by Lisa Childs
But as desperate as she’d been for air, she hadn’t wanted to see anyone else. Or more important, she hadn’t wanted anyone else to see her.
To see how upset she was…
She’d had enough sympathy she didn’t deserve. Being married to her had cost Emery his life. The bomb must have been meant for her—since it had been in her vehicle.
But why would anyone want her dead?
What had she done? Not that everyone liked her. Her family hadn’t. And most of Cole’s family didn’t like her either. Not only did they suspect that Maisy might be another Bentler heir but they also did not like her close relationship with Xavier. All of Cole’s cousins were as mean to her as her own had been. And she’d left her child alone in that house.
She needed to get back to Maisy and to Xavier.
As Shawna hurried past another car, she realized it was running, too, as was the one next to that, and the next one.
Fumes began to fill the garage. Exhaust. Carbon monoxide.
Why were the vehicles running?
Her eyes began to tear, and she coughed and sputtered for breath. Uncertain where the door to the house was, she turned back toward the outside door. She continued to cough as she rushed to it. Her hands trembling, she grabbed the knob.
But it didn’t turn. She tugged and pulled at it. But it didn’t budge. Someone had locked the door—or blocked it—from the outside. She was trapped. Someone had trapped her inside a garage that was quickly filling with carbon monoxide. Someone definitely wanted her dead.
She could not die. She couldn’t leave her child an orphan. But then Maisy wouldn’t really be an orphan. She had a father still. Would Cole even want her?
Would he ever forgive Shawna for keeping her from him all these years? At the moment, his forgiveness was the last thing she needed to think about. Survival was paramount.
She was not the helpless damsel in distress Cole had once accused her of being. She was going to fight like hell to get out of here.
She was going to fight for Maisy…
*
I cannot live with what I’ve done. I am the one who planted the bomb that killed my husband. I wanted out of my marriage. Now I want out of my life.
Using the eraser of a pencil, the killer tapped out the message on the keys of Shawna Rolfe-Little’s laptop keyboard. It would have to suffice. There was no way to print out the paper and have it signed—even if Shawna could have been coerced to sign it.
It was probably too late for that. Shawna might already be dead. She should already be dead.
If only Emery hadn’t been the one to start her car…
It would have already been over, but then Little would still be alive. The killer stared at the urn on the table in the library and felt no regret over his death. It wasn’t as if Emery Little had been an innocent man. He’d been causing problems as well, problems that had pushed up the killer’s timetable.
The plan had been to send Emery Little to prison, not the grave. Little was supposed to have been held responsible for Shawna’s murder.
Plans could be adjusted, though. Now Shawna would be held responsible for Little’s death and for her own. And Cole and his damn friends could return to wherever the hell they’d come from.
Cole turning up at the funeral had been a surprise. An unpleasant surprise.
But once Shawna was dead, he would have no reason to stay. She had to be dead.
Chapter 4
Where the hell is she?
Cole hadn’t searched the entire house for her. The old mansion was too big for him to have investigated every nook and cranny. He had hit the main rooms first—the living room and dining room and parlors where the other mourners and unfortunately some of his scowling family members were hanging out. But he’d caught no sight of Shawna nor had any of his fellow bodyguards reported having seen her. They were all searching for her now, too.
Unsuccessfully.
How the hell had she just disappeared?
Cole retraced his steps to the library where he’d lost her. The pocket doors were open again, so more people—some of Cole’s contemptuous cousins and his mom and his stepdad—had gone inside to pay their last respects to the urn of Emery Little’s ashes.
He sucked in a breath at the sight of his mother. Tall and blonde and slender, Tiffani still looked like the pageant queen that she’d once been, the one who’d turned his father’s head while working as an intern in his company. She didn’t look old enough to be Cole’s mother, but then she’d rarely acted like it.
