Winchester Christmas Wedding

by B. J Daniels

  “You know what happened to the baby, don’t you,” McCall said. “That’s why you’re telling me this.”

  “Yes. I found him and got him back to the ranch.”

  “Are you telling me—”

  “TD Waters is my son.”

  “TAKE THE BACK ROAD, it’s faster,” Lizzy said as the pickup bounced over a bump.

  TD swung down the road, forcing her to hang on. She could feel them racing against time. Any moment the Winchester Ranch lodge might explode in a shower of flames and splinters, killing everyone inside. There’d been enough fertilizer in the shed alone to blow the lodge to smithereens. And apparently Janie had the training, so she knew exactly what she was doing.

  Lizzy quickly filled him in on what had happened with Anne and what Janie had told her. He reached over and took her hand for a moment, squeezing it, his look filled with both surprise and compassion when she told him that her father—and Janie’s—was Roger Collins.

  “Collins started his own little army with young people from Montana,” Lizzy said. “I wonder how many more of us there are in the agency?”

  “Enough that when there’s a problem, a few of us are expendable,” TD said as they came over a rise and saw in the distance a McCormick Ranch pickup nearly hidden in a coulee behind a stand of scrub junipers.

  TD threw on the brakes and they both jumped out armed and ready.

  No sign of Janie. They checked the back of the pickup. They could smell the diesel and the fertilizer and see where she had used a sled to take everything down the hillside behind the lodge.

  TD looked over at Lizzy. “You know this place better than I do. The place to put the bomb to do the most damage would be the basement. Is there one?”

  Lizzy shook her head. “Just a crawl space.”

  “That’s where she had to put it, then.” He didn’t have to tell her that the optimal place would be in a corner. In her training, they had piled fertilizer bags in one corner of a basement, piled sandbags around it. When the bomb went off, it had leveled the vacant house they’d used.

  She had to assume Janie had gotten the same training.

  They dropped off the hillside, coming down behind the lodge. Still no sign of Janie, but Lizzy spotted a plastic sled where it had been discarded behind a bush. As she approached the house, she saw where an air vent had been pulled off along the foundation of the lodge.

  TD had seen it, as well. There were tracks in the snow where Janie had squeezed through the small opening under the house. TD moved quickly to it and looked in.

  Lizzy knew before he turned to her that there was no way he was going to fit in the crawl space. The lodge had settled over the years. The only reason Janie had been able to was because she was small—like Lizzy.

  ALONE IN THE ROOM she’d abhorred for so long, Pepper finally forced herself to read what was written on the wall next to her.

  She’d expected the words scratched into the plaster would be cries for help or condemnation of her husband and herself for the lousy parents they had both been.

  To her shock, the words were songs or poems. She moved around the room, reading snippets of stories, thoughts, lyrical expressions of children left alone to their own devices.

  Had Call ever come up here and read these?

  “Mother?”

  She turned to find her son Brand standing in the doorway. “McCall told me to tell you it’s time to start getting ready.”

  For a moment she was confused, so many thoughts and regrets. “Ready?”

  “For the wedding? Are you all right?”

  McCall was still getting married here at the ranch? She’d thought that her granddaughter would never be able to forgive her. Tears welled in her eyes. She’d thought they would all leave, desert her as she had deserted them.

  She smiled up at her son. What a handsome man he was. What a handsome bunch the whole Winchester family was. And they would all be here. Worth, Brand, Virginia, the grandsons and their wives, Cyrus and his lovely Kate, Jack and Josie, Cordell and Raine, Jace and Kayley.

  Pepper realized she had to find TD and tell him. He had to be here, as well.

  “Yes,” she said as she let her son help her up. “The wedding. Don’t look so worried. It’s going to be wonderful.”

  WHERE THE HELL WAS TD Waters, Enid wondered as she paced in the kitchen.

  She rattled the nearly empty pill bottle in her apron as she paced. She stopped long enough to consider the small carafe of special coffee she’d made him. Maybe she should put in a couple more of the pills. TD was bigger than other men she’d drugged.

  “Finally,” she said, turning at the sound of the outside kitchen door swinging open. “I was about to…” The rest of whatever she planned to say died on her lips as she stared at the woman standing in the door.

  Janie McCormick.

  “What are you doing here?” Enid demanded, then felt a chill quake through her as the young woman closed and locked the kitchen door.

  “Just tell me where I can find Pepper Winchester, I need to see her.”

  Enid heard her voice quaver as she asked, “What should I say this is about?”

  “Tell her it’s about my step father.”

  Enid nodded dumbly. “I’m sure she’s getting ready for the wedding.”

  “Then I suggest you hurry up and find her. I’ll be waiting right here,” Janie said sitting down and considering the coffee carafe. She grabbed the handle and the cup Enid had put out for TD and was already pouring herself a cup before Enid could stop her.

  “Don’t drink that—”

  Janie gave her a look that said she didn’t take orders from Pepper Winchester’s maid. She took a drink, then another, practically gulping it down.

  That’s when Enid noticed that her clothing looked wet, as if she’d been rolling in the snow. It was also dusty, covered with cobwebs. Where had the woman been?

