She turned to Kelsey, and Kelsey could see the pulse jumping in her throat. “They found something big.”
Kelsey entered the kitchen, hoping to find a piece of cold pizza left in the fridge. Janie had been wound up tonight, refusing to go to sleep. Every time Kelsey would get her down, she would pop back up and say in a pitiful little voice, “Mama?”
Kelsey didn’t even know where she learned to say the word. Maybe it was instinct. Maybe it was some deeply embedded memory. But the fact remained that it melted Kelsey’s heart even as it grieved her for the little girl who would never know her mama.
It didn’t help that Tyler had suggested it would be safer for them in the main house since Bridges knew they were here. Even with the extra security they’d called in, it would be less building to guard if they were all in one place.
She crept into the kitchen and almost screamed when she saw a figure sitting at the prep table.
Ethan looked up, his face glowing in the light of one of Nolan’s laptops. He looked sad. “Oh, hey there. Sounded like you were having a rough night with the baby.”
“Janie was having a rough night. I think she was wound up from so much attention today. That combined with the change in location again was more than she could handle.” Kelsey opened the huge refrigerator and pulled out the leftover pizza she’d missed because of Little Miss Fussy-Pants. Sitting at the table beside him, she didn’t bother to heat it, just took a bite and chewed. “I was starving.”
“Good?”
“Amazing how good it is when you don’t have to cook it.” She took another bite. “I don’t even know what to say about your former partner. He gave me the creeps. Do you think he willingly was a part of …” Her voice trailed off.
“Murdering my wife?” He shook his head. “I hate to believe it, but I don’t know what else to think. His voice is on the recording.”
“Have you found any more evidence?” She picked a piece of pepperoni off her slice and popped it in her mouth.
“Nolan’s still tracing funds from that shell company, and Bridges is one of the names that it tracks back to.” He sighed and stared at the computer screen. “Tyler called in some guy from the U.S. Marshals, someone he worked with on a joint drug enforcement task force. He says the guy is a straight arrow. We’ll see, I guess. He should be here in the morning to take Viktoria into custody. I think we can get her relocated if she’ll testify.”
“But are you okay?”
“Yes.” He turned the screen toward Kelsey. “I confirmed that the family you found is the family that has Charlie. I cross-referenced the tag number and date on the photograph with the date and names from the blog. They match.” He paused. “I guess deep inside I knew they would. I just wanted to be sure.”
She looked at the pictures of the boy with the beautiful blue eyes and then at the man with matching set. Somehow the thought of him sitting down here in the dark, looking at pictures of the child he thought he’d lost made her heart stumble a little in her chest. She put the pizza down.
“How do you stop feeling like you should’ve died too?” He said it so quietly that she barely heard the words, but they echoed in her soul.
Getting up, she walked behind him and wrapped her arms around him. He reached up to hold her hands in his.
No one on earth besides her adoptive parents knew what she’d survived that day. What she’d endured remained hers alone to carry. She didn’t share it because it wasn’t her story, it was theirs. “Ethan, my entire village was leveled the day my parents died. There is no explanation for why I survived.”
His fingers tightened around hers but he didn’t say anything. He wanted to know her. She’d heard his deepest thoughts, his hurts and fears. He wanted to know hers—this woman who had reached his heart again when he had feared no one else ever could.
“For me, it’s about making a difference. It’s in the things, sometimes the little things, that I know would make them proud. They were so full of love. And when I show love to other people, I’m carrying on their legacy.” Her voice was hesitant. Shy, even.
“I think I’m beginning to understand that. I’m not betraying her memory by living. I’m honoring her.” He turned to face Kelsey. “Your parents would be proud. I don’t have to know them to know that. I know their daughter.”
Her eyes filled. “You’re something special, Clark.”
He laid his head back against her chest and rested in her arms. There was something so sweet about just being held by her.
A plaintive cry came from upstairs. “She really is restless tonight,” Kelsey said, the weariness obvious in her voice. “Maybe she’ll go back to sleep.”