She’d taken more to Shawna than she ever had him. They even used to work with the cheerleaders at the high school. He wondered if they still did that, but he didn’t care enough to ask; that would have required approaching his mother. Since his father had died, they struggled to have any conversation at all, let alone a civil one.
His cousins—the female twins—Lori and Tori scowled at him. They tried to look like his mom by bleaching their hair and using colored contacts. They looked like caricatures of her instead. Then there were his male cousins, Bobby and Reggie, who were a little older than he was but still dressed and acted like frat boys, even at a funeral. They completely ignored him the way they’d done since they were all kids.
Jeffrey Inman, his stepfather, was the only one who paid him any attention. He waved at him and smiled. He seemed to be a nice man, and was also a former vet, retired now from the Army. But instead of heading toward him, Cole backed away from the open pocket doors.
Manny was in the library, too. Although the dark-haired bodyguard didn’t know anyone beyond the descriptions of them that Cole had shared over the years, he was carrying on a couple of conversations. The bleached-blonde twins had latched onto him as if they had a chance with a man who was dating a supermodel. But Manny was friendly. He could talk to anyone or no one at all. As his roommate, Cole often heard the other man talking in his sleep.
At least he could sleep.
Cole struggled with that, with shutting off his mind enough to rest. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw things he spent his waking hours trying to forget. And it wasn’t just the things that had happened during their missions.
He saw Shawna, too.
He saw way too much of Shawna when he closed his eyes. But when he opened his eyes, she was never there, never lying in bed next to him like he wanted her. Naked. Flushed with passion. Or smiling and affectionate. She was gone—just like she was now.
He realized that while he’d been searching for her, he hadn’t seen her daughter either. They were probably together. Hadn’t she sent Maisy off to check on his grandfather?
He backed out of the library and headed down the hallway toward the kitchen. The main meal had been set out as a buffet in the enormous dining room, but Cole had already been there and, as well as Shawna and Maisy, he hadn’t seen Xavier either. Of course it would have been more difficult for the old man to sneak treats off the buffet. The excess bakery goods had been left sitting out in the kitchen, and his grandfather’s sweet tooth was legendary.
But when Cole stepped into the kitchen, he found it empty, as well. The cook and servers must have been in the dining room, restocking the buffet. Some of the cookies were gone, but for one that Cole crunched under his foot against the tile floor. He glanced down and noticed a few more had fallen onto the tiles near the long island that ran between the rows of cabinets on each wall. As he leaned down to pick them up, he noticed little feet sticking out between two bar stools pulled up beneath the granite counter.
He dropped to his haunches and met the blue-eyed gaze of the little girl who sat with her back against the cabinets and her knobby knees pulled up nearly to her chin. Cookie crumbs clung to her lips and liberally peppered her black tights. Although it was obvious, he asked, “Whatcha doing?”
Tears welled in her eyes. She squeezed her lids shut, but some of those tears slipped through her thick black lashes. Cole gasped as he felt that sensation he used to feel when Shawna cried, like someone was
squeezing his heart in a tight fist. Needing to comfort her—and maybe himself as well—he scooped her out from beneath the counter and into his arms. Maisy’s eyes opened and she stared up at him through her tears.
“Are you okay?” he asked, then grimaced at his insensitivity. Of course she wasn’t okay. She’d lost her father. He had to make sure she didn’t lose her mother, too.
But everyone was searching for Shawna. Someone would find her soon—probably more easily than he would since he was the one from whom she’d run away.
“That was a stupid thing to ask you, huh?” he remarked.
She blinked again, but no more tears fell. “Why?” she asked.
“Because I know what’s wrong,” he said. And it wasn’t just the fact that she had probably eaten too many cookies. “My dad died, too.”
She lifted her hand to his cheek like she had in the library. But now she was offering him comfort. “I’m sorry,” she said. “That’s what everyone keeps saying to me…like it’s their fault.” Her blue eyes widened with fear. “Is it?”