  Janie finished the cup of coffee and started to pour herself another. “Didn’t I tell you to get Pepper?” she snapped.

  “What’s in it for me?” Enid asked, wondering how long it would take for the drugs to take effect.

  Janie actually smiled. “So everything I’ve heard about you is true. I’ll give you a hundred bucks to get your boss, how’s that?”

  “I’ll take two hundred.”

  Janie’s smile disappeared in a heartbeat. “Don’t push your luck. You have no idea what I am capable of.”

  “Nor you me,” Enid said. “Two hundred. I’ll be right back with Pepper.”

  TD LOOKED FROM THE OPENING to the crawl space to Lizzy. He was no fool. He could see that the lodge had settled over the years and there was no way he was going to be able to maneuver under there.

  “I can do it,” Lizzy said. “I’ve had bomb training.”

  He swallowed back his fear and nodded as he met her gaze. “I’ll get the family out of the lodge.” He wanted to say so much more, but there wasn’t time. “Just be careful. And one more thing. I was hoping you’d be my date for the wedding. After all, I’m a Winchester. I would think that means I’m invited.”

  She laughed and shook her head. “You’re that sure there’s still going to be a wedding?”

  “Just a little time around the Winchesters and I’ve learned one thing for certain. They are one tough, resilient family—and I have every faith in you that you’ll find the bomb and defuse it.”

  Their gazes locked for a moment. “I’ll see you at the wedding, then,” she said and knelt down to squirm into the hole.

  TD saw her disappear and, with a prayer on his lips, took off running toward the front of the lodge.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Lizzy crawled only a few feet under the house and stopped to listen. She held her breath, afraid Janie was under there with her. After a few moments, she heard nothing. She turned on the headlamp and shone it into the cold, cobwebbed darkness.

  What she hadn’t told TD was that she hated cramped spaces. Hated spiders and webs and creepy-crawly things
that lived in the cold dampness beneath houses.

  It stemmed back to one time when she and Janie and Anne were kids. Janie had locked her and Anne in an old root cellar on the McCormick Ranch. She remembered the smell, the cobwebs that brushed across her face and the feeling that something was crawling on her.

  Forcing herself past that memory, Lizzy saw that the space under the house was even more cramped than she and TD had thought. She barely had enough room over her head to move. She was going to have to crawl on her belly like a snake.

  As Lizzy wriggled toward the first corner of the lodge, she tried to ignore the spiderwebs that hung like lace from the floorboards. Twice she had to stop to brush them from her face, trying hard not to panic as she told herself there was something down here much more scary than spiderwebs.

  She stopped to catch her breath, shining the light ahead. Nothing in that corner. She turned her head. The light picked up movement. Her heart thundered in her chest as the beam caught the beady red eyes of half a dozen rats.

  She shuddered as something scampered past her and had to clamp a hand over her mouth not to scream as she felt it run across her legs.

  The light caught on something in the corner. Sandbags. Her pulse jumped. In the training class they’d used sandbags around bags of fertilizer. She crawled toward the corner—and the bomb.

  AS TD NEARED THE LODGE, he saw no sign of Janie, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t still here somewhere.

  He burst through the front door, then slowed. He wanted to alert everyone in the house without alerting Janie. She could decide to set off the bomb early if she knew he and Lizzy were there to stop her.

  Before he could decide where to go first, he encountered Enid coming from the kitchen. “We have to get everyone out of the house now,” he said and saw at once that he would have to give this old woman a reason or she would dig in her heels. “But I don’t want them to panic. I believe Janie McCormick has planted a bomb under the lodge.”

  Enid’s eyes widened. “That little bitch.”

  “Can you get Pepper out? Tell me where I can find the others.”

  “Upstairs in the north wing. Pepper’s in the south wing. McCall’s in a room down there, too.”

  “Hurry, but remember, if they panic and make a lot of noise, Janie could decide to blow the place early.”

  Enid nodded, but looked as if her thoughts were elsewhere as she glanced back down the hall toward the kitchen.

  “Enid, forget whatever you have cooking in the kitchen. Get Pepper out of here. I want everyone to gather out front until we’re sure there is no one left in the house.”

  “Fine,” Enid said, shooting another glance toward the kitchen. She got a strange smile on her face. “Better find Pepper. She is going to be furious.”

  The first room TD found was Virginia’s. It was early enough that no one had gotten dressed for the wedding yet.

  He told Virginia what he’d told Enid, since she was another one who was too stubborn to just take his word for anything, maybe especially because he was just the cook’s helper.

  “Quietly get out of the house. The others are waiting for you outside.”

  She nodded and grabbed her coat before taking off down the hall.

  Brand heard TD knocking at Worth’s bedroom door. He stuck his head out of his room. “What’s going on?”

  “Go with Virginia. She’ll tell you. We have to get everyone out of the house.” He opened Worth’s door. The bed was empty. A tux was laid out on the bed. He quickly checked the bathroom. Empty.

  TD checked the other rooms on the wing to make sure Worth hadn’t taken a different room last night.

  No Worth. Where the hell was he?

