For the next four hours they plotted and planned. Micah had somehow gotten hold of a floor plan of the house, and they speculated in what room Julie might be held.
Troy had counted eight men going in and out of the house who he thought might be armed. But why would a church-owned establishment need armed guards?
By midnight they were all champing at the bit, ready to take on an entire army to save one beautiful pregnant woman. It was decided that they would park their cars a mile away near the fields that served as a backyard to the home. There they would scale a tall chain-link fence.
They would spread out and each find a way into the house. There was no need to plan the specifics, each would do whatever necessary to gain entrance. The goal was to get in and out without encountering anyone, but if they did, they each knew how to take out a threat without making a sound.
They would go in at twelve-thirty and hopefully rendezvous back at the safe house with Julie in hand by one-thirty.
“I just want to tell you both how much I appreciate this,” Lucas said as they left his apartment. None of them had spoken of the fact that before the night was over there was a possibility they could be in jail—or dead.
Troy clapped Lucas on the back. “In until the end,” he said.
It was what they’d said when they’d served side by side, and in that moment Lucas realized how rich his life was in having these two men as friends.
They left Lucas’s apartment complex, each in his own vehicle, and within minutes were in position about a mile away from the compound.
None of them spoke as they ran toward their objective.
They scaled the fence that thankfully wasn’t electrified. The minute they split apart and Troy and Micah disappeared into the darkness of the night, Lucas’s thoughts were solely on Julie.
Was she still okay? Had they harmed her since he and Wendall had appeared at the gate to check on her welfare? So many hours had passed since then. It was possible they were already too late. He couldn’t dwell on that. The idea that she might be hurt—or worse—would destroy him.
He moved like a shadow in the cold night, his feet skipping over the frozen earth without making a sound. Troy would head to the left side of the house, Micah to the right and Lucas would take the rear. Somehow they would get inside. It was what they were trained to do.
With every step he took he saw her again and again, tugging on that golden strand of hair, her lips curved into a pleasant smile as she’d lied to him and told him she was where she wanted to be.
Be safe, Julie. His heart thundered the words, and it was in those moments as he ran toward the house, as his heart beat the frantic rhythm of fear, that he was struck again by the depth of his love for her.
She was the woman he’d want in his life if he were the man he wanted to be instead of the man he feared he was. Hopefully he could rescue her, get her to safety and then love her enough to let her go.
The moon cooperated with the mission, hiding its light behind a thick layer of clouds, and as Lucas approached the dark, quiet house, his heartbeat slowed and his anxiety level dropped.
He called it mission mode, when all thoughts left his head and he was filled with a cold calm. All emotion fell away, replaced by the steely determination of a soldier.
There wasn’t a single light on anywhere in the house that could be seen, and yet even with the hidden moon overhead there was a faint illumination.
Where are you, Julie? They all had agreed that she was probably being held on the second or third floor.
He reached the side of the house and looked up, but there was no clue as to which of the dozens of windows she might be behind.
A faint crunch of icy grass came from the side of the house. Lucas flattened himself with his back against the building just as the dark outline of a tall, thin man came into view.
A guard, Lucas quickly surmised. He walked at a leisurely pace, letting Lucas know he had no clue that their security had been breached.
Still, Lucas knew his safest course of action was to take the man out. He narrowed his gaze as the guard drew closer, making a wide circle around the back of the house.
If he saw Lucas, then he might get an opportunity to alert others before Lucas could neutralize him. Lucas stopped breathing, hoping, praying he wouldn’t be seen.
Crouching for attack, he waited until the man had his back to him; then he sprang.
It took less than five seconds to get the man in a sleeper hold and render him unconscious. As he fell to the ground, Lucas quickly taped his mouth closed and tied his hands and legs, then dragged him away from the house and into the field beyond.
Moments later he sprinted back and once again eyed the house. Now to find a way inside, he thought. His mission-mode calm slipped away as he thought of Julie, and prayed that they would get to her in time.
JULIE LAY IN BED in the darkened room, sleep the furthest thing from her mind. Tonight was her last night on earth.
Robert had told her when he’d left her room earlier that tomorrow she would be undergoing a cesarean section. She knew that they would take her baby and she would die. There was no way they could allow her to live. She was a loose end, a liability in their crazy plan.
She closed her eyes and rubbed her tummy. Robert would raise her son as his own, and groom him to usher a congregation from a good, religious group to a dangerous, powerful cult. When Robert had first told her his plan, she’d asked why it had to be her baby. He’d told her it was the bloodline that mattered. If anyone in the congregation questioned that the child wasn’t of his own bloodline then he’d have DNA proof. He’d promised his congregation a child of his blood, and a nephew would fit the bill just fine.
With the hours that she’d had to think, she’d realized that it was possible that Robert had killed his brother, her husband.
Robert had known Julie was leaving David and that she’d just discovered she was pregnant at the time of David’s death. It was possible he’d feared that she’d leave David and disappear into another life with her son. And Robert wanted her child.
