Bodyguard Daddy (18 page)

Maybe it was because she finally felt like a lawyer again that she needed to investigate. Not that she suspected Milek of anything nefarious.

She believed he had nothing to do with Gregory’s murder. Or Frank Campanelli’s...

But she wanted to check out his place—to see if she could find some clue to the secrets she was sure he was keeping from her. Why had he broken their engagement?

How could he make love to her the way he did if he didn’t care about her?

He had to have feelings for her. It couldn’t be all one-sided.

She knew there was nothing in his bedroom; she’d spent too much time in it to have missed anything. But there was another door down the hallway past the room in which their son slept. It looked like a back door. But it didn’t open to the outside. It couldn’t. The warehouse was big and only a portion of it had been converted to the condo. What about the rest of it?

She stopped in front of that door. The access code was written on the panel beside it. Not in Milek’s handwriting. The scrawl was bolder—sloppier. Garek’s.

Her heart rate quickened when she read the number. The date Milek had proposed to her. If he’d regretted proposing—as he’d told her—why would he have wanted to remember it?

Her fingers trembling, she punched in the code, and the door slid open. Cold air rushed over her. This area of the warehouse hadn’t been converted. But it wasn’t the garage. That was on the other side. What was back here?

She moved through the open area until she found another door. There was no lock here; it wasn’t even shut tightly, so she pushed it open.

Sunshine poured through the skylights in the metal roof—illuminated the space. Dust danced in the light. Nobody had been here for a while.

But she could see what it was used for.

Paint spattered the concrete floor. It was dry. Like the paint on the canvases leaning against the walls. They covered every wall except for the area where he’d put a desk. Only a few papers sat atop it.

She walked over to find what he kept here. Some old receipts for paint supplies and a few sales. And a review. She picked up the yellowed paper and read.
There is an angry energy in the brushstrokes and colors Koz uses in his work. If the rage in his paintings was ever unleashed, he could prove a danger to himself and others.

She gasped at the reviewer’s audacity. It was one thing to judge the art. But to judge the artist?

Why had Milek kept such garbage? She rummaged through his desk but there were no other reviews—none of the ones she had kept in a scrapbook for him. Those reviews raved about his brilliance—about his use of vibrant colors to express emotion—to bring his art alive.

Why keep the one bad review and ignore all the good ones? She looked at the article again. Was the reviewer someone he knew? Respected?

She didn’t recognize the name. But she recognized the date—the day Milek had ended their engagement. Had that review had anything to do with it?

Had he actually believed he could be a danger?

Metal creaked and groaned. It might have just been the roof. Or the walls...

Or the wind blowing around outside. Amber shivered. It was cold in here. But the chill Amber felt was within—because she didn’t think those noises were the weather or the warehouse. But a real danger...

* * *

“Frank’s money must have been running low,” Garek commented as he pushed open the door to the studio apartment. It had taken him only seconds to pick the lock.

But then, a notorious assassin like the Ghost wouldn’t have had to worry about security. Nobody would have dared sneak up on a man who’d killed so many.

So, who had shot him in the nightclub? Who had he trusted enough to get that close to him?

Milek followed his brother inside and glanced around the place. The furnishings were minimal. A bed. A table. One chair. But then Campanelli probably hadn’t planned on staying long.

He’d wanted to kill Amber, collect his fee and leave River City.

“Would you have done it?” Garek asked.

“Killed the doctor?” He wasn’t even sure what he’d have threatened Dr. Gunz with—death? That probably wouldn’t have scared the man. Surgeons like him thought they were God. He’d threatened him with exposure and that had been far worse. Of course, they’d had nothing but the word of other criminals that Dr. Gunz was the one who’d treated Frank’s gunshot wound. They couldn’t have gone to the authorities. But the media didn’t care about little things like facts and evidence.

“No,” Garek said. Maybe a little too quickly. “Would you have stolen to get Campanelli more money?”

Milek met his brother’s curious gaze. And nodded. “I would have done whatever’s necessary to find out who’s trying to kill Amber.”

