RENEGADE GUARDIAN

by Delores Fossen

  She didn’t seem surprised about that, only more distressed. Her chest began to pump for air, and Slade was thankful that she sat down because she looked ready to fall.

  “It started two days ago.” Her words no longer came out at breakneck pace. She spoke in a ragged whisper. “I put Will down for a nap after his afternoon bottle and then went to grab something to eat from the kitchen. I had the baby monitor with me and was gone a half hour, tops. When I got back, Will wasn’t in his crib.”

  “You didn’t hear anyone?” Slade asked.

  She shook her head and shoved her hair from her face. “It’s a big house. Twenty rooms, and it was also cleaning day. Three maids were coming and going. A crew of handymen, too. None of them saw anything, either.”

  “There’s been no ransom demand,” Slade reminded her.

  “I know.” Her teary gaze came to his. “The kidnapper planned it that way so I’d look guilty.” She reached in her pocket, took out her phone and scrolled through the numbers. “He called me just seconds after I realized Will was missing. The number isn’t working now. Believe me, I’ve tried.”

  The kidnapper had probably used a prepaid cell. Or Andrea could have used one to call herself. Still, if she’d planned this kidnapping, then why was she here? She had to know that she’d be a suspect. Better yet, where was the baby?

  “What’d the kidnapper say to you?” And Slade didn’t bother to take the skepticism out of his voice.

  What little color Andrea had drained from her face. “He said to meet him at the park and to bring money, and if I called the cops, the baby would die.” She paused, mumbled a string of oh, Gods. “He insisted he had the place bugged, and he’d know if I called anyone.”

  That wasn’t a new ploy. Slade had heard of other kidnappers doing the same. Maybe it was true, maybe not. One of the maids or someone on the work crew could have planted a bug and then even set the fire.

  “I told him I didn’t have much cash,” Andrea went on, “and he said for me to bring him some of Nadine’s jewelry. He gave me thirty minutes to get there.” She shook her head. “I had to drive like crazy to make it, and I was terrified. I love that baby like he is my own.”

  Slade got an uneasy feeling of how he would have reacted if it’d been his child being held hostage. Not a good time for that. And he forced his mind back on the interview. “What happened when you arrived at the park?”

  “The kidnapper wasn’t there, but he called me again.” She showed him the second number on her phone. “He said the cops had been alerted that I’d kidnapped Will. I didn’t tell them,” Andrea insisted.

  Slade lifted his shoulder. “If you’re innocent, why’d you run?”

  “Because the kidnapper threatened to hurt Will again. He said for me to leave, to get far away from the Colliers’ estate and that he’d contact me soon. But he hasn’t.” She pressed her hand to her mouth. “And I heard someone burned the place down right after Will was taken. I couldn’t stay in hiding even if I figured I looked guilty. I didn’t know what else to do.”

  Slade caught movement from the corner of his eye and turned to find the sheriff motioning for him to step out of the room.

  “Stay put,” Slade warned Andrea first, and he went back into the hall, where he would have asked what Sheriff Monroe wanted if he hadn’t seen the open door. Not just any door, but the one to the office where he’d left Maya and the baby. And clearly no one was guarding it.

  Slade practically pushed the sheriff aside so he could get to the room and see what was going on.

  No Maya.

  No baby.

  “They’re in the break room,” the sheriff explained, pointing toward the back of the building. He also handed Slade a grocery bag. “It’s formula and diapers. I had my wife run to the store and get it.”

  Slade mumbled a thanks and started to move again, but the sheriff stopped him. “You should know that Maya’s upset,” the sheriff said. “She got a phone call that seemed to shake her up, and she said she needed to stretch her legs.” Maybe because Slade was cursing a blue streak, Monroe added, “There’s no exit off the break room, just some windows.”

