Evil Secrets Trilogy Boxed Set

by Vickie McKeehan

  The entire time Sarah protested as loudly as her lungs allowed.

  Trevor desperately tried to stay on his heels while at the same time staying back far enough to keep Connor from becoming suspicious. They joined a small group gathered waiting for an available car to open up to take them down to the parking structure. Trevor watched as the double doors opened and a stream of people filed past, gawking at the wailing infant.

  Annoyed that she was making a scene, Connor clumsily tried to bounce Sarah up and down in his arms. When that didn’t work, he tried to put his hand over her mouth to keep her quiet, which only seemed to infuriate Sarah further. Resisting his efforts, her head moved back and forth, and she struggled in his arms in complaint.

  As soon as the last person emptied the car, Connor impatiently hopped on, quickly pressing the button several times in rapid succession to get it to start moving. Calmly, Trevor waited for the last possible second to board the car himself, making sure he didn’t allow Connor an opportunity to change his mind. They rode down a couple of floors, making stops for a few other people, who seemed grateful to get out of the car away from the screaming baby.

  Trevor didn’t bother to make small talk but listened instead to Sarah’s wails of protest as they became more and more pronounced. When the elevator door finally reached Level Five, Connor hurried out, heading beyond the first row of cars at a fast clip.

  Trailing behind, Trevor scanned the parking lot until he spotted the familiar Hummer in the distance, parked several rows away. Knowing Connor’s destination made it better, but this was hardly the ideal place for a coup. And no matter how he wished otherwise, it wouldn’t be bloodless. He reached down, pulled the knife from his boot.

  With no time to consider the security cameras or anyone who might be lurking, Trevor gauged the situation and realized he didn’t have much of a choice. He couldn’t let Boyd reach the Hummer and make off with the baby. It had to be here or not at all. And it had to be quick and clean.

  With Sarah screaming, Boyd never noticed Trevor come up behind him. The baby was the perfect diversion. In a movement that lasted no more than five seconds, the six-inch blade Trevor held sliced deeply through Connor’s neck, severing his carotid artery. Connor’s free hand instinctively flew to his throat before trying to grab for the weapon. With blood spurting and streaming down his neck at a rapid rate, he soon began to falter. The second his momentum waned, Trevor snapped Sarah out of his clutch. With his left boot he pushed the weakening man to the concrete.

  Trevor took off for the stairwell. He descended two floors down before he stopped to try and quiet the baby. “Shhhh, shhhh, little one, it’ll be okay. You’re okay. You’re just frightened. Everything will be fine. Shhhh, now. I’ll get you back to your mother.” An Irish lullaby popped into his head from another time, another place. Memories of holding another infant, his baby daughter, flashed through his brain in a montage of scenes that came fast and hard and painful.

  He began to softly sing to the baby in Gaelic. His heart melted when she placed her weary head on his shoulder, as if she knew her ordeal was over. She did her best to try and calm down, all the while hiccupping and sniffling into his chest. Patting her back the way he remembered, the way he’d done a lifetime ago, he used his thumb to wipe her runny nose. Swaying back and forth, he rocked her gently until she quieted, falling into exhaustive slumber.

  When Dylan came into the room with the coffee and spotted Baylee lying on the floor, he flung the carton holding the coffee cups aside and bent to where she lay. She was still out cold. The bruise on her face was already turning purple, her puffy and swollen lip looked twice its normal size, and blood from her nose trickled down to her chin.

  He looked around for Sarah. Terror engulfed him. A wave of nausea clutched his stomach. While he ran to the bathroom sink to grab a washcloth and wet it with cold water, he dialed nine-one-one on his cell.

  It felt like he waited fifteen minutes for anyone to pick up.

