Her Christmas Guardian

by Shirlee McCoy

  He headed toward the sound, picking his way through narrow saplings and thick pine trees, the shadowy world swaying with the soft November wind.

  He heard another groan. This one so close, he knew he could reach out and touch the injured person. He scanned the ground, saw what looked like a pile of cloth and leaves under a heavy-limbed oak and sprinted to it.

  Scout lay on her stomach, pale braid dark with blood, her face pressed into leaves and dirt. For a moment, he thought she was dead, and his heart jerked with the thought and with the feeling that he was too late to make a difference. Again.

  Then his training kicked in, and he knelt, brushing back the braid, feeling for a pulse. She shifted, moaning softly, jerking up as if she thought she could jump up and run.

  “Don’t move,” he muttered, the amount of blood seeping into her hair, splattering the leaves, seeping into the earth alarming. He needed Stella. All her years of working as a navy nurse made her a crucial and important part of HEART. It wasn’t just that, though. She had a way of moving beyond emotion, filtering everything external and unnecessary and focusing on what needed to be done. He coveted that during their most difficult missions.

  Scout either didn’t hear his demand or didn’t want to follow it. She twisted from his hand, the movement sluggish and slow, her face pale and streaked with so much blood, he thought they might lose her before an ambulance arrived.

  He needed to find the source of the blood, but when he moved toward her, she jerked back, struggling to her knees and then her feet, swaying, her eyes wide and blank. “Lucy,” she said clearly, that one word, that name enunciated.

  “Was she with you?” he asked, easing closer, afraid to move quickly and scare her again.

  “She’s gone,” she whispered. “He took her.”

  That was it. Just those words, and all the strength seemed to leave her body. She crumpled, and he just managed to catch her before she hit the ground.

  Footsteps crashed behind him, sirens blaring loudly. An ambulance, but he was terrified that it was too late.

  He ripped off his coat, pressed the sleeve to an oozing wound on her temple, the long furrowed gash so deep he could see bone. He knew a bullet wound when he saw one, knew exactly how close she’d come to dying.

  His blood ran cold, every hair on the back of his neck standing on end. Someone had come very close to killing Scout, and that someone had Lucy.

  “Is this the woman?” Officer Lamar panted up behind him, the beam of his flashlight splashing on leaves wet with blood.

  He knelt beside Boone, touched Scout’s neck. “We need to get that ambulance in here. Now!” he shouted into his radio.

  Voices carried on the night air, footsteps pounding on leaves and packed earth. Branches breaking, time ticking and a little girl was being carried farther and farther away from her mother, and if something didn’t change, a mother was being carried farther and farther away from her daughter.

  He pressed harder, praying desperately that the flow of blood would be stanched before every bit of Scout’s life slipped away.

  THREE

  Lucy!

  Scout tried to call for her daughter, but the words stuck in her throat, fell into the darkness that seemed to be consuming her. She tried to struggle up from it, to push away the heavy veil that blocked her vision, but her arms were lead weights, her body refusing to move.

  She tried again, and nothing but a moan emerged.

  “I think she’s waking up,” a woman said, the voice unfamiliar, but somehow comforting. She wasn’t alone in the darkness.

  “I hope you’re right. Until she does, we’ve got nothing to go on,” a man responded, his soft drawl reminding her of something. Someone. She searched through the darkness, trying to find the memory, but there was nothing but the quiet beep of a machine and the soft rasp of cloth as someone moved close.

  “Scout?” the man said.

  Someone touched her cheek, and that one moment of contact was enough to pull her through the darkness. She opened her eyes, looked into a face she thought she knew. Dark red hair, blue eyes, hard jaw covered with fiery stubble.

  “Who are you?” she asked, her voice thick, her throat hot.

  Where am I?

  Where is Lucy?

  That last was the question she needed answered most. It was the only question that mattered.

  She shoved aside blankets and sheets, tried to sit up.

