Razing Kayne (27 page)

He disengaged their bodies and rolled away, letting her up. Jess pulled his T-shirt
over her head, and he watched it fall nearly to her knees as he kicked into his jeans.
He fastened them even as he began to walk, Jess sticking close to his side.

They made their way to the nursery, knowing Grace and Isabelle would be the most frightened,
but when they got there all four children were waiting for them.

“Why are you all in here?” Jess asked.

“Izzy said she saw someone on the stairs.” Ash nervously pointed toward the now barricaded
passage.

Kayne turned to his son.
“What do you mean,
saw
someone?”

Isabelle ducked her head. “I saw the scary man, again.”

A cold chill ran down Kayne’s spine. “What scary man?”

Isabelle wrapped herself around his legs.
“The one in the window.”

Kayne stroked Isabelle’s silky crown of curls. “Someone has been outside your window?”
He felt Isabelle’s nod against his hip. Kayne wished he could see Jess better to gauge
her reaction.
Dammit, why the hell wasn’t the generator working?

Kayne shifted Isabelle to Jess’s side. “Wait here.” 

Kayne studied the chair wedged under the door handle to keep the door from being opened.
“Who put the chair here?”

“I did,” Ash said proudly.

“Good job, kiddo.
Smart thinking.
Just don't forget to barricade both doors next time.” Kayne knew there wasn't anyone
in the house, he'd set the alarm himself. However, he liked that Ash had kept a clear
head and knew how to take care of his siblings.

“There isn't another chair in here, but I have my Maglite.” Ash sounded pleased with
himself. Kayne was just about to ask him for it when the power kicked back on.

Kayne fought really hard not to laugh when he realized Ash was still standing near
the hallway door holding the 4 D-cell flashlight like a baseball bat, ready to kick
some boogeyman’s ass.

Kayne stepped into the empty, illuminated stairwell and activated the security screen.
The alarm wasn't on.
Son of a fucking bitch!

He quickly scrolled through the construction-blueprint style screens, scanning for
anyone who didn't belong. The house was empty save for the six of them. He reactivated
the alarm and searched all the door and window indicators. Everything appeared secure
and activated.

“Okay, kiddos, no one in the house but us. Let’s get you back to bed.” One look at
his children’s faces, and he knew their king-sized bed was about to get really crowded.

***

Kayne woke to the sound of a cell phone vibrating. It took him a moment to realize
why he felt like a sardine. He was snuggled up with his wife and a bed full of children.
Not only was the arm under Jess numb, but the one holding Gracie atop his chest had
little feeling in it as well. Before he could figure out how to extract himself, Jess
grabbed the phone and answered, “Hello?”

Kayne lay close enough that he could hear the sound of radio traffic through the phone,
followed by muted silence while the dispatcher responded to the officer
.
Why the hell were they calling him in the middle of the night? He wasn’t the on-call
officer
.

“Hey, it’s Shay in dispatch. I need Kayne.”

“Sorry, he’s taken,” Jess mumbled.

Shay laughed. “You can keep him. I only need to borrow him for a call out.”

Even if Kayne had wanted to take the phone, he wasn't sure if he could. Seeing his
dilemma, Jess held the phone so he could hear
better
.

“I’m not the one on call,” Kayne grumbled.

“I know, but he’s already tied up on an accident scene, and we have a report that
the highway has washed out somewhere east of Little Green Valley.”

Kayne rolled his eyes toward the ceiling, biting back a sigh of frustration. “Isn't
there someone else? I really don't want to leave my wife and kids alone tonight. They're
all snuggled up in bed with us as it is.”

“Yeah, I wish I were there too.” She paused, laughed. “I mean in my own bed. It’s
been a hellacious night—we must be getting close to a full moon. Anyway, Sgt. Balentine
said you're the closest unit.”

“Go already,” Jess mumbled, but she snuggled deeper, sending pins and needles snaking
up his arm.

He searched out her face in the darkness. “Are you sure,
baby
?”

“As long as you promise to hurry home,
Pookie Bear
, I'll miss you.” Jess batted her eyes at him adoringly.