  Windows could easily turn into an exit for someone desperate. He ran, practically knocking into one of the deputies, and he skidded to a stop in front of the door. It took him a moment—a bad, heart-stopping moment—to pick through the furniture and appliances cluttering the room and locate Maya on the sofa. She had Evan in the crook on her arm and a death grip on her phone.

  She looked up, her gaze connecting with Slade’s, and he immediately saw the tears. Unlike Andrea’s tears, these punched him hard in the gut.

  “He said he’d kill us,” Maya whispered.

  That was another punch. “Who said that?” Slade went to her, set down the bag of supplies and looked at her phone when she held it up for him to see the number of the person who’d called fewer than five minutes earlier.

  “He didn’t tell me his name.” Her voice was shaking as much as she was. “Only that if I didn’t hand over Evan, he’d kill all of us, including you. He also said he’d kill us if I told the sheriff, that he’d shoot up the place and he’d know if I’d told him.”

  Hell.

  Things were escalating faster than he could keep up. And it was having a bad effect on Maya. Thankfully, not Evan. The baby had fallen back to sleep.

  Slade wasn’t good at providing a shoulder to lean on, but he figured Maya needed something. He slipped his arm around her and pulled her to him.

  It felt better than it should have.

  Far better.

  “Think hard.” He tried to keep his voice level. Hard to do with the emotions and anger firing on all cylinders. “What else did he say?”

  “That I was to sneak out of the sheriff’s office and meet him at an abandoned gas station at the edge of town. That’s when he said he’d kill us all if I didn’t come.”

  He’d probably try to kill them all if they did show up at the gas station. A Catch-22. Whoever was behind this was getting desperate. Or maybe the guy was just stupid. Either way, Maya and Evan weren’t getting close to that gas station.

  Too bad Slade couldn’t, either.

  He wanted to meet this SOB face-to-face, but it was too big of a risk to take because this could be some kind of ploy to lure him away from Maya.

  But why?

  The kidnapper had to know that Slade wouldn’t leave them unprotected. But there was the other possibility. A bad one. That maybe the guy had some contact inside the sheriff’s office and would indeed know that Maya had told him about the call.

  “Come on,” Slade said, and he helped her to her feet so he could lead her to the far side of the room, where there were no windows. He also shut the break room door. There was no lock, but at least it would stop someone from walking right in on them.

  “What should I do?” Maya asked.

  “Nothing. I’ll handle this.” He moved the car seat and supplies closer to them, too, in case they had to make a quick exit, and he called his brother Harlan at the marshals’ office in Maverick Springs.

  “Declan just filled me in,” Harlan greeted him. “I’ve been working on those background checks you wanted.”

  Good. He’d need that information later, after he’d taken some other measures. “Maya got a call from the possible kidnapper.” Slade took her phone and read off the number.

  Almost immediately, he heard Harlan’s fingers clicking on the computer keyboard. “It’s a burner,” Harlan said several moments later.

  “A burner?” Maya asked.

  Slade hadn’t realized she could hear the conversation, but then, he had her plastered right against him. She was no doubt as desperate for answers as Slade was, and that was the reason he clicked the speaker button.

  “A burner is a prepaid cell. Can’t be tr
aced,” Slade explained. Then he added, “Harlan, Maya’s listening in now, but the person who called from the burner threatened to kill her if she didn’t meet him at an abandoned gas station here in Spring Hill. He wants her to turn over the baby to him.”

  “I’m not doing that,” she insisted, the tears spilling down her cheeks again.

  There was the sound of more keyboard clicks. “The name of the gas station is Jasper’s. It’s been closed for nearly a year now. You want me to get someone out there?”

  Slade knew this would alarm her, but he had to say it. “Yeah. But not the locals. Judging from the threat this guy made, he could have a friend in the sheriff’s office. It’s just a precaution,” Slade added when her eyes widened, and she stared at him.

  “Hold on a sec,” Harlan said, and Slade heard him make a call to arrange for some marshals to drive out to Spring Hill.