  “Not a good idea,” the woman said, moving in beside the man and frowning. She had paler red hair. Cropped short in a pixie cut.

  “I need to find my daughter,” Scout managed to say, the words pounding through her head and echoing in her ears. Sharp pain shot through her temple, and she felt dizzy and sick, but she wouldn’t lie down until she knew where Lucy was.

  “We’re looking for her,” the man said, his expression grim and hard, his eyes a deep dark blue that Scout knew she had seen before.

  “I need to look for her,” she murmured, but her thoughts were scattering like dry leaves on a windy day, dancing along through the darkness that seemed to want to steal her away again.

  “You’re not in any shape to look for anyone,” the woman said, dragging a chair across the floor and sitting. “We’re going to do this for you, and you’re going to have to trust that we can handle it.”

  The words were probably meant to comfort her, but they only filled Scout with panic. Lucy was missing. That was the only clear thought she had. Everything else was a blur of feeling and pain, bits of memories and shadowy images that she couldn’t quite hold on to. A store. A man. Flames and smoke.

  “I don’t know who you are,” she responded absently, her attention jumping from the woman to the man, then past them both. A hospital room with cream walls and an empty corkboard. A television mounted to a wall. A clock. In the background, Christmas music played, the carol as familiar as air.

  “I’m Stella Silverstone. I work for HEART Incorporated.” The woman took a card from her pocket and set it on a table near the bed. “Among other things, we help find the missing.”

  Missing. The word was like a dagger to the heart, and Scout had had enough. Enough listening. Enough talking. Enough sitting in a hospital room.

  “I’m going to find my daughter.” She scrambled from the bed, dizzy, sick, blankets puddling near her feet. “She’s—”

  “Been gone for three days,” Stella said, the blunt words like hammers to the heart. “Running out of the hospital in some mad dash to find her isn’t going to do any good.”

  “Stella,” the man warned. “Let’s take things slow.”

  “How slow do you want to take them, Boone? Because I’d say three days waiting to talk to the only witness is slow enough. I’m going to find Lamar. He’s hanging around here somewhere.”

  She stalked from the room, closing the door firmly as she left. The sound reverberated through Scout’s head, sent stars dancing in front of her eyes.

  “You need to lie down.” The man nudged her back to the bed, and she sat because she didn’t think her legs could hold her.

  “What happened?” she murmured to herself and to him, because she couldn’t remember anything but those few images and the deep, deep fear for her daughter. It sat in her stomach, leaden and hard, the knot growing bigger with every passing moment.

  “That’s what we’ve been trying to find out.” He sat in the chair his friend had abandoned, his elbows on his knees, his gaze direct.

  “We’ve met before,” she offered, the words ringing oddly in her ears.

  “You remember.” He smiled, but it didn’t soften his expression. “I’m Boone Anderson.”

  The name was enough to bring a flood of memories—a trip to Walmart, Lucy in the cart. The man she’d been sure was following her. Boone handing her his business card.
r />   And then...

  What?

  She pressed shaking fingers to her head, wanting to ease the deep throbbing pain. A thick bandage covered her temple, the edges folding as she ran her hand along them.

  “Careful,” Boone said, pulling her hand away and holding it lightly in his. “You’re still stapled together.”

  “Tell me what happened,” she responded, because she didn’t care about the staples, the head injury, the IV line attached to her arm. All she cared about was getting up and going, but she didn’t even know where to start, couldn’t remember anything past the moment Boone had handed her his card. “Tell me where my daughter is,” she added.

  Please, God, let this be a nightmare. Please, let me wake up and see Lucy lying in her little toddler bed.

  “We don’t know much, Scout,” he responded. “What we do know is that you were shopping. When you left the store, you were followed. The tire of your car was shot out, and you were in an accident.”

  She didn’t care. Didn’t want to know about the car or the accident or being followed. She needed to know about Lucy. “Just tell me what happened to my daughter.”