“I'll check 10-8 in a few,” Kayne sighed, knowing he was going to have to figure out
how to extricate himself from the sardine can of the bed. He did not want to leave
them.

“Okay,
Pookie Bear
.” Shay chuckled before she hung up.

Kayne pinched Jess’s ass, satisfied when she yelped in surprise. “You're in so much
trouble for that,” he growled.

“I guess you're really not much of a Pookie Bear, you're more of a Pookums?
Or maybe a Snooky Poo?”
Jess giggled when he cringed. “Sugar Kayne, Candy Kayne?”

“You're enjoying the fact that I'm a captive audience, aren't you?”

Jess nodded—the little witch.

Fifteen minutes later, Kayne climbed into his patrol car.
“Eleven-three-eight, 10-8, en-route.”

***

Jess startled awake, disoriented, certain someone had shouted her name in warning.
The hair on the back of her neck was standing on end, and a chill raked down her spine.
She felt hunted. That was the only word for it.
Hunted.

She lay motionless for a moment, orienting herself. The storm was still fussing outside,
but that wasn’t what had her senses on alert. She looked toward the alarm clock on
the opposite side of her bed, only to realize the power was out again.

Lightning flashed as she turned back to the window. In that brief moment of illumination,
she saw a masked figure, clad in black, looming over the bed.

Jess gasped even as she stomped down the scream trying to escape her. Despite the
mask, she knew it wasn't Kayne.

Someone was in their house.

“Who's there?” she demanded. Jess searched for the flashlight she knew would still
be wrapped in Ash's hands or close by. Another flash lit the room as her hand closed
around the handle, but the man was nowhere to be seen.

A scan of the room with the flashlight showed whoever had been there was gone. Jess
picked up her cell phone and dialed.

“9-1-1, what is your emergency?” Jess recognized Hayden’s voice. She'd been a dispatcher
back when Jess worked for the police department.

“I have an intruder.” Just saying the words out loud scared the hell out of her. She
carefully climbed out of bed and tucked the cell phone between her ear and shoulder
to free up her right hand. Without taking her eye off the bedroom door, she leaned
down, placed her thumb on the biometric lock of the bedside gun safe, and felt the
lock silently disengage.

Jess blindly reached in, grabbed the subcompact 9mm, and tucked it under her arm.
Then she retrieved the ten-round magazine. She slid the magazine into the firearm
and felt it click into place. Jess laid the flashlight on the edge of the bed for
a moment, and chambered a round as quietly as possible, flinching when it sounded
loudly in the silent room
.
Palming the loaded firearm in her right hand, the flashlight in her left, she cautiously
made her way toward the bedroom door.

Jess used her forearm to slam the door shut and then threw the lock. Knowing the door
wouldn't even slow down a determined
person,
she dragged a folding step-stool from the closet and wedged it under the door handle,
barricading them in.

She scanned the flashlight over the kids, amazed they were still sleeping. Her heart
stilled when she didn't see Gracie. But then Ash rolled over, and there she was. Somehow,
the little sprite had made her way into his arms after Kayne left.

God, Jess wanted Kayne to come home.

***

“Eleven-three-eight, are you copying Payson PD's traffic?” Kayne’s dispatch asked.

Kayne picked up his microphone. “Negative.” Shay was really beginning to piss him
off. Since checking on duty, he'd fielded two phone calls and a dozen messages via
computer, and she'd managed to just out and out annoy him over the radio, even when
she wasn't talking to him. No one should be so goddamned cheerful at 3 am.

On top of that, he'd been all the way to the top of the Mogollon Rim on Highway 260
and halfway back, with no signs of a washout. Sure, the heavy rainfall had displaced
a few rocks along the side of the canyon passes, but that was normal, and there had
been no reason to call him, or anyone else for that matter, out of bed.

“They’re responding to your 10-42. Your 1-0-1 reported an intruder.”

Son of a bitch!
No reason to call him out of bed, unless it was to get him out of the house. Kayne's
heart nearly jumped out of his chest. Jess had called in an intruder?
Motherfucker!

“Copy, how long ago?”

“PD just called. Officers are enroute. They wanted to confirm your 10-20.”

