Cowboy Undercover (3 page)

“It could be nothing,” Chance cautioned.

“Or it could be he was seeing someone else,” Lily said. “Oh, my gosh, I bet he was having an affair. This is great!” She started pacing the room again, gesturing, suddenly animated. “If he’s involved with someone else, maybe I can use that as leverage.” She grabbed her handbag off the back of a chair and the baggy gray sweater from the bed. “Let’s go check out that address.”

He took the keys from his pocket, ready for action of any kind.

* * *

1801 V
ANCE
S
TREET
turned out to be located within a small villa of condos arranged around a central courtyard, all encased within the confines of an ornate iron fence. At this time of year, the pool had been drained and covered in preparation for cold weather. The trees were a riot of color, leaves drifting to the ground as the wind teased them loose.

They found a row of brass mailboxes built into a small arch near the street. The name on 1801 was V. Richards.

“Vicky, Valerie, Vivian?” Lily mused.

“Or Vincent, Victor, Val,” Chance said.

“How do we find out?”

“We ask.”

She looked around at the complete absence of other people and raised her eyebrows.

“Look, at the risk of making you mad, how about you let me knock on the door and see what I can find out.”

“Why you?” she said. “I’ll do it.”

“What if this person is actually home and what if you know them or they recognize your face? You aren’t disguised, remember?”

“I know. But so what?”

“So they call Block, Block calls the cops, Charlie spends the next twelve years living with daddy dearest.”

“Oh.”

“Just go sit in the car, okay?” he coaxed.

“Okay, but don’t mess this up.”

“Your faith in me is truly heartwarming,” he said. “Here, take my hat with you so I don’t stand out so much.” He waited until she got back in the car, then he walked down the narrow path to 1801. He wasn’t surprised when no one responded to the doorbell as it was a late weekday afternoon. He imagined the tenant of the condo was still on his or her commute. He walked around the grounds looking for someone, anyone, and finally spied a middle-aged guy raking leaves out by the pool/patio area.

“Excuse me,” he called. “I have a delivery out in the truck for 1801, V. Richards. They’re not home. Is there a manager here or anything?”

“I’m the manager,” the man said, leaning on his rake. He gave Chance a once-over, probably deciding he didn’t look much like a delivery man but glad for anything that interrupted the raking, especially as the fading light must make the job a tough one. “What can I do for you?”

“Is it safe to leave a package outside the door? It’s pretty heavy. I wouldn’t want it to be a problem for the recipient to get it inside by themselves.”

“Yeah, it’s safe enough. That door doesn’t face the street. If Valentine needs help, all she has to do is ask for it. She’s a nice enough kid.”

“Kid?”

He laughed. “Everyone under thirty is a kid to me and she’s way under. Probably nineteen or so.”

“Does she live alone?” Chance asked and immediately wished he hadn’t. But the manager didn’t seem to find the question intrusive.

“Oh, you mean how does a gal her age afford this place? Easy. She’s a student. Her parents pay the bills and they wanted her someplace safe.”

“So she lives off her folks and goes to college,” Chance said, hoping he sounded like a jealous guy who had had to support himself his whole life and begrudged Valentine her address on easy street.

“Yeah, tough, right? She’s been here for two years now. Well, kids these days, you know.” His gaze suddenly focused over Chance’s shoulder and he straightened up. “Hey there, Mr. Hasbro.”

Chance turned to see a grumpy-looking man in his late sixties. “The circuit breaker blew again. You need to fix it pronto.”

“Sure thing, Mr. Hasbro. As soon as I finish raking...”

“No, now. Betty is in the middle of making my dinner.”

“I’ll be right up, sir. Just have to get my tools.”

“Don’t dawdle,” the older man said and stalked off.

“His breaker wouldn’t blow if his wife didn’t overload it,” the manager confided to Chance. “Just leave the package,” he added as he set aside the rake and hurried off.

“Well?” Lily asked as he slid into the passenger seat.

“You were right, it’s a woman, but I don’t know. The manager said she is a nineteen-year-old student.”

“She sounds perfect,” Lily said. “Jeremy likes his women young and innocent.”

“Her name is Valentine Richards,” Chance added. “The manager seems to think she’s a nice kid.”

“That’s all he said?”

“Pretty much.”

“It’s going to have to be enough,” Lily said.

