The Baby's Defender

by Jill Elizabeth Nelson

  “What if Olivia wakes up?” he asked. Nice trump card, if he said so himself. West hid a smug smile behind an impassive expression.

  Cady rolled her shoulders. “As late as she went down for the night, she should sleep for more than an hour yet. But I’m not going to get another wink of sleep until we ensure the intruder isn’t going to get in again. And, remember, during that first attack, I heard noises downstairs before they arrived in my bedroom. There is probably more than one hidden door. What if you’re in there exploring and the killer pops out through another one and comes after me? No, thank you.”

  “You’ve got your gun.”

  “Fat lot of good it did me during the first attack. Even if I had the chance, I don’t know if I could shoot anyone. That’s your department. Like you said earlier, the safest place for me right now is square on your six.”

  West scowled at her. “Grab your gun and throw on some sneakers. Those flimsy slippers aren’t enough protection for your feet in unknown territory. Hop to it! We’re wasting time.”

  His full-on army sergeant snarl didn’t dent her triumphant grin as she rushed away to comply with his demands. A guy might have to admit when he was licked, but he didn’t have to like it.

  She was back at the passage as quickly as he could have expected one of his trained squad members. In addition to the pistol, she had also brought a flashlight from her side table. At his approving nod, she blushed and West turned away before she could glimpse his heart in his eyes. This woman had come to mean the world to him. Now, it was up to him to protect that world—with his life, if necessary.

  “Stay close,” he said. “Train your beam around one side of me and straight ahead. That will provide steady illumination. I’m going to be playing my light over every inch of territory as we move forward. We can’t afford to miss anything.”

  “Roger that,” she responded, and West allowed himself a grin.

  They moved to the head of the steep stairway that plunged downward.

  “No stairs going up toward the attic,” he observed aloud.

  West cautiously led them down the narrow steps, noticing nothing that would indicate traps laid. Shortly, they arrived at a small landing where it didn’t make sense for there to be one. It was too soon for them to have reached the next floor of the house.

  “Could there be a door here?” Cady half whispered to him.

  He traced his beam up and down the wall and found a latching mechanism.

  “Move back,” he warned, and she retreated several steps upward.

  Hyperalert for any surprises, West depressed the latch and a narrow door swung open. He went through the opening, gun and flashlight first, then his head.

  He let out a short chuckle. “The door leads onto the servants’ stairs, but the stairwell is still locked and boarded up from both ends, not to mention missing several steps. And the space is full of undisturbed dust, so our intruder can’t have ventured here. Let’s keep going.”

  “Right.” She came up behind him again, the warmth emanating from her a contrast to the dank chill that flowed toward them from somewhere in the deep darkness below.

  After a sharp turn, they arrived at another, more spacious landing that seemed sensibly placed, as far as distance between floors was concerned. West played his light over the surrounding area. Again, no sign of a booby trap. There was, however, a latch like the one he’d tripped next to the servants’ stairs, indicating that this was a hidden door panel, and one new anomaly—a rectangular cutout about the dimensions of a mail slot with a knob and a hinge slightly below his eye level. He tugged open the cutout and uncovered a pair of peepholes. He looked through them and found himself staring at Cady’s Pabst chair. His insides went molten. Some life-form lower than pond scum could have been staring at Cady with evil intent for who knew how long—perhaps since the day she’d moved in. No wonder she’d sometimes felt like someone was watching her.

  “What do you see?” Her tone was thin and pitched slightly higher than normal, but that was the only sign of her anxiety.

  Lots of people would be hysterical with all that had been happening. Cady was holding it together remarkably well.

  West turned toward her. “I see the living room from the vantage point of the fireplace wall. I’m assuming the door here is hidden similarly to the one upstairs.”

  Her brow furrowed. “I don’t understand. Why didn’t they step out and try to end me sooner if they had this kind of access anytime of the day or night?”

  “Good question. I think we’ll have to return to the assumption we made early on, right after the tea incident. This person was biding their time for you to drink the poison and die. The cause of death might easily have been missed and attributed to natural causes. When time passed and you didn’t drink their poison, they went to plan B and attacked you in the night.”

  Cady shuddered visibly. “Had they succeeded, I suspect they would have tried to arrange the scene to make it look like a freak accident or something—anything—other than murder.”

  “But they didn’t succeed, and then I drank the tea, and the poison was a secret no longer. Ever since then, the attempts have grown progressively more blatant and desperate.”

  “I don’t like desperate,” she said. “Desperate people do extreme things. But at least there’s one bright spot.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Detective Rooney will have to take back those insinuations he made the first time he came here to investigate—that I imagined noises on the first floor.”

  “He’ll have to eat a lot of his insinuations and wrong conclusions.” West nodded toward the stairs that continued downward. “Let’s keep going to the end of this thing.”

  One cautious step at a time, he eased them onward.

  “Basement level, here we come,” Cady murmured in his ear.

  “Basement level, here we are,” West confirmed as they came to the end of the stairs and reached an enclosed space the size of a small, narrow hallway that ended in a blank wall with no direct access into the actual basement, only this small compartment at basement level.