It was somebody’s fault, unless Emery Little had set that bomb himself. And Cole doubted that. The man had had everything to live for. He’d had a great job with students who adored him. And he had a wonderful little girl. And he’d had Shawna.
Where the hell was Shawna?
A chill chased down his spine as he thought of her and of what Maisy had just said. Had her father’s killer apologized to her? Was he or she somebody in this very house?
“I don’t know whose fault it is,” he answered honestly. “But I will find out.” Damn. He’d just made another promise, but for some reason he felt compelled to take care of her, just like he’d felt compelled to take care of Shawna when they’d first met so many years ago.
“Do you know who killed your daddy?” she asked.
He shook his head. “Nobody killed him.” Except himself. “It was an accident.”
His father had been so driven, so determined to get as much out of life as possible that he’d lived it on the edge. It shouldn’t have been so surprising that he had eventually fallen off. Literally. He’d lost control of his sports car on a sharp turn and had fallen off a cliff. There hadn’t been much more of him left than there had been of Emery Little.
“My dad died several years ago,” he told her. “It gets easier.”
“Easier?” she parroted, her little brow puckered with confusion.
It probably hadn’t been the right word to use.
“Better.” He shrugged. “I don’t know. It just gradually hurts less.”
She released a little breath. “That’s good. Will Mommy hurt less, too?”
That tight fist squeezed his heart again. He hated to think of Shawna in pain, especially and selfishly, over another man. “Yeah, eventually.”
The little girl’s wide eyes narrowed as she studied his face. Did she see his jealousy? She was much too astute. How could she be barely five years old?
“She’ll be okay,” he assured the little girl.
“But aren’t you supposed to be bodyguarding her?” Maisy asked.
“Well…” That was damn hard to do when you couldn’t find the body you were supposed to be guarding.
“You promised,” she reminded him.
“Yes, I did,” he said. But he wasn’t certain if that was a promise that Shawna would make it possible for him to keep. “But I don’t know where she’s gone.”
“I know,” she said.
But before she could tell him, Manny burst into the kitchen, a laptop tightly clenched in his hands. “There you are!” he exclaimed. “You’ve got to see this.” Then he noticed the little girl in Cole’s arms and his face flushed. “But she shouldn’t—if she can read.”
“What? What is it?” Maisy asked.
But Cole put her down on the floor and held the laptop above her head, just in case she could read already. He shook his head at the supposed suicide note where Shawna admitted her guilt. “No…”
It wasn’t possible.
If Shawna was capable of killing anyone, it would have been him when he’d broken their engagement six years ago. She had been furious with him then. More furious than he had ever seen her…even more than when she’d stormed out on him a short time ago.
“What is it?” Maisy asked again as she tugged on his arm.
“Nothing,” Cole said. Then he remembered. “You said you know where your mother went—tell me!”
At the urgency in his voice, the color drained from the little girl’s already pale face, and her bottom lip quivered as if she was about to cry. That was the last thing Cole had wanted to cause. He wanted to make sure she didn’t have any reason to cry, ever again.
He dropped to his knees beside her. “It’s okay,” he said. “You can tell me where your mother is. Remember—I’m supposed to be bodyguarding her.”
He could only hope that when he found Shawna, it wasn’t too late to save her. Why would the killer have written a suicide note to frame her, unless that killer was damn certain that she was already dead?
*
Panic pressed on Shawna’s lungs, which already burned from the carbon monoxide filling the garage. Thankfully the building was big, with a tall ceiling, or she might have died already.
Eyes streaming from the toxic fumes, she blinked furiously as she searched through the darkness and smoke for the control panel that opened the overhead doors from the inside. She found it near the service door to the house—the one that, just like the back door, would not open. It had been locked somehow from the outside.
Her fingers shaking, she pressed the buttons for all the overhead doors but none of them budged. And of course the lights were off. Someone must have cut the power to the garage.