They had. They’d reached out to old contacts—to friends of their father and uncle—to find out what they’d known about Frank Campanelli and who might have patched him up. Dr. Gunz. He hadn’t known much; it was his chauffeur who’d driven Frank from the doctor’s mansion to the tiny studio on the other side of River City.

Maybe it wasn’t so bad being a Kozminski after all. Since those contacts had led them to where Campanelli had been staying.

“I would have helped you,” Garek told him. “Get whatever you needed...”

Milek grabbed his brother’s shoulder, squeezed it.

“We should have told Nick, though...”

“That we’re going back to our lives of crime?” Milek asked. He moved around the place, opening drawers—cupboards.

Garek checked the usual places. The toilet tank. The freezer. The flour jar. Boxes of cereal.

Milek riffled through books. Then he flipped out his switchblade and went to work on the mattress.

“That we found where Campanelli had been staying,” Garek said.

“He’ll find it, too,” Milek said. But he’d wanted the head start—in case they found something that led to the person who wanted Amber dead.

Garek chuckled as he looked around at the destruction. “He’ll be pissed.”

“Yeah.” Milek was pissed, too. They’d found nothing. As he headed toward the door, a board creaked beneath his foot. He paused. It gave more than it should. It wasn’t just old.

Garek met his gaze. Then they both dropped to the floor. Milek used the blade of his pocketknife to pull up the board. A small metal box lay in the space between the trusses.

Garek laughed at the lock as he disposed of it. Then he handed the box to Milek to open.

A book lay inside, its leather cover fraying at the edges. He pulled it out and scanned through the pages. There were names. So many names. But they weren’t easy to read—not with the line meticulously drawn through each.

He didn’t recognize many of them, either. Until he got toward the end. Then he found one: DA Gregory Schievink. The name was visible despite the line scored through it. All the names had lines through them but for two on the last page.

Frank had never failed to kill any other targets but those last two.

Seeing the names like that, in Frank’s careful handwriting, chilled Milek’s blood even while his heart began to pump hard and fast with fear.

Amber Talsma.

Michael Talsma.

Someone didn’t want just Amber to die; they wanted her son—their son—dead, too.

Chapter 16

C
andace glanced in the rearview mirror, but something distracted her from the road behind her. Michael met her gaze and smiled.

“Hey, Aunt Candy!”

“Hey, little man.”

Stacy reached over the center console and squeezed Candace’s hand. “Thanks for driving us out to Penny’s when Logan had to go talk to Nick.”

“I’m happy to—”

“It’s not necessary, though,” Stacy said. “We’re not in any real danger.”

Candace wasn’t so sure about that—not when she glanced into the rearview mirror again. She’d noticed that truck before—back at Milek’s condo. Someone was following her.

But that discreet distance the driver had maintained was closing. Of course, she would have made the tail anyway. The road to Penny’s wasn’t as traveled as the streets of River City.

Who was it?

Campanelli was dead. But he wouldn’t have followed her. He’d seen Amber’s new appearance. He wouldn’t have mistaken either her or Stacy for the former assistant district attorney. Whoever had replaced him probably didn’t know what Amber looked like now.

Maybe he had mistaken Stacy for her. There were streaks of red in her hair, along with blond and brown, and she was nearly the same build as her curvy friend.

Or maybe it wasn’t a bad man—as Michael would say. Maybe it was one of Rus’s men. He might have stopped trusting them after Milek had slipped away to meet Frank alone.

The guys had gone off alone today, too.

She knew where. She and Garek had no secrets. She reached for her cell phone. She should probably call him now—let him know she’d picked up a tail. He could check with Rus to make sure it was one of his men.

But the truck kept coming. An agent or an officer wouldn’t have been driving so fast. So carelessly...

No. This was a bad man.

The truck slammed into the rear bumper of the SUV. Despite Candace’s grip on the steering wheel, it spun out of control.

* * *

Panic gripped Milek. His heart pounded fast and frantically. His hand shook as he punched in the code on the panel outside his condo. He couldn’t wait for the door to open fully before squeezing between it and the jamb. “Amber? Amber?”