Kayne flipped on his overhead lights. “I haven't been anywhere near the house,” he
said, realizing they wanted his location to make sure he hadn't gone home for a minute,
and Jess hadn’t realized it was him.

His location, however, was a problem. Even running code, with the heavy rain and low
visibility, he was a good five to ten minutes away.

“I'm enroute, Code 3.”  Kayne added sirens to the flashing lights. He prayed P.D.
would get there quickly, because anything could happen in a moment, much less ten
fucking minutes.

“Battalion One, I'm on scene of the PD's intruder call.”

Kayne glared at the in-car scanner when he heard Cody's voice.
What the fuck?
Why was Cody anywhere near their house at three in the morning, much less checking
on scene like he was some sort of law enforcement officer?

Kayne had a funny feeling he knew exactly who the intruder was. If he was right, Cody
had just crossed the line from nuisance to dangerous. Kayne listened as Rafe Chatham
ordered Cody to stay out of the house and let the cops handle it. It was clear from
Cody’s response that he had no intention of following that order.

TWENTY-NINE

Once he got within a couple miles of home, Kayne killed the sirens so he wouldn’t
announce his arrival and continued on with flashing lights until he reached the long
driveway, where he shut everything down and pulled in behind the other arriving police
vehicles.

Kayne had barely let the car come to a standstill before throwing it into park and
scrambling out. He grabbed the first officer he recognized, Nick Astenbeck. “Are they
okay?”

Nick nodded. “Dispatch has them on the line. They're all barricaded in the master
bedroom, wherever the hell that is.”

Kayne heard the frustration in Nick's voice. While the twenty-thousand square foot
house/event center might be many people's idea of a dream home, it was a cop's nightmare.
And currently a cop's wife's nightmare.

“Very southeast corner, right under the lower tower.”
Kayne pointed to one of the two round towers. He glanced at the second tower, the
highest point on the house. The red clearance beacon wasn't flashing. “The power is
out.”

Trace St. Moritz seemed to materialize out of thin air next to him. “Yeah, that's
what Jess told dispatch.” 

Kayne blinked at him. “What the hell are you and Rafe doing out at this time of the
morning?”

“We have no fucking idea.” Rafe shook his head in disgust. “It's too complicated to
explain.”

“Where's Cody?” Kayne looked around but didn’t see the belligerent hose-monkey.

Rafe threw his hand toward the house. “Supposedly he's inside, somewhere. Maybe the
dumbass will get himself shot and save us from having to report him.”

Obviously, Cody hadn't listened to Rafe's warnings, or he'd already been inside when
he checked on scene. Either way, Kayne didn't want him anywhere near Jess. “How the
hell did he get in?” Kayne wondered aloud.

“You're uh...not going to like the answer.” Trace rubbed the back of his neck with
one hand
.
“But all of us have access to the code for the side door into the garage. It's on
file for emergency access, since it’s a place of business too.”

Son of a bitch!

Naturally, Jess would have provided an access code for emergencies without second
thought, since she knew and trusted everyone who'd have access to it.

“Tell your dispatch to advise Jess we're coming around to the bedroom patio doors.”
Kayne would hate for someone to get shot.

Rafe grabbed his arm. “Now wait a second, Kayne. We've got to search the house.”

Kayne yanked his arm free and started walking again. “It will take us hours to do
that, and there are five staircases alone in the damn thing. We don't have the crew.
If I can get the
generator up and running, the alarm will tell us exactly who's in the house and where.
Besides, I
think
the intruder was Cody. He seems to be having a hard time accepting the fact that
she's married, and not to him.”

“Funny you should mention that,” Nick said as they played follow-the-leader through
the rose garden toward the southeast corner of the house. “Before she was married
the first time, there were a couple incidents where she
thought
someone had been in her house while she was gone. We all kinda wrote it off, because
even she wasn't sure. The only clues were things like leaving a light on that she
was sure she’d turned off, or finding a door unlocked
she
thought she'd locked. The one that really creeped her out was the laundry incident—she
came home and laundry she'd sworn she folded and put away was laying on the end of
her bed. It was lingerie.”

