. “I just can’t—it can’t be anyone I know.”
“Are you usually a sound sleeper?”
“No. Actually, I’ve been having trouble.” Aimee thought about the past seven months since William Matthew’s birth. All the nights she’d lain awake, worrying that something would happen to him if she went to sleep.
Dear heavens, something had.
“What about the evening before?” Matt drove steadily, watching the road and glanc
ing occasionally into the rearview mirror. “Did you drink anything? Take anything to help you sleep?”
“No,” she answered indignantly. “I would never take a chance like that with William. I gave him his bath and played with him a while, and then made myself some herbal tea and went to sleep.”
Matt nodded and drove in silence for a few minutes.
Thoughts and images chased each other helter-skelter through her brain. What had she done? What had been different about that night?
“I didn’t do anything differently,” she said finally. “My life revolves around his, and his routine is pretty well set. I locked up the house and turned out the lights around nine, just the way I always do. I bathed him at the same time as I do every night. We played the same games we always play, then I put him to bed and went downstairs to the kitchen.”
“So anyone who’d been watching the house could know almost to the minute what time you go to bed?”
Aimee nodded miserably. “Yes. My life is that ordinary. I make the same tea, use the same cup. Probably even the same spoon. I can’t think of anything unusual—” She stopped. There had been one thing different.
“What is it?”
“It’s—it’s nothing. It has to be nothing.” She was really twisted—or really desperate—to even be thinking what she was thinking.
“Tell me.”
“This is awful. I can’t believe I’m even saying it.” She took a deep breath, preparing herself for Matt’s ridicule. “The tea? It’s a new blend. Margo bought it for me at the health food store. They told her it was good for insomnia.”
Matt glanced at her, frowning.
“But Matt, I’ve been drinking it every night for almost a week now.”
“Is it helping you sleep?”
“Yes,” she said. She hadn’t really thought about it, but she had slept better this past week than she had in a long time. “It is. You don’t think—?” Her breath hitched. “No. That’s ridiculous. Margo wouldn’t—Not her own—her only grandchild—” She stopped, horrified at her thoughts. During the first moments after she’d realized William was missing, she’d briefly considered that Margo might have planned it, but she’d dismissed it as impossible. She was his grandmother.
Matt glanced at her.
“No. She couldn’t do that—could she?”
“You tell me.”
“But it’s outrageous. Not even Margo—I mean, yes, she’s been complaining about how hard it is for her to get anything done through the Vick Corporation board since Bill died.”
“What’s that got to do with anything?”
“Bill left everything to William, just like his dad left everything to him. Remember when Boss Vick died?”
“Sure, that summer after we graduated from high school.”
“Right. Bill was all set to go to MIT. He wanted to get his degree in aerospace engineering, then go into the Air Force, like you and Deke and Rook.”
“Yeah. After his dad died, he changed his mind, and decided to go to the University of Wyoming.”
“Right. To stay close to home. Margo convinced him that he had to run the business. Because when he turned twenty-one, the entire Vick Hotel fortune—and responsibility—fell into his lap.”
“Bill controlled everything—”
Aimee nodded. “And Margo controlled Bill,” she said bitterly.
“And now?”
“Now that Bill’s dead, William stands to inherit all of it.”
Matt looked at her questioningly. “What about until he’s twenty-one? Who did Bill name as William’s trustee?”
“Me,” Aimee breathed.
“So you’re the one who votes the controlling interest. That must rankle Mrs. Vick.”
“I go to the board meetings, but I’ve never opposed a single decision. Why would I?”
“But you could.”
Aimee shrugged. “I suppose. You think she did it, don’t you?”
Matt glanced in the rearview mirror. “Think about it. What does she want? What does kidnapping her own grandson right from under his mother’s nose accomplish?”
“Frightening me?” Aimee cast about for any possible explanation. “Making it look like I can’t—”
“Like you can’t take care of your own child. What would she gain if she had custody of William? She’d retain controlling interest in the corporation. But it’s damn hard to get custody away from the mother. She’d have to prove that you’re unfit. That you couldn’t protect your own child in your own home.”
She moaned under her breath. Hearing those words in Matt’s carefully neutral voice made them sound true.
“Sorry,” he muttered. “But it would explain a lot.”
Aimee’s face felt numb. Her mind felt numb. Intellectually, she understood Matt’s reasoning. If he were right, her mother-in-law was setting her up to take William away from her.
His words echoed in her brain, taunting her with their truth.
