by Lynn Patrick
Taylor was sitting on the floor, glued to the television, watching her favorite video. Heather stopped short.
“You’re Daddy’s little girl. You’ll always be Daddy’s girl.”
“Forever and ever?”
“Taylor, I need to talk to you.” When her daughter ignored her, Heather walked to the television and manually turned it off.
“Mommy! Don’t!”
“You can watch it in a minute. First I want you to tell me where you got this.” She held out the bill.
Taylor gave a big sigh. “Found it.”
“Where?”
Her daughter shrugged. “Can I watch Daddy now?”
“All right. But I’m returning this money to the mansion tomorrow. You can’t take something that belongs to someone else.”
“I didn’t take it. I found it!”
Taylor’s face screwed up as if she was ready to cry, but then Kirby burst into the room and nearly knocked her over. She squealed and laughed and hugged him.
Leaving Heather feeling utterly defeated.
* * *
ANTICIPATION AND TREPIDATION warring in him at the thought of seeing Keith Murphy again, Rick walked into Captain Bob’s Burger Bar at the marina. The place was decorated to resemble the interior of a wooden ship. Murphy was waiting for him at an outside table overlooking the water. The moment Murphy saw Rick, he stood and held out a hand. Rick took it for a shake and his friend pulled him in for a quick hug and a hard slap on the back.
“Good to see you again, Slater. It’s been too long.”
The trouble was, Rick didn’t know if it was too long...or not long enough.
“I almost forgot what you looked like,” he fibbed.
Who could forget a tall, skinny man with muscles like steel? Not to mention the shaved head. Murphy came from a line of men who went bald before they were fifty, so when his hairline started receding a decade ago, he just shaved it.
Rick was glad to see him again.
“So how’s civilian life?” Murphy asked, sitting.
Rick took the chair opposite him. “It has its ups and downs. I’m just getting into the swing of things.”
“The job.”
“And a personal life.”
A waitress stopped at their table, and they ordered burgers and beers. The moment she walked away, Murphy resumed the conversation as if they hadn’t been interrupted.
“You have a girl, I take it?”
Did he? It was too soon to tell. “Not exactly.”
“Which means?”
“There’s potential.”
“And problems?”
“Heather is an army widow, left with two little girls. Twins.”
“Uh-oh, built-in family. That’s a tough situation to involve yourself in.”
“Well, it’s something to think about,” Rick agreed.
It was a stumbling point for him, but not in the way Murphy thought. Rick had failed his men, failed his responsibility, so how could he get involved with a young woman who already had two little girls? How could they rely on him? What if he and Heather got serious, and then he decided to re-enlist? What if he didn’t make it out the next time? How could he put Heather through that nightmare again?
And yet...
How could he stop wanting to see her and not give them a chance?
Feeling more torn than he had when he’d left the army, he said, “Addison is a cool little kid, real chatty, real likeable. But her sister, Taylor, doesn’t seem to care for me much.” Which did bother him. He’d just been trying to stop her from getting hurt when she’d taken off with the dog, but now he feared he’d screwed up by interfering.
“Maybe you should end it before you get in too deep.”
Rick started. Despite the reasons he shouldn’t get involved with her, he didn’t want to end it with Heather before he had a chance to get to know her better. Or to know what it was he wanted to make of his life. He still hadn’t figured out what he was going to do. And Murphy telling him to quit before he had his answers didn’t sound like the supportive friend he thought he knew.
“What are you trying to say?” Rick asked. “Why are you here?”
“I need a reason to have dinner with my best friend?”
Rick stared at Murphy for a moment and tried to read him, even as his friend made his expression go blank.
“Now I know you have an ulterior motive.”
“Slater—”
“Murphy! Spill!”
“All right, all right. I was hoping that with a little encouragement from me, you would be ready to come back.”
“To what?” Rick asked, his gut immediately tightening.
“The life. Your team.”
“My team is dead.” That photograph burned in his memory flickered through his mind.
“I’m not dead,” Murphy said. “And you aren’t. The guys I’m working with now need a real leader.”
As if he could just walk back in and take over Murphy’s special operations intelligence team. Part of him wanted a way to make up for his men’s deaths. Reduce the guilt. But the other part told him to give civilian life a chance.
“You could be a real leader for them,” he told Murphy.
Arriving with their food, the waitress interrupted once more. “Can I get you boys anything else?”
“I’m good,” Rick said.
“Me, too.” Murphy winked at her, and, flustered, she moved away from the table. Murphy turned his attention back to their conversation. “Tell me you don’t miss it.”
“Okay, maybe I do. Parts of the life were good.” Rick shook his head. But the parts that weren’t good—more specifically, the tragedy that had made him walk away—were horrible. “I never knew anything else but army life. That’s what I’m trying to do now—find out if I can build a life on my own.”