  “We don’t know. You were alone when we found you.”

  “I need to go home.” She jumped up, the room spinning. The knot in her stomach growing until it was all she could feel. “Maybe she’s there.”

  She knew it was unreasonable, knew it couldn’t be true, but she had to look, had to be sure.

  “The police have already been to your house,” he said gently. “She’s not there.”

  “She could be hiding. She doesn’t like strangers.” Her voice trembled. Her body trembled, every fear she’d ever had, every nightmare, suddenly real and happening and completely outside of her control.

  “Scout.” He touched her shoulder, his fingers warm through thin cotton. She didn’t want warmth, though. She wanted her child.

  “Please,” she begged. “I have to go home. I have to see for myself. I have to.”

  He eyed her for a moment, silent. Solemn. Something in his eyes that looked like the grief she was feeling, the horror she was living.

  Finally, he nodded. “Okay. I’ll take you.”

  Just like that. Simple and easy as if the request didn’t go against logic. As if she weren’t hooked to an IV, shaking from fear and sorrow and pain.

  He grabbed a blanket from the foot of the bed and wrapped it around her shoulders, then texted someone. She didn’t ask who—she was too busy trying to keep the darkness from taking her again. Too busy trying to remember the last moment she’d seen Lucy. Had she been scared? Crying?

  Three days.

  That was what Stella had said.

  Three days that Lucy had been missing, and Scout had been lying in a hospital unaware. She closed her eyes, sick with the knowledge.

  Please, God, let her be okay.

  She was all Scout had. The only thing that really mattered to her. She had to be okay.

  A tear slipped down her cheek. She didn’t have the energy to wipe it away. Didn’t have the strength to even open her eyes when Boone touched her cheek.

  “It’s going to be okay,” he said quietly, and she wanted to believe him almost as much as she wanted to open her eyes and see her daughter.

  “How can it be?”

  “Because you ran into the right person the night your daughter was taken,” he responded, and he sounded so confident, so certain of the outcome, she looked into his face, his eyes. Saw those things she’d seen before, but something else, too—faith, passion, belief.

  “Who are you?”

  “I already told you—Boone Anderson. I work for HEART. A hostage-rescue team based in Washington, D.C.”

  Someone knocked on the door, and Stella bustled in. Slim and athletic, she moved with a purposeful stride, her steps short and quick. “I’m not happy about this, Boone.”

  “I didn’t think you would be,” he responded, stepping aside.

  “She’s not ready to be released,” she continued as she pulled on gloves and lifted Scout’s arm. “You’re not ready,” she reiterated, looking straight into Scout’s eyes. “You have a hairline fracture to your skull, staples in your forehead and a couple more days of recovery in the hospital before you should be going anywhere.”

  “I need to find—”

  “Your daughter.” Stella cut her off. “Yeah. I know. And she needs her mother’s brain to be functioning well enough to help with our search.” She pulled the IV from Scout’s arm and pressed a cotton ball to the blood that bubbled up. “But I’m not going to waste time arguing with a parent’s love. I’ve seen men and women do some crazy things for their kids.”

  She slapped a bandage over the cotton ball and straightened. “So, fine. We’ll head over to your place. You can look around to your heart’s content. Don’t expect me to scrape you up off the ground, though. You fall, and I’m—”

  “Stella...” Boone cut into her diatribe. Scout looked as if she was about to collapse, her face so pale he wasn’t sure she’d make it into a wheelchair. “How about we just focus on the mission?”

  “What mission?” she muttered. “This is pro bono, and I’m only helping because you saved my hide in Mexico City. If you remember correctly, I’m still supposed to be on medical leave.”

  “For the little scratch you got on the last mission? I’d have been back to work the next day,” he scoffed, because he knew she wanted him to, knew that asking her if she was up to going back to work would only irritate her.

  “If I remember correctly,” she responded, her eyes flashing, “you took two weeks off for that little concussion you got in Vietnam.”

