Undercover Christmas

by BJ Daniels

  At least Marni hoped that was the case as she started up the stairs, the steps curling up and up in a tight spiral that seemed unending in the semidarkness. Natural light seemed to filter down from somewhere at the top.

  A few steps and Marni heard the secret panel close below her. Her heart thumped wildly. Who’d closed the door? Someone downstairs? Or did it close on its own? What did it matter? That avenue of escape was gone and instantly the stairwell seemed more claustrophobic than before. She felt as if she’d been sealed up in the walls of the old house never to be seen again.

  She brushed away such ridiculous thoughts, hoping they were indeed ridiculous, as she climbed more quickly. That’s when she heard it. At first she thought it was her imagination. Her hand dropped to Sam as she stopped to listen and catch her breath.

  It was faint, but definitely a baby laughing and cooing softly. The sound brought goose bumps to her skin. She shivered, telling herself there was no baby in this house. Someone just wanted her to think there was. But that frightened her all the more. Why would anyone want her to think there was a baby here? What possible purpose could they have?

  Marni heard a door open overhead. And close again softly. She hurried up the steps only to have them end in a wall. A skylight above her let in what little light there was in the passageway.

  Beyond the wall, she could still hear the baby, no longer laughing and cooing, but fussing. She could hear another voice now. A woman’s voice, trying to soothe the infant.

  Marni examined the wall. She could only assume it also had a secret panel she would have to press. She ran her hand along the dark wood, the memory fresh in her mind how she’d been unable to open the lower door the time she’d tried. Her heart rate skyrocketed as her fingers felt frantically along the wood. A scream rose in her throat.

  She felt a narrow vertical notch in the wall and realized with body weakening relief that Lilly hadn’t closed the door all the way. Slipping her fingers in the groove, she pushed and the door began to slide open, reinforcing Marni’s hope that Lilly had wanted her to come up here.

  Marni slid the door aside and stepped into what appeared to be an attic. The air smelled of dust and age, but definitely felt warmer than in the stairwell. Furniture stood like sentinels in front of the doorway. Marni started around a huge antique bureau, remembering Lilly’s pale face peering out from the small window on the third floor. Unless she missed her guess, this was the room.

  “Lilly?” Marni called, her voice little more than a whisper as she stepped around the bureau. Deeper in the attic, the baby started to cry as a woman’s voice tried to hush it

  The rich wood of armoires and chiffoniers, credenzas and tallboys gleamed, the feeling of another, gentler lifetime in the valuable antique pieces. Why didn’t Jabe and Vanessa use these wonderful antiques instead of the massive log furniture that looked so out of place in the old Victorian house?

  Marni had started to take a tentative step deeper into the room when she heard a rustling sound like taffeta and the scrape of a shoe as someone moved across the floor. She froze behind a massive armoire.

  Until that moment, she’d believed it was Lilly who’d maneuvered her up here.

  Now she wasn’t so sure. The step had sounded sure. Not like that of a woman who’d had too much wine to drink. What if it wasn’t Lilly who’d lured her up here? All she’d seen was a glimpse of Lilly’s pale pink dress in the shadowed darkness and just the hint of a staggered gait.

  The baby quit cooing. The room filled with silence, thick and heavy. Cold fear raced across Marni’s skin as quick and frightening as a spider.

  “Elise?”

  Just that one word, whispered hoarsely in the darkness. Marni’s pulse thrummed in her ears. Goose bumps skittered across her flesh. She held her breath, no longer pretending her fear wasn’t warranted.

  “Poor Elise,” came the whisper again.

  Marni recoiled at the hatred in the voice, bumping into the bureau behind her. Instantly she realized her mistake. She’d given away her location. The armoire beside her came toppling over.

  CHASE CLOSED the barn door, pleased he’d accomplished what he’d set out to. His arms ached from the hours he’d spent stacking hay and pulling feed sacks down from the storage loft. His good leg ached from standing on it for so long, his casted leg ached from trying not to stand on it. He felt exhausted after all the weeks of inactivity. But he’d been too busy even to think about Miss McCumber. Most of the time.