Kayne’s head swiveled around to look at Nick. “What the fuck?” That was stalker activity.

“I went over personally and dusted for prints because she didn't want anyone to know,”
Nick said. “There were no prints anywhere.”

“So she'd been mistaken?” Kayne couldn't picture Jess being that scatterbrained.

Nick shook his head. “No. I mean there were
no
prints anywhere, not even hers. Every surface had been wiped clean. She wouldn't
file any official report, but I quietly passed the word around, and we all kept an
extra eye on her. Figured even if she found out, the only way she could be mad at
me was if she was still alive. It spooked her enough that she let me follow her home
after work for a good long while so I could check the house.”

“What happened?” Why hadn't Jess ever told him about a stalker problem?

“Nothing really.
Well no, that's not true. A couple of nights later, I found the door unlocked, but
there was no one there, and this time only the bedroom had been wiped clean of prints.
My gut told me someone was keeping an eye on
who
she was or wasn't inviting into her bed, if you know what I mean.” Nick tossed him
a grin. “I never told Jess, but I made sure my prints were strategically locatable
around her bedroom and stayed for coffee that night.”

“They were wasting their time,” Rafe scoffed. “She was saving herself for marriage.
Believe me. I wasted a great deal of my misspent youth trying to get into her pants.”

When Kayne turned on him, Rafe quickly took a step back, both hands up in surrender.
“Whoa, I gave up my stalking Jess days back in college, when she introduced me to
my wife, Bianca. While I might have liked to have started something after Jarred died,
it never happened, and I sure as hell would never poach.”

Kayne shook his head. He’d heard about Bianca Chatham. Rumor had it she’d been brutally
raped and murdered in their Chicago home while Rafe had been working a missing person’s
case.

Payson, it seemed, was the place injured souls came to lick their wounds and heal.

“Did the stalking start back up when Jarred died?” Kayne asked.

“I don't know.” Nick shrugged. “If it did, Jess never said. I'm not saying anything
Trace and Rafe don't already know, but we haven’t seen much of Jess since Jarred's
funeral. She let Joe help out for the first week or so with the kids, and after that
she managed to keep her distance from everyone except for Del and Polly St. Phillips.
Well, and Cody, though she was thankfully smart enough to recognize him for the alley
cat he is.”

“Let her know we're here.” Kayne climbed over the balcony railing. “Once I know they're
okay, we can go down to the basement and figure out why the generator didn't kick
on.” Then he could find Cody and kick his ass. He didn't even want to think about
what Cody could have done to Jess tonight, especially with thoughts of Rafe's wife
having flashed through his head only moments before.

Rafe slapped a hand on his shoulder. “You leave Cody to me.”

The door flew open, and a violently trembling Jess threw herself into Kayne's arms
and began sobbing.
“Kayne!”

“It's okay, baby, I’ve got you.” He took the firearm from her trembling hand and handed
it off to Rafe, then scooped her up and carried her inside, out of the rain.

She clung to him. “He was just standing there, watching us sleep.” 

Kayne looked around the room, now lit by candlelight. Four little bodies that’d been
huddling in the middle of the bed scrambled toward him.

Rafe crossed the bedroom, yanked the step-ladder out of the way, and flung open the
bedroom door. “Gee, what a surprise,
Cody.
Been here long?”

“Jessica, thank God you’re okay.” Cody tried to move past Rafe without answering
his question.

Rafe shoved him up against the wall and patted him down, Cody protesting all the while.
Apparently satisfied with the negative results of the search, Rafe let him go, but
pointed to a spot by the door and ordered, “Stand right there and don’t say a word,
or I will arrest your happy ass.”

Cody was clearly pissed, but after a moment’s protest, he reluctantly obeyed Rafe’s
order.

“Why don’t you take Jess into the sitting
room.
” Rafe pointed through the doorway. “Cody and I will stay here with the kiddos.” 
He paused to look at the kids. “If you lay back down, I’ll tell you a bedtime story.”