“You’re fooling yourself, Slater. You’ve been out for nearly four months now, and you still don’t know what you want. Maybe that’s because you’re forcing yourself into a life that’s not for you.”
Rick grabbed his burger. “Let’s just eat.” He took a big bite, filling his mouth so he didn’t have to answer.
Deep inside, Rick feared Murphy might be right.
CHAPTER TWELVE
“DON’T WORRY,” HEATHER told her workers as she picked up gardening tools and set them in the wheelbarrow. “I’ll take everything back to the coach house and put it all away.”
She’d seen Rick earlier but he’d been so preoccupied that he hadn’t noticed her. He’d been outside the coach house, looking at what might have been blueprints. She’d watched him as he’d glanced from the papers in his hands to the mansion and back several times. A few of the guests had come out of the house, heading for the terrace. Seeing them, he’d gone back inside.
Come on, whatever he was up to had nothing to do with a handyman’s job!
Heather hadn’t even had the chance to show him the ten dollar gold certificate Taylor had found when she’d disappeared on them. She’d planned on doing that today. She wanted to give Rick the old bill and maybe talk some more about the rumored treasure and the hidden passageways. So she’d stalled in finishing up her landscaping work for the day. She would send her team home and have a logical reason to stay behind.
“You’re going to have to stay late,” Amber said.
“Only a few minutes,” Heather hedged. She wasn’t about to tell Amber and Tyrone why she was working late.
“What about the twins?” Tyrone asked.
“Brian is picking them up today.” And babysitting for a while because she had errands to do.
Both workers raised their eyebrows, but neither said anything.
Heat slid along Heather’s neck as she said, “See you
in the morning.”
“Yeah, sure,” Tyrone said, but when he made no move to leave, Amber grabbed his arm and gave it a jerk.
“C’mon, let’s get out of here. I have plans for tonight.”
As they walked off, Tyrone asked, “What kind of plans? You got a date?”
“Why? Is that so unbelievable?”
Their voices faded as they headed for the parking lot, where another car was pulling in. More guests.
Heather quickly finished loading the wheelbarrow and then rolled it straight to the coach house. Excitement motivated her. It was the gold certificate, she told herself, not the possibility of being alone with Rick.
He’d crept into her thoughts too often over the weekend, especially while she’d been on the computer catching up with her work for Sew Fine’s internet site. She’d tried to convince herself that with his background, he simply wasn’t the right man for her, yet whenever she thought about Rick—about spending time with him or just seeing him—it was with a sense of anticipation that she hadn’t felt in a very long while. Though a big part of her still struggled with the idea that he might re-enlist, she’d given up fighting her attraction to Rick. If she was ever going to move on, she needed to see where that attraction would lead. Surely, the situation would work itself out for the best one way or another, and she didn’t always have to be so on guard.
Once in the coach house, she locked up the tools in the shop area as Rick had suggested—he’d given her a key to the shop door after learning the shovel had disappeared—and turned out the light. But before she could leave the room, she heard footsteps on stairs. She glanced out the shop window and saw Rick coming down. Good. She’d have the opportunity to give him the strange-looking bill.
He bent down to pick up a bag that leaned against the staircase. What could be in it? And why did he seem so on edge? He had those papers in his hand again. If they were blueprints, what was he doing with them? Her suspicions about his being more than a handyman continued to crystallize.
She stood frozen, watching him through the window.
* * *
RICK SWUNG THE bag he’d loaded with tools from the shop and quickly found the lock release in the door to the tunnels. Going down the stairs, he acknowledged the lights had mysteriously come back on. There must be a loose connection somewhere. If he knew where the feed started, he might be able to fix it.
He was still on edge. He could definitely feel the prickle. After what he’d survived in Afghanistan, he would undoubtedly always be a little claustrophobic in underground spaces.
As he traveled through the tunnel, Rick sensed he wasn’t alone. He stopped to listen and heard a feminine gasp and a noise that sounded like rock skittering. He whipped around and shone his utility lantern straight on Heather Clarke.
“What are you doing here?” he demanded.
“I was putting away our gardening tools when I saw you come down here.”
“So you just followed me?”
“I was curious. I wanted to see what you were doing.”
“And you couldn’t call out to tell me you were here?”
“Um, sorry. So this is another part of the secret tunnels, right? What are you doing down here?”
She had the nerve to sound suspicious, Rick realized. “I’m doing my job.”
“Your job as a handyman is to explore tunnels? Or do you actually have a different job? First the security cameras...then running back here the other night when a thief set off one of those cameras...now this. Doesn’t sound like a handyman’s job to me.”
Oh, great. She’d figured it out. Why couldn’t he have done the smart thing and deleted that footage of her in the boathouse right away? Now there was no talking his way out of it. He would need her promise to secrecy yet again.
“Okay, you got me. I work for Lake Shore Security in Milwaukee,” he admitted. “Ben Phillips needed someone to secure the mansion and to figure out who has been intruding on the estate’s property and why. Cora is the only employee who knows why I’m here. It’s important to keep it that way because it’s likely an employee has something to do with what’s been going on, so I trust you won’t tell anyone else.”
