Before she lost her nerve, she slipped into the garden and hid in the lee of the outbuilding. Her heart was thundering, her palms clammy. The baby carriage stood not twenty paces away. It would take her no more than five seconds to race across the open space and seize the baby.
Unfortunately the nanny beat her to it, reappearing just as Linda was about to make a dash for it. Flattening herself against the building, she watched in horror as the woman scooped the baby into her arms and took her back into the house.
“Now what?” she whispered, wishing suddenly that she wasn’t so alone. “What would Mac do, if he were here?”
Movement at a window on the top floor caught her eye. She saw the nanny cross to a nursery table clearly visible through the open slider. Watched as she changed Angela’s diaper, then cradled her against her shoulder and stood a moment looking down the hill toward town, all the while crooning a lullaby in Spanish.
On the opposite side of the window, sunlight gleamed on the white rails of an infant crib. Linda waited, scarcely daring to breathe. Finally the nanny turned and lowered the baby to the mattress, adjusted the slats of the California shutters at the windows to diffuse the sun, and glided out of sight.
How long could she wait for the perfect opportunity, Linda wondered, vibrantly aware that Kirk could return at any minute and put paid to her plans. More to the point, wasn’t the present setup about as perfect as she could expect, with the baby alone in her nursery and the nanny presumably occupied elsewhere?
She swept another quick glance over the garden, up at the house. Nothing stirred. Even the breeze had dropped to a whisper. “It’s now or never,” she breathed, and sprinted across the patio to the slider on the lower deck, directly below the nursery.
The room she entered likely belonged to the nanny. Spacious and pleasant, it held a bed, pretty dressing table, comfortable couch and a bookcase with a television set on top. Louvered doors on the wall to her right stood slightly ajar, revealing a walk-through closet with a bathroom beyond.
Opening another door on the opposite wall, Linda found herself in a long hall. Somewhere close by, a clothes dryer hummed. She heard footsteps on the tiled floor, and water running into a sink. Ordinary, tranquil noises, just loud enough to camouflage any sound she might make as she stole as far as the next room and squinted through the crack in the door.
The nanny stood at a table, humming to herself as she folded laundry. Behind her was an ironing board, with an iron plugged into a socket on the wall. A blue bowl turned slowly in a microwave oven set on a long counter. A steaming cup of coffee stood on a small table. The nanny was there for the duration.
Circumstances weren’t going to get much more favorable than this, Linda realized, slipping past the door and racing stealthily up the stairs at the end of the hall. Another flight led her from the main level to the third floor and, at last, to the nursery.
Pushing open the door, she crossed to the crib. The baby lay on her back, gazing at the colorful mobile swinging above her head. Blue eyes, a drift of fine blond hair, rose petal skin, tiny perfect hands and feet…
Linda’s heart contracted with painful joy. This was June’s daughter, all right! The resemblance was amazing. Indisputable.
She knew a powerful urge just to pick her up and run, but knew, too, that there were other things she had to take care of first. She had no supplies and babies needed to be kept comfortable. There were diapers stacked on the lower shelf of the change table, extra sleepers and receiving blankets in the drawers of the little white dresser, and a diaper bag hanging from a hook in the closet. Moving swiftly, she collected enough items to last until she could shop, and tossed them in the bag.
Then, slinging it over her shoulder, she approached the crib a second time. “Come here, precious,” she cooed, bending over the baby. “I’m taking you home to mommy.”
She was within a hairsbreadth of holding her niece in her arms when cool breath floated over the back of her neck.
“I don’t think so, dear,” a voice said softly in her ear. “I think she prefers to stay with daddy.”
Linda spun around and there he was, Kirk Thayer in the flesh, big, rather bloated, and with a face the color of porridge. Good grief! was her first thought. What in the world had June ever seen in the man?
“Forget it, Mr. Thayer,” she retorted, amazed that she sounded so calm when her insides were quaking with fright. “I’m taking her back where she belongs and I’d like to see you try to stop me.”