  JANIE HEARD THE COMMOTION out in the main lodge and realized Enid wasn’t coming back with Pepper. She pushed up from the table, surprised that her legs felt like rubber. Staggering to the door, she stumbled out, almost falling. What is wrong with me? It came in a flash. That damned Enid. She…she…drugged me?

  But how had the old hag even known she was coming here? She would kill Enid when she found her. She would…

  Janie laughed. She wouldn’t have to do anything. Once the bomb—

  Realization cut through the drugged fog that was swirling in her brain. She would have to work fast now. She could feel whatever Enid had put in that coffee trying to drag her down.

  Clinging to the wall, Janie worked herself around the abandoned side of the house. Behind her, she heard the front door open and the Winchesters streaming out. Someone had told them about the bomb. But they were still close enough to the house that if she could just get the fuse lit…

  She reached the back corner of the house, her brain still functioning sufficiently that she congratulated herself for going with the longer fuse. She’d done that so she would have a chance to get away. Now, though…

  “Time for plan B,” she said to herself as she sat down, leaning back against the side of the house next to the end of the fuse, and pulled out her satellite phone. She dialed the number, then took the lighter from her other pocket and flicked it until she had a flame.

  She could feel herself slipping away. There was one person she needed to say goodbye to before she lit the fuse.

  “Daddy?” she said when he answered.

  “Janie, how many times have I told you not to call me that?”

  She ignored his rebuke. She was about to die but she wanted him to know what a good job she’d done. She wanted him to be proud of her. “I did it.”

  “You took care of all of them?” he asked, sounding relieved.

  “I thought you’d like to hear the bomb go off.”

  “Janie, I told you—”

  “I had to change my plan. I had to kill Anne and burn down the house. I had to—” The rest caught in her throat as she looked up and saw Worth Winchester standing over her with a gun in his hand. “Daddy, I have to go now. I love you.”

  “Janie—” She dropped the phone, but held tight to the lighter as she met Worth Winchester’s gaze.

  “What the hell are you doing?” he asked.

  Janie realized she was crying. She made a swipe at her tears with her free hand. She wished she could get to her feet, but it was too late for that. The drug had her almost immobile now. “I’m going to blow your whole family to kingdom come.”

  “What?” His gaze widened and then he saw the short length of fuse sticking out from under the house—and the flame of the lighter in her hand next to it. “Put that down. Now!”

  She smiled. Or at least she thought she did as she touched the lighter to the fuse.

  LIZZY FLINCHED AT THE SOUND of a gunshot. It had come from outside. Had TD found Janie? Or— She couldn’t let herself think about that now as she crawled to the corner where Janie had left the bomb.

  Behind the sandbags were two fifty-pound bags of fertilizer—just like the ones she’d seen in the shed at the McCormick Ranch. Her heart was threatening to beat out of her chest. She had to calm down and find the detonator.

  She shone the flashlight around her. More eyes watching her. Making a swipe with her hand, she cleared more spiderwebs from in front of her face and tried to get up on all fours to search for the detonator.

  At first it had been freezing cold under the house. Now sweat ran into her eyes. She thought of Janie dragging the sand and fertilizer bags under here—and remembered the maniacal strength the woman had had even as a girl.

  Something glinted from one of the bags of fertilizer. Lizzy moved closer, all of her training making her forget the rats and the spiders as she looked for the device Janie had used that would detonate the fertilizer.

  That’s when she saw the line of fuse running along the wall. She followed the fuse with the headlamp down the side of the wall to an air vent where it disappeared outside at the back of the house.

  She smelled it even before she saw the fuse burning. Janie had lit the fuse. It burned toward her.

  Lizzy felt panic rise in her as she dragged her gaze f
rom the burning fuse and back to the bomb. She had to find the detonator now!

  TD HEARD THE GUNSHOT and froze for a second. He couldn’t tell where it had come from. He listened for another and hearing none, ran down to the south wing. Again no Worth.

  Who’d fired the gunshot? Lizzy? Janie? He couldn’t bear to think of Lizzy down there under the house just below the floorboards and maybe not alone. Had she found the bomb? Would she be able to defuse it in time? If Janie was down there—

  He shoved the thought away as he hurried downstairs. He checked to make sure everyone else had gotten out and then ran outside to where the family had gathered. He had no choice but to get the largest number of people out of danger first before he could check on Lizzy.

  “Is everyone here?” he asked, knowing it wouldn’t be long before more of the family would be arriving for the wedding.

  “What’s going on?” the sheriff demanded. She was wearing jeans and a Western shirt, but it was clear she had started fixing her hair before she’d been interrupted.

  TD pulled her aside. “I’m a federal agent. I need you to stay with your family. Get them all in the vehicles and drive to the other side of the rise and keep them there. Don’t let anyone else come in. Can you do that?”

  “I can as soon as you tell me if what Enid told me is true,” she said.

  “We have reason to believe Janie McCormick planted a bomb under the lodge,” he said.

  “We?”

  “There is another agent looking for it as we speak. Can I trust you to take command of this bunch and get them a safe distance from the house?”

  She nodded and turned toward her family. “All right, everyone—”