“No, of course not. I already gave you my word once before.”
“Good. Now let me walk you to your car.”
“I’m not leaving. It’s kind of spooky down here,” she noted. “I mean, the ceiling could collapse on you or something, and you could get hurt. You shouldn’t be down here alone.”
Reminded of Afghanistan, Rick clenched his jaw. He felt torn. On one hand, he could use some company. Someone who could keep him centered. On the other hand, he felt uncomfortable being responsible for another person’s safety underground...again.
“It’s better to have two people than one in a situation like this,” she said.
“Yeah.” He couldn’t deny that. Considering Heather now knew what he was doing at the estate, he supposed it wouldn’t hurt anything to let her tag along.
He wanted to reassure her, and, to an extent, himself at the same time. “The ceilings won’t collapse. See those beams? They’re stable.”
“You shouldn’t be down here alone,” she repeated.
“I can’t change your mind?”
“Nope.”
He handed her his battery-operated utility lantern and started off.
“What are you looking for?” she asked as she quickly followed.
“What I suspect the intruder is looking for—the rumored treasure room.”
Rick told her about his initial exploration down here, how he thought the intruder had gotten into the house through the hidden door to the conservatory. All the while he noted Heather was flipping the beam around, checking every crack and crevice and spider web as they walked.
When some dirt sifted down on them halfway to the mansion, she jumped. “What just happened? I thought you said these tunnels are stable.”
“They are.” The tunnels were nearly a century old, but they seemed solid enough to him. Still, it didn’t hurt to be extra careful. “I heard an engine—car, truck, something. Maybe it came close enough to cause a little vibration.”
“I didn’t hear any engine.”
“You’re not trained to.”
His whole team had been trained for stealth operations. A few critical times his acute hearing had prevented him from walking into a dangerous situation. That training had saved his team members’ lives more than once.
Too bad his instincts hadn’t been enough to save his men on that last mission.
“Relax,” he said, pulling Heather close so that he could wrap an arm around her shoulders. She fit perfectly in the shelter of his body and just holding her like this made him feel better. “I won’t let you get hurt.” Of course, he’d said the same thing to people before...
“You won’t... I mean, good!”
Just enough light allowed him to see every feature of her face, and the way she was looking at him made his chest tighten. He wanted in the worst way to kiss her again. The way he’d meant to Friday night before being alerted to the intruder’s presence in the boathouse.
“This place is so creepy,” she said a little breathlessly. “I just didn’t think you should be down here by yourself. You know...just in case.”
“Which was very generous of you,” Rick said, keeping his amusement from his tone. “We should go on.”
“Oh...of course.” Obviously flustered, she pulled free of his arm and went ahead of him.
Even though he felt the loss of her warmth against his side, Rick grinned. He didn’t mind watching Heather as she stalked down the tunnel. She had this cute little sway to her hips.
He suddenly remembered her saying, Just in case...
What had she thought she could do if something did happen to him down he
re? Or what would she do if he was in some kind of danger? Very brave of her to insist on being here, especially because he knew how much she’d stepped out of her comfort zone. Of course, if he’d thought there was the slightest chance that there was any real danger, he would have turned down her very generous offer. Truth was, he wanted to spend some time with Heather, and this was a start.
Thinking about how he had her off guard, he couldn’t stop grinning all the way to the split.
Heather stopped. “Which way?”
“Let’s stay to the left.”
A few minutes later, they reached the first set of narrow steps. Rick led the way up and took measurements with a laser tool. After checking the blueprints, he was certain this was the way into the master suite, either the very large drawing room on the lakeside or the dressing room next to it.
“It looks to be an interior wall,” Rick said. “Which makes sense if you want a hidden room to stay hidden.”
“Our shovel!” Heather said, shining her light on the floor area at the sealed entry. “Broken.”
Indeed, the wooden shaft had been split near the metal. The shovel lay in two pieces. Rick noted there were also a few big chunks of concrete around the damaged garden tool.
“Looks like whoever took it was using it to try to break in,” he said, noting Heather looked anxious. “And don’t worry, I really will buy you another shovel.”
She nodded. “I’m sorry it’s ruined, of course, but I’m just glad the thief couldn’t get in.”
“Not this way,” Rick said. “But he obviously found the entry through the conservatory. Remember, he stole the candelabra the other night. I’ll have to remind Cora to make sure that door between the conservatory and the house stays locked at all times.”
“What about whoever takes care of the plants? I was wondering who that might be.”
“I think someone from a flower shop comes in on a regular basis. But the watering is done automatically on a timer.”
“That makes sense. There are so many plants it would take quite a while to water manually.” Heather paused for a few seconds, then said, “But if someone from the outside is coming in to take care of the plants...”