  Those marshals would likely be more of Slade’s foster brothers. There were some huge advantages to having five brothers who were all federal marshals, and this was one of them. Slade trusted them with his life.

  “Done,” Harlan verified. “Now for those background checks.” He paused. “You want them now?”

  That was Harlan’s way of asking if Slade wanted Maya to hear. Slade didn’t, not really. She was already too close to falling apart, but Maya’s gaze suddenly steeled up.

  “I want to hear,” she insisted.

  Slade mentally debated it but knew whatever he learned from Harlan, he’d eventually have to tell her anyway. “Go ahead,” he told his brother.

  “You still got Andrea Culberson there in custody?” Harlan asked.

  That wasn’t the question Slade expected. “Yeah. Why?”

  “Because you need to ask her about her employers. She could be innocent in all of this.” More keyboard clicks. “I just found out that her boss Nadine Collier is up to her Botoxed forehead in gambling debts. The woman loves betting on the horses, but she’s apparently not very good at it. She owes a cool million, and she owes it to the wrong people.”

  A million. Good grief. That was a big motive for plenty of things. “You think Nadine could have set up the kidnappings to collect the ransoms and pay off her debts?”

  “It’s possible, especially since her husband, Chase, doesn’t seem to know about those debts.” Harlan paused again. “The Colliers got a ransom demand about five minutes before you called me.”

  The demand was actually a relief because until now Slade hadn’t known the kidnapper’s plans for the missing babies. Maybe this meant the kidnapper wouldn’t harm the babies.

  Unless...

  “Perhaps Nadine didn’t kidnap the other baby, only her own adopted son,” Slade suggested.

  “Yeah.” And that’s all Harlan said for several moments. “I’m working on it, and if Nadine has her son hidden away, then I’ll find him.”

  Maya shook her head. “So this might have nothing to do with fact that the babies are adopted?”

  “We’ll piece this together,” he settled for saying. Especially since Nadine could still be responsible for all the kidnappings. “How soon can you question Nadine?”

  “She’s coming in for an interview first thing in the morning.”

  That wasn’t soon enough for Slade. He didn’t want Maya to have to go through a night with the danger looming over them. But then, even if Harlan pressed Nadine hard, the woman probably wouldn’t confess to kidnapping. She’d no doubt have some well-paid lawyers who would keep her quiet, too.

  “Talk to her husband,” Slade insisted. “See how he reacts when you tell him about his wife’s gambling debts.”

  “Will do. I’ll set up the interview so you can watch it from a laptop. Didn’t figure you’d want to bring Maya and the baby here to Maverick Springs to hear the interview in person.”

  He didn’t. It was too big a risk to be on the road with them, and yet he had no choice. Slade had to get her to the safe house. And away from the sheriff’s office. Yeah, there was only a slim chance that the kidnapper had an ally here, but a slim chance was still too big of a risk.

  “I’ll wrap up the interview with Andrea,” Slade told his brother. “Better yet, can you send someone out here to finish things with her?”

  “Sure. The sheriff does plan to hold her, right?”

  “He does. She’s a kidnapping suspect.”

  Of course, if she was the actual kidnapper, she had help since there was no way Andrea could have made that call to Maya. There was also the question of a mole in the sheriff’s office and maybe that was the person who’d made the call.

  “I know I’ve loaded you down with stuff, but I have to add one more thing,” Slade continued. “Have someone run a check on the sheriff and his whole department. Just in case the caller was telling the truth about that.”

  “If he was, you shouldn’t be there,” Harlan insisted.

  “I won’t be much longer. Call me—”

  “Wait,” Harlan interrupted. But he was the one who paused. “I need to go over one more thing with you. In private,” he added.

  Slade groaned. This couldn’t be good.

  “I want to hear whatever he has to say,” Maya insisted.

  No doubt. But that didn’t mean she should hear it. Slade clicked the button to take the call off speaker, and he put the phone to his ear.

  “What’s going on?” Slade asked his brother.