“Enough for what?”

“Leverage. You don’t send a woman flowers for weeks on end without there being a motive.”

“Maybe, but Lily, even if he was having an affair, you left him. Unless this woman is a convicted criminal, he’s just an abandoned husband with a girlfriend.”

“But it appears he was seeing her while we were married.”

He shrugged. “Today’s morality doesn’t necessarily blink at infidelity.”

“It’s all I’ve got,” she added. “Are you coming with me or not?”

“Let’s get it over with,” he said as he felt around under the seat with his right hand, reassured when his fingers brushed the smooth leather of the holster into which he’d slid his .38 over twelve hours earlier when they’d stopped at his cabin.

* * *

S
HE
KNEW
HER
way around the city, taking backstreets, avoiding long-winded lights, anxious now to get this over with.

“You can’t just walk into his house and have a simple conversation with him, you know,” Chance said.

She flashed him a quick look. He’d all but disappeared in his dark clothes in the dark car. Just the glint of the whites of his eyes and the occasional street lamp illuminating his face. “That’s exactly what I’m going to do,” she said. “I’m going to tell him I know about his affair with Valentine. That’s my leverage.”

“He’ll chew you up and spit you at the police department.”

“Doesn’t matter. It’s a chance I have to take. Maybe he’ll listen to reason.”

“Maybe he’ll listen to Smith and Wesson,” Chance said, and took the gun from under the seat. The thought of the two of them eye-to-eye with a gun in the middle made her anxiety level shoot through the roof.

She pulled the car over to the side of the road, parking between street lamps where darkness prevailed.

“We’re here?” Chance said, looking around.

“No. The house is a block over. I didn’t want anyone to recognize my car. Come on.”

They walked quickly. She knew a shortcut that consisted of a nature trail owned by the home owners’ association and took him that way. They erupted onto the street she’d called home for five years. The thought of stepping foot on Jeremy’s property made her physically ill. The only worse scenario was losing Charlie. She would not leave here until she’d at least seen him. “I’m going to try reason,” she muttered to herself as they drew closer.

Chance sighed. “Nothing you’ve said about this guy screams reason, Lily. Listen, let me go in first,” he added. He shoved the gun into the back of his jeans. “I’ll be reasonable. He won’t know who I am so he won’t be expecting anything. I can at least make sure Charlie is in the house and—”

“No,” she said softly but with fire in her tone, pulling on his arm to stop him from proceeding. “The house is right up there. Someone could be guarding the gate. You stay back here so he doesn’t see you.”

“Have you forgotten what your husband did to you, Lily? Are you crazy?”

“He’s not going to risk killing me in his own home.”

“You are crazy. You’ve told me what he did to you in his own home.”

“I was a lot more timid back then. And I didn’t have Valentine Richards to use as ammunition. Please, Chance, just wait for me. Like you said on the ranch, I might need someone to bail me out of jail.”

With that, she continued walking, relieved beyond belief when Chance didn’t follow. She didn’t look back until she reached the gate. There was no sign of Chance.

“Evening,” a man said.

She turned to face the gate. She’d never seen the man standing there.

“May I help you?” he asked.

“Who are you?”

“Name’s McCord,” he said. “Who are you?”

“I’m Jeremy Block’s estranged wife. I need to talk to him.”

McCord’s face registered surprise as thick eyebrows wrinkled his brow. He was a stocky, fifty-year-old guy with an ex-boxer’s nose and a smoker’s gravelly voice. “I reckon he’ll be surprised to see you.” He rolled open the gate for her and she followed him up the walkway to the big black door.

“Mr. Block is probably in the study,” McCord said as he gestured for her to enter the house. Stepping inside felt like entering a time warp.

“Is anyone else in the house?”

“Besides me? Just the gal Mr. Block hired to watch the kid.”

“Then Charlie is here,” she said, her gaze flying up the stairs. She veered that direction but McCord stepped in front of her.

“He’s here. But you came to see his father, right?”

“After I say good-night to my boy,” she said.

“No can do,” McCord said and started to reach for her arm to prevent her from climbing the stairs. She dodged his grasp, walked to the study and yanked open the door.

Jeremy glanced up from his seat behind his desk. He was on the phone.