  As soon as the dispatcher answered, Dylan’s composed manner evaporated. With every word, his panic grew. “There’s been a kidnapping at the Medical Center, a six-month-old baby, Sarah Burke, was taken less than five minutes ago by a man named Connor Boyd. You need to put out an Amber Alert. Now. Get the police here! The suspect is driving a black Hummer. I don’t know the plate number, but you should be able to cross-check the name to the plate.”

  After getting the specifics, the dispatcher told him, “The police are on their way. Do you want to keep the line open?”

  “Sure, but I have…the baby’s mother has been injured. She fought the guy and she’s out cold.” He stuck his head out the door and wondered why no one had heard the commotion. He yelled down the corridor. “I have an injured woman in here. Hello? Could someone get me a doctor? Now.”

  By the time he knelt down beside Baylee again, she began to come around. “Baylee, honey, talk to me, what happened?”

  She attempted to gain her feet but slunk back down to the floor when her head spun. “Connor. Connor has Sarah.” Baylee pleaded, “Go, Dylan. Go find her. I’ll be fine. Hurry, please, don’t let him take her. Don’t let him get away.”

  The nurse came in, just in time to see Baylee throw up.

  Dylan was torn between running and staying. But when he saw the look of pure panic on Baylee’s face, he knew he had no choice. He took off down the hallway, not knowing for a minute where he was going or what he intended to do when he got there.

  In the parking structure stairwell, Trevor took off his jacket, unbuttoned his shirt, and slipped it off. He used it to wipe some of the blood off the baby’s face. When he’d done the best he could, he took the shirt and bundled the baby firmly inside. If he didn’t get out of here soon he’d have a shitload of swarming police all over the place.

  He shrugged back into his jacket, zipped it up, and opened the door of the stairwell leading down to the third level parking. He stuck his head out and looked around. He saw no one. With the coast clear, he headed straight for the elevator, hoping like hell that when the car opened it would be empty. Luck had been riding with him up to this point. Now was no exception. When the double doors dinged open, a sigh of relief escaped his lips. The car was vacant.

  He stepped inside momentarily to pull out the red emergency stop button so the doors wouldn’t close. He took the time to place a kiss on the baby’s forehead. Gently, he put the sleeping Sarah on the floor still wrapped in his shirt. Trevor hated letting her go, but time was not on his side. He pulled a gold cowboy from his jacket pocket and slipped it into the front pocket of the Oxford shirt. Reluctantly, he re-engaged the emergency lever and stepped outside the elevator, watched as the door closed and baby Sarah disappeared.

  By the time Dylan reached ground level, a crowd had gathered around the bank of elevators leading to the parking garage. Five police officers converged on the scene about the same time Dylan waded into the throng of people.

  A man yelled, “Look at that, there’s a baby with blood on her in the elevator.”

  Dylan’s heart sank. A sickening feeling washed over him as he maneuvered his way to the front of the crowd, pushing and shoving for space. Then he heard Sarah start to fuss. The sound was the most wonderful sound he’d ever heard in his life. Before he ever laid eyes on her, he knew she was at least alive. By the time he inched his way through the crowd, he watched as a police officer reached down and scooped her up off the floor.

  Specks of blood smeared her face. The shirt that wrapped around her little body bore red stains as well.

  Sarah started to cry for real.

  It was music to Dylan’s ears. Knees weak, he reached out his hands to take the baby and told the officer, “Oh God. She’s mine. She’s hurt. Give her to me.”

  “Now wait a minute…I can’t just…do that…who’s to say… We don’t even know whose blood this is. This is a crime scene.”

  Dylan didn’t give a shit about a crime scene. He wanted to get Sarah back to her mother. With shaky
hands, he reached around to his back pocket and pulled out his wallet with his driver’s license, flashed it to the officer. “I’m the one who called you guys. I’m Dylan Burke. This is Sarah Burke. She’s mine. Now give her to me.” He reached out his hands again, and when Sarah saw him, she held up her little arms and babbled something that sounded very much like a long drawn out, “Daaaaaaaaaa.”

