Innocent Hostage (7 page)

That night, still thinking about Ingrid Rowland, he drove into his allotted parking space beneath the apartment building. Kit was sprawled out asleep in the back seat, his safety restraint cutting into his stomach. Outside, only a sprinkle of stars dotted the sky and clouds obscured the moon. The basement parking area was as black as pitch. The super had neglected to fix the two fluorescent tubes that had been flickering on and off for a couple of weeks now.

Wondering what he could fling together for dinner, Breck jumped down from the 4WD straight into a punch that sent sky-rockets exploding in his brain. In the distance he could hear Kit struggling out of his seatbelt yelling, “Dadd-ee!! Dadd-ee!!” but fog clouded Breck’s brain and swirled in front of his eyes. He couldn’t seem to move. His eyes wouldn’t focus but his hearing went on full alert to compensate. A slight hitch in breathing and the scrape of a sneaker on asphalt had him ducking down.

“Dadd-ee!” Kit yelled again and Breck heard a click as Kit escaped from his safety belt.

Terror gripped him by the throat. Nobody was going to take Kit away from him. “No!” he managed to croak, and then Kit cannoned into him. In one movement Breck curled himself over his son and dropped to the ground. He squinted up at the dark figure looming over them and punched upwards, the full force of his anger behind the punch. His fist connected and the figure staggered back. Still too stunned to move, he stayed where he was, a sitting duck. His eyes swiveled, trying to gauge where the next attack would come from. Then an almighty wallop slammed him between the shoulder blades. The breath whooshed out of his lungs. Choking and gasping for air, he prayed the assailant wasn’t carrying a knife.

Nearby a car door slammed and an engine revved. The warmth of car exhaust brushed his skin and he raised his head in time to see a battered pick-up truck fishtail its way out of the car lot. Without giving way, it roared into the traffic flow to the accompaniment of blasting horns. As it turned, Breck caught a flash of color under the streetlights. Blue.

“Daddy?”

Hell. He was crushing Kit into the asphalt. “Sorry, Kit.” He dragged himself to his feet, groggy and disoriented, using the SUV as a prop. That had been some punch. It had been years since he’d been sucker-punched. He touched his chin gingerly. Warm blood coursed down his chin and neck and dribbled over his fingers. So, not just a fist. A knuckle duster.

He staggered into the apartment with Kit trailing behind, towing his backpack and Breck’s satchel.

Breck locked the door and turned on the lights. Then he crouched down unsteadily to examine Kit. “Sure you’re okay, son?”

Kit stared at him, his eyes round with wonder. “You saved me, Daddy,” he said solemnly. “Just like…like—” He gave up trying to find an analogy and buried his face in his father’s shoulder. Then he started and pulled back. “Ugh! There’s blood all over you!”

There sure was. Breck’s tee shirt was soaked. It stuck to his skin. He tried to stand but the effort was too much for him. He settled for crawling on his hands and knees and collapsed on to the sofa just as his cell phone rang. “Shit,” he muttered, struggling to sit up.

“I’ll get it, Daddy.” Kit dived into Breck’s satchel. He fished out the phone and to Breck’s shock, gabbled away like a pro. “Hi, Ms. Rowland,” he chirped.

Breck groaned. The woman would think he stumbled from disaster to disaster.

“Ms. Rowland, can you come over? Daddy’s sick. A bad man tried to hurt us.”

“Hell! No, son. Don’t tell her that!” Breck tried to grab the phone.

Too late. Kit had already shut the phone down and set about emptying his backpack and Breck’s satchel. “Lie down, Daddy.”

Breck lay back, wondering where his submissive, quiet little boy had gone. This kid was taking over. He almost grinned in spite of his spinning head. It was great that Kit had become confident enough to take over.

The next thing he knew, gentle hands were turning his head this way and that. “Puncture wounds,” a soft voice said. “How on earth did he get those, Kit?”

Breck struggled to sit up.

“No, no. Lie down, Mr. Marchant—er, Breck.”

It was the fairy lady. His stomach tightened.

“Let me see…”

He stayed still.

There was a short silence while her fingers brailed his face. His heart beat in an uneven tattoo.

“I think you should go to the emergency department,” she said after a few minutes. “Two of these wounds are very deep. I think they’ll need stitches. Here.” She pressed a soft, damp cloth against his chin. “Are you hurt anywhere else?”

He was damned if he was going to admit that his head was spinning and his back felt as if someone had driven a tank over it. “There’s a doctor I can call,” he mumbled.

“Will he make house calls?” Ingrid Rowland bit her lip.

“Yes,” Breck said, and lay back again. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Kit, round-eyed, watching.

“Kit? Sure you’re okay?”

“Yes, Daddy. Ms. Rowland checked me over.”

“Thanks,” Breck murmured.

Somehow he lost another half-hour and woke to find Doc Hargreaves bending over him, tying off a stitch.

“Hi, Marchant. We meet again,” Hargreaves said. He shone a light into Breck’s eyes. “No concussion.”

“No. I didn’t bang my head. Why am I so dizzy?”

“Blood loss. I think you ran into a knuckle-duster with sharp spikes. Stuffed up your stubborn chin but was high enough to miss your windpipe.”

