Undercover Dad

by Charlotte Douglas

  Jason raised his weapon until it pointed between Stephen’s eyes. The rogue agent’s finger flexed on the trigger.

  “Give it up.” Stephen thought fast. He couldn’t risk shooting Jason. Only he knew where Jessica was hidden. “If Rachel or I don’t check in within the next five minutes, this mountain will be swarming with FBI and sheriff’s deputies. You’ll never get away.”

  He exhaled in relief and edged toward Rachel when Jason relaxed his trigger finger.

  “I’m not going to jail,” Jason said, his face contorted with anger and fear. “My mother always called my father a jailbird. I won’t be like him.”

  “Just give me the gun,” Stephen said, “and tell me where you hid the baby. Then we’ll sort this all out in Atlanta.” He used every bit of self-control to keep from pulling the trigger and blowing Jason away for what he’d done to Rachel. The sight of her still, crumpled form filled Stephen with warring emotions of red-hot anger at her shooter and icy fear for her suvival.

  Jason shook his head. “I’m not going to jail.”

  Stephen stepped closer. If he could somehow disarm Jason without shooting him—

  With the lightning-quick reflexes that had made him a tough opponent at racquetball, Jason whipped the barrel of his pistol against his temple. “I’m not going to jail.”

  The shot reverberated through the stillness and echoed off the surrounding mountains.

  With a look of astonishment, Jason crumpled to the porch.

  Stephen knelt beside him. “The baby, Jason. Where is Jessica?”

  He felt for a pulse, but Jason’s body was already cooling in the frigid night air. With a terrible sense of failure, he shoved to his feet and leaped the steps to where Rachel lay sprawled on the front path.

  He knelt and gathered her in one arm, almost sobbing in relief at the warmth of her skin, pulled out his cell phone with his other hand and requested an ambulance and FBI backup from 911.

  Rachel stirred and opened her eyes.

  “Be still,” he ordered. “An ambulance is on the way.”

  She struggled to sit up and rubbed her chest. “I don’t need an ambulance. My vest stopped the bullet, but I’m going to have a doozie of bruise.”

  Her glance fell on Jason, lying on the porch. With a cry of distress, she scrambled to her feet and ran toward him. Stephen followed and watched her check the pulse at Jason’s neck.

  She raised her face to meet Stephen’s gaze, and her eyes were wide with panic. “He’s dead.”

  Stephen’s stomach knotted. He was sorry for Jason’s death, no matter what crimes he’d committed. “He said he wasn’t going to jail.”

  Rachel fought back a heartrending sob. “And now Jessica’s lost. We’ll never find her in time without Jason to lead us to where she is.”

  Her daughter—their daughter—was somewhere on the mountain, shivering in the cold, at the mercy of the elements and wild animals. With a shudder he remembered the bark they’d heard earlier. Had a wild dog already discovered her?

  “We’ll find her.” Stephen dialed 911 again to ask for a search party. “I promise you, Rachel. I’ll find her if it’s the last thing I do.”

  WITHIN TWENTY MINUTES half a dozen agents, who had followed them from the rest area and waited at the Glenville post office, filled the cabin. Rachel stood on the porch, oblivious of the cold, watching the searching beams of flashlights and listening to the shouts of the men who combed the mountainside. Her chest ached from the impact of Jason’s bullet, but that pain was insignificant compared to her agony over her missing baby.

  Deputies from the Jackson County Sheriffs Office, their tracking dogs and dozens of volunteers searched for Jessica, but it was a big mountain. Covering the entire area would take hours, and with the cold increasing, Jessica wouldn’t survive much longer.

  Her misery was too deep for tears. If Jessica wasn’t found soon...

  The door to the cabin opened and closed, and familiar arms surrounded her.

  “You’ll freeze out here,” Stephen said, his breath warm against her face. “Come inside where there’s some heat.”

  “If they won’t let me search, the least I can do is keep watch.”

  He seemed to understand that she wouldn’t be swayed. “I’ve given a full report of what happened to Jack Roche.”

  “How was Jason Bender mixed up in all this?”

  “Jason was the mastermind. He planned the Maitland kidnapping.”

  “But he was one of us. Why would he do such a thing?”

  “Greed, envy?” Stephen shrugged. “With Jason dead, we’ll never know for sure.”

  “He didn’t really get a call from that informant about Weed and Bubba?”

  “Evidently not. After we found Margaret Maitland and she identified her kidnappers, Jason knew he had to kill them to protect himself.”

  “And Harold Maitland,” Rachel said. “Was he involved?”

  “According to Jack, Maitland’s clean. His New York alibi checks out.”

  “Did Jason kill Milton Carver?”

  He nodded. “Carver and Ralph Fulton both knew about Jason’s involvement with Weed and Bubba. For a while, Jason managed to keep them quiet with promises of staging another kidnapping and cutting them in on the big money.”