  “Well, okay then,” the officer said as he handed Sarah into the waiting arms of her father. “You lead the way. I’ll need to follow you upstairs and get your statement.”

  The minute Dylan clutched her to his chest, Sarah laid her head on his shoulder and stopped crying. With the cop in tow, Dylan raced toward the elevator to head back upstairs, holding on to Sarah for dear life. He had to wait for an available car, and while waiting he began to unwrap the shirt from around Sarah’s body, trying to examine her for injuries, trying to figure out why she was wearing it in the first place and why it had so much blood on it.

  But while loosening the shirt, a small gold cowboy slipped out of the pocket and hit the tile floor with a ping.

  Bending to pick it up, he had a sick feeling what that meant. Their mysterious stranger had obviously, once again, shown up out of the blue and rode to the rescue. Dylan didn’t know why and didn’t care. If he ever came face to face with the man, he’d kiss him on the mouth right before he bought him a round of beers.

  But right this minute, he needed to make sure the baby wasn’t hurt. He handed the bloody shirt to the officer and took turns examining her arms and legs for anything that looked like a cut or a scrape. Even though she’d stopped crying, he checked her as best he could for any outward signs of trauma. Relieved to find she didn’t have so much as a cut or a bruise on her anywhere, he clutched her to his chest.

  When the elevator finally opened he didn’t realize tears were streaming down his face until he saw his reflection in the mirrored glass inside the car’s sidewall.

  As it rumbled upward to the twelfth floor, he leaned his weight up against the opposite wall and cried like a baby right in front of the cop.

  The minute the elevator doors slid open, he looked up through teary eyes and saw Baylee standing at the nurses’ station wringing her hands with a swollen face and puffy lip, bruised and battered, her heart ripped out waiting for any word about their daughter.

  Their daughter, thought Dylan, relief and joy running through him.

  As soon as she spotted Dylan holding Sarah, she threw herself into his body. “Oh, my God, you found her. She’s safe. Oh, thank God. You brought her back to me. Thank you, Dylan. I love you.”

  “Is that for me or for Sarah?” he asked in wonder.

  “It’s for both of you. You did it, Dylan. You found her and brought her back to me.”

  As she plucked the baby from his arms, Dylan wrapped both of them up. Kissing the top of Baylee’s head, he told her, “We’ve found each other. I love you, Baylee. I love Sarah. And I’m not letting either one of you go.”

  Ending Evil

  The Evil Secrets Trilogy

  Book Three

  Vickie McKeehan

  Ending Evil

  The Evil Secrets Trilogy

  Copyright © 2013 by Vickie McKeehan

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without prior written permission of the publisher.

  This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  Published by Beachdevils Press

  ISBN: 978-1-4524-0544-5 eBook

  ISBN: 978-0-6156-6057-8 Paperback

  Printed in the USA

  Cover art design by Vanessa Mendozzi Design

  Visit the author at:

  www.vickiemckeehan.com

  www.facebook.com/VickieMcKeehan

  “She Walks in Beauty”

  Poem Excerpt by Lord Byron

  For Carrol, sister by blood, the best mother

  I know, and my best friend. You know all

  my darkest secrets and manage

  to love me anyway.

  “Family isn’t always blood. It’s the people

  in your life who want you in theirs.

  The ones who accept you for who

  you are, the ones who would do

  anything to see you smile, and who

  love you no matter what.”

  Anonymous

  “To let evil go unpunished

  is to breed more evil.”

  Anonymous

  CHAPTER 1 Book 3

  Darkness descended causing shadows to fall around him, helping to conceal his movements. He quickened his steps as cop cars flew past him racing to get to the Medical Center.

  It seemed to him the LAPD occupied the area in record time and from every direction. From the corner of his eye, Trevor Dane watched as uniformed cops blocked off the main entrance then scurried to get the entire hospital in lockdown mode in a matter of minutes.