  On top of that he’d had the joy of listening to Dayton and Hayes grumbling and complaining as they shoveled out the horse stalls.

  All except for Wind Chaser’s stall. The stallion wouldn’t allow either of the brothers to get near it. Chase had found no small satisfaction that he was the only Calloway the new horse at the ranch would tolerate. Although he did wonder what had upset the horse to such an extent. Probably the storm, he told himself. Or maybe the horse liked it at Calloway Ranch as much as Chase did and realized they had that in common.

  Chase felt good as he came through the back door of the house, assured that his physical exhaustion would keep his mind from wandering to that one particular pregnant woman.

  But the moment he closed the door behind him, he felt her presence. And something even worse. A concern for her that he’d promised himself he wasn’t going to allow. The house felt too quiet. He started to worry that he shouldn’t have left her alone, even with Jabe and others around—maybe especially with them around. He’d been keeping a close eye on Dayton and Hayes, up until about thirty minutes ago when he’d lost track of time and them.

  Chase picked up the hall phone and dialed her room. No answer. He pushed open the kitchen door and stuck his head in. “Have you seen Elise?” he asked Cook.

  She looked up from the open door of the woodstove oven. The smell of a large piece of prime rib wafted toward him as she closed the oven door.

  She shook her head and went back to her cooking as if she had better things to do than keep track of his women.

  Chase swore under his breath as he headed for the service elevator. The stairs were just too dangerous on crutches, although he’d tried them out of stubbornness his first day only because Jabe had insisted he not.

  He wondered where everybody was. Probably in their rooms, avoiding each other. If he knew Vanessa, she’d be working out in the exercise room off the master bedroom. Felicia would be doing her nails or something productive like that. Lilly, well, who knew where Lilly might be. He’d seen her sneaking around the house like a drunken ghost in the days he’d been here. No wonder Hayes spent so much time on the road.

  And the same could be said of Dayton. He and Felicia seemed to lead separate lives as far as Chase could tell. He doubted a baby would change that. It made him glad he had no intentions of ever getting married, let alone having children.

  By the time the elevator groaned to a stop on the third floor, Chase had pretty well convinced himself that Miss McCurnber was none of his concern. It wasn’t as if he really believed she was carrying his baby. But still he stopped at her door and knocked softly. When she didn’t answer, he went to his own room and built a fire, then slumped in the chair in front of it, watching the flames dance along the logs, determined to relax and not think about her. Especially the part where he’d almost taken her on the dining-room table. Whatever had possessed him?

  He tried to steer his thoughts to business, all the work he’d have when he finally got out of here. He’d already made up his mind. He was leaving the moment the roads opened. And as for Jabe—well, he was on his own. If Miss McCurnber wanted to stay here and continue her charade, that was her problem.

  Chase swore again. Wishing she fit his image of a gold digger. If she’d been more like Felicia it would have made things a whole lot easier. But instead, she was so damned wholesome-looking and so…chaste. If he didn’t know better, he’d think her a virgin.

  Nor could he forget the sight of her kneeling beside Lilly’s chair in the garden room,
holding the crying, obviously sloshed woman and trying to comfort her. It was that compassion, along with everything else, that threw him. And the feeling that she wasn’t the kind of woman who fell in love with just any man, had a four-day tryst and didn’t take the proper precautions. She seemed so…nice.

  He had to find her. Not to make sure she was all right. No, he had to find her just so he’d know what she was up to.

  He knocked at their adjoining door. When she didn’t answer, he tried the knob. Locked. He knocked again and listened for even the slightest sound. When none came, he used the key he was sure his father had left for him in the lock and opened the door without even a twinge of guilt.

  He’d expected to find her napping or sitting in the chair before the fire, ignoring his knock. He found neither.