“I keep trying to figure out what we have that Cantori would want. Money?”
“That doesn’t make sense. If he’s been part of this from the beginning, he’ll have plenty of money.”
Ethan turned to face her. “Viktoria. He’ll want Viktoria.”
“Ethan, you can’t hand her over to him. He’ll kill her.” She backed up a step. “Regardless of what she’s done, it’s not worth that.”
“I’m not suggesting we actually hand her over. But we can make him think we’re going to hand her over to him. He’ll do whatever we want if he thinks he can get his hands on her.”
“What about your partner? How will you know if he’s in on it?”
“He’s in on it. He knew all along that Charlie was alive and kept it from me. An innocent person wouldn’t do that.” But there was that pain in his gut again, that he’d trusted someone willing to do that to him. His mouth tightened.
“Tomorrow we’ll work out the kinks.” He turned his ear toward the door as the cry came again.
Kelsey sighed.
“I’ll get her.” He gave her fingertips a quick kiss and stood. “Finish your pizza and get some rest. I can handle this.”
“If you’re sure, it would be great if you would take her for a while. I’m exhausted.” She sank down on the stool he’d just vacated.
“No problem. I’ve got this.” Ethan flashed her a smile and took the stairs two at a time. Ever since he’d seen that baby turn blue and gasp for air, he’d been terrified she’d have another spell. He didn’t want her getting wound up, not if he could help it.
He pushed the door open and stepped into the darkened room. “Hey Janie-girl, what’s going on? You don’t want to go to bed tonight?”
She made a relieved whimper, raising her arms up to him. He lifted her from the crib and when she buried her head in his chest, he had to sigh. “Oh, you do know how to get to a man’s heart, don’t you, pumpkin?”
Ethan settled her on his shoulder and walked the length of the room, doing an awkward version of the swaying motion that he’d seen Kelsey do. Why did it seem to come so naturally to her?
Janie popped her thumb in her mouth and closed her eyes. “I think you just don’t want to be alone tonight, and that’s okay. Sometimes I don’t want to be by myself, either,” Ethan told her.
As she relaxed, he walk-swayed into the sitting room, flipped on the sports channel and eased onto the couch, making sure the remote was within reach. Janie didn’t cry, so he tossed one of the cushions to the end and eased a little farther back, eyeing the baby. Still no movement.
Ethan laid all the way back, rubbing circles on Janie’s back, sure that at any moment she was going to wake up screaming.
His eyes were heavy, too, and with the baseball highlights running on the TV and seventeen pounds of baby snuggled into his chest, he gave in and closed them. It had been a killer day.
Tomorrow would be worse.
He closed his arms around the baby. Janie didn’t have to worry. She was safe in his arms. No one was going to get to her, not on his watch.
Kelsey tiptoed into the room where Ethan still slept on the sofa with Janie on his arm. From the looks of it, he was going to have massive cricks in his neck and his arm, where he propped Janie.
The baby was snuggled on his chest, her head where s
he could hear his heartbeat. His arm supported her weight and his free hand was on her back. Even in sleep, he was protecting her.
And there it was. That moment that she knew she’d been kidding herself. The exact moment when she knew she’d fallen and fallen hard. She wasn’t fanciful enough to imagine birds singing or violins playing or anything like that. It felt more like getting hit over the head with a frying pan.
He was achingly gentle with Janie and everything he did, regardless of his own motives, was designed to protect others. He was such a good man and he didn’t even realize it. She was really in trouble here. In over her head, going down fast and she hadn’t even realized it.
Shaking her head at her own naïveté, she took the extra mug of coffee and placed it on the end table near his head before retreating a safe distance to the overstuffed chair on the other side of the room. His eyes popped open.
“Coffee?” he croaked. He rolled his head to the side and winced.
“Good morning.” She tried not to look at him like a woman who’d just been struck over the head with the frying pan of love.
“What time is it?” He turned his arm over to look at his watch, but Janie stirred. He jiggled her back to sleep.