There was no way out without knocking down a door. And she just wasn’t strong enough. Cole’s voice echoed inside her head, taunting her like her cousins used to taunt her. Damsel in distress. Damsel in distress.
No. It wasn’t that she wasn’t strong enough to break down a door. She wasn’t big enough. She was stronger than Cole knew, stronger for which he’d given her credit. And while she couldn’t bust her way out of the garage physically, she could do it mentally.
Couldn’t she?
Her vision began to blur and not just from the smoke and the darkness. Her lungs burning, she was beginning to lose consciousness. She couldn’t do that or she would lose it all.
Her life. Maisy…
Thinking of her sweet little girl renewed her strength. She stumbled through the smoke toward one of those cars and pulled at the driver’s door. It was locked with the damn keys in the ignition.
She stumbled into another bay, toward another door, but it was locked, as well. How had someone managed to start all the vehicles without Astin knowing?
Where was the chauffeur?
She stumbled toward another vehicle but tripped as her feet hit something. And she fell. A body broke her landing, saving her from the concrete on which Astin lay. His hat had been knocked off, and blood spattered the ground and the side of the nearest vehicle.
“Oh, no!” she gasped. And more tears burned her eyes, but these weren’t from the fumes. Astin was such a sweet man. And like anyone who worked for Xavier, he had become part of the family—dysfunctional though it was. She felt his wrist, hoping to find a pulse. And her breath shuddered out when she found one, albeit weak. She leaned closer, making sure that he was still breathing.
He was. But barely. He needed air. And so did she. She wasn’t certain she would have been able to perform CPR, had he stopped breathing.
She had to get them out.
She pushed herself to her feet again and as she did, her hands scraped the concrete and something metal. A crowbar lay next to the chauffeur’s body. She wrapped her fingers around it but it was harder to lift than she’d thought it would be.
And she could barely think…
Her mind was so foggy, like the air in the garage. She couldn’t see. She could bare
ly stand, her legs threatened to fold beneath her. But she couldn’t give up.
She had to find a way out. A way back to her daughter.
Gathering all her strength, she lifted the crowbar and swung it at the car door. It bounced off the car window and fell from her grasp, clamoring to the concrete beside the vehicle.
What the hell was the glass made of? Why wouldn’t it break? Was she just that weak?
Coughing and sputtering, she dropped to her knees to pick the bar back up. But she couldn’t summon the strength to stand again. Her legs—all of her muscles—felt like jelly.
She was so weak and foggy-headed that she thought of lying down beside Astin. Wouldn’t Cole come to her rescue like he always had?
Then again, she’d told him she didn’t want his protection. She didn’t need his help. She’d lied to him and to herself. But she’d had no idea—until now—just how much danger she was in…
The bomb hadn’t been a mistake, except that it had claimed Emery’s life instead of hers. Someone clearly wanted her dead. And she was afraid that someone might be about to get his wish.
*
“We need a crowbar,” Manny said as he struggled with the service door on the side of the garage. Fumes seeped out from beneath it into the mudroom that separated the house from the garage in which vehicles rumbled. Someone had locked the door from the inside, and he could guess who.
But it was clear that Cole, who’d shaken his head as he’d read the suicide note, refused to accept it. Maybe he was right to be suspicious of it, though.
Because it wasn’t a lock on the inside keeping the door closed but a lock on the outside, a lock that had been filled with some kind of industrial strength glue. It stuck to Manny’s palms as he wrestled with the knob. He cursed and kicked at the door.
Fortunately, it wasn’t the only one in the mudroom. Another door opened onto the sidewalk to the driveway. Cole rushed through it and around to the front of the garage. Smoke furled beneath the overhead doors, too, seeping out.
Cole tugged at the handle of one, but he couldn’t raise it. And as he struggled with it, Manny heard one of those rumbling engines roar as someone pressed on an accelerator. Wood splintered and tires squealed as the vehicle barreled through the door.
