by Lisa Childs
“While it was sitting in my driveway?” she asked, horrified that someone dangerous had been that close to her home.
“He’d parked a ways down the street,” Ash said. “But the car was under a light. Whoever did this was really bold.”
Or really crazy.
“Where would Thad have gone?”
“I have a couple patrols looking for him,” he said. “I’m sure he’ll turn up. You know Thad…?.”
Did she? Sometimes she believed she knew him better than his own family did. But at times like now, when he disappeared, she wasn’t sure anyone knew Thad—even Thad.
“But what if the person who did that to his car took him?” she asked.
“More likely Thad’s trying to track down the vandal himself,” Ash said. “And it was probably just a vandal. We’ve had reports in this area of malicious mischief—stolen or destroyed Christmas decorations, that kind of thing.”
She glanced out the big picture window and shivered. “Someone knocked down all our snowmen… Mark’s snow family.”
From what she could see in the dim light falling from the picture window into the front yard, the snowmen hadn’t been just knocked down but crushed. Even the snow boy. Mark would be devastated when he noticed that the snow family he’d built with his daddy was gone.
Ash let out a breath of relief. “Yeah, it’s probably kids then, getting antsy for Christmas break.”
“But to break windows and slash tires…” To Caroline, that felt more personal than a random act of vandalism.
“You’re a teacher, right?” Ash asked.
She nodded. “Elementary school. None of my kids would do something like this.”
“Well, kids don’t stay that sweet and innocent nowadays,” he warned her. “They egg each other on to bigger risks and greater violence.”
“I know some high school teachers whose houses have been egged and mailboxes knocked down,” she admitted.
“Depending on where they teach, some have reported their cars stolen and themselves physically assaulted,” he shared. “Even kids can be quite dangerous.”
Caroline shuddered. “And Thad’s out there by himself.”
“We both know Thad’s been in more dangerous places than a St. Louis suburb,” Ash reminded her, “and he’s come out without a scratch.”
“I can’t say the same now,” a deep voice grumbled as Thad pushed open the door and stepped inside the living room. Blood dripped from a gash on his hand.
“Are you all right?” Caroline asked, her pulse tripping with fear.
His lips curved into a grim smile. “It’s just a scratch.”
“Looks like it might need stitches,” Ash observed as he inspected the wound. “I wondered where all that blood had come from.” He’d obviously been worried although he’d kept that information from Caroline.
She grabbed one of the Christmas stockings hanging from the fireplace and gently wrapped it around Thad’s hand.
He groaned as he inspected the knitted reindeer-patterned stocking. “Yeah, that’ll make it feel better.”
“You need to stop the bleeding,” she said, peeling back the stocking to look at the wound. “There could still be glass in the cut. You need to go to the emergency room and get this taken care of.” She turned to his brother. “Why don’t you take him?”
“No!” Thad said, his voice nearly a shout.
Ash shook his head. “She’s right. It looks bad.”
“I don’t need to go,” Thad said with a pointed stare at his older brother.
The detective nodded with sudden understanding of their nonverbal exchange. “Caroline could take you, and I could stay here.”
“No,” she said, rejecting the idea. “I don’t want Mark to wake up with a stranger.”
“He’s his uncle,” Thad said.
“Who he’s never met,” she reminded him. “He’s a stranger, and after the incident at the mall, I put the fear of God in Mark about strangers. There’s no way I could leave him alone with one.”
Thad sighed. “You’re right.”
“So I’ll take you then?” Ash asked tentatively.
With a grimace, Thad tied the Christmas stocking around his hand. “I don’t need to go. It’ll be fine.”
Ash glanced out the window. “I need to go. Looks like the department tow truck is here.”
“Department tow truck?” Thad asked.
“Yeah, we’ll bring your car in,” the SLPD detective said, “and see if we can find any fingerprints or anything on it.”
“But you said it was probably just kids,” Caroline reminded him. The brothers’ intensity unnerved her; something was going on.
Ash nodded. “More than likely, since they took out the snow family, too.”
Thad glanced out the front window at the desecrated snowmen he’d made with his son, and a muscle twitched along his tightly clenched jaw. “I’ll go out to the tow truck with you,” Thad said.
Caroline stepped closer, worried about more than his hand now. “But you’re hurt—”
“I’ll see that he takes care of it,” Ash promised. “And it was nice to finally meet you. I’d like to meet your son—” his throat moved as he swallowed “—my nephew, too.”
“Sunday dinner,” Thad said. “She and Mark are going to come to Sunday dinner.”
“But Sunday’s…”
Christmas. Thad hadn’t realized, nor had he obviously intended to invite her home for Christmas. She’d actually forgotten, too.
“We’ll see you Sunday then,” Ash continued with excitement. “It’ll be great to have a little one around to open up presents. It just might make Christmas special again.”
Thad said nothing, neither taking back nor confirming his invitation. He just opened the door for his brother and then followed him out. The door had barely shut behind them when she heard them raise their voices in an argument.
From the look on Thad’s face, she doubted that she and Mark would be showing up on Sunday. She also doubted that Christmas would ever be special again for the Kendalls.
