A Father For Her Baby

“How would I know that?” Derrick snapped.

Sanders reached for the pay phone. “We have to call the police—”

Derrick grabbed his wrist. “Are you crazy? We can’t chance calling the cops. I won’t risk my son’s life. We have to wait until we hear from the kidnapper and see what his demands are. He’ll call me back in Montana. I’m sure of it. I’ll have to take the next flight home.”

Sanders blinked. “You’re going to just leave Kit and the baby in the hands of some kidnapper in Texas and go back to Montana?” He couldn’t believe his brother. Couldn’t believe Kit had been kidnapped. How had the kidnapper known where she was, let alone that she’d be taking a limo?

“I’m not just leaving them,” Derrick snapped. “You’re staying here. You track that limo and driver and call me as soon as you know something.”

Sanders felt sick as he left the airport. Who would kidnap Kit and the baby? Only one man he could think of. The same man who’d known the address where Kit worked, who came up with the idea of a friend’s secluded ranch in Huntsville, who anticipated Kit would insist on Sanders meeting him at the airport instead of driving her, and who’d suggested hiring a limo and driver to take her.

Derrick could easily have set up this whole kidnapping thing. To scare Kit into coming back to him.

* * *

THE STORM SUCKED the last of the light from the day, making the sky as gray as the gulf. Rain streaked the windows of the limo as it sped along the coast. Kit fought the urge to scream and pound again on the window. She knew it would only upset her son—and accomplish nothing.

She glanced at her watch, trying to calculate where they were. She had no idea. She didn’t know Texas, never having ventured out of the house, let alone Galveston, for fear of running into Derrick. Through the rain, she glimpsed a highway sign: Brownsville, 170 miles. Dear God, they were headed south along the gulf toward Mexico.

Andy began to whimper. Kit unsnapped him from the carrier and changed his wet diaper, her hands trembling. She tried to stay calm, to think clearly, for the baby’s sake.

“It’s going to be all right,” she said to him as she took a bottle from the warmer in the bag and put the nipple to his mouth. Andy took it greedily. She looked down at him, studying his precious face, promising him silently that she would get them out of this. Whatever she had to do.

Her head jerked up as she felt the car slowing. Her pulse was deafening in her ears as she fought to see beyond the rain. Why were they stopping? She quickly unsnapped Andy’s car seat and buckled her son back into it as the driver turned onto a narrow shell road that ran through high dