Kade

by Delores Fossen

  And it hadn’t been for Kade or the FBI’s lack of trying.

  “But McClendon ordered those two security guards to kill us,” Bree pointed out.

  “No proof of that, either. The guards are in custody, but they’re insisting they acted alone, because they thought we were a threat to the other patients. They claim they had no idea we were agents.”

  “Right,” she repeated.

  Kade had to agree with that, too. But the guards weren’t spilling anything, probably because they knew it would be impossible to prove their intent to murder without corroboration from someone else. So far, that hadn’t happened, and Kade suspected the guards would ultimately accept a plea deal for much lesser charges.

  “The only two people arrested so far have been McClendon’s son, Anthony, who was a doctor at the clinic and a nurse named Jamie Greer,” he explained. “They’re both out on bond, awaiting trial.”

  Bree repeated the names. “Just because there’s no evidence, it doesn’t mean McClendon’s innocent of kidnapping and doing God knows what to me.”

  Kade tried to keep his voice calm. “True, but if he did it, he’s not confessing. Still, he has the money and the resources to have held you all this time.”

  She shook her head. “But why?”

  Now it was Kade’s turn to shake his head. “I don’t know. There were no ransom demands for you. Leah wasn’t hurt. In fact, she was dropped off at the hospital probably less than a day after she was born.”

  She shuddered, maybe at the thought of her kidnapping. Maybe at the way Leah had been abandoned.

  “And if McClendon had wanted me dead,” Bree finished, “then why not kill me after the C-section? Heck, why not just kill me after taking me from my apartment?”

  This is where Kade’s theory came to an end. “I was hoping you’d have those answers.”

  Bree groaned. “I don’t! I don’t remember any of that.”

  He reached over and touched her arm. Rubbed lightly. Hoping it would soothe her. “But you can with help. That’s why I’m taking you to the hospital.”

  She opened her mouth, probably to repeat that she didn’t want to go, but she stopped. And gasped. “What if the gunman goes after the baby?”

  “He won’t.” Kade hoped. “She’s at my family’s ranch with my brother. He’s a deputy sheriff and can protect her.”

  Bree frantically shook her head and pushed his hand away so she could latch onto his arm. “Hurry. You have to get to her now.”

  There’s no way Kade could stay calm after that. “Why?”

  “Hurry,” Bree repeated. Tears spilled down her cheeks. “Because I remember. Oh, God. I remember.”

  Chapter Four

  The memories flooded back into Bree’s mind. They came so fast, so hard, that she had trouble latching onto all of them. But the one memory that was first and foremost was the danger to the baby.

  Her baby.

  Even though that didn’t seem real, Bree had no more doubts about the child. She had indeed given birth, and at the moment that was the clearest memory she had.

  “You have to get to the baby,” Bree insisted.

  “I’m headed there now,” Kade assured her. His voice sounded more frantic than hers. “What’s wrong?” he demanded. “What do you remember?”

  “Pretty much everything.” And Bree tested that by starting with the first thing she could recall. “The night after the botched assignment at Fulbright Fertility Clinic, I was kidnapped by a person wearing a mask.”

  “How did that happen?” Kade wanted to know. “And what does it have to do with Leah?”

  “It has everything to do with Leah.” Because it was the start of her becoming pregnant. “I came out of my apartment that night, and the person was waiting for me just outside the door. He popped me on the neck with a stun gun. I went down like a rock before I could even fight back. Then, the guy used chloroform.” Yes, definitely. She recalled the sickly sweet smell of the drug.

  “Chloroform,” he repeated, but there was impatience in his voice now. Concern, too. “Did you get a good look at the person before you lost consciousness?”

  “No.” In fact, not a look at all, good or otherwise. The guy never took off his mask. “When I finally came to, I was at a house in the middle of nowhere, and the guy wasn’t alone. A masked woman was with him.” Bree had to pause and regroup. “You were right—they inseminated me with your baby.”

  He had a death grip on the steering wheel and was flying through traffic. “Why did they do that, and why do we have to hurry to get to Leah?”

  Oh, this was crystal clear. Well, part of it, anyway. “More than once they said that the baby was to get me and you to cooperate.”

  “Cooperate?” he questioned. “With what?”

  “I don’t know. And it’s not that I don’t remember. They didn’t say how they would use the child. But I’m figuring they’ll go after her, especially now that they no longer have me.”

  Kade cursed, snatched up his phone and made a call. Hopefully to one of those brothers he’d mentioned that were in law enforcement.

  “Lock down the ranch,” Kade instructed to whomever was on the other end of the line. “There could be trouble. I’ll be there in about twenty minutes.”

  He jabbed the end call button so hard that she was surprised the phone didn’t break. “Who held you captive, and if they planned to use Leah to get to you and me, then why abandon her at the hospital?”

  That part wasn’t so crystal clear, but Bree had a theory about it. “Something must have gone wrong. Not at the beginning, but later.”

  Much later.

  The memories came again. Like bullets, slamming into her. “I woke up after the delivery and heard my kidnappers talking,” she continued. “The man told the woman he didn’t get the money they’d been promised. He was furious. He was going to kill me right then and there.” A shiver went through her. “Maybe the baby, too.”

  Kade’s jaw muscles turned to iron. “What stopped them?”

  Bree had to take a moment because she was reliving that horrible fear as if it were happening all over again. “The woman talked the man out of it. She said she’d take care of the baby.” Bree had to choke back the emotions she’d felt then. And now. “I thought that meant…”

  She couldn’t finish, but she’d thought she would never see her baby alive.

  “This woman must have been the one who dropped Leah off at the hospital,” Kade said through clenched teeth. He turned off the interstate at the Silver Creek exit. “Leah wasn’t harmed.”

  Relief flooded through Bree. But it didn’t last long. “If the man who kidnapped me knows that she’s alive…” She couldn’t finish that, either.

  “No one will get onto the ranch without my brothers being alerted,” he promised. He didn’t say anything else for several moments. “How did you escape?”

  “The woman helped me again. She had on a prosthetic mask, one of those latex things that makes it impossible to see any of her real features. And she used a voice scrambler so I never heard her speak normally. But a few hours after she disappeared with the baby, she came back and got me.”

  Now, here’s where her memory failed. No more bullets. Only bits and pieces of images and conversations that Bree wasn’t sure she could trust. Were they real or part of the nightmare she’d had all these months?

  “She drugged me then and I don’t know how many times after. A lot,” Bree settled on saying. “The woman moved me, too. Usually to and from hotels, but a time or two, she took me to a house. I think she was trying to save me.”

  “Sure. And she might have made that call to let me know you were at the motel,” he suggested. “The person who contacted me used a voice scrambler, too.”

  If so, then Bree owed that woman her life many times over. Not just for saving her, but for delivering Leah to Kade.

  Except the woman had also been one of Bree’s kidnappers.

  If she hadn’t helped keep Bree captive, then mayb
e none of this would have happened. And since Kade and she had come darn close to dying today, Bree wasn’t ready to give the woman a free pass just yet.

  “This has to go back to the Fulbright clinic,” Kade said. “Hector McClendon could have masterminded all of it. His son, Anthony, and that clinic nurse, Jamie Greer, could have helped with the kidnapping. And with the delivery since Anthony is a doctor.”

  She couldn’t argue with that. Plus, she’d seen what they really were at the clinic—criminals—and believed them capable of murder. After all, someone had tried hard to cover up everything that had gone on there.

  “You said Anthony and Jamie were out on bond awaiting trial?” Bree asked.

  “Yeah. And their lawyers have been stonewalling the investigation and the trials.”

  Great. So, not only were they suspects, both had the means and opportunity to have done this to her. In fact, they could be working as a team.

  “Maybe they were looking for another way to get some leverage over us,” Kade went on, “since we’re the only two people who could or would testify against them. That could be why the kidnappers said they would use the baby for leverage.”

  True, and McClendon could have done the same, as well. Of course, if she remembered correctly, there wasn’t any hard evidence against him except for some minor charges that wouldn’t warrant much jail time, if any at all.

  Not so far, anyway.

  Nor could Kade and she testify that they’d seen him do anything illegal because they hadn’t. McClendon had stayed away from the dirt, and even though Bree had tried, she hadn’t been able to make a direct connection between him and the crimes.

  Still, McClendon could have feared that some evidence would surface that would support their testimony. After all, Kade and she had failed to find the missing disks to the clinic’s surveillance systems. Those systems were dated and still did hardcopy backups. If they’d found those, then McClendon might be in jail right now, and he couldn’t have kidnapped her.

  If he had been the one to honcho the kidnapping.

  The agent in her reminded her to look at all the angles. To examine the evidence and situation with an unbiased eye. But it was hard to do that when someone had made Kade and her involuntary parents, and might now be placing their daughter in danger.

  “You heard your male kidnapper speak,” Kade continued. He took a turn off the main highway and turned onto Ryland Ranch Road. “Was it Anthony or McClendon?”

  Bree had to shake her head. “Maybe. The man also used a voice scrambler whenever he was around me.” Which wasn’t very often. He always kept his distance from her and only came into the room after she’d been given a heavy dose of drugs. “But if I could hear interviews with Jamie and Anthony, I might be able to pick up on speech patterns.”

  Kade didn’t respond except to pull in a long hard breath. And Bree soon realized why. He stopped directly in front of the sprawling three-story house that was surrounded by acres and acres of pasture and outbuildings.

  It looked serene. Inviting. Like pictures of ranches that she’d seen in glossy Western magazines. There definitely wasn’t any sign of kidnappers, gunmen or danger, but Bree still felt panic crawl through her.

  The baby was inside.

  Oh, mercy. She wasn’t ready for this. Maybe she’d never be ready. But she especially wasn’t ready with her mind in this foggy haze.

  “I need a minute,” she managed to say. A minute to get her breath and heartbeat tamped down. Her composure was unraveling fast. “For the record, I’d never planned on having children.”

  When Kade didn’t say anything, Bree looked at him. She didn’t exactly see empathy there. Well, not at first. But then he gave a heavy sigh and slipped his arm around her. As he’d done before, he pulled her across the seat until she was cradled against him. It felt better than it should.

  Far better.

  Bree knew she should be backing away. She should be trying to stay objective and focused on what had happened. Besides, she’d learned the hard way that taking this kind of comfort from a man, any man, could be a bad mistake. Especially since she could feel this steamy attraction for Kade simmering inside her. It’d been there from the first moment she’d laid eyes on him.

  And it was still there now.

  Getting worse, too. The comforting shoulder was getting all mixed up with the confusion, the attraction and the fact that he’d just saved her life.

  Bree took another deep breath and gathered her composure. “Let’s do this,” she said, pushing herself away from him.

  Kade lifted his eyebrow but didn’t question her. Not verbally, anyway. He got out of the truck and started toward the porch. Bree followed him, and with each step she tried to steady her nerves.

  She finally gave up.

  Nothing could help in that department.

  But then, Kade reached out and took her hand.

  It was such a simple gesture. And much to her surprise and concern, she felt herself calm down. It lasted just a few seconds until Kade threw open the front door, and Bree spotted the armed dark-haired man.

  Kade’s brother, no doubt.

  But this Ryland had a hard dangerous look that had her wanting to take a step back. She didn’t. However, she did pull her hand from Kade’s.

  “This is my brother Mason,” Kade explained. He took off his Stetson, put it on a wall hook where there were two similar ones, and he glanced around the massive foyer.

  Bree glanced around, too, looking for any threats, any gunmen. Anything other than the brother that might set off alarms in her head.

  Like the house’s exterior, this place screamed home. It looked well lived in and loved with its warm weathered wood floors and paintings of horses and cattle. There were more pictures and framed family shots in the massive living room off to her left.