“Wait outside,” he barked, his gaze traveling from Lily to McCord. “I’m in the middle of something important.” He turned in his swivel chair so that his back was toward them. McCord grabbed Lily’s arm and pulled her out of the room. He closed the door and pointed at a chair set against the wall.

Could she get past him and run up the stairs? Charlie was up there, so close now she could almost feel him in her arms.

“Don’t try it,” McCord said, accurately reading her body language.”

“Please, Mr. McCord. Charlie is my child.”

“I don’t want to hurt you,” McCord said and firmly pushed her down onto a chair. He planted himself square in front of her. “But that doesn’t mean I won’t.”

Chapter Three

For twenty-one minutes, according to the clock in the foyer, Jeremy kept them waiting. Lily had no choice but to accept the fact she wasn’t getting past McCord, but that didn’t keep her gaze from repeatedly traveling to the second floor and the open balcony railing that surrounded it. She was so nervous and stressed her hands trembled in her lap and she had to clench them together to keep herself from exploding. More than once, she caught McCord casting her a distasteful glance.

What exactly had he been told about her?

At last Jeremy’s voice told them to come into his study.

“You can leave,” he told McCord as they entered. McCord turned and left, closing the door behind him.

Looking straight at Lily, Jeremy trotted out what she called his campaign smile. “Well, look who came home,” he said. He did not get to his feet. His sandy-colored hair showed a few gray streaks, his eyes were so blue she knew he wore contact lenses to boost the color. He was dressed for the office in a custom-made gray suit. It was one of the more expensive worsted wools, which probably meant he had been in court that day.

Was he handsome? Not in the way Chance was, not with classic features, broad shoulders and a devilish smile that ignited the color of his eyes. But he was commanding. His cold eyes could look warm when he put in the effort and he knew how to twist words more adroitly than a clown manipulating balloons into giraffes.

She stepped to the far side of his desk. “First of all, this is not my home. Secondly, of course I came. You stole my son.”

“The law sees it the other way around.” He nodded at his phone. “I should warn you. The police will come as soon as I ask them to. They have a warrant—”

“I know about that.” She’d had twenty-one minutes to cool her heels and face reality and what she’d decided was that she was going to have to do the whole thing the legal way and that meant going through the system. “Listen, Jeremy,” she pleaded. “Just let me see Charlie. I have to know he’s okay.”

Jeremy chuckled. “How very melodramatic. Of course he’s okay. He’s back where he belongs and no longer at the mercy of his unpredictable mother.”

Lily’s chin tilted. “You might be able to fool other people, Jeremy, but you can’t fool me. I’m the one who lived here. I’m the one you set up to look like a lush. I’m the one you knocked unconscious. And then there’s that minion you sent to kill me, Jodie Brown.”

“You’re delusional,” he said. “I think you always have been. Well, you know what they say drugs and alcohol will do to a person.”

“I found the barbiturates in your desk.”

“So what? The prescription is in your name, prescribed by your physician to relieve anxiety. I was very troubled when I discovered you were mixing them with booze. I even talked to him about it. He was going to hospitalize you for observation, but you disappeared about then. I swear, getting custody of Charlie was a walk in the park.”

“If it was such a walk in the park then why did you employ Jodie?”

“I knew nothing about what he did,” Jeremy insisted.

“Did you kill him when he failed?”

“I believe he died in a drunk driving accident. Surely you’re not blaming me for that, too?”

“You think you’ve covered all the bases, don’t you? Let’s try this one. I know about your affair with Valentine Richards.”

He leaned back in his chair, a man in his domain, a confident man who could lie without effort. “I suppose you found out about her when you snooped through my files.”

“It doesn’t matter how I know about her. You were cheating on me. I wonder what your precious community would think of you if they knew that.”

“As usual, you have it wrong. Valentine was an intern in my office. Sweet girl. Lost her grandmother while she worked here. I wanted to cheer her up so I sent her flowers.”

“You hate flowers.”

“But she loved them.”

“I love them, too. That never made a difference to you.”

“Are you jealous?”

“Oh, please. I just find it interesting that you’ve finally met someone who makes you think beyond yourself. Maybe you’re ready to give me a divorce now.”

“No,” he said.

“Why?”

He smiled. “Because you want it so badly.”

“I don’t need your permission,” she said.

“If you’re hiding from me, it’s going to be tricky to show up in court. And oh, then there’s that nasty warrant.”