  He had only a block to go and he would make it off campus entirely. Knowing that, he lengthened his stride, notched up his radar, kept his pace brisk.

  When he got to the end of the street, more black and whites screeched to a stop, cordoning off the last remaining access road into the parking structure directly to his right. Keeping his head down, he reached the first alleyway behind the Medical Center and the first path that wasn’t out in the open. He hastily ducked into the narrow opening before the cops had a chance to get a good look at him.

  Hidden now, behind a six foot wall of concrete, he continued putting one foot in front of the other toward his Chevy, which he’d parked several blocks over in a residential section of the neighborhood. After that close call, he didn’t dare run. Running would only draw attention to himself. Old habits sometimes paid off. Escaping from a risky area often called for simple action, like walking away rather than a problematic foot chase or worse, a do-gooder who took down the description of a vehicle fleeing the scene.

  He wasn’t far enough away, though, not by a long shot. He kept his steps brisk as he dared not steal a glance behind him. He didn’t have time to worry about security cameras or what surveillance images he’d left behind.

  Too late for that, he thought wearily.

  He’d worn gloves, though, and he had another name to check off his list.

  That list grew shorter by the day.

  Right out of the box he’d taken care of the viper, Alana Stevens with a simple kitchen knife, ending her reign of terror for good. She’d never be able to hurt another innocent soul.

  From there, he’d moved on to her cohort, Jessica Geller Boyd. A bullet to her temple from a nine-millimeter Glock had put an end to those soulless dark eyes once and for all.

  Thereafter, he’d moved down his list to Jessica’s sister, Eva Geller Gatz, then on to Sumner Boyd.

  By that time, it had been sleazy Frank Geller’s turn. Frank had met his fate with the standard suicide gun, a .22 caliber Smith and Wesson, the up close and personal model.

  Now, the boot knife that went wherever he did had taken care of Connor Boyd.

  That left two brothers still standing.

  Throw in a cousin or two, which even now might need his attention before too long and he would complete the coup d'état, ending the regime of Boyd Boyd Geller &Gatz for good. He’d missed taking out Collin Boyd once before though.

  He didn’t intend to miss a second time.

  Because he wore no shirt beneath his jacket, dusk made the June gloom marine layer cooler than it had been just an hour earlier. He’d left his shirt behind, the shirt he’d used to wrap up little baby Sarah, which obviously had Connor Boyd’s DNA all over it. But it was one of those things that couldn’t be helped.

  And the
baby remained safe now back where she belonged in the arms of her mother, Baylee Scott, away from the violent and unstable man who’d fathered her.

  The baby.

  It had been a long time since he’d held an infant, especially one so young, so dependent on the adults around her. He remembered her smell, her little face, her little puckered mouth, the hiccupping, and her eyes brimming with so many tears.

  Tears she should never have been forced to shed.

  Not twenty minutes earlier, he’d slit the throat of the baby’s father and left him on the dirty concrete of the fifth floor parking garage to bleed out. He would not soon forget Connor Boyd’s cold eyes as the man lay dying at his feet.

  Nor would he forget the man’s attack on the young mother. Connor had used his fists to bring her to her knees. If Trevor had let the man escape with the baby, he wouldn’t have been able to live with himself.

  In the distance Trevor heard the sounds of even more sirens as they grew closer. He needed to put some miles between this place and the crime scene as quickly as he could. Even a professional, he reminded himself, with his years of experience, sometimes had to take risks.

  He sighed. No sense beating himself up. Not every kill could be as meticulously carried out as one could hope or plan he thought bitterly. Even though the June night lacked a real bite to the air, he pulled his jacket collar up around his ears and hurried on.

  From the moment Connor had kidnapped Sarah, ripped the baby out of her mother’s arms, he had left Trevor few options. As he saw it, he’d been fortunate Connor had made his escape route via the parking garage. The place had been deserted enough that he had been able to take the man down without bringing much attention to himself or to the area.