  “Where are the others?” Kade asked when he’d finished looking around.

  “Dade’s in his office watching the security cameras. After you called, I had a couple of the ranch hands take Kayla, Darcy, Eve and the kids to Grayson in town. They’ll stay at the sheriff’s office for a while.”

  Since Bree didn’t recognize those names, she looked at Kade.

  “Dade’s another brother,” he clarified. “He’s a deputy sheriff like Mason here. Kayla, Darcy and Eve are all my sisters-in-law.” He turned his attention to Mason but didn’t say anything.

  Something passed between them. A look. And Mason tipped his head to the room off the left side of the foyer. Kade caught Bree’s arm and led her in that direction.

  For one horrifying moment she wondered if she’d been a fool to trust Kade. After all, someone had kidnapped her and done heaven knows what to her. But that horrifying moment passed and settled like a rock-hard knot in her stomach when they walked into the living room and Bree saw the petite woman with reddish graying hair.

  The woman was holding a bundle in a pink blanket.

  “This is Grace Borden, one of the nannies here at the ranch,” Kade said. “Grace, this is Bree Winston.”

  Grace offered Bree a tentative smile and then walked toward her. As she got closer, Bree saw the tiny hand as it fluttered out from the blanket. The knot in Bree’s stomach got worse. It got even tighter when Grace stopped in front of her, and Bree could see the baby nestled inside all that pink.

  “This is Leah Marie Ryland,” Kade volunteered. He led Bree to the sofa and had her sit down, probably because she didn’t look too steady on her feet. And she wasn’t. “The names of both my grandmothers.”

  A lot of family tradition for such a tiny little thing. “You said she’s healthy?”

  Kade nodded. “She just had her checkup, and she’s nearly eight pounds now.”

  Bree had no idea if that was good or bad. And the terrifying feeling returned in spades when Grace came closer and held out the baby for Bree to take. The nanny must have picked up on Bree’s uneasiness because she shot Kade a questioning glance. The moment he gave another nod, Grace eased the baby into
Bree’s arms.

  It probably wasn’t a normal reaction, but Bree gasped.

  She’d never held any living thing this tiny, and Leah felt too fragile for Bree to trust her hands. Her breath stalled in her throat. In fact, everything seemed to stop.

  “I’ll be in the kitchen if you need me,” Grace whispered.

  “I need you to call Dr. Mickelson,” Kade told her. “If he can, have him come out to the ranch right away to give Bree a checkup. Explain that she’ll need lab work done.”

  That made sense. Maybe they could learn what she’d been drugged with. Considering the female kidnapper had seemingly tried to keep Bree alive, maybe the drug wasn’t addictive or harmful. Ditto for the drugs they’d given her when she was pregnant.

  Grace verified that she would indeed call the doctor and walked out of the room. The silence came immediately. Awkward and long. Bree couldn’t say anything. She could only stare at the baby’s face.

  “She’s got my hair and coloring,” Kade said. “Your green eyes, though.”

  Yes, those curls were indeed dark brown, and there were lots of them. Bree couldn’t see the baby’s eyes because she was sound asleep. But she could see the shape of her face. That was Kade’s, too.

  Until Bree had seen the baby, she’d been about to question the DNA test that Kade said he’d run. She had figured to ask him to repeat it, just to be sure. But a repeat wasn’t necessary. Kade was right: Leah was a genetic mix of Ryland and Winston blood.

  And that required a deep breath.

  Because she knew this baby was indeed hers.

  Oh, mercy. Not good. She had lousy DNA, and that’s why she’d never intended on passing it on to a helpless little baby.

  “Here,” Bree managed to say, and she quickly handed Leah to Kade. Despite her wobbly legs, she got up so she could put some distance between Kade and her.

  Kade cuddled the baby closer to him, brushed a kiss on her cheek. The gesture was so loving. But the glare he aimed at her wasn’t. Far from it. She’d obviously riled him again, and he had no trouble showing it.