“It’s five forty-five. Too early for her, but I needed to talk to you. Two things. Gracie got a call from one of her police buddies. A guy came into Sacred Heart last night with a bullet wound a couple days old. He had a nasty infection. Police ID’d him as Russian mafia, just like the other guy.”
He held his hand out for the coffee. “Really.”
Figuring it was safe, she crossed the room and handed him the mug.
“And here’s the interesting part. Guess which former partner of yours finished a case about a year ago dealing with the Russian mafia?”
Ethan eased to a sitting position and sucked down about half of the mug of coffee. “Bridges.”
“You guessed it. Nolan was up half the night digging up that information. The man must have Red Bull running through his veins.” She sat back in her chair and swigged from her own mug of coffee, pleased with herself to see the half-stunned look on his face. Of course that could be lack of sleep, the caffeine not having had time to kick in yet.
He frowned into the coffee mug. “Did you get some rest?”
“Me? Oh, yeah. I slept great on the couch downstairs. Didn’t even know where I was when I heard Nolan whoop from the library about an hour ago.” She ran a hand over her still damp, slightly curling hair. “I came up to relieve you, but you were both sleeping so sound, I left you alone.” She giggled a little. “You’re really cute when you sleep.”
He cut his eyes at her, a smile curving his lips. “Janie and I were cutting some Zs, man.”
Her eyes were on the baby, but the words were for him. “She’s had a lot of change to deal with. I bet she just wanted to know someone was here.”
Janie stirred, rubbing her face in Ethan’s T-shirt as she woke up. The sleepy toddler lifted her face, giving him a squinty-eyed look. He cringed. “Ooh. I know that look. That look says, ‘Give me milk now or I’m gonna scream.’”
Kelsey dropped to her knees beside the sofa. “Hey, Janie … good morning, sunshine.”
Ethan laughed. She sat back on her heels. “What?”
“Nothing. It just strikes me as funny, that you’re sitting here talking baby talk and we’re having this really normal moment with Janie when everything is crazy out there.”
“It’s going to happen today, isn’t it? Whatever’s going to happen, all this is coming to a head.” She was worried and she didn’t mind him knowing. There was a lot at stake here. “It’s going to happen today.”
He sat up and shifted Janie on his lap. “Probably, yes. I can’t imagine Bridges waiting very long. He’ll have to know that I’m going to go after Charlie, which would blow his whole operation wide open. He’d also know that Viktoria Arsov would be a threat. He doesn’t know she’ll be going with the U.S. Marshals today.”
Janie reached for Kelsey, who lifted her into her arms and stood. “I wish we knew what he was going to try.”
Ethan stood and wrapped his arms around the two of them. “Don’t worry. You’re going to make sure Janie is safe. I’m going to make sure both of you are safe. And we’re going to control what Bridges does, not the other way around.”
He kissed her head. “Now go get the baby some milk before she has a complete meltdown.”
The sounds of a waking house drifted up the stairs. Breakfast making, shower running, people chattering. Normal sounds of a normal day. Kelsey knew that it was anything but that.
This day had the potential to change all of their lives forever.
TWELVE
Ethan looked around the table at their small team. The huge farm table in the remodeled dining room of the bed-and-breakfast held them easily—he and Kelsey, Gracie and Tyler, Nolan and their new ally, U.S. Marshal Tom Carlisle, and his partner, Jason Reeves.
The marshal piled Tyler’s home fries onto his plate. “So you want us to take Ms. Arsov off your hands this morning, but you don’t want anyone to know.”
“That about sums it up. We’re going to use her as bait, but we don’t actually want her to be bait.”
Carlisle thought about that for a minute. “Okay. I can handle it. Who’s going to provide backup?”
Ethan looked at Tyler. “The two of us are former agents, Tyler with the DEA and me with the FBI. So between the two of us we figure we can handle Cantori. If he decides to bring the hit squad, that poses a bigger problem.”
Gracie sat her coffee mug down. “I just happen to have access to the best crisis response team in the region. We have training scheduled for this morning anyway. They may as well be here.”
