Carly Bishop - No Baby But Mine

by No Baby But Mine(Lit)

  "Matt is supposed to be there any second now," she went on, "vetting the place to make sure it's not some elaborate ambush."

  "What about Garrett?" Kirsten asked. J. D. asked Ann.

  "He left half an hour ago, right after the call came in." She described the meeting place Loehman had dictated.

  "It's a mountain lodge at the end of a private road off the county- maintained two-lane highway, roughly five miles up a canyon. Do you see it on the map?

  It's a T-junction, only one way to turn off. "

  Juggling her coffee, Kirsten spotted the road and pointed it out.

  J. D.

  answered.

  "Got it. What's the building opposite the turnoff?"

  "A diner," Ann replied, "which is where Garrett and Vorees dropped me off about ten minutes ago. I've got company here."

  Straining to hear along with J. D. " Kirsten realized they'd dropped Ann there to watch who else came up that road, and that the " company" had to be her counterparts on Loehman's team. No one was going up that road.

  "Was Loehman there already?"

  "No. The road hasn't been plowed, and Vorees's are the only tire tracks. Mart's source says the place has to be empty, no signs of life or traffic in and out since before the blizzard. Since we know Loehman was still in Kalispell himself this morning" -- "He must be arriving in a chopper," J. D. guessed, and Ann confirmed that was their consensus.

  "Any idea," he asked, "when he plans to show up?"

  "Garrett thought Loehman would let them cool their heels a while. An hour minimum, but God only knows. Hold on." Her line had clicked.

  "This may be Matt."

  It was. He was on his way to the hall. J. D. peeled a couple of hundred-dollar bills out of a money clip, for which the station attendant was thrilled to hand over the keys to his pickup for a couple of hours.

  From a rack filled with junk food, Kirsten grabbed a couple of packages of miniature chocolate donuts and boxed juice for Christo.

  Eight minutes later, at four forty-five, daylight all but gone, they pulled up alongside Matt, who sat in the Wilders' Toyota with the engine running less than a thousand feet from the hall, which itself sat up on a short road that was otherwise deserted.

  Chilled to the bone despite the heater and coffee, her heart thudding, Kirsten rolled down the passenger window of the kid's restored 1965 Ford pickup as Matt rolled down his.

  He gave her a thumbs-up.

  "It's all clear, Kirsten.

  There's no one around. I don't know if Christo's in there, see, because the windows are heavily shaded, but we know it's warm inside and"-he grinned ,f " --I just saw what looked like a flashlight beam $ making designs on the shades. " j Christo. Dear God, keep him safe. j

  Chapter Fourteen

  Tears streamed down her cheeks.

  J. D. downshifted and spun out over the icy road, skidding to a stop fifteen feet from the overlarge, double-wide door of the hall.

  She bolted out her side and ran to the doors, calling for Christo, but there was no way she was getting in because the doors were padlocked.

  Beside her, J. D. unzipped his coat, jerked out his machine pistol and blasted the frozen lock to bits. Matt was there to shield her from flying metal, and to push open the door.

  Both men edged inside, their weapons at arm's length and shoulder high, and plastered themselves against the wall to each side of the door.

  Their precautions were unnecessary. Christo was completely alone, kneeling on a stage elevated no higher than one in a grade school, startled, frozen with fear and wild-eyed hope, the heavy flashlight waving wildly, catching her in its beam.

  "Mommy?" His small, sweet voice trembled.

  "Christo!" She flew across the dark vacant ex e pan se and he crawled on all fours to the edge of the stage, dragging the flashlight with him till she met him there. Then he let it go and launched himself into her arms, his fierce expression filled with a four- year-old's rage at her for losing him, all mixed up with love and un tellable relief.

  When his dead weight grew too heavy, she sat his little bottom down on the stage. She couldn't get enough of touching him, of filling her gaze with nothing but her son, alive and healthy and true.

  Garrett's son.

  She swiped away her tears and steadied her lips against her fisted fingers.

  "Christo-man, did you think Mommy was never coming?"

  "Those guys said you were coming," he offered, his wide eyes brimming with tears. His voice took on an altogether different texture, a little deeper, rounder.

  "To be honest" -his lips jutted in a heart wrenching twist "--I didn't think you were ever coming."

  Her emotions already strapped, already excessive and overblown, her heart began to pound.

  "What did you say, Christo?"

  "I said" -he fumed at her, so in tune and uncertain of her reaction that his tears spilled out "--to be honest, I didn't think you were coming."

  But Christo hadn't ever said "to be honest" in his short little life, or anything close to it. He'd picked it up from his captors. Sitting a few feet away on the stage, Matt had stiffened as well. She didn't even have to think when or where she'd heard it. Ross Vorees, when he ID'd the Identicomp photos of the Tacoma cops playing spooks across the street from her home.

  She fought to keep control because Christo would go off the edge himself if she scared him even more now. She used his made-up Indian name to make her question seem playful.