  Damn. Where had she gone? What was she up to? Trouble. Because trouble dogged women like her who got too involved in other people’s lives. As he went to the window, he assured himself she deserved every moment of whatever disaster befell her. He’d half expected her car to be gone.

  Of course, it wasn’t. She couldn’t get out even with four-wheel drive. The snow was too deep. But, to his surprise, he saw that the storm had stopped. Someone was out plowing the ranch yard. It wouldn’t be long until the county snowplow would be coming up the road. And Miss Mc-Cumber would be going down the road.

  She wouldn’t be happy about that, he told himself. She had probably planned to stay here until she got what she wanted. And she seemed to want Chase Calloway. The fool woman.

  Turning from the window, Chase decided he’d check downstairs for her again. The best thing he could do for both of them was to get her out of this house. He’d started for the door when he heard what sounded like thunder rumble over his head. He looked up to see dust sifting down from the rafters and realized that a large object had just hit the floor over his head. He stared at the ceiling and frowned. What was someone doing in the attic?

  MARNI HAD ONLY an instant before the towering antique closet came crashing down. She fell back into a chest of drawers as the armoire toppled, smashing the credenza behind it as it fell in a loud thunderclap of splintered wood and destruction.

  Marni felt the massive wardrobe graze her arm, breeze past her face and hit the maternity form with a force that knocked her breath out. Then it crashed into the credenza, flattening it as if it were built of toothpicks. Marni stood staring down at the pile of splintered wood as she fought to corral her racing heart. She wasn’t hurt. No harm was done.

  She heard a door open and close on the far side of the room and the sound of footsteps retreat down creaky stairs.

  Relief. She leaned back against the chest of drawers, reassuring herself again that it had been a close call but she was all right. She looked down, surprised to see that her borrowed maternity shirt was torn from where the armoire had hit her protruding stomach. She stared at Sam. The form would survive. But would a real baby have? Her blood turned to ice.

  All she wanted was out of the attic. She hurriedly stepped over the shattered armoire and around another large wardrobe and stopped. To her left, a child-size door creaked open. From inside, Marni could hear the sound of the baby cooing softly. Her heart thundered in her chest as she slowly knelt to gaze through the crack between the door and the jamb.

  Light from a small round window under the eave at the back of the room illuminated the eerie scene. A window much like the one Marni had seen Lilly peering out of yesterday afternoon. Next to the window sat a rocker with a ball of pink yarn on the seat, a pair of knitting needles and two tiny baby booties, the second nearly completed.

  The air suddenly filled with the startling cry of a baby. Marni jumped, her heart a sledgehammer inside her chest. An antique crib had been pushed back into a shadowed corner of the room. A mobile of hideous-faced clowns spun slowly above it in an invisible draft. From inside the crib the baby started to cry softly.

  Marni had to bend down to see in through the doorway and as she did, she noticed the scrape on the floor where someone had recently moved a large object away from the door.

  She stuck her head in tentatively, but the room was empty except for the rocker and the crib. Carefully she slipped in, surprised to find she had room to stand once inside.

  As the baby whimpered, Marni moved toward the crib and, calling on all her courage, looked over the side.

  Something the size of a baby lay wrapped in a pink baby blanket. With trembling fingers, Marni pulled back the blanket.

  A face leaped out at her. She fought back a scream as she realized what was lying in the crib. The blank eyes stared up out of a grayed worn face. Not a baby. But a doll. Lilly’s rag doll.

  Marni tried to still her thundering heart as she pushed the doll and the blanket aside to reveal a small tape recorder.

  “Hush now,” a woman said as the baby began to cry again on the tape. With a start, Marni recognized the voice. “Stop that fretting,” Vanessa said impatiently.

  Marni hit the stop button on the recorder. The baby quit crying. Vanessa fell silent.

  Marni felt sick as she stared down at the crib and the doll baby inside it. Who had done this? What was Vanessa’s voice doing on the tape? Was this Lilly’s way of coping with the loss of her baby? Or someone else’s sick way of tormenting Lilly?