Tyler looked at his wife. “Call Todd and let him know?”
“Done.” She took another bite of her breakfast. “As soon as I’m finished with my bacon.”
Tyler’s friend looked at Kelsey, who was sitting by the high chair feeding Janie bits of potato. “Do you have law enforcement experience as well?”
She shook her head. “No, I’ll be staying upstairs, keeping Janie out of the line of fire.”
Jason, the other marshal, looked at Nolan. “And you?”
Nolan looked from one armed agent to another. “I’ll be running tech support. And hiding with the baby—I mean, protecting her.” He grinned.
Tom took a bite of bacon, chewed slowly, and swallowed, obviously thinking. “What about the FBI agent? If you have a warrant for his arrest, one of us can stay to do the honors and we can transport all of the prisoners at the same time.”
“Our problem is that we have enough evidence to prove he’s involved, but not enough evidence to prove he committed a crime. We’re working on it,” Nolan muttered, reaching for another biscuit.
Jason, a quiet guy with a soft Southern accent, shrugged. “I don’t mind hanging around. I have two little girls of my own. If one of them were in trouble, I hope you’d do the same.”
His partner nodded. “Sounds good. I’ll move Ms. Arsov. You’ll stay here to take the others into federal custody. Local law enforcement will provide backup as needed.”
Ethan asked Tom, “Do you have time for us to do a quick interview with Ms. Arsov before you leave?”
“I’ve got time. I’d like to look around the place since Tyler promised me a couple days’ stay here in a few months.” He grinned. “It looks like a real nice place to bring the wife, mafia hit men notwithstanding.”
The marshal stood and unhooked his shirt, which had gotten hung up on the weapon on his hip. “Thanks for breakfast, Tyler. I’ll go outside for a while, enjoy the scenery.”
Ethan pushed back from the table. “Nolan, do you have that phone number?”
“The one we found for Tony Cantori’s alias? Yeah, I’ll get it. Are you ready to get this show moving?” Nolan slid his chair back.
Ethan nodded, but hesitated before walking away. He cleared his throat. “Maybe we should, uh,
pray … before we should get started today.”
Shock slackened Tyler’s face, but they each stood and joined hands around the table. Everyone looked at the other and one by one, their eyes turned to him. Okay, so he guessed they wanted him to pray. That wasn’t exactly his intention.
He resisted the urge to release the hands on either side and swipe his suddenly sweating palms on his jeans. “I’m no good at this praying stuff, something that would make my mom want to crawl under the table in embarrassment. It’s kind of been a while.” Ethan felt his cheeks warming and bowed his head. “Dear God … please guide and protect us today. Help us stay safe as we try to do what’s right. Amen.”
Scattered amens came from around the circle. Kelsey squeezed his hand, nodded, her own color high—from nerves, maybe. “That was a good idea. I think your mom would be proud.”
He held her hand another second. “I’ve got to go make that call. Make sure you keep Janie out of the way today, okay?”
“I will. Ethan, please be careful. These men have a lot at stake.”
Ethan pulled her close for a hard, tight hug. “I know. We’re going to get through this.”
Nolan handed him a paper with a number. “The name is Boyd Macintosh. That was the confidential informant, right?”
“That’s the one. Thanks.” Ethan pulled his cell phone out of his pocket, watching with his peripheral vision as Kelsey picked up Janie and brushed the crumbs from her little overalls.
In his ear he heard the one-word answer. “Yeah.”
The voice sent nausea spinning in his stomach. “I’m looking for Boyd Macintosh. Someone gave me this number.”
“Who is this?”
“A friend. I have something you want.” He picked up a digital recorder and played Viktoria’s voice saying, The man you want is Boyd Macintosh. He’s the one in charge of it all.
“Who in the blazes is this?”
Ethan didn’t answer the question, just gave the instructions. “Here’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to come to the address that I text you. You will come at the time I specify.” He barely stopped to breathe before barreling on. “Viktoria Arsov will be waiting for you and you can do whatever you want with her.”
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