Bantering with Jeremy was wasting time. Maybe that was the point. Maybe the police were about to arrive. If that was the case, then she was going to at least see Charlie before it was too late. She walked across the room, grabbed the doorknob and advanced on the staircase.

Jeremy caught her arm and pulled her around. She stumbled on the stair and fell against him. A visceral wave of distaste filled her body as she struggled to stand on her own. He slapped her face so hard her neck snapped to the side. She put a hand up to her stinging cheek and stared into his flat eyes. “Get away from me.”

He lowered his head until his mouth was close to her ear. “I could kill you tonight and explain it away however I want. No one on earth would give a damn, not even Charlie, not after a while.”

“You never give up, do you, Jeremy. Stop trying to bait me. It doesn’t work anymore.”

Pounding footsteps from the top of the stairs broke a stalemate. They looked up to see a young woman rushing across the open mezzanine. She stopped short at the head of the stairs and looked down at them.

“What’s going on?” Jeremy said.

“It’s the boy,” the woman responded.

Lily tore herself from Jeremy’s gasp and ran up the stairs. Jeremy was right behind her. “What about Charlie?” Lily demanded as she reached the quivering woman who glanced at Jeremy, then back at Lily.

“I’ve looked everywhere,” she said. “He’s not in his bed. I don’t know... I don’t know where he is.”

Lily tore down the hall. She entered Charlie’s room. It was filled with toys, many of them still in their boxes. The bed was empty. The other two appeared in the doorway as Lily stared at the rumpled sheets. She set her palm against the pillow. It was cool to the touch.

“Is he hiding somewhere? Did he run away?” Jeremy asked.

“I don’t know,” the woman responded. Lily walked to the window and examined the sill. Then she looked at the wooden window casing. Scratch marks clearly revealed the window had been pried open from the outside. She looked out the open window and saw nothing but the blackness of night. The light that should have illuminated this side of the yard wasn’t burning and the moon hadn’t yet risen high enough to help.

Her baby had been taken from this room. Had Chance done it? It was possible and if so, at least Charlie was safe. She’d been inside the house for more than thirty minutes, so he could have had time to do this. Her heart slammed against her ribs. Was Chance that rash and impulsive? Yes, at times. But he was smarter than that, she was sure of it. The thought of him trying to help her and actually jeopardizing his freedom—for surely if he had done this and was caught he would wind up in jail—well, it made her sick inside.

“Damn that spoiled brat,” Jeremy said under his breath. “If he ran away—”

Lily whirled around, ready to slap him as hard as she could. “How dare you call Charlie—”

“How dare you?” He caught her raised hand and twisted it down to her side but didn’t release it. For the first time he seemed to be interested in what she’d been staring at. He pulled her out of his way and turned to examine the window in silence. She knew the gouges on the wood were unmistakable. At last, through clenched teeth, he addressed the other woman. “I employ you to watch my son. You’re his damn nanny. Where the hell were you while this was going on?”

“In the other room,” she admitted. “I know you said to sit here with him, but my eyes kept drifting closed. I don’t know why I’m so blasted sleepy. I knew I had to do something so I went to my room to find a book. I guess I sat down on the bed. The next thing I knew I was yawning myself awake. I wasn’t out that long, I swear I wasn’t.”

“You were gone long enough for this to happen, you nitwit.”

“Yes, sir,” she said, looking down at the floor. She bent and picked up a piece of paper. “I didn’t see this before,” she said. “Maybe it fell when I threw back the blankets. Oh, my gosh! It says:
A son for a son. White—”

Jeremy snatched the paper from the nanny’s hand before she read another word. “Give that to me,” he said as he released Lily’s wrist.

“What does it mean?” Lily demanded. She couldn’t believe Chance would leave a message as inflammatory as that. In fact, she knew he wouldn’t. That meant someone else had taken Charlie. But who? “Who is White?” she asked.

Jeremy met her gaze but didn’t respond, at least not to her. Instead he turned to the nanny. “Get downstairs and tell McCord to search the grounds. I want to know exactly how my son was taken from this room.”

She nodded nervously and began to turn. Jeremy cleared his throat. “And Janet? Don’t say a word about this to anyone else, do you understand? Not even the police. It’s your fault the child is missing. Don’t make it worse for yourself by blabbing to anyone but McCord.”