His voice echoed in the empty living room. He could see through it to the kitchen and the dining room. They were completely empty. His footsteps echoed off the concrete floor as he rushed across the living room to the open door to the master bedroom suite. Had she been inside, she would have heard him. So he wasn’t surprised to find it empty.

But a creak from the living room had his breath easing from his tightly constricted lungs. “Amber?”

“She’s not here?” Garek asked.

Ignoring his brother, he hurried to the hall on the other side of the living room. The first door off it was a bathroom. It was empty. He moved down to the next door—to Michael’s bedroom. The bed had been made but the little bear that was always sitting on it wasn’t there. Jewel was gone.

He remembered the night he’d found her packing. Should he have trusted that she’d stay? “She took off...”

Garek shook his head. “No. Cooper said nobody left the warehouse since Stacy and the boy.”

“The boy?” he repeated. Logan had been here when Milek had left, but Cooper wouldn’t dare call his older brother
the boy
. “Michael?”

Garek nodded.

And a pang of pure fear struck Milek. “He’s out there—where the killer can get to him?”

Garek reached out and squeezed his shoulder. “Candace is driving him and Stacy out to Penny’s. They’re safe.”

He would have believed that, too—had he not seen Frank Campanelli’s kill book and those two unlined names.

“And where the hell is Amber?” If nobody had seen her leave...

“She’s gotta be here,” Garek insisted. “Cooper wouldn’t have missed her. He couldn’t have survived all those tours of duty if he wasn’t observant. He wouldn’t have missed her slipping out of the condo.”

“Not the condo...” Milek murmured.

“What?”

“He didn’t see her slip out of the
building
.” There was more to the building than the portion that was his condo. There was his studio space and the place where he stored old canvases. That area wasn’t as secure as the condo, though. If someone had managed to slip past the perimeter guards, they might have been able to get into that part of the warehouse.

His pulse racing, he hurried down the hall to the door at the end. Like the front door, it had a security panel. He hadn’t been out to his studio in a year, so he’d forgotten Garek had written the code on the panel. His brother knew he painted; he didn’t know about the shows and the reviews, though. He just thought it was a hobby—one he’d worried had consumed Milek. So he’d wanted the code to get into the studio so he could remind Milek to eat and to drink and to sleep—for those times when his art had consumed him.

He didn’t need to see the code. He would never forget it. The date he had asked Amber to marry him. The date she’d said yes.

What had she thought when she’d seen it? If she had seen it?

Had she punched it in? Was that where she’d gone? He should have been furious if she’d invaded his private space, if she’d put herself in danger in the less secure area of the building...

But all he wanted now was to see her. His hand shook as he punched in the numbers; she had to be there. She had to be safe.

Before he could step through the door, Garek’s cell rang. His brother fumbled it out of his pocket. His breath shuddered out in relief. Despite his assurance, he’d been worried, too. “It’s Candace.”

He pressed the phone to his ear. But as he listened his smile faded and his eyes darkened with concern.

Whatever he’d learned was not good news...

* * *

Pain struck Amber—so hard she sucked in a breath. Until he’d found them living in that lakeshore town under assumed identities, Milek had had no interest in their son or her. Or so she’d thought...

She’d thought he had never even seen the baby they had created together.

But if not...

How had he created a portrait so vivid it brought Amber back to those early days, to the smell of talcum powder and baby shampoo? And the warmth and comfort of holding her baby in her arms, against her heart?

She’d thought Milek had missed all that—that he’d wanted nothing to do with his son. But somehow he’d painted this portrait. She reached out and touched the canvas, expecting to find it as warm and soft as their infant son had been. But the paint was hard and as cold as the low temperature in the old warehouse.

Nothing had been converted from the original structure here. The walls were metal and brick and apparently uninsulated. The ceiling was metal, too. Maybe it was the source of the noises she’d heard earlier, because it creaked and groaned above her with the weight of the snow left from winter.

And the floor was bare concrete but for all the spatters of paint Milek had left on it. He worked here?