“Would you, dear?” he said. “What will it take to convince you that I can? This, perhaps?”
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small gun. A water pistol, no less!
She laughed in his face. “Aren’t you a bit too old to be playing with toys?
He blinked slowly and a thread of fear wound down her spine. He had the eyes of a madman. Pale gray like the scales of a fish too long dead.
He raised the pistol, aimed it at the open window and fired. The noise it made, though not overly loud, was unmistakably deadly. “Do not irk me, dear,” he said. “I tend to overreact when I am irked.”
I should have waited for Mac, she thought, her mind whirling with sudden terror. He’d never have let this happen. We’d be on our way back to the mainland by now, and Angela would be safe.
“I was expecting two of you,” Kirk went on, conversationally. “What happened to your husband? Did he lose his nerve at the last minute?”
“How did you know to expect us at all?”
“My dear mother phoned and told me. She seemed to think you might wish me ill. Just as well I picked up my messages this morning, or you might have been gone before I realized what you were about.”
Mac’s voice echoed through her mind, his words as clear as if he stood next to her in the room. Sadie’s a loose cannon, Linda. …a mother who’s been overprotective all her life….
Why hadn’t she believed him?
“I confess I didn’t know you’d married,” Kirk said, idly stroking the barrel of the gun, “but I recognized your name at once. I heard it ad nauseam when June and I were still together. Linda this, Linda that, all day long. She’s the one who sent you here, of course, but it won’t do her, or you, any good. No one’s taking Angela away from me.”
“That’s not why I’m here,” she said, though such a line of reasoning was hardly likely to convince him. “June just wants to be sure Angela’s thriving. She’s not interested in cutting you out of your daughter’s life.”
“Of course she is!” He shook his head sadly. “I’m so disappointed in her. I really thought she understood. After all, she grew up without a father, so she knows what a child misses, not having him there to guide her. It’s what drew us together in the first place, you know—the fact that we’d both been abandoned by a parent.”
“And it can be the bond that keeps you together, Kirk.”
“Don’t make me laugh! She’s sent you to steal my daughter, but I’m not about to lose another child.” He waved the gun, menacingly. “You will not take her!”
“How are you going to stop me?” she asked, swallowing the bile rising in her throat.
“Kill you, I suppose.”
He spoke as casually as someone else might have commented on the weather, and that, by itself, made Linda’s blood run cold.
But, Mentally unstable, Sadie had said.
Off his rocker, James had declared.
How true!
She’d never thought that finding the baby would be easy. She’d been prepared for delays and setbacks. And the possibility of failure had always lurked in the back of her mind, waiting to make a sneak attack during a weak moment. But never for a second had she suspected the search might end in death.
It was obscene, she thought, her gaze swinging from Kirk to the rest of the room. Everything was too pretty. Too rich. Too civilized! Men bent on murder lurked in back alleys. They operated under cover of night. They did not flaunt their evil in bright sunshine, with people passin
g by on the street not thirty yards away.
“Are you going to shoot me?” she asked, some small sliver of her brain remembering that, in the movies, the secret always was to buy time by keeping the villain talking.
“Heavens no, dear! You’d make a dreadful mess on the rug,” he said cheerfully. “You’re going to fall over the balcony railing. Not right outside the nursery, of course. There’s a much better spot around the side of the house, facing onto the canyon. It could be weeks before your body’s discovered, if ever.”
“You’ll never get away with it. Mac will come looking for me. He knows I’m here.”
“He can look all he likes, he won’t find you. And he won’t find me or my daughter, either. We’ll be gone before your poor broken body stops rolling down the cliff. Rosa is already preparing for our little vacation. So come along, dear. Say goodbye to my little daughter and let’s get this show on the road. No point in putting off the inevitable.”
