by Joyce Lamb
Today was different, though he didn't know what had made it different. All he knew was that she had just raced out of the newspaper, agitated and in such a hurry that he'd feared he would lose her before he got himself outside.
Pausing behind her, careful to keep his gaze away from her very attractive backside, he took the opportunity to regret leaving behind the coffee he'd been nursing.
And then she dashed into the street.
He saw the car coming and shouted a warning. But it was too late.
Her body hurtled almost gracefully across the hood of the car and struck the windshield. Momentum arrested, her body reversed direction, tumbling off the hood and landing with a splash in the street.
Mitch, shouting at stricken bystanders to call 911, was the first to get to her. She was on her side, her dark hair streaming across her face, blood from a scrape on her forehead mixing with the rain.
He expected her to be unconscious, but as he knelt beside her, she rolled onto her back. Seeing her eyes open -- a striking light gray-green -- startled him, and for a heart-stopping instant, he thought she was dead. But then she blinked and focused on his face.
"Don't approach her. Don't talk to her. Just tell me when you find her."
He'd been paid well to follow those guidelines, but under the circumstances he couldn't turn away.
He heard her draw in a wheezing breath, then another, as raindrops struck her face and ran in rivulets over her cheeks. She gave no indication of pain, her eyes glazed with shock. Her fingers sank into his jacket and gripped. "Help me ..."
He patted her hand. "Just take it easy. It'll be okay."
Sirens began to shriek in the distance, but the day suddenly seemed preternaturally quiet as Mitch gazed down at her face and felt her fingers clasp his. Her lips moved. He leaned close, and rain dripped from his hair and face and onto hers. Drops that clung to her eyelashes splattered when she blinked in slow motion. She was trying to tell him something.
He lowered his ear to her lips to hear better.
"Help ... me ... up."
"You need to stay still," he said, stripping off his jacket and spreading it over her. Giving her what he hoped was a reassuring smile, he stroked his hand over her wet hair. "Hang on. Help is coming."
The driver of the car dropped to his knees on the other side of her. "Is she okay? Oh, Jesus, I didn't even see her. She ran right out in front of me."
"Alex!"
Mitch glanced up to see a blond woman wedging her way through the crowd of onlookers. "Alex!" She fell to her knees next to Mitch, her hands shaking as she started to touch her fallen friend, seemed to think better of it and instead covered her mouth with both hands. "Oh God, oh God."
The driver of the car began to babble. "I couldn't stop. I didn't see her. She ran out in front of me."
"Jonah."
The name snapped the woman out of her hysteria, and she leaned over her, oblivious to the muddy water soaking her linen slacks. "What? Talk to me, Alex. What can I do?"
"Get Jonah." Her teeth started to chatter.
The blond woman nodded. "Yes, of course. I'll get him. Don't worry."
"Now. Get him ... now."
"Step aside, people, let us through."
Paramedics had arrived. Rising, Mitch stepped back, drawing the blond woman up with him. She started to protest, but he said, "Let them do their jobs."
She wouldn't back away more than a few steps, her gaze glued to the paramedics as they set their equipment down, removed Mitch's shielding jacket from Alaina and went to work.
Mitch bent to retrieve his jacket, and between the medical workers, he could see Alaina staring intently at her friend. Her lips moved, formed a word that made his stomach muscles clench, and then her eyes rolled back.
Please.
Chapter 2
"We were too late."
Addison Keller sank onto the black leather chair by the phone. Her hand that gripped the receiver was damp with sweat. "What do you mean too late?" she asked.
"Your sister bolted before we could get to her, but we'll have her in protective custody before the day is done."
"I told you this was delicate, that she'd run."
"Yes, I know. But something spooked her before we got to her, and she took off."
"And my nephew? Where is he?"
"We're also checking into that."
Her stomach did a flip. "You don't know?"
"We'll find out."
"You assured me that this wouldn't happen."
"We're doing the best we can, Mrs. Keller."
"I don't want you to do your best. I want you to do whatever it takes to protect them. That was the deal."
She punched the "off" button on the phone but didn't put it down. This was what powerlessness felt like, she thought. She was dependent on others to handle something very important to her, and if they screwed it up, there wasn't a damn thing she could do about it. She couldn't reprimand anyone or fire them. She was at the mercy of their incompetence.
Looking around at her dream house, with its sleek black furnishings, white marble floors and walls, glass and chrome tables and lamps, she took no pleasure in it. At one time, it had mattered to her that the house was perched on a hill in an exclusive Alexandria, Virginia, community that overlooked the Potomac River and Washington, D.C. A high, black, iron gate and fence kept unsavory characters off two acres of the most expensive land in the area. Unfortunately, she had discovered -- quite by accident -- that one of the most unsavory characters of all shared her bed.
She was still sitting there, nervous and fuming, when Layton walked in, a bounce in his step that had not been there that morning. He smiled as he paused before her, a drink in his hand that might have been alcohol or water.
"What's the trouble?" he asked.
She set the cordless phone back on its charger, concentrating on keeping her hand steady. "No trouble."
"You look stressed, dear. I don't like it when you look stressed."
