Silent Rescue
Page 1
To find her daughter, she must trust a handsome stranger
Since her brother’s tragic death, Maryse LePrieur has been in hiding. Left to care for her niece as her own, Maryse heeded his cryptic wish: that they run fast...and far. But Maryse discovers far wasn’t quite far enough when she wakes up one morning to find her beloved daughter missing. Frantic, she enlists the assistance of an unexpected ally...
When he spots a beautiful woman being forced through the streets at gunpoint, Detective Brooks Small acts quickly. But helping Maryse brings passions and unexpected connections to the surface and elevates this mission from professional to personal. Brooks soon realizes love between mother and daughter isn’t the only kind of relationship at stake.
She ran her hands over the corded muscles without shame, then lifted her gaze to meet his.
He was smiling, and his eyes had darkened to the color of maple syrup. The warmth she found there held her, stilling her completely.
“Hey there,” he said.
“Hi.”
“You’re beautiful up there, you know.”
“Likewise. Well. Down there. And you know. Handsome.”
He chuckled and reached up to touch her cheek. “I’ve got an idea. How about a bit little more of that quid pro quo.”
She frowned. “You want to save my life again?”
He laughed again, then tugged on the bottom of her shirt. “Nope. Yellow looks good on you, but I feel like we should even the playing field.”
“Oh.” Pushing through a renewed shyness, Maryse used both hands to pull off the top.
“Better?”
Brooks’s eyes traveled over every inch of exposed skin before he answered. “You have no idea.”
“I have some idea.” She gave him an equally thorough onceover, then bent to kiss him once more.
* * *
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Dear Reader,
Silent Rescue is a book that started with a single, imagined scene. A man watches a woman from afar. She’s hurrying through the streets, her concerns and goals unknown. The woman is focused. Driven. But where is she going, and why? Is her pace the result of fear? Distress? Determination? All three? Or is the man just projecting his own worries onto the woman? Maybe he is. But then he sees the flash of a gun, and he knows his gut instinct is correct...
This is how Maryse and Brooks came to be. It’s how I started to get to know them both. I discovered what a smart, dedicated mother Maryse would be. I learned that she would do anything for her daughter’s safety—even risk her life and trust a man she’d just met. This one scene taught me that Brooks would have a gruff exterior but a caring heart. It showed me how his experience as a detective would mix with that kindness and help him go out of his way to rescue a child he’d never even seen. It made me want to tell their complete story. So I did.
Happy reading,
Melinda Di Lorenzo
SILENT RESCUE
Melinda Di Lorenzo
Amazon bestselling author Melinda Di Lorenzo writes in her spare time—at soccer practices, when she should be doing laundry and in place of sleep. She lives on the beautiful west coast of British Columbia, Canada, with her handsome husband and her noisy kids. When she’s not writing, she can be found curled up with (someone else’s) good book.
Books by Melinda Di Lorenzo
Harlequin Romantic Suspense
Worth the Risk
Last Chance Hero
Silent Rescue
Harlequin Intrigue
Trusting a Stranger
Harlequin Intrigue Noir
Deceptions and Desires
Pinups and Possibilities
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To all the moms and dads out there who would
lay everything on the line for their kids
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Excerpt from Take It to the Grave (Part 1 Of 6) by Zoe Carter
Prologue
Six Years Ago
Maryse glanced down at her watch and cursed her inability to move quickly. Two minutes more, and she would miss the bus that would take her to the spot where she’d promised to meet her brother, Jean-Paul. Not that she was excited about whatever he had to say. Probably a request for more money or to tell her he’d been fired from his latest job. He was always in some kind of trouble—of the illegal variety, half the time—and Maryse was always the one to bail him out.
She hated the fact that he’d even talked her into coming from Seattle to Las Vegas for the week in the first place. Two days had gone by and she’d only seen him once. When he picked her up from the airport.
“Brother-sister bonding, my foot,” she muttered.
She snapped up her purse from the counter, then pushed open the door. As always, the desert heat hit her like a slap in the face. The air was painfully dry. Maryse could already feel her hair wanting to bounce from its gentle waves to thick curls. She wished she’d thought to tie it back.
No time now.
With a sigh, she turned the spare key in the lock, securing her brother’s basement suite. Then she paused as a soft mewl drew her attention to the bushes to the side of the doorstep. She peered over. A large cardboard box sat in the shade of the prickly foliage. Had someone left a kitten out there? Annoyed, Maryse shook her head, then moved closer. Her brother wouldn’t be thrilled if she brought some flea-ridden beast into his place, but she couldn’t leave the poor thing outside. Even at ten in the morning, it was sweltering.
She reached the box, put her hand on the edge, then gasped.
It wasn’t a kitten.