Breck hadn’t thought about his trachea. Lucky he hadn’t drowned in his own blood.

“Seen a couple of similar injuries recently,” Hargreaves said. “Martial arts technique. Got any ideas who would do such a thing?”

Breck tried to shake his head but his head swam and he subsided.

“Uncle Billy does martial arts, Daddy.” Kit’s voice startled them. He was standing beside them, watching his father anxiously.

“Who’s Uncle Billy, son?” Breck tried to sound casual, but it came out as a croak.

“Marty knows him. He’s mean, Marty says.”

Hargreaves raised his eyebrows. “I have to report this at HQ, Marchant.”

“Mmmph.” Breck wasn’t going to try to nod. “I understand.”

“Leave it up to Max to sort out.” Hargreaves peered into Breck’s face. “Hmm. See how you feel tomorrow. You’re healthy enough not to need a transfusion. Plenty of fluids will do the trick.”

In the distance Ingrid Rowland clattered pots in the kitchen. The doctor inclined his head, “Friend of yours?”

“Not really,” Breck answered. “A friend of my son’s.”

Ingrid came into the room, wiping her hands on a cloth. She must have heard what he said because her lips trembled. Looking uncertain, she began to back out of the room.

Feeling like a complete bastard, Breck lay back and looked at the ceiling.

Hargreaves looked from Breck to Ingrid. “Well, if you’re staying, Ms. Rowland, could you see that Breck gets plenty of fluids to drink?”

Ingrid nodded and hurried off to the kitchen, Kit pattering behind her.

As Hargreaves packed up his gear he whispered to Breck, “Not bad; not bad at all.”

Breck flushed. Hargreaves was a notorious gossip. He hoped while he’d been out cold the doc hadn’t said anything that would be better left unsaid. Then again, he had just managed to both upset and insult Ingrid, so anything Hargreaves came up with couldn’t possibly be worse.

“Don’t want to hear from you until you come in for your next physical.” Hargreaves winked, and was gone.

Breck fingered his chin. As Ingrid had surmised, the doctor had stitched two of the gashes beneath his chin. Breck hadn’t felt a thing so Hargreaves must have sprayed his skin with anesthetic. The skin still felt numb.

Ingrid and Kit rattled into the room carrying trays of food and Breck struggled to sit up.

“Here, let me help you,” Ingrid said, dumping her tray. She came around the back of the sofa and put her arms around him as if she were going to hug him. She smelled of lemon peel and vanilla. Startled, he froze, but she had already hoisted him up against the back of the sofa.

He tried to assemble his wits. “Where did you…uh, learn that?” he asked.

She grinned. “Night shift at a retirement village while I was at university. There were supposed to be two of us on duty at all times but it just never happened, so we learned to manage.”

Lord, the little princess was strong. He would never have believed she could lift more than a cucumber sandwich.

“Kit was hungry so we dug around in the cupboards. Hope you don’t mind.”

She looked anxious, and he cursed inwardly that she’d overheard his comment to Hargreaves. How ungrateful could he be? “Thank you, Ingrid. I’m not very hungry at the moment, but it looks good.” Must be. Kit was tucking into his food as if he hadn’t eaten for a week. Breck knew his cooking left much to be desired, but hell, it wasn’t
that
bad. “He
did
get breakfast and lunch, you know,” Breck muttered.

Ingrid smiled. She dug her fork into her food. “It’s good. Try some.”

He frowned. She was talking to him as if he were one of her four-year olds.

Then she saw the expression on his face and clapped a hand over her mouth. “Sorry. Force of habit.” She removed the plate from his lap and plunked it down on the table next to him.

Perversely, he now wanted to sample the casserole. Damn it. The woman must have done a course in psychology. Child psychology.

He shuffled along the sofa and retrieved the plate, his head swimming with the effort. As soon as he swallowed the first mouthful, he realized she was right. It
was
good. It wasn’t like any canned casserole he’d ever had before. “What did you add to it to make it taste like this?” he asked.

“Just a bit of this and that. You know, the usual stuff.”

Well, that cleared things up. What the hell was she talking about?

“She put in some spices and stuff, Dad,” Kit explained. His plate was clean. Breck suspected that if Ingrid wasn’t there, Kit would have licked the plate. As a matter of fact, if Ingrid wasn’t there,
he
would lick the plate. “I didn’t know I had any of those things in the cupboard,” he said, feeling like an idiot.

She eyed him, delicately forking up small mouthfuls. “So who stocked your cupboards?”

The penny dropped. “That must have been Jace on the day the Unit came here. The day you—” He stopped. He’d been going to say, “The day Kit was kidnapped and you got snotty about our having a party.” Since Kit was listening and since she was doing him a favor, he shut up.

“Oh. That day,” she said. “It must be great to have friends like Jace. I could do with some.”

“You don’t have friends—”

“None who I’d let near my kitchen.” She finished the sentence quickly, with a snap.

What was she saying? That she didn’t have any trustworthy friends? She was so hard to read. Anyway, why was he wasting his time wondering? She was a kind, helpful, okay…very pretty woman who was also his son’s preschool teacher. That’s all. And he wasn’t in the market for kind, helpful, pretty preschool teachers. He wasn’t in the market for any kind of woman, period.