  “Then you arrested Milton in Atlanta.”

  “Milton gave up Jason,” Stephen said, “hoping to get a lighter sentence for the arsons he’d committed. But Jason shot him before he could make an official statement.”

  “You were the only one Milton had talked to?”

  “That’s why I was such a danger to Jason. He’d already gone to the Okefenokee and shot Ralph Fulton. With me—and you—out of the way, Jason must have figured he’d be safe.”

  “How did you know he was after me, too?” Rachel asked.

  “After Milton Carver was shot in Atlanta, Jason got the drop on me while I was searching for the sniper.”

  “You talked to him then?”

  He nodded. “With my amnesia, I didn’t remember until I saw Jason again on the porch here. In Atlanta, he bragged about what he’d done and told me he was going to kill you, too.”

  “Did he say why?”

  “To cover all his tracks. He said since you’d worked the Maitland kidnapping with me, you might be able to figure out his involvement. He couldn’t risk letting you live.”

  Rachel shook her head in disbelief. “He wasn’t thinking straight. Didn’t he know by killing both of us, he’d have the Bureau going over every case we ever worked together?”

  Stephen tightened his arms around her. “Jason hadn’t been thinking straight for a long time, or he would never have attempted the Maitland kidnapping.”

  “Jason was the one who shot you in the arm?”

  “After he shot me, I managed to get away. That’s when I called you to meet me here.”

  Rachel leaned against him. “So many people dead for one man’s greed. And now Jessica—”

  Stephen shook her gently. “We’ll find her. I’m going out now to help search.”

  “She’s so tiny, so helpless.” Her voice caught in her throat. “Please find her.”

  He turned her to face him, and his dark gaze bore into hers. “I won’t come back without her.”

  Before she could speak, he released her and strode off the porch and around the cabin.

  The cold ate into her bones, and she tried not to think how icy the ground was or of Jessica lying exposed to the freezing air.

  “Cry, Jess,” she said aloud. “Scream your tiny lungs out so we can hear you.”

  The long minutes dragged by, and still no one returned with her baby. Jack Roche brought her coffee and forced her to drink the hot liquid. The dejected expression on his face told her he knew Jessica’s time was running out, but neither of them spoke of it.

  The searchers had long ago disappeared over the ridge and out of sight, working their way down the mountain. Occasionally the howl of a bloodhound drifted up the slope, but no one ret
urned with her baby.

  Stephen would never forgive her. She had kept his child a secret, and now, before he’d had a chance to know and love her...

  Stop it! You can’t give up hope.

  Rachel was too pragmatic to believe in miracles. It had been more than an hour since the search had begun, closer to two hours since Jason had told them about hiding Jessica. And he had left her on the mountain long before then.

  But as much as her practical brain insisted Jessica’s time had run out, Rachel refused to believe it in her heart. She would hold her daughter again, see her sunny smile, hear her silly laugh.

  She couldn’t live if she didn’t.

  She huddled in despair against a porch post. Gradually, she detected a distant noise, coming from down the mountainside behind the cabin.

  The clamor of the engine grew louder.

  Suddenly a large tractor chugged around the corner and parked in the front yard. Clayton Jones hopped from the driver’s seat and held his arms out to Stephen, who sat perched behind.

  Stephen handed Clayton something, hopped to the ground, then retrieved the bundle from the farmer. Cradling the parcel in his arms, Stephen started up the path toward Rachel.

  Rachel’s heart froze in her throat.

  Stephen had found Jessica, just as he’d promised.

  But was she alive?

  With a strangled cry, she leaped from the porch and ran to meet him.

  “Clayton’s German shepherd ran off over an hour ago,” Stephen said. “When Clayton found Rusty a few minutes ago, he was curled around Jessica, keeping her warm. Clayton didn’t know who she belonged to until he found me searching the mountainside as he was taking her home to call the authorities.”

  “Is she all right?”

  “She’s been safe and warm all this time with Rusty.”

  He folded back the blanket, and Jessica peered out at her with dark eyes so like her father’s. Rachel grabbed her daughter and held her close. Over Jessica’s short dark curls, Rachel’s gaze met Stephen’s.

  “Thank you.” she said. “I hope you can forgive me for not telling you sooner about your daughter.”

  “We’ve both made mistakes. That’s all behind us now,” he said in a voice rough with emotion, and drew them both into his arms. “When I saw you go down from Jason’s bullet, I knew then you—and Jessica—were more important to me than anything in the world.”

  “But—”

  With their daughter clutched between them, he dipped his head and kissed her.

  A few minutes later he released her, breathless. “Now let’s take our daughter home.”

  “To my house?”

  “To our house. Remember, we’re a family now, and this family’s been apart too long already.”

  ISBN : 978-1-4592-5144-1

  UNDERCOVER DAD

  Copyright © 1999 by Charlotte H. Douglas

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.

  All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

  This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

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