“Oh, God,” she said softly.
It was a baby. A newborn, swaddled in pink. Whimpering.
Maryse reached in to lift the child—a girl, she assumed—and was surprised to find the blanket cool to the touch. She glanced into the box again. One side held a diaper bag. But the other held an ice pack. Maryse raised her head and looked around the yard in search of whoever had cared enough to try to keep her cool, but had been heartless enough to abandon the poor thing in the first place. No one was in sight.
She looked down at the infant again. A tiny black smudge adorned the girl’s cheek, and Maryse reached up to rub it away gently. Her tiny eyes opened, and her blue, unfocused gaze seemed to be seeking out the source of the attention. Then the baby let out another cry, this time a little louder, and instinct took over. With one hand, Maryse cradled the girl, rocking her. She murmured soothing things as she used the other hand to rifle through the bag until she found a full bottle. The formula inside was cool, but Maryse figured that meant it w
ouldn’t have spoiled. And the baby was clearly hungry. She nudged back the blanket and pressed the bottle to the newborn’s mouth. The baby immediately settled in, sucking enthusiastically.
“Okay, sweetheart,” Maryse said softly, settling to the ground.
Careful not to disturb the little one’s feeding, she lifted the diaper bag and pushed it open. Inside, she found two Canadian passports, and when she thumbed open the first one, her blood went cold. Her own picture stared up at her, and the name was just as startling.
Maryse Anne LePrieur.
It was hers. But not hers, too. Maryse and Anne were correct. But the surname was her mother’s maiden one.
She grabbed the second passport.
Camille Anne LePrieur.
And the photo was of the infant.
Feeling numb, Maryse adjusted the baby—Camille—and dug farther in the bag. Her hand found a thick envelope, and a quick look told her it was an enormous stack of cash. Her hands shook as she lifted a small, folded-up piece of paper from the front of the envelope. With dread pooling in her gut, she opened it. Her brother’s familiar, untidy handwriting sprawled over the page.
Run. Far. Fast. Keep her safe. Don’t trust anyone, and don’t risk going to the police. Just love her like your own. She’s yours now. And if they say I did it, know it’s a lie.
Maryse stood quickly. And she and her belongings were gone before the first sirens even got close to her brother’s house.
Chapter 1
Maryse swung open the bedroom door, a huge smile on her face. A few minutes earlier, she’d turned on the news and learned that black ice had forced her daughter’s school to close for the day. She knew a lot of moms would be cursing the weather and cursing the school board and wondering what they were going to do with their kids on this extra wintery day. But Maryse was thrilled. She didn’t mind the cold. She didn’t mind a day off. And she didn’t mind an excuse to pull out the ice skates and do loops on the pond with her daughter.
“Rise and shine, Camille!” she called to the lump of blankets on the bubble gum–pink bed.
Not that she thought the six-year-old could hear her, but because old habits die hard. And sometimes, Maryse thought if she didn’t speak out loud now and again, she might lose her voice altogether.
Besides that...though she was deaf, the little girl was impossible to sneak up on. She heard everything in her own way.
You vibrate, Cami signed to her once.
Vibrate? Maryse had repeated, thinking she’d missed something.
Though Cami was a natural ASL speaker and had been taught the proper grammatical rules from the time she was small, Maryse knew her own understanding was sometimes lacking. She tended to try to translate what she wanted to say from English first, and it often mucked things up. But this particular time, she’d got it right.
Vibrate, her daughter confirmed, then giggled and added, Like an elephant walking across the floor.
Maryse smiled at the memory and twisted the blind slats open just enough to let in the sunshine, and with it, a puff of cold air. Because Quebec weather could be deceptive like that. The glowing orb up there in the sky looked so much like it should be warm. Like it wanted to provide some heat. But it was an unforgiving light instead.
For a second, the chill seemed ominous, and a shiver made Maryse wrap her arms around her own body, rubbing her palms against the comforting fuzz of her faux-angora sweater. Then she pushed off her worry and reminded herself that today was going to be a fun day.
“Nothing a jacket won’t fix. Right, sweet pea?” she said as she turned back toward the bed. But the down comforter didn’t move. Not an inch. “Camille?”
She stepped forward and put out a hand, wondering if her daughter was sick. But when she reached for Camille’s shoulder, she found a pillow instead.
Panic didn’t set in right away—the little girl was fond of pranks. And hide-and-seek.
“Very funny!” Maryse said, then gestured, too, in case her daughter was hiding somewhere she could see.
She moved around the room, peeking into the usual hiding spots. The closet. The book cubby. Under the bed, then in the tiny bathroom that adjoined the room. Empty.
She stood in the bedroom’s doorway, put her hands on her hips and turned slowly, searching for her too-clever girl. Stuffed animals and knickknacks galore dominated the shelves.