She couldn’t go near the crib again. Dare not, not with a madman waving a gun in her face. She made do with blowing a kiss across the room, then turned away.
He stalked her across the floor to the slider. “That’s a good girl,” he said, nudging the pistol in her ribs to keep her moving. “Turn to the right now, and keep on going. I’ll tell you when to stop.”
The balcony curved, swinging away from the garden and veering toward the east where the steep sides of the canyon cut into the hillside. “All right, dear, that’s far enough,” he decreed, prodding her forward from behind. “Just climb onto the railing, and I’ll give you a little push. Before you know, it will all be over.”
Searching for a possible means of escape, she stepped closer and glanced down—a huge mistake on her part. The world below dropped away too suddenly, leaving her blind with panic and clawing at the air for support. Even with her feet still firmly planted on solid ground, supernatural forces threatened to raise her up and fling her into the endless blue space of sky and sea. Already her lungs were bursting from the impact.
“Move, Linda!” Kirk Thayer snarled, ramming the pistol against her spine.
“No,” she panted. “You’re going to have to pick me up and bodily throw me over.”
She felt the muzzle of the pistol at the side of her throat; heard a deadly click. The safety catch being released? She didn’t know. She’d never been this close to a gun before; couldn’t tell the difference between the real thing and a toy.
I should have listened to you, Mac, she thought hopelessly. I should have trusted you.
But she had not. She’d sulked like a child and run off by herself to teach him a lesson. And now she was paying the price. But the worst of it was, so would he. Because of her rash actions, he would have another tragedy on his conscience; another blot on his personal record of achievement.
I’m so sorry, she told him, closing her eyes the better to bring his face into focus, and remembering how safe she’d felt when he held her in his arms. She hadn’t known the meaning of fear then. It had not existed for her. He had not allowed it.
He was already inside the house when the gunshot shattered the serenity of the afternoon, and his heart literally stopped. But then, from the kitchen on the main floor, he heard the sound of voices—Thayer’s and Linda’s—and realized they came from the infant monitor on the counter.
Grabbing the laundry basket she carried, he shoved his way past the terrified woman staring at him from midway down the stairs, and raced to the top floor, guided by the sound of the baby’s crying. Beyond the sliding glass doors, a cantilevered deck followed the curve of the house. The second he stepped outside, he heard Linda again.
“Why don’t you just shoot me and get it over with, Kirk?” she said, her voice drifting, thin with terror, from somewhere to the right. “It’s the only way you’re going to be rid of me.”
Don’t give him ideas, cookie! Mac telegraphed, flattening himself against the wall and rounding the corner silently. He’s crazy enough already.
He saw them at once. Saw Thayer climbing on top of the wide railing and dragging her up behind. He saw the pistol, too. Recognized its lethal capabilities.
He’d been a cop. He’d lost colleagues, faced death. Inflicted it even, when he had to. Never, though, in all those years, had he experienced anything to equate with the barren fear curdling his blood at that moment; a fear so profound that he recoiled from the shock of it.
Letting fly with a great roar of rage, he lunged forward and hurled the laundry basket. For an endless second, it seemed to hang in midair, its trajectory caught in a dream-like arc. Baby things fluttered lazily through the air. A little blanket bordered in pink satin glided like a parachute and draped itself over Thayer’s hair.
He half turned, took the weight of the basket on the shoulder, staggered a moment, then tumbled almost gracefully into space, still clutching his pistol. But Linda, thank God, fell the other way, landing with a soft thump on the balcony, and crawling forward on her hands and knees until Mac could scoop her up into the safety of his arms.
It was late afternoon before the police finished questioning them.
“We can leave now,” Mac told Linda, coming on her in the nursery where she sat in a rocking chair with the baby in her arms. “Pack up enough stuff to see her through the next few hours, and let’s get out of here.”
He might as well have been speaking in foreign tongues for all the notice she took, and he knew from her blank stare that the full effects of shock had finally hit.