  "Well, look, Crossing Bear, what color hair did the man have who brought you here?"

  Christo brightened.

  "It was yellow, Mom. Just like Big Bird on'y more white, and real short."

  Vorees. Ross Vorees. Her short, practical fingernails dug into her palms.

  Blond, blue-eyed Ross Vorees was playing both ends against the middle in a bid for control of the Truth Sayers

  In an instant she saw what terrible sense it all made, how Vorees had lobbied to come aboard Garrett's team, and suggested the kidnapping scenario. He was in a position to know where Christo was, and he exploited the knowledge when the moment was ripe to execute a real kidnapping.

  Her throat clutched. She traded quick glances with Matt. It was obvious now that Vorees had offered up the names of the Tacoma cops staking out her house to make himself all the more credible, and he'd made sure Ann Calder was busy the night her snitch revealed Burton Rawlings's whereabouts at the bar.

  Vorees stood sentinel that night, perfectly positioned to have shot Burton Rawlings through the window of the men's room, then "save" Kirsten's own life--though not until Burton made Kirsten aware of the existence of the tape backups.

  Even in her emotion-riddled state, she saw clearly what Matt and J. D. knew as well. Ross Vorees couldn't lose. If he had his way, Loehman and Garrett would kill each other before the day was done, leaving Vorees in control of the Truth Sayers Garrett had gone to the meeting with Loehman. His only backup was Ross Vorees, the deadliest clandestine Truth Sayer of them all.

  She allowed herself one-half of a shaky, panicked breath, then looked straight into her child's eyes, seeing his father in Christo's features, and drew a long steadying breath.

  "Would it be okay with you, Christo, if I go find your daddy?"

  His eyes flew wide.

  "Where is he?"

  "Not very far from here, but you'll have to stay with one of our friends. This is Matt and J.D. Is that okay with you?"

  Too excited to stand it, Christo jumped up and darted away, running full bore to the back of the stage where in his duffel was his medicine bag, and dragged it back. He dragged the medallion on its satin cord over his head and held out to her his daddy's lucky-charm medallion.

  "Take this, Mom," he ordered.

  "An' then come right back.

  Right back;' Inside of thirty seconds. Matt and J. D. had rock paper- scissored their way to the decision of which of them would take Christo back to Ginny and Sam's and stay with them, and which would go back with Kirsten
for the snowmobile at the gas station,

  try to circumvent Loehman's security and get some semblance of real backup to Garrett.

  Matt leaped up onto the stage, retrieved Christo's duffel and picked up his best friend's boy.

  "Come on, Christo. Let's me and you go baby-sit Wag while we wait for your dad."

  kirsten drove the pickup back to the gas station while J. D. studied the maps one more time, searching for a route through the frozen, snowy, moonlit night to the mountain lodge with only one way in and one way out.

  By the time the attendant had helped her fill the snowmobile gas tanks, J. D. had his route and landmarks etched in his mind's eye.

  J. D. wolfed down the last of Ginny's cinnamon rolls and they began. He guided the snowmobile back across the street, and once across, over a couple of miles of open terrain before taking the machine on a course to the rim of the canyon.

  The engine seemed to Kirsten to roar rather than to drone, and she feared it could be heard coming for a hundred miles when by J. D. "s reckoning they were less than five miles from the lodge. Physically and emotionally depleted, she rested her. forehead against J.D." s back and let her mind go to a place where the roar was of silence, where she could feel the gratitude well up inside her for Christo's rescue, for his sturdy, steadfast resilience, and for his father, who might already have sacrificed his life to save the son kept secret from him so long.

  She was in love with Garrett Weisz, and had been,

  however mistaken she had been about his feelings for her, from the moment she laid eyes on him. And she understood now, at a level so deep that questions became meaningless, that when he told her she was mistaken if she believed it had been Margo he was making love to, he meant to say he'd been expressing a love only Kirsten deserved, that only she had evoked in him.

  She'd been right about the most important thing. He was a man of honor; now she understood how honorable--beyond offering her a marriage for the benefit and convenience of their child, he held himself as accountable as he held her. He was right. Love wasn't going to be enough. He would be Christo's father no matter what, but they would have to find it in their hearts to forgive each other.

  But now, descending from the crest of the canyon to the lodge, a hideously loud sound rent the air as a helicopter engine started up and the whine of its rotors began assaulting the air.

  Unconcerned for their own noise now, J. D. sent the snowmobile hurtling closer and closer to the plume of smoke issuing from the chimney of the lodge, pale gray contrasting against the ink-black moonlit sky.

  Sooner than she expected, he braked powerfully and the machine stopped only a few feet short of the clearing, brightly lit by the chopper lights, thirty yards or so above and to the right of the front door.

  More startling, Garrett walked out the front door, seemingly alone.

  Leaving the engine idling, J. D. hopped off, pulled his pistol and began skidding downhill, skirting into position to provide Garrett whatever cover he could.