“Come out, come out, wherever you are,” she called, her hands moving to make the words come to life.
As Maryse turned to move her search to the rest of the house, her sock-covered foot slipped on something on the floor, and she slid across the carpet, landing on one knee. She bit back a curse—Camille always seemed to know when she let one drop—and reached out to snap up the offending object.
What the— A key card?
She frowned down at the slim piece of plastic.
Maison Blanc.
She flipped it over and found an address in Laval. The city was an hour and a half south of the tiny town, LaHache, where they lived.
“Where’d you get this one, Cami?” she murmured as she pushed herself to her feet, then set the card beside the rest of the odd little trinkets on the nearest shelf.
Collecting things was a Camille habit. Just one of the hobbies that made the kid interesting.
Maryse smiled to herself, then stepped out to scan the hallway. “Okay, kiddo. Give me a hint.”
But the house stayed silent, and as she covered the scant eight hundred square feet of space, her smile began to slip.
All closets. Nope, nope and nope twice more.
Every cupboard large enough to hold a fifty-pound child. Nothing.
Concern crept in quickly.
“Camille!” Maryse called her daughter’s name loudly. Useless, she knew. But she still did it again. “Cami!”
She looked in the laundry basket and up the sooty chimney. With her heart in her throat and thoughts of the subzero temperature outside on her mind, she eased open the only entrance to the house—a door off the living room. But all she found was the same day-old dusting of snow that had coated the patio yesterday. Impossible for Camille to have gone over it without a trace. Relief made her sag temporarily.
But where is she?
Maryse took a breath and made her way back to the bedroom, where she scanned for some hint of something she might’ve missed. Her eyes found the window, then stayed there. Her brain grabbed a thought and hung on to it.
That little blast of cold air...
Woodenly, she stepped closer. She gripped the blinds’ rod and turned. And yes. There it was. Evidence. The childproof lock had been forced across the ridge at the bottom of the window, leaving a nasty groove through the metal. And when Maryse pushed the blinds aside, she could see the sliver of an opening.
Oh, God. Please, no.
Her heart thumped hard against her rib cage as she spun back to the pile of pink bedding. Then she saw it sticking out from under one of the frilly pillows: a slip of familiar notepaper dotted with fluttering butterflies.
Maryse snatched it up, her hand shaking so badly she almost couldn’t read the words that were written there in large, deliberate block letters. She inhaled and forced herself to go still.
Two sentences. Two. And they were enough to take her world, stop it from spinning, then flip it in the other direction.
I TOOK WHAT YOUR BROTHER OWED ME. CONSIDER HIS FATE A WARNING - NO POLICE.
She breathed in. She breathed out.
She fought the threatening blackness and made herself look at Camille’s familiar things. The favorite stuffed bunny, one loose ear and one eye gone. The ribbon she used as a bookmark tucked into the pages of her latest read. The radio she insisted on having even though she couldn’t listen to it.
And then her eyes landed on the sin
gle item in the room that she was certain she hadn’t seen before.
The key card for Maison Blanc. A clue. But what did it mean she should do?
The police!
The urge to call them was instinctual. Logical, even. Or it would be under normal circumstances.
Normal.
The word was nearly laughable. There was nothing normal about this. Still. Her feet itched to move. To take her to her cell phone so she could make the “normal” choice. But there was more to consider than simply placing her daughter’s fate in the hands of the police.
For one, there was the not-so-small issue of guardianship. No matter how Maryse sliced it, there was nothing legal about her parentage. Or even her identity. Sure, she had ID that had passed even strict scrutiny over the years. But this was different. This was the police, picking apart all aspects of her life. If they figured out that she was a fraud, it might influence how the case was viewed. Would they throw her in jail? Keep her from the investigation?
Of course, that was actually a small matter compared to the note and its warning. Because Cami’s safety was definitely worth more than protecting her own identity, and there was no getting around what fate her brother had met. He’d died in the fire supposedly set by his own hand.
Maryse swallowed. The idea that something similar might happen to her daughter was unbearable. More than unbearable. Unthinkable.
But she was sure that every kidnapper made the same warning about contacting the authorities. That was what they always showed in the movies, anyway. So did that mean she should just do it anyway? Was calling them worth the risk in spite of the warning? They’d already snuffed out Jean-Paul’s life. Would they hesitate on making this new threat a reality, too?
And what about ransom?
Her rapidly churning thoughts paused for a moment. There was no mention of money. Was it coming later?
No. Because they already took what they wanted. Cami herself.
The thought made her want to go for the phone all over again. Because if they weren’t after anything in exchange, what did she have to negotiate with? The police were surely better equipped to deal with this than she was.