Once they were settled in the sitting room, Jess explained to Nick, Trace, and Kayne
what had happened, but she looked nervously at Nick when she claimed she wasn't a
hundred percent sure it hadn't been her imagination, perhaps a remnant of a bad dream.
But listening as Jess relayed the situation, Kayne was convinced someone had been
there. One look at the other officers, and he knew they agreed.

“Can you stay here, while we check the house? I want to see what's wrong with the
generator.” Jess hadn't let go of him since she'd thrown herself in his arms.

“I'll stay with Jess,” Cody volunteered quickly from where he still stood by the bedroom
door.

Rafe stepped into the sitting room. “I'll stay with Jess and the pack of sardines.” 

He met and held Kayne's gaze, not in challenge, but friendship. Yeah, he might have
had a thing for Jess, but he'd meant what he said. He recognized that Jess belonged
to Kayne, and he supported it.

Kayne deliberately looked at Cody. “You should have seen me trying to extricate myself
out of that sardine can when I got the callout earlier. They crawled into bed with
Jess and I after the storm hit.”  He surreptitiously watched Cody's demeanor change
with that revelation. Sure enough, he looked ready to blow a gasket for a moment before
masking his emotions. Kayne glanced at Nick and Trace. They hadn't missed it either.

“Let’s go.” Cody stalked off.

Trace grabbed his arm. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing? You’re not a cop;
you have no business being here.”

Cody motioned toward Kayne with his chin. “Even if he could find the generator, I
doubt he’d know how to work it.”

Trace lifted his hands in surrender. “You know what, it’s your funeral.” 

Cody stormed off, heading straight for the hidden staircase. The same staircase that
Isabelle claimed she’d seen someone using earlier.

“Swa-eeeet!
The castle had hidden passageways,” Trace whispered behind Kayne. “Did she build a
dungeon too?”

“Yeah, it's labeled In-law-quarters on the blueprints.” Kayne smirked.

He knew they should be taking this a little more seriously, but he couldn't shake
the gut feeling that Cody was the intruder. He prayed to God that was the case. Just
the thought of some shadowy nemesis from his past touching this family scared the
ever-loving shit out of him. At least with Cody he knew who his enemy was and how
to deal with him.

Besides, he might not know what really happened the night Tasha was taken, but the
people who'd taken her were dead.

Nick whistled low. “This place is so much more amazing in person than on paper.”

“On paper?”
Kayne flashed him a curious glance.

“Yeah, this was Jess's dream house long before Jarred. She found it online one night
when she was surfing the Internet.”

“So anyone could have access to the house plan?” That thought did not make Kayne happy
.

They discovered the main breaker had been thrown. Though it could have been done manually,
more than likely lightning had struck the tower and kicked the breaker. Kayne shoved
the lever into the
on
position, and everything powered up, including the light in the utility room.
That made him frown
. He was sure he would have noticed light coming from under the door at some point
when he retrieved or put away his duty belt and service weapon in the safe down the
hall.

Looking around, he noticed a door that he was pretty sure wasn’t on the alarm blueprints.
“Where does that door go?”

Cody flashed him a superior grin. “Oh, it's unfinished space.”

Kayne went to the security screen, logged in, and rebooted the system. When it came
online, he searched the floors from top to bottom. Everyone showed up where they should
be, and there were no bodies unaccounted for. However, Kayne had remembered correctly,
and the extra rooms were not on the blueprints. He also noted the tower door to the
observation platform was not monitored, something he'd never noticed before. While
it seemed unlikely for someone to scale the four-story tower, it wasn't impossible.

A cursory search showed the cavernous room to be empty, save for one small object
on the concrete floor. A cigarette butt—something that could have easily been left
by a service crew. However, the lingering scent of smoke could not. Nor could the
disturbed dust where footprints had been carefully obliterated.

If someone had known about this room, and given that the alarm didn't monitor this
section, they could have been in the house for any length of time. Kayne felt physically
ill. He'd left his family home alone tonight with a real life monster in the house.
He'd been sent out on a wild goose chase to get him out of the way.

Godammit!
Jess could have been raped. They all could have been injured or killed. He could
have lost everything tonight. If he'd just checked the fucking generator before he
left, he would have known someone was here.