  Behind her, Marni heard a sound. She spun around. The child-size door shut.

  Blindly, Marni flung herself at the closing door.

  Chapter Nine

  “What the hell?” Chase cried as the door hit him. He dropped the flashlight in his hand. The light spun in an arc, illuminating the source of his pain, then the flashlight hit the floor with a thud at Miss McCumber’s feet. “I should have known it would be you.”

  She looked up at him. “It amazes me that any woman could have ever fallen in love with you.” She handed him the flashlight

  “Yeah, well, that makes two of us.” He pointed the beam at her.

  “Do you mind?” she said, shielding her eyes.

  He shifted the circle of light to a spot on the floor between them, but not before he’d noticed two things that surprised him. Her disheveled appearance. And the fear in her eyes. “Want to tell me what’s going on?”

  Marni glared at him as she drew her shirt together over her swollen stomach. “I was almost killed!”

  Leave it to a woman to magnify things.

  “I’m the one who got hit with the door,” he told her, then recalled the fear in her eyes. Surely just catching her snooping around the house hadn’t put that scared look on her face. And it wasn’t as though he could frighten her even when he’d tried.

  “Why should I expect you to believe me?” she said.

  “You’re a mess,” he said softer than he’d meant to. He reached out to wipe a smudge from her cheek with his thumb. “There’s probably a good reason why you’re up here.”

  She looked as if she might cry. But she also looked damned and determined not to. He watched her face, amused and intrigued by her. She wasn’t like anyone he’d ever known. And yet, sometimes she reminded him a little of himself.

  “So why don’t you tell me about this hair-raising experience you had,” he said, brushing hers back from her face.

  She pulled away and didn’t seem all that willing to tell him anything. But he realized something had happened up here that had upset her. Not only was she a dusty mess, it looked as if she’d torn her maternity top. Both filled him with concern, a concern that made him angry. He fought the urge to tell her she had no business in the attic, no business here at all.

  “I was worried about Lilly,” she began hesitantly.

  He bit his tongue to keep his mouth shut. Hadn’t he warned her not to get involved with this family? Especially Lilly?

  She seemed surprised he hadn’t said anything and, obviously encouraged by his silence, charged ahead with her story.

  He amazed himself. He kept his mouth shut through the climb up through some secret staircase, as ridiculousl
y stupid as that was, right to where the armoire crashed and she was almost killed, even though he could tell she was purposely leaving out details for whatever reason he could not imagine, probably just exaggerating how close a call it was.

  “Didn’t I tell you that you were in danger?” he demanded when he couldn’t stand it anymore.

  “I thought Lilly was in trouble,” she cried in high indignation.

  “Lilly was in trouble?” Chase asked, trying to control his anger, which was matched only by his fear for this woman. It surprised him how relieved he felt that she hadn’t been hurt. “It sounds to me like you’re the one who’s always in trouble.” He hobbled toward her. “Do you have any sense at all? Going up hidden stairways to old attics following a woman who at best is an alcoholic and at worst is…unstable?”

  “I thought it was a cry for help.”

  “You’re the one who needs help,” he retorted. “You just can’t seem to stay out of other people’s lives, can you?”

  “Like yours?”

  “Show me this fallen armoire.” He handed her the flashlight. “Unless-you’re afraid to go back there.”

  Her chin came up, her eyes darkened like clouds before a hailstorm. “Maybe you should see it for yourself.”

  He didn’t like the sound of that

  She led him around several large pieces of furniture and he realized he’d had no idea any of this was up here. It surprised him and made him wonder about Jabe Calloway and what else he kept hidden.

  She stopped, waiting for him to maneuver the last few steps on his crutches.

  He rounded the corner of a huge buffet and came to an abrupt stop. “What the hell?” He took the flashlight from her and flicked the light over the fallen armoire, his gaze widening in horror as he saw the armoire and the splintered credenza beneath it