  To one side of them gaped a ragged opening in the concrete foundation, just large enough for a human being to slip through sideways. The musty chill that permeated the passageway originated from the tunnel beyond. A steady plink-plink-plink sound carried faintly to West’s ears. Water was dripping a little distance away, but it wasn’t trickling into the house. No moisture was evident on the cement floor under their feet.

  West played his beam through the hole. The light was swallowed in darkness before it could reach the end of wherever the tunnel led, but within the tunnel it illuminated shoring beams and evidence of human chiseling in the rocky spots from decades ago. Contemporary technology would result in much smoother, more even walls.

  “This hole in the concrete between the house and the tunnel looks like it was made recently and inexpertly through an area in the foundation that appears to have been walled up at some point with inferior material.”

  “Another confirmation that our creeper has to be someone with intimate knowledge of the property,” Cady said, peering into the opening.

  “Certainly. Someone would have had to know the location of the tunnel and how to get into it, follow it to the house and patiently chisel out a new opening to the passageway.”

  Cady backed away from the opening. “Are we going in?” Her tone was the opposite of enthusiastic.

  West shook his head. “We don’t need to go any farther. In fact, it would be unwise. The tunnel shows every sign of being old and neglected. I’m not sure I would trust the shoring beams. A few of the ones I could see are cracked and sagging. This recently made hole is the point where we need to cut off access to the house.” He waved toward the tunnel opening. “However, it’s not going to be a quick and simple process. Bren and I will get in here tomorrow—” he glanced at
his watch “—er, later this morning with brick and plaster.”

  “Our intruder would be an idiot to try to come back this way again tonight,” Cady said. “And so far, they haven’t struck me as stupid. Cunning, yes. Stupid, no.” Cady turned and began walking the perimeter of the confined space.

  West went back to assessing how much brick and plaster he and Bren might need.

  “I wonder where this claustrophobic little hallway lets out into the basement,” Cady said. “Ah, here’s the latch.”

  West whirled, caution on his tongue, but he was too late. She depressed the latch and a distinctive click raised the hairs on the back of West’s head.

  “Freeze!” he cried out. “Don’t move a muscle.”

  Her wide gaze darted toward him but she complied, standing stock-still with the latch pushed down under her slender fingers.

  West swallowed against a dust-dry throat. None of the other latches had made a sound when depressed, but he’d heard that kind of terrifying snick before. A pressure switch. If Cady let up on the latch, some sort of IED—improvised explosive device—would blow them into eternity.

  TWELVE

  As West explained the situation, Cady’s heart pounded in her throat. How could she have been so careless, messing with the latch without having West check it out first? Now that they had discovered the intruder’s access point to the house, she’d allowed herself a false sense of security. A natural reaction. Perhaps their adversary had a background in psychology, because here, where she’d let her guard down, is where they had laid the booby trap.

  “Hold still and let me find out where the explosive device has been planted.” West knelt by her side and gazed closely at the depressed latch. He made a humming noise.

  “What?” Her voice came out far sharper than she’d intended, but his seeming calm was getting on her last frayed nerve. Every molecule in her body wanted to scream and run, which was the very thing she could not do.

  “Leading out from the latch are wires embedded in the wall under a thin layer of new plaster. Even I might have missed them before pressing the latch.”

  “Way to make me feel better about doing a dumb thing.”

  “Did I?”

  “No.”

  “I didn’t think so.” More humming and then a cluck of his tongue. “Very clever.”

  “I don’t like the sound of that.”

  “The device is embedded in the false wall between the basement and this hidden room. I’m going to have to scrape away the new plaster to get to it.”

  “With what?” Cady cautiously switched her weight from one foot to another without letting up on the pressure against the latch.

  “A soldier never goes anywhere without his knife.”

  “Hurry! Please!”

  “Hang in there. You’re doing great.”

  More of that fake calm. Cady gritted her teeth. Scraping sounds continued for an eternity.

  “Here you are, you lousy little critter,” West intoned softly, clearly not talking to her.

  “Are you addressing the bomb, or are you referring to the person who planted it?”

  “Both.”

  “Can you disarm it?”

  “Yep. Just did.” West rose with a small cylinder in one hand and what looked like a battery pack from a toy in the other. “The cleverness was in the concealment. This IED is super simple. Disengaging the battery pack from the canister renders it harmless.”

  Cady remained frozen in place, staring at the deadly device. She could scarcely haul in a full breath.

  “You can let go of the latch now,” West prompted, his words and expression soft and tender.

  With a cry, Cady released the latch and threw herself into his arms. He drew her in against his strong chest. His heart thrummed against her ear in double time. He hadn’t been nearly as calm as he’d pretended. Sobs broke from her throat and she let the tears flow. His soft murmurs of assurance spread a warm balm through her. And was he showering kisses on the top of her head?

  Cady lifted her face to his and the kisses fell on her lips. She responded in kind. When was the last time she’d felt so secure and at home? Before Griff died, of course.

  Griff!