  “Declan just dropped off the swab kit with the baby’s DNA at the lab, and he said the results are for our eyes only.”

  “That’s right.” But he knew what his brother was really asking—why did the results need to stay secret? After all, this baby had been involved in a kidnapping attempt.

  “So you want some kind of DNA comparison to prove what—the identity of the birth parents?”

  “Yeah.”

  Another pause. “That’s a short answer for a big question. I’ll do an entire database search to see if there’s a DNA match. But who’s the specific DNA comparison we’re looking for?” Harlan came right out and asked.

  “Mine.” He waited for his brother to question that, but Harlan didn’t say anything. “Call me when you have the results.”

  Slade ended the call, shoved his phone back in his pocket so he could carry the car seat and baby supplies but still have his right hand free for his weapon. He prayed he didn’t have to pull it, but with everything going on, Slade wasn’t going to trust anyone who wasn’t family.

  “We’re leaving,” Slade told her. “We’ll go out the side exit, and once we’re outside, move as fast as you can to my truck.”

  She nodded but didn’t budge. Maya looked up at him. “I heard,” she said in a whisper.

  “Heard what?”

  Maya swallowed hard. “I heard,” she repeated. “Why do you want Evan’s DNA compared to yours?”

  Oh, hell.

  Slade should have remembered that she’d heard the earlier comment made in a phone conversation. The woman had excellent hearing.

  And bad timing.

  This wasn’t something he wanted to take the time to explain. “We’ll talk about it later.”

  Maya caught onto his arm when he opened the door. “No. We’ll talk about it now.”

  He didn’t like that determined look in her eyes, but it faded just a bit when they heard the movement. Sheriff Monroe was making a beeline toward them, and he was moving darn fast.

  “We have to get out of the building now!” the sheriff insisted. “Someone just called in a bomb threat.”

  Chapter Seven

  The bad news just kept coming, and Maya was afraid it would even get worse. Judging from Slade’s body language and his sharp replies to the person on the other end of his phone conversation, he felt the same way.

  Slade had taken or made mu
ltiple calls every second since they’d evacuated the sheriff’s office in a mad rush. The ride was equally mad, but that hadn’t stopped Slade from keeping watch of their surroundings as they’d first gone to the marshals’ office in Maverick Springs so he could get a “clean” vehicle. A truck that couldn’t be traced back to him or the Marshals. One that he was now driving down the rural road.

  Maya had kept watch, too, because she knew this could all be some kind of ploy to get them out in the open so that the kidnapper could try to take Evan.

  “I want him found,” Slade snapped, and he jabbed the end-call button as if it were the cause of their problems. “They didn’t find a bomb, but during the evacuation, Morgan Gambill disappeared.”

  Mercy. No wonder Slade had jabbed the phone button so hard. “How the heck could that have happened?”

  Slade shook his head and looked on the verge of cursing, but he glanced down at the car seat they’d strapped in between them. Evan was wide-awake and appeared to be hanging on every word.

  “The deputy said he just lost sight of him,” Slade settled for saying.

  Great. Now one of their suspects was on the loose. Even if Gambill wasn’t the kidnapper, it was entirely possible he was working for the very person who’d tried to take Evan. “Please tell me they managed to hang on to Andrea.”

  “They did, and my brother Dallas is personally transporting her to the Maverick Springs marshals’ office. I’ll question her again tomorrow. Along with Nadine and Chase Collier.” His gaze met hers. “That means you’ll need to stay at the safe house with one of my brothers.”

  There was a lot he left unsaid in that last part. Slade seemed to be waiting for her to object. And maybe she would.

  Slade was keeping something from her, and she wanted to know what. But first things first. Since he’d been on the phone during their entire hour-long drive, she hadn’t had a chance to ask some much-needed questions.

  “What about the meeting at the abandoned gas station?” she asked. “Did anyone show?”

  “No one. That could mean the guy had us under surveillance and wanted to see what we’d do.”