She forced herself to smile as she helped herself to the glass in his hand. A sip told her it was water. She had hoped for alcohol. "You, on the other hand, look happier than you have in days," she said. "Weeks, actually."
Six weeks, to be exact. That was how long it had been since her father had died at the hands of a mugger while out for a morning jog. His will had changed Layton, who apparently had expected that he and Addison would inherit the entire estate, not the least of which was a software company worth several million dollars. It wasn't an unreasonable expectation. PCware would never have grown into the company it was if Layton had not devoted himself to it -- and his father-in-law -- years before.
But Paul Chancellor, for all his hard-ass, hell-bent ways, apparently had a soft spot that no one had suspected. He'd left one-third of everything to his youngest daughter and the grandson he had not seen since he was a newborn.
Reclaiming his water from Addison, Layton drained it with a clink of ice cubes. "You're right," he said. "I am happier."
"Care to share?"
He cocked his head, blond hair falling across his forehead. "Not yet. Celebrating too early could jinx my plan."
"A plan," she said, her tone casual even as her nerves tightened. "That sounds promising."
"Oh, yes. Promising, it is."
She pushed her lower lip out in a pout. "And you're going to make me wait? That hardly seems fair."
"This is too good to spoil, my dear. I prefer to knock your socks off when the time is right." He kissed her on the cheek before heading for the door. "I have some work to do."
Addison watched him go, resisting the urge to throw something at his back. Alone, she crossed to the black-lacquered bar, poured herself a goblet of red wine and swallowed most of it in one gulp. The mirrored wall behind the bar reflected her image back at her, and she narrowed her eyes in disdain.
In a year, she would be forty. And she looked it. Gray was seeping into black hair that sported an artificial sheen. Lines creased the skin arou
nd gray eyes that bore just a hint of green. Magazine articles had described her chin as sharp, her nose as pointed and her body as too thin. But her eyes were intelligent, her cheekbones the envy of models everywhere. She'd taken the good with the bad and smiled her way through the endless stream of philanthropic breakfasts, lunches, dinners, auctions and benefits. That was part of being the wife of a corporate CEO, just like her mother had been.
On the surface, she and Layton had it all -- money, prestige, influence -- thanks to the powerhouse that was PCware. But there was something else that Layton wanted, something she -- and all the money and power they had -- couldn't give him.
A son.
Several doctors and every fertility drug available had made no difference. She'd endured procedure after procedure, treatment after treatment, with no results.
Compounding the pain and frustration for them both was that another woman had given Layton a son. And not only had she taken his son away, but she and her child had inherited a third of everything that Layton had worked so hard to build.
But none of that justified the phone conversation Addison had overheard less than a month ago.
"Kill the bitch and bring the kid to me."
She'd approached Layton's study door to check on him. He'd been at work far longer than was usual, and she'd gotten worried. Plus, she'd wanted to talk to him again about adopting. He'd shot down the idea before, but she wasn't willing to give up so easily.
But those words -- "kill the bitch and bring the kid to me" -- spoken in a tone that she'd never heard her husband use, changed her world.
Kill the bitch.
She wanted desperately to have heard wrong.
But she knew in her gut that she hadn't. She had prayed for fifteen years that she was right about Layton, that he was everything she thought he was, everything that he seemed to be.
"Kill the bitch and bring the kid to me."
Now she knew she was wrong.
* * *
"Can you hear me, Alex?"
Pain rolled over her in pulsing, white torrents. Alaina struggled to stay above it even as darkness threatened to close over her head.
A young man's face swam into view. He had the greenest eyes she'd ever seen. "I'm Dr. Marks, Alex," he said. "Do you know where you are?"
She couldn't move. Panic tumbled with the pain, like tennis shoes in a dryer. Both the panic and the pain were blinding.
"I need you to relax, Alex," Dr. Marks said, his voice soothing. "The paramedics put you in a neck brace and strapped you to a backboard as a precaution."
He asked her questions, poking her with a pin in various spots, while nurses in gauzy yellow protective clothing buzzed around her, like bees without the black stripes and stingers.
Alaina tried to concentrate on the doctor's voice, but the pain was so intense, she couldn't think over it, couldn't breathe. The blood roared in her ears as black spots splattered her vision and grew. She fought them off, clinging to consciousness. She didn't have time for this. She had to get to Jonah before the feds did.
Someone shined a light into her eyes as Dr. Marks, leaning over her, released her from the backboard. "Looks like the worst of it is a dislocated shoulder, Alex. We're going to give you something for the pain, get you out of the neck brace, then slip the joint back into place."
Out of the corner of her eye, Alaina saw a nurse with a syringe. Alarm sank its teeth in.
"Something for the pain."
She couldn't get herself and Jonah out of town if she was drugged.
She grabbed the nurse's wrist, aware of how pathetically weak her grip was. "No."
Startled, the woman recoiled. Dr. Marks put a hand on Alaina's arm, his brow creased with concern. "It's morphine, Alex. It'll make you feel better."
She forced herself to be calm, to appear reasonable, even as agony sliced reason to shreds. "I don't want it."