  Gasping, Cady wrenched herself away from West and turned her back on him. Did he groan softly with the separation? Her insides echoed the groan, but she couldn’t do romance. Not right now. Especially when her eager reaction to West might be nothing more than intense relief. And his? Well, he’d already made it clear he was in the grip of survivor’s guilt over Griffon’s death. No, it was better and wiser for them both if they kept their relationship to nothing more than friends.

  Composing herself through sheer willpower, she turned toward West. “Livvy could be waking up for her feeding anytime. I need to return to her.”

  “Of course.” West nodded, his face impassive. “I’ll call the authorities to dispose of this IED. They’re going to be very interested in this secret passageway, too. I doubt they’ll volunteer to stop up the hole for us, though.” He grimaced.

  “Thank you...for everything. After I feed Livvy, she should go back to sleep. I’ll try to grab a little more shut-eye in the rocker recliner in her room so the police can have free access to my room.”

  “Sounds like a plan.” West nodded as he pulled out his cell phone.

  Cady hurried up the steep stairway toward her chief treasure in this world, her daughter. If circumstances required her to give up this house to keep Livvy safe, she’d do it in a heartbeat.

  Several hours later, Cady roused to find herself in her daughter’s room. The silence in the house indicated that the authorities had come and gone. How could she have slept through the muted ruckus? The fact that she had done so was a clear indication of how exhausted she had been. Still was. Refreshed did not describe how she felt right now.

  Time to be up and at it, nevertheless. Livvy was stirring in her crib and would be up for the morning soon. A quick shower would go a long way to fortifying herself for whatever was going to come at her today, though how it could be more nerve-wracking than last night’s near-miss with the bomb, she couldn’t imagine.

  As soon as she was showered and dressed, Cady put in a call to Mr. Platte’s office, and that sweet-voiced receptionist of his said they could stop in anytime after lunch. The man had no court scheduled so he would be in the office attending to paperwork.

  Cady ended the call and went downstairs. She stepped into the kitchen with her daughter in her arms to find West seated at the table nursing a cup of coffee. He was wearing the same clothes as last night, so a shower and change had not yet been on his morning agenda. The responsibility he felt for her had to be wearing on him. After their kiss last night, would they be able to regain a natural camaraderie?

  She gazed at him, searching for words that would come out casually. West didn’t seem similarly tongue-tied. He greeted her with nonchalance, showing no sign that their kiss was in his thoughts. Her heart pinched. Did he regret kissing her last night? Did she? She probably should, but she didn’t. She’d lock that moment away in her heart as a special memory to overlay the terror of the previous minute when he disarmed the IED.

  “Have you heard an update on Darius?” she asked.

  West nodded. “He’s awake, and the doc says he’s going to pull through.”

  “That’s great news.” A smile broke out on Cady’s lips. “We should go visit him before we head for the lawyer’s office.”

  “Let me grab a shower first. I’m feeling as ripe as the muskmelon I ate with my breakfast this morning.”

  Cady laughed as the humor untied much of the knot in her chest that she seemed to be carrying around permanently these days. “Sure thing, Mr. Melon.”

  West grinned and rose. At the sound of feet on the stairs behind her, Cady gasped and whirled. A thickly built man wearing a grit-streaked
yellow coverall stepped out of the open basement door, followed by another younger man in similar garb. They were each carrying tools and large plastic tubs with metal handles. She gaped at them.

  The first man glanced at her, then focused on West. “We’re done down there. We drilled and inset bars across the opening and then applied concrete. The ’crete will set within twenty-four hours, but the bars will keep out any intruders until then.”

  “Thanks for the quick work on short notice.” West nodded at the men in the coveralls, who headed toward the front door. Then he turned to Cady. “Sorry you were startled. I neglected to tell you how accommodating the cops turned out to be—Detective Rooney, especially. He got right on the horn to a contractor who owed him a favor... Well, as soon as he finished reaming me out for us traipsing through the tunnel and fudging up potential fingerprints by disarming that bomb myself.”

  Cady barked a laugh. “Did he think it would have been better if you’d let it explode?”

  “With Rooney, who knows? But I think hauling the contractor out of bed was as close as he’ll ever come to apologizing for his wrong assumptions about you. Saves me and Brennan a messy job, too.”

  Cady inhaled a long breath and let it out slowly. “Wow! Knowing that tunnel is sealed lifts a great weight from me.”

  “Ditto,” he said. “Why don’t you grab some breakfast while I clean up.”

  As soon as West returned from his quick washup in the bathroom, and Cady finished a piece of toast and jelly, they were on the road.

  “Did the cops explore that underground tunnel?” She glanced over at his strong, appealing profile and her wayward heart gave a little kick against her ribs. Inappropriate reaction. She squelched it.

  “Nope,” he said. “They agree with me that the shaft is getting ready to fall down around someone’s head. It’s not worth risking people’s lives. They sent a K-9 in there and the dog nosed around for a while but came back without signaling human presence. Our creeper was long gone, and it would be pointless for them to return to the tunnel now that it’s been discovered. For safety reasons, we may have to dig up the yard to expose the tunnel and fill it in before it collapses all of a sudden with someone standing on top of it. I wonder how far it goes. Probably to the edge of the property. Maybe under or around the utility shed?”