“WHAT THE HELL is the matter with you?” Ash yelled. “Why’d you go running after some malicious vandals unarmed?” He grabbed at Thad, patting the bulge under his jacket. “You’re not unarmed. What the hell are you?”
“Prepared,” he lied.
He hadn’t been prepared at all, so it was good that he hadn’t actually found anything more frightening than a half-frozen raccoon in the little alley behind Caroline’s house. He hadn’t even noticed that Mark’s snow family had been destroyed. As he stared at the trampled mounds of snow on her front yard, his gut clenched with regret and anger. That bothered him more than the damage to his car.
Whoever had done all this had been so damn close to the house.
If only he’d looked out the window and caught him. But instead he’d been giving Mark a bath and then trying to seduce Caroline into bed.
“Where and how did you get a gun?” Ash persisted.
“I’m not entirely without connections in this town,” he reminded his older brother.
Ash shuddered. “You don’t need the kind of connections that’ll hook you up with a gun,” he said. “You need to focus on your connections in that house—that woman and your son.”
“That’s why I needed the gun,” Thad admitted. “To protect them.”
Ash’s green eyes narrowed with suspicion. “What makes you so damn certain that they need protecting?”
He gestured at his damaged car and what had once been Mark’s snow family. “This…”
“It could have been vandals, like I told her,” Ash said. “The suburbs have been getting hit hard this holiday.”
“And Mark nearly getting abducted at the mall?”
“Could have been the mistake the security guards thought it—”
“Why didn’t whoever grabbed him bring him back to his mother then?” Thad said. “I thought you, out of everyone, wouldn’t be so damn naive and trusting anymore.”
Ash grabbed Thad’s jacket, his face tight with concern and impatience. “And why the hell are you so damn untrusting? Has there been a threat against you?” He glanced back at the house, where Caroline watched them through the front window. “Against them?”
Thad shook his head. “But my gut’s telling me they’re in danger.”
Ash sighed. “I’d put a car out front, but I need more than your windows shattered and your tires slashed to warrant around-the-clock protection. The best I can do is step up patrols in the neighborhood. I’ll send a car past every hour or so.”
Ignoring the pain in his wounded hand, Thad grabbed Ash’s shoulders and squeezed. “Thanks. It’ll help until I can convince Caroline to move her and Mark on to the estate with me.”
“You think the estate is safe?” Ash asked.
Given everything that had happened there, in the distant past and not so distant past when Natalie and Gray had nearly died at the cottage on the grounds, Thad couldn’t claim that it was. “I just want them with me.”
“And she won’t let you stay here?” His brother gestured at the brick Cape Cod.
“She doesn’t trust me,” Thad admitted.
“So she’s as smart as she is beautiful,” Ash remarked with a grin.
“Hey!”
“I don’t trust you, either, little brother,” Ash admitted. “I think you’ve been keeping bigger secrets than her and your son from us.”
Just then Thad’s cell rang, with the distinctive tone that indicated it was his boss, his real boss, calling. “I’ve gotta take this,” he said, stepping back as the tow driver approached Ash.
While his brother was busy with the department employee, he walked farther down the block to get out of Ash’s hearing, and Caroline’s if she came out of the house. “Kendall,” he answered the call.
“I got a message that you needed to speak to me immediately,” Anya said.
He had called her after he’d called Ash.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“I think Michaels gave me up,” he said. “I think the wrong people have found out who I really am.”
“Has there been an attempt on your life?” she asked, her voice full of concern.
“No.” He glanced down at his hand. “But something happened—someone’s trying to send me a message.” And he had received it loud and clear. He and his family were not safe in St. Louis.
“What happened?” she asked.
When he told her, she made no reply. “I know it doesn’t sound serious, but I’d like some protection.”
“You would?” she asked, her voice sharp with surprise.
“Not for me,” he admitted. “I discovered something recently.” Something that had changed everything for him.
“Your parents’ killer?” she asked. “That’s good. Then you can come back in now. I’ve been holding an assignment that requires your special skills.”
“To finish the assignment with Michaels and find his killer?” He had always assumed that would be his next job.
She made a noise like a pen clicking or gun cocking. One never knew with Anya. “That assignment is no longer a priority.”
“A man died—”
“I need you for something more important. When will you be ready to return?”
“I haven’t found my parents’ killer yet,” he said. But maybe, if he hadn’t been compromised, the killer had found him. “I found out that I have a son.”
“You’re a father?” she asked, shock clear in the sharp crack of her voice.
“Yes. He’s three years old, and someone tried to grab him from the mall a couple weeks ago. And tonight vandalism happened outside his house. I think someone’s threatening my son.” And his mother. “To get to me.”
A sigh of heavy disappointment rattled the phone. “If you were compromised, no one would know that you had a son,” she pointed out. “This has nothing to do with what you do for your country.”
“So you won’t help me protect my family?” After all the years he had cared nothing of his own safety, putting his life on the line, to protect others?