“Yes, Mr. Block,” she said as she scurried away.

Lily planted her fists on her hips. “What does that note mean, Jeremy? Who is White?”

He looked at the paper again, then folded it in half. “Don’t you have enough problems of your own?”

Had he always been this much of a nutcase? Did he really think anything that happened to her mattered in the face of what was happening to their son? “Why aren’t you calling the police? And you shouldn’t be touching that paper. There may be fingerprints—”

“I will handle this my own way,” he interrupted.

“You know something, don’t you?” she said in a burst of understanding. “You know who took him and why. Someone named White. Tell me.”

The hateful look in his eyes as he raked her over went straight to her gut. He tore the note into pieces and opened his hand to let them flutter to the carpet. She wanted to catch them and paste them back together. She couldn’t understand how he could destroy the only link they had to Charlie’s abductors.

“It’s some enemy of yours, isn’t it?” she implored. “Oh, my poor Charlie. How can you stand there and let this happen? Don’t you care anything about him? Please—”

He grabbed her shoulders and shook her. “God, you’re annoying. I’ll get Charlie back safe and sound but I’ll do it my own way in my own time. No police. Not unless you want Charlie dead.”

Lily swallowed a lump of air. She wasn’t sure what to do except get out of that house.

“Now I have to figure out what to do about you,” he added.

“No, you don’t. I’m leaving.”

He stepped in front of her. “I don’t trust you. You aren’t going anywhere.”

“Move out of my way.”

“So you can run to the police and in some misdirected gesture of sacrifice, tell them everything you’ve seen and heard? I’ll have to waste time quieting them down and by then it will be too late for Charlie. If you want him to live, you’ll stay out of this and you won’t involve the police. For now, I have things to do and you’re in the way.”

His fist connected with her cheekbone and she stumbled backward. Grabbing her arm, he pulled her from the room and all but ran her down the stairs, his fingers digging into her arm. He propelled her into his office, opened the closet, tore her purse from her shoulder and pushed her inside. The door slammed in her face, encasing her in blackness. The click of the lock echoed in her ears.

And then it was silent.

* * *

C
HANCE
WAITED
UNTIL
he heard the front door close behind Lily and the man she’d called McCord, then jumped over the gate. He dashed to the cover of the trees and hunkered down for a minute as his eyes adjusted to the dark. It seemed odd to him that the outside was so poorly lit but at least he didn’t think he had to worry about cameras picking up his every move.

The gun constituted a last-resort measure not to be taken lightly. Bravado aside, he had no intention of shooting anyone if there was any other choice.

Eventually, he knew his sight was as good as it was going to get and he made his way across the manicured lawns to the house where he carefully peered in through a low window. It turned out to be the kitchen—empty. The next window opened onto a dining room that was dominated by a black lacquer table and the most pretentious-looking candelabra he’d ever seen. For a second he stared inside, wondering what bothered him so much, and then he had it. There were two chairs at the table, one at either end, like on a movie set when they wanted you to understand that the people who dined there didn’t have much to say to one another.

Had Lily endured dinners in this setting? Chance, who had grown up with four other men and a rotating roster of stepmothers, couldn’t imagine the numbing silence and the thought that Charlie might soon eat a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich in this mausoleum was just flat-out depressing.

Farther along, he found a living area that looked as though it had never been lived in, and then popped his head up to find himself peering into a smaller room that seemed to be a den or a home office. It, too, appeared empty and he was about to turn away when the chair in the corner suddenly spun around and a man appeared.

Chance immediately ducked out of sight, but the impression of the man stayed vivid behind his eyes: late forties, stern, arrogant. Blue eyes like Charlie’s. He held a cell phone in one hand and avidly tapped a pencil against the wooden arm of the chair with another. The window was slightly open, but try as he might, Chance couldn’t make out what was being said. He scampered away, careful to keep his head down.

That had to be Lily’s husband. But where was Lily? And where was McCord? He decided to skirt the entire perimeter of the house. The harvest moon that had seemed to illuminate the world on his ranch in the middle of the night was subdued here by the massive size of the house and the shadows it cast. Maybe in a couple of hours it would rise high enough to overcome this obstacle, but Chance fervently hoped he and Lily were back in the motel room by then.