“Hey, cookie,” he said gently, dropping to one knee beside her and stroking her face. “It’s over. Angela’s safe. Thayer won’t be bothering June, or you, or anyone else, ever again. You can go home now.”
“I’ve never heard a person die before. I thought he’d never stop screaming.”
“I know,” he said, wanting to take her in his arms again so badly he could taste it. “It takes some getting used to, even for a hard-bitten guy like me.”
“It’s my fault he’s dead.” A flicker of some dark emotion passed over her face. “He wanted me to jump over the railing, but I couldn’t.”
“I know, darlin’, and I’m glad you couldn’t.”
“Just looking down made me dizzy.”
“I know,” he said again. “You don’t like heights.”
She shuddered and brought the baby to snuggle against her neck. “Poor little baby! He startled her so badly when he fired his gun. She almost jumped out of her skin.”
“He scared the living daylights out of me, as well. I was afraid he’d shot you.”
“No,” she said. “He was just showing me how it worked. I thought it was a toy, you see.”
Some toy! “It was a nine millimeter Beretta, Linda. Pistols don’t come much deadlier than that. He meant business.”
Her eyes clouded with sorrow. “Poor Sadie!”
Poor Sadie nothing! “She’s the one who blew the whistle on us.”
“I know.” She bit her lip, trying not to cry. “Because she loved him. He was her baby. When she hears what’s happened to him—”
“You can’t worry about that,” he told her. “She’s got James to lean on, and you’ve got enough to deal with. Come on, now, cookie. Collect what you think the baby’s going to need, and let’s get moving. There’s a helicopter on standby in town, waiting to ship us over to LAX. We don’t want to miss that flight to Vancouver.”
“Will I have to come back here for the inquest?”
“No.” He cupped her elbow and urged her to her feet. “I’ll look after all that and tie up any loose ends. It’s part of what you hired me to do.”
Moving as if she were in a trance, she strapped the baby in her infant seat, and collected diapers, a couple of terry-cloth sleepers, a soother—all the stuff that new mothers carry with them wherever they go—while he went looking for formula, which he found already made up in bottles, in the refrigerator.
Finally, as the sun went down in an orange blaze, they reached the waiting helico
pter and were off. “Don’t look,” he said, as the island dropped away below them.
For the first time in what seemed like years, she smiled and turning toward him, fixed her lovely blue-green eyes on him instead. He couldn’t look her in the face. Wasn’t ready to confront the feelings she stirred in him. It would be a mistake to try to put them into words. He might end up saying things he’d regret later.
“Where’s your luggage?” he asked instead.
“I stowed it in a locker at the airport.”
“We’ll collect it first, then pick up the tickets.”
“How soon does our flight leave?”
“At eight. You’ll sleep in your own bed tonight.”
“Mom will be surprised to see us.”
“No, she won’t,” he said. “I phoned and told her the good news. The whole gang will be waiting at the other end, including June and your dad. It’ll be quite the home-coming.”
The baby started fussing just then, and kept her occupied for the duration of the trip. It wasn’t until they’d arrived at the airport and he handed her her tickets at the security gate that she said, “Where’s yours, Mac? And how come you didn’t check your bags with mine?”
“I’m not coming with you, cookie.”
“Why not?”
“Things to do here,” he said. “All those loose ends I mentioned.”
“Is that the only reason?”
“The job’s just about over, Linda.”
“To hell with the job!” she said, with something like her usual fire. “What about you and me?”
He shook his head. “This isn’t the time for any of that.”
Her shoulders slumped and her eyes filled with tears. “Is there ever going to be a time for us?”
“I can’t answer that. All I know is that we both need to step back from everything that’s happened this last week. It’s been a real roller-coaster ride, and we need to catch our breath. Return to normal, to the lives we thought we wanted before you landed on my beach and everything started going haywire.”
“You don’t care how I feel about you?” she asked, her voice barely above a whisper.
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