If what she believed was true, then Robert had taken a gamble. He’d wanted a child of his blood to fill the position of the son he’d never had. Julie and David’s baby fit the bill. Still, if he’d killed David and she’d miscarried, he would never have gained the child he desperately wanted—needed—to complete his plan.
None of that mattered now. It was over. Robert was going to succeed and she was going to die. At least her regrets were few.
Although the pain of knowing she would never see her son, never hold his sweetness in her arms and watch him grow into a man, was too hard to bear, in every other area of her life there weren’t many things she regretted.
She’d loved.
A vision of Lucas filled her head. With all her memories now intact she knew that what she’d felt for him hadn’t been just gratitude. She loved him with a sweeping depth that she’d never felt for the man she’d married.
And she’d been loved.
She didn’t care what Lucas said, he had loved her, too. Unfortunately his love for her hadn’t been strong enough.
She knew it had to do with his father, with the miserable childhood he’d suffered. There was no way a child could go through that kind of experience and not be changed at the very core.
If only he could see himself through her eyes and embrace the man he was, a loving, giving man who might have made her life complete.
Her only regret was that she and Lucas had never gotten the chance to make love for real. She would never feel his hips against her own, the weight of his body on hers as he buried himself deep inside her.
Too late now.
She closed her eyes, begging for sleep to come and take her away from her thoughts. She had almost drifted off when a faint thud sounded just outside her door.
She shot up to a sitting position, her heart thundering alarm. What was that? Were they coming for her? Had they decided to take the baby now, to
night?
Her weary acceptance of what was to come disappeared as an unexpected adrenaline filled her. At that moment she realized she did not intend to go easy.
She would scratch and claw and fight whoever came inside to take her baby. She would kick and gouge and scream bloody murder even if it didn’t help. She’d make sure she hurt them before they killed her.
She slid out of bed and grabbed the bedside lamp. With a single pull she yanked the cord from the plug in the wall. It was a tiny thing, by no means a lethal weapon, but she crept to the door and held it up over her head.
Her arms shook and her heart pounded so hard she felt half breathless as she waited to see if anyone would enter. Seconds ticked by and she began to think that maybe she’d imagined the noise she’d heard in the hallway.
She froze as she heard the scrape of a key in the lock, then the squeak of the knob slowly turning. As the door creaked open she tightened her hands on the base of the lamp.
As the dark figure stepped into the room, she crashed the lamp down on him, crying out in frustration as she realized she’d missed his head and hit him on his shoulder.
He whirled around and grabbed her by the shoulders, his big, strong fingers biting painfully tight into her tender flesh. She screamed and was instantly backhanded with a slap that nearly sent her to her knees.
“Shut up,” Robert said. “If you scream again I’ll knock you unconscious.” He batted the lamp out of her hand and grabbed her. “Let’s go. We’re moving out of here. Security has been breached.”
He jerked her out into the dim hallway, where only faint night-lights lit the area. It was like her dream, the long hallway and the eerie lighting. Only this time she wasn’t running alone, she was being dragged by the man who wanted her dead.
It was only as they stepped out of the bedroom that she realized he had a gun, and her heart once again knocked so hard against her ribs it nearly took her breath away. “If you make a sound, I’ll put a bullet in your brain,” he whispered as he pulled her up against him.
What was happening? Why was he moving her out of her bedroom in the middle of the night? And why was he doing it at gunpoint?
They moved slowly, passing dark rooms with open doors. Where was he taking her? It was obvious he was moving in the direction of the back staircase that would eventually take them into the kitchen of the large house. In the kitchen was a door that led to the garage.
Was he moving her completely out of the house? Was he taking her someplace where a doctor awaited to cut her baby from her and toss her dead body on some deserted city street?
She might have fallen to the floor in utter despair if they hadn’t passed another room. As she glanced inside she could have sworn she saw the movement of a dark, silent shadow just inside the door.
Her heart skipped a beat and a tiny flicker of hope ignited inside her. Lucas? Her heart cried his name. Was it possible he had caught her attempt to signal him when she’d pulled on the end of her hair?
Had he realized she’d been lying to him when she’d told him everything was all right? Or had she simply imagined that dark form in the room because she desperately wanted to be rescued? Or had the dark shadow simply been one of Robert’s henchmen?
Closer and closer they got to the stairs that would lead them down and out of the house. Knowing that if he managed to get her outside, nobody would ever know what had become of her, she dragged her feet, making it difficult for them to make forward progress.
When they passed another dark room and she thought she saw the shadowy figure of a man, she wondered if she was losing her mind, if the stress of the situation had her seeing phantoms.
She never heard them coming. The phantoms seemed to jump out of the very woodwork, two behind them and one in front of them, blocking their way down the hall.
She also didn’t see the blow that sent the gun flying from Robert’s hand. Everything happened in a blur. One of the shadows grabbed her, and the minute she was pulled against his chest she knew it was Lucas.
Tears sprang to her eyes, and she might have wept with relief if it wasn’t for the sound of running footsteps coming from the opposite end of the hallway.