“I can’t misappropriate manpower when there’s been no obvious threat,” she told him, clicking off the call as if she cared to hear nothing else he had to say.
And given that he had revealed himself to be as much a liability as Michaels, maybe she didn’t care anymore.
He glanced up to find his brother watching him, his eyes narrowed with suspicion. Detective Kendall hadn’t considered the damage here tonight a threat, either. Maybe it wasn’t obvious to him or to Agent Anya Smith, but it was obvious to Thad that his family had been threatened.
SLASHING THE TIRES, breaking the windows, destroying the snow family—Ed had done it all in a fit of fury. Even now, hours later, his heart pounded erratically over the risk he’d taken.
He could have been caught, and then it all would have been over before he’d had a chance to mete out the punishment that Thad Kendall deserved.
But he’d had to wait too long to dole out that punishment. And while he bided his time—the most opportune time—to grab the boy, Thad Kendall got to play happy family.
But he had caught a glimpse of Thad’s face tonight, when the man had discovered the damage to his car, and Kendall hadn’t been happy. He’d been scared, not for himself but for them. He knew for certain that they were in danger now.
Sure, it would make him even more vigilant, more determined than ever to protect them. But then, when he failed, and Ed would see to it that he failed miserably, it would hurt him even more. Because there was no worse feeling than failing those you loved…?.
Chapter Ten
“Are you okay?” Tammy asked, tapping her knuckles against Caroline’s open classroom door. The children had gone down to lunch. Usually Caroline would have been with Tammy in the teacher’s lounge by now, eating her own lunch.
She nodded, but her head pounded with the movement. She hadn’t managed to get much sleep the night before, even after Thad and his brother had left her house. And every time she’d glanced out her window, she’d noticed a St. Louis Police Department patrol car driving past. Instead of the police presence reassuring her, it had made her more uneasy.
“I’m not sure,” she replied honestly.
“Things not going well with Thad?” Tammy asked, her voice soft with sympathy.
“He’s great with Mark,” she admitted. “So patient and sweet.”
“You sound surprised. Or disappointed?”
Caroline leaned back in her chair and sighed. “Maybe both.”
Tammy chuckled. “I understand.”
“How can you when I don’t?” Caroline wondered.
“After we had kids and I saw what a great father Steve is, I fell deeper in love with him, deeper than I’d thought it possible to love anyone,” Tammy shared.
“I can’t love Thad,” Caroline insisted.
“Why not?”
“Besides the whole leaving thing,” Caroline said, “there’s also the fact that I don’t trust him. He’s keeping something from me and his family, something important.” Something that might have put their son in danger.
“Like another wife and kid?” Tammy asked.
She shook her head. “Something dangerous.”
“Sure, he puts himself in danger when he goes to those countries to report on war,” Tammy allowed. “But he’s home now. What danger could he be in?”
Caroline flashed back to his car with the shattered windows and slashed tires. And Mark’s poor, crushed snow family. Her little boy had been devastated when he’d seen the snowmen gone that morning. She’d promised him that Thad would come back and help him rebuild them even bigger.
But was it wise for Thad to be around his son if he was in danger? Maybe he hadn’t brought the danger back with him from whatever war-torn country he’d been in last. Maybe the danger had been waiting for Thad to come home all along.
“His parents were murdered here,” she remind
ed Tammy.
“The Christmas Eve Murders, everyone knows that,” Tammy replied with a shudder of revulsion. She much preferred romance to reality. “That happened twenty years ago.”
“But the man they’d thought had killed the parents wasn’t the real killer.”
Tammy nodded. “I know. My husband works for the news, remember?”
“I’m sorry—”
“You’re scared,” her friend observed, “about more than just falling for Thad Kendall all over again, too.”
“Yes, I am. That killer—the real killer—is still out there, you know.” And had he been out there the night before in her front yard, destroying the snowman family her son had made with his father?
Tammy shook her head. “No, you don’t know that. Twenty years have passed. He could have died.”
“But what if he didn’t?”
Her friend shrugged off her concerns. “If I got away with murder, I would have gotten the hell out of town.”
“But now, with the other man cleared, he didn’t get away with it.”
“Even more reason to stay far, far away from St. Louis,” Tammy said. “Criminals very rarely return to the scenes of their crimes.”
Caroline blew out a breath of relief. “You’re right.”
“So are you going to come eat now?” Tammy asked. “I brought salads for today, so we can pig out tomorrow when everyone brings something for our Christmas lunch.”
Caroline’s stomach growled, more at the mention of the Christmas lunch than the salad. But before she could stand up, her cell rang. She opened her bottom drawer, pulled out her purse and then her phone.
“It’s the day care,” she said. “I have to take this.”
“I hope Mark’s all right,” Tammy said.
“I’m sure he is.” This was probably about Thad. Had he shown up and tried to take Mark out despite her telling him not to?
“Have them give Bethany a hug from Mommy for me,” Tammy said, referring to her daughter, who was in the same day care. Then she headed out the door, off to her salad.
“Hello,” she said. “This is Caroline Emerson.”
“Hi, Caroline,” the day care director said.