  She stripped off her mittens, pulled her digital camera up by its strap around her neck from deep inside her coat and went down on her belly, inching her way forward as Loehman and Vorees appeared;

  The scene was eerily lit, her flashes would never be noticed. She began snapping photos as Garrett turned, spoke briefly to the two vigilantes, then turned his back and began to walk away alone in the direction of Vorees's vehicle.

  A hideous premonition consumed her. The only reason Garrett would turn his back on Loehman was that he still trusted Vorees. Every instinct in her screamed she had to do something, had to stop this, had to scream at Garrett to get down before he took a bullet in the head and died without ever meeting his son. But even if he could hear her over the chopper engine, he would be dead before he could respond to her cries, and she knew J. D. was the only chance Garrett had.

  Tears poured down her numb, frozen cheeks, but she did by rote the only thing she knew how to do. In freeze-frames through her camera lens she caught Vorees stepping back behind the man he would replace, raising his arm, pointing it not at Garrett's retreating form but at the back of Loehman's head. Before she could react or move her camera away or even cry out, Loehman dropped like a puppet cut from its strings.

  A scream tore from her throat as she scrambled to her feet, but neither the shot nor her scream could be heard over the screaming pitch of the chopper engines.

  She hurled herself down in J. D. "s path toward the clearing, screaming to Garrett as Vorees knelt, rolled Loehman's dead body over and exchanged weapons. Drawing a bead now on Garrett, he began to pull the trigger. Flying down into the chopper lights in the clearing, she screamed, then threw herself at Garrett, knocking him down in the split second before the bullet tore into the metal frame of the four wheel drive at the level of Garrett's head.

  Reacting with lightning speed, Garrett drew his own weapon, in the same motion rolling on top of her to shield her body from the gunfire.

  She craned her neck to see what was happening as Vorees went to one knee, braced and tried to get another shot off, but then shock crossed his features as not only Garrett's, but J. D. "s shots, ripped into his collarbone and chest in a tandem takedown. Fury and confusion crossed his cruelly handsome features in the surreal lights of the chopper on the vast white terrain as the impact of the bullets threw Vorees back without dropping him. He dropped his weapon, staggered to regain his balance, and then began to fall slowly, headfirst, facedown into snow.

  The chopper pilot cut the engines and the lights, and the blades began to wind down to a slow, echoing whap. whap. whap. Garrett forced his forearms beneath Kirsten's shoulders and rolled over onto his back, taking her with him. His hands went to her frozen face, his fingers through her hair as he looked up into her face with only the light of the moon and stars.

  "Kirsten" "Garrett..." Her tears, of adrenaline left over and starkest terror, changed to great spills of gratitude for his life, the life of her little boy's father, the man she had loved from afar for so long, miraculously spared.

  Against all the odds. Against the maw of evil, the battle for the souls of men. The battle even his father, Kryztov, had scarcely survived.

  For Christo, because of them, the world might yet be a safer, saner place.

  "I love you." Her voice trembled, her throat ached with emotion too profound for such counterfeit things as words. His legs shifted around her, his body engulfed her and her heart swelled.

  "I have always loved you."

  He lowered her face to his and nibbled away her frozen tears, his kisses more desperate than soft. The hard-core son of a freedom fighter was more tender than he had ever known himself to be.

  garrett commandeered the chopper and its pilot to ferry the wounded and unconscious Vorees to the region's only hospital. J. D. and the pilot assisted the understaffed hospital emergency room in the transfer of their patient from the chopper to the operating room.

  Kirsten remained in the back of the chopper with Garrett and turned toward him on a bench seat behind the pilot's.

  He took his arm from around her shoulders and leaned back, resting his head, his hands on his thighs, his eyes focused away from her, neither close nor far away.

  Steeped in emotions wholly unfamiliar to him, he felt himself raw and needy.

  "I'm glad Christo's all right."

  She nodded.

  "Matt took him home to Ginny and Sam's." Her voice wavered. Garrett imagined more tears glittering in her eyes though he decided he daren't look.

  "They didn't hurt him?" In his own voice he heard the shadow of threat, the echo of the man who had warned Kirsten McCourt not to mistake him for a soft touch. He hadn't reckoned with the sensation of finding himself so. exposed. It gave him a whole new appreciation for his own father.

  "Christo was fine, Garrett," she reassured softly.

  "Miffed because it took me so long to come get him, but otherwise fine. He's the reason we knew you were in trouble."

  He turned t
o her.

  "How?"

  "He's at that age of parroting everything he hears--he's really got a great ear. He said something that made me think he had to have been around Ross Vorees. Christo confirmed it, really. He told me the man who'd brought him there had hair the color of Big Bird, only more white."

  His heart swelled unmercifully, for his four-year- old son must be a chip off the old block when it came to innate detecting skills, but he didn't have a clue, any more than he'd had about a baby monitor.