  It had been a fractured skull, and he’d been forced to take a month off, but he didn’t correct her. “True, but I’m not as pain tolerant as you are. I need a little more time to recover from my injuries.”

  She snorted. “We have some clothes around here for the lady? I don’t think she wants to leave in a hospital gown.”

  “Just what she was admitted in.” He pointed to a pile of belongings. He’d been through the purse, the pockets of the coat and jeans. He’d found nothing that might point him to a kidnapper.

  “I’ll help her get dressed. You wait in the hall.”

  “I don’t need help,” Scout murmured. “If you just call a cab for me, I’ll get dressed and—”

  “Not going to happen, sweetie,” Stella said. “You go with us or you don’t go at all.”

  “Says who?”

  “Says the people who are looking for your daughter for free,” Stella bit out.

  “What Stella means,” Boone cut in, “is that you’re weak and you need to be careful.”

  “What I mean is that if we’re going to do this, I want to get it done. Besides, if we don’t go now, Lamar might show up and put a stop to our little party.”

  “We’re not sneaking her out of here, Stella. It isn’t that kind of mission.”

  “Whatever kind it is, Lamar isn’t going to be happy that you’re taking his only witness. He’s been waiting three days to question her, and if he weren’t following a lead that was called in—”

  “What lead?” Scout asked, her eyes alive with hope.

  He’d seen it many times before, watched hope flare and then die only to flare again. He knew the feeling, knew the quick grip of the heart when it seemed as if what was longed for would finally be had. Knew the despair when it wasn’t.

  “Don’t know,” Stella responded. If she noticed Scout’s sudden excitement, she didn’t let on. She wasn’t one to give false hope, and she wasn’t one to feed dreams. “I just know he left. Said he wouldn’t be gone long. So, how about we get this show on the road?” She looked at Boone, pointed at the door. “Out.”

  He went because she was right. If they were g
oing, now was the time. Lamar wouldn’t be happy that they’d helped his lone witness walk out of the hospital. On the other hand, he had no reason to keep her there.

  Except to protect her.

  She’d nearly died and had lost so much blood, she’d been given five units her first night in the hospital. Whoever had taken her child hadn’t planned on Scout surviving.

  Why?

  Who?

  They were questions the police were desperately trying to answer with little to no success. They’d reviewed security footage from the store and parking lot, tried to ID the man who’d been following Scout. He’d been careful, though, his face always turned away from the cameras as if he’d known exactly where they were. No license plates had been visible on the cars that had followed her. No clear image of any of the drivers. The kidnapping had been planned by someone who knew exactly what he was doing. Lamar and his team weren’t denying it, and they were doing everything in their power to find the people responsible.

  The problem was, there were no good leads. No one who’d really seen anything. Most people had been caught up in preholiday daze and hadn’t noticed Scout or Lucy. If they’d noticed her, they hadn’t noticed the man who’d followed them around the store.

  Three days on the phone with Chance, convincing him that using HEART resources was the only way to bring Lucy home, and Boone was just tired enough to feel as though he was biting off more than he could chew. He couldn’t let the case go, though. He wouldn’t, because he didn’t want another parent to go through what he had. He didn’t want anyone to ever have to spend every second, minute, hour of every day wondering where their loved one was.

  Yeah. He was going to search for Lucy, and he was going to do everything in his power to bring her home safely. God willing, that would happen.

  In the meantime, he’d promised Chance that he’d keep his nose clean, that he wouldn’t overstep the boundaries or smash any local P.D. toes while he was working on the case.

  He wasn’t sure taking their sole witness from the hospital was the way to do it, but he’d seen the look in Scout’s eyes before. Seen it in the gaze of every mother, father, uncle, aunt, brother, sister, loved one who’d lost someone. She’d do what she thought she had to in order to bring her daughter home. If that meant sneaking out of the hospital alone, she’d do it.