Lucas shoved her behind him and turned to face the next challenge. Somebody turned on the hall lights, and as Julie cowered against the wall, her hands protectively splayed across her belly, all hell broke loose.
Lucas and his partners faced off against Robert and the two other men who had appeared in the hallway. As Robert dove for the gun he had dropped, Lucas jumped on his back while Troy and Micah began hand-to-hand combat with the others.
“Take her and go,” Micah yelled as he rendered his opponent unconscious, then jumped on Robert’s back.
Lucas rose, his features set in grim lines as he grabbed Julie by the hand and pulled her toward the stairs. They raced downward as fast as she was capable of going. They wouldn’t be safe until they were out of this house, away from this compound.
Down the two flights of stairs they flew, and when they reached the kitchen they burst out the back door. Julie hadn’t realized she was crying until the cold air slapped her wet cheeks.
“Wait,” she said, and stopped in her tracks. Even though she knew they needed to get out of there as quickly as possibly, the run down the stairs had winded her. She bent over slightly and drew in deep gulps of air.
She gasped in surprise as Lucas scooped her up in his arms and continued across the field toward the high fence in the distance. She buried her head in his shoulder, awed by his strength, by the chance he had taken to come in to get her.
It was only when they reached the fencing that he set her back on her feet. Troy and Micah grinned at them from the other side of the fence. “What took you so long?” Micah asked, and pulled apart a section of the steel links that had been cut away.
“I stopped to smell the roses,” Lucas replied drily. Julie stepped through the hole in the fence and Lucas followed.
“I’m taking her right to the police station,” Lucas said. “I suggest you two lie low until we see how this all plays out. Any casualties?”
“Nothing that a little time and a few bandages won’t heal,” Troy replied.
“Call Wendall and tell him to meet me at the station,” Lucas said to Troy, who nodded.
“Let’s move,” Micah added. The two men headed for their vehicles, and Lucas and Julie raced for his. Within minutes they were driving away from Julie’s nightmare and Julie was telling him everything she remembered, everything that Robert had planned.
Lucas said nothing, he just listened until she was finished telling her story. By that time they were in front of the police station.
As he turned off the engine of his car she placed a hand on his arm. “Lucas, before we go inside, I need to tell you something,” she said.
“What’s that?” His gaze was enigmatic in the spill of light from the nearby police station.
“In the hours tonight as I contemplated my own death, the one thing that kept me strong was my love for you. Not gratitude, Lucas. Love. I love you, Lucas Washington, and if you look in your heart I know that you’ll see that you love me, too.”
“It doesn’t matter what’s in my heart,” he said, his features looking starker, more sharp than usual as a pulse knotted in his jaw. “I told you from the start of this that I don’t want a wife.”
He started to open his car door, but she stopped him by grabbing his arm. “Is it because of the baby? You can’t love a baby that isn’t yours?”
“Of course not,” he replied without hesitation. “I could love a baby—I could love your baby, but I told you I don’t want to be a husband or a father.”
“Why not? What are you afraid of, Lucas? Why would you deny yourself the joy of a woman who loves you? A family who could fill your life?”
“We don’t have time for this,” he said impatiently.
“That’s one thing I realized as I was waiting to die,” she exclaimed. “The only real thing we have tim
e for on this earth is to love and to be loved.”
He stiffened. “I will not repeat the mistakes of my father,” he said in a voice that trembled with suppressed emotion.
“No, you won’t,” she agreed. “Because you are not anything like your father. Oh, Lucas, why can’t you see yourself as I see you, as your sister sees you? How long will you allow the shadow of your father to keep all light from your heart?”
A headlight beam from an arriving car bathed Lucas’s face in stark brightness. “That’s Wendall. Let’s go inside.” Before she could stop him he opened his door and got out of the car.
For the next several hours Julie sat with Chief Kincaid and a prosecuting attorney in an interrogation room where she told them everything that had happened from the time of her husband’s murder to the present. She now knew why she had been so terrified of coming to the police, and she told Wendall of Officer Ben Branigan’s involvement with Robert’s plans.
Lucas had disappeared. She assumed he was being questioned in another room. Several times Wendell left and was gone for long minutes only to return for more questioning.
She was completely wrung out by the time Wendall called a halt to things. “I’ve arranged a room for you at a nearby hotel for the next couple of days,” he said. “You’ll be under guard until we can sort all this out.”
He smiled for the first time since they’d begun the questioning process. “Don’t worry, Julie. We’ll make sure you and your unborn baby are safe now.”
She nodded wearily. “Can I see Lucas now?”
He looked surprised. “Lucas left here some time ago. He told me to tell you goodbye for him. Now, let’s get you settled in for the night.”
Numb. She was numb as Wendall escorted her from the room and introduced her to Officer Clay Samuels, who would be taking her to her hotel and standing guard for the next twelve hours.
He left without saying goodbye. He’d made sure she was safe, he’d listened to her tell him that she loved him, but ultimately he’d made the choice to walk away from her. She had a horrible feeling that she would never hear from, never see him again.
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