You couldn’t protect your own child in your own home.
Chapter Three
Aimee was still reeling, still trying to process the idea that Margo could have kidnapped her baby, when she realized that Matt’s demeanor had changed.
Nothing outwardly was different. His hands still held the steering wheel in a tight grip at ten and two. His expression was carefully neutral, if a bit tight.
But tension suddenly crackled in the air, and it definitely came from him.
He’d gone on alert.
“Matt, what’s wrong?” she asked.
“Wrong?” He glanced in the rearview mirror.
“Don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about. Something’s wrong. I can tell. Did you see something?”
He didn’t reply.
His sudden transformation fascinated and frightened her. Yesterday, he’d been the consummate soldier on a mission. This morning he’d acted more like a protector. She was his charge, his responsibility.
But now in the blink of an eye, he’d morphed from protector back to predator. He was a hunter, and he’d scented his prey.
She opened her mouth to ask him again when, without warning, he veered off the stark mountain road and stopped.
“What are you doing?” Fear raced through her.
“I’ll be right back,” he said. “If you hear or see anything while I’m gone, lie flat across the seat. The metal should protect you.”
“Protect me? Matt—?”
“Do you understand?” He glared at her, his tone and the grim set of his face brooking no argument.
“Yes,” she retorted.
He walked over to the edge of the graded area and stopped at the line of trees. For a couple of seconds, he surveyed the mountain road in both directions, then reached for his fly.
Aimee gaped. Was he—? He was! On the way to exchange a million dollars for her baby, he’d stopped to take a leak! She didn’t know whether to scream or laugh. Was he so confident? Or so arrogant?
She reached for the door handle, prepared to jump out and yell at him for wasting time while her child was in the hands of kidnappers. At that instant he turned his head imperceptibly to his right, back the way they’d come. And she got it—his sudden transformation. His razor-sharp alertness. Her impression that she was watching a predator.
He’d detected a threat.
Her heart jumped into her throat and she twisted in her seat, looking behind them. But she didn’t see anything. Of course, she wouldn’t. Matt was ex-Air Force Special Forces. His skills and senses were sharper than an ordinary person’s.
She watched as he took a step closer to the trees. The sight was awesome and frightening. The curve of his back and the set of his shoulders made her think of a leopard about to spring. Standing still, he might look like a regular guy, but when he moved—oh my.
Absently, it occurred to her that, although she’d known Matt as long as she’d known her husband, Bill, she had almost no knowledge of his personal life or his background. He might as wel
l be a stranger.
She hunched her shoulders, feeling fragile and human and exposed.
All at once the very air around her went still. Only the occasional snap of a twig or the rustle of bare branches in the wind broke the silence.
The nape of her neck prickled. Her pulse pounded in her ears. She didn’t move, not even turning her head to glance at the spot where Matt had disappeared into the trees.
She wasn’t sure how long she’d sat there, not daring to move, like a rabbit sensing a threat, when she heard it.
The crunch of twigs and rocks.
Someone was coming toward the Hummer from the opposite direction.
Without hesitation, she threw herself down across the seats, avoiding the stick shift.
It was Matt—it had to be. Didn’t it?
She squeezed her eyes shut as the footsteps came closer. Her fingers twitched. If only she had something she could use as a weapon.
Then the driver’s-side door opened.
Panic exploded in her chest and she curled her fingers into claws. Fingernails were better than nothing.
“Aimee.” Matt touched her shoulder. “Good job.”
Relief washed over her. Her scalp tingled. She sat up and tried to hide her trembling nerves. “You sneaked up on me,” she accused.
He slid into the driver’s seat. “Sorry I scared you. I wanted to circle around, make sure we weren’t being watched.”
“I knew you saw someone. Why couldn’t you have just told me? I’d have been a lot less scared.” She blew out a breath between pursed lips. “Who was it? The kidnapper?”
He shook his head and started the engine. “Can’t be sure,” he said shortly.
He was lying. But she’d already figured out that he would tell her just what she needed to know, and then only when she needed to know it—in his opinion.
Once she had William in her arms and they were safe back at home, she’d let him know what she thought about his gestapo tactics. For now, as much as she hated to admit it, his air of command, his complete confidence, and even his predatory edge, made her feel safe.
And feeling safe was dangerous.
Safety was what she longed for. But she’d learned as a child that trusting someone else to keep her safe was a fantasy. As the only child of older parents, she’d grown up with the weight of their health and safety on her shoulders.