"You need it," the doctor said.
"I don't want it," she repeated, her voice thin and hoarse.
"Put it away," he said to the nurse, then placed a gentle hand on Alaina's forehead, his fingers warm through a latex glove. "This is going to hurt like hell. You'll probably pass out."
But when she resurfaced, she thought, her head would be clear.
He searched her eyes, his kind and concerned. "Are you sure about this?"
"Do it."
"On the count of three."
He put pressure on her arm, and she writhed, trying to get away from him, escape the torment. Nausea rolled through her in undulating waves.
"One. Two." He jerked, and the joint snapped back into place as Alaina slid down into a black hole.
* * *
"She's coming back."
Alaina blinked up at the two faces above her, pain now a steady but tolerable throb in her shoulder. The cacophony that had filled her ears was gone. So were her clothes. A sheet and blanket were tucked around her.
"Alex?"
She focused on the doctor with the green eyes. He had a sweet face, the kind that would make it easy to confide in him. "Do you remember what happened to you?" he asked.
"Car got in my way."
He smiled. "That shoulder's going to be a pain, especially if you don't let me give you something to help you out."
"No, thanks."
"Do you have a history of drug abuse?"
"No."
Baffled, he made a note on a chart. "I don't get too many patients who turn down a good dose of morphine."
"Sorry." Feeling groggy, she wondered if they'd slipped her something anyway. They'd certainly managed to strip her fast enough. "How long was I out?"
"About ten minutes. Your clothes were wet, and we needed to get a good look at you to make sure we didn't miss anything."
Slotting the chart at the end of the gurney, he patted her uninjured arm. "We'll have to stabilize that shoulder, but the good news is there's no evidence you hit your head. You might have a couple cracked ribs, so we're going to get some X-rays. All in all, though, I'd say you were a very lucky woman today, Alex."
Chapter 3
Sitting at a stoplight in rush-hour traffic, Mitch rubbed his hands together in an effort to get them warm. He wasn't sure what to do. Technically, he needed to call his boss and tell him what had happened and where she was. But something about it all made him uneasy.
He'd worked for Layton Keller for two years, doing background checks on potential PCware executives. He liked Keller. The man didn't treat him like an employee. He talked to Mitch as one man to another. When Keller had asked him to track down the son who had been kidnapped fourteen years before by his mother, Mitch had been floored.
Keller had chuckled at his look of shock. "Not what you expected, huh?"
"I didn't know ..." Mitch trailed off, unsure how to respond. He felt a sudden affinity with the man. He hadn't seen his own son in three years, and while his ex-wife had not kidnapped the boy, she had made it very difficult to see him. Tyler was four the last time Mitch saw him, just before his ex-wife moved to another state with him. Mitch acknowledged that it was mostly his own fault that he had not seen Tyler in so long. But Shirley had made every visit so arduous, so painful, that Mitch had given up trying. It wasn't something he was proud of.
"I made a mistake," Keller said. "I was young and stupid and easily manipulated. The mother ... this is difficult to say ... but the mother of my son is my wife's sister."
That surprised Mitch, too, and for a moment, his image of Keller shifted. What kind of man slept with two sisters, got one pregnant and still managed to be married to the other? The scenario was incongruous with the man Mitch thought he knew.
Seeming to sense the waver in Mitch's opinion, Keller said quickly, "It happened while Addy and I were engaged. Quite a bit of alcohol was involved." He gave a rueful smile. "We've all had moments like that, haven't we?"
"I suppose," Mitch said, relaxing some. As a young man, he'd had his own alcohol-related bouts of stupidity. For some people, some bouts were
worse than others.
"After much apologizing and groveling," Keller went on, "I was damn lucky Addy forgave me. Unfortunately, once the child was born, things got ... ugly. There was a custody fight. I won't go into the details except to say that I won. But my sister-in-law kidnapped him, and I haven't seen my son since."
"I'm sorry, Mr. Keller."
"Please, call me Layton. I feel we've become friends. I trust you, Mitch."
"All right."
"I've kept this business low-key over the years, mainly because ... well, not only would the press have a field day, but it's painful." He paused, sipping from a glass of fizzy water on his desk. "I'd like to continue to keep all of this as low-key as possible."
"I understand."
"The truth is, I've had several private investigators searching over the years." He slid a folder across the glossy surface of the desk toward Mitch. "These are their reports, paltry as they are. My sister-in-law is a shrewd, ruthless woman. The only man who managed to track her down earned a knife in the gut. He's dead."
Mitch grimaced.
"Right," Keller said. "Not the kind of woman around whom you'd want to let down your guard."
"What about the FBI? I assume they've been looking for her, too?"
Keller shifted, just slightly, as if the question made him uneasy. "Actually, no. It's probably difficult for you to understand, given the circumstances, but my father-in-law was an intensely private man."
Mitch nodded. He'd met the late Paul Chancellor once. The exchange hadn't been significant enough for him to get a sense of the man, but he'd heard he was a strict boss with a penchant for micromanaging. Word was that while his passing at the hands of a mugger had been tragic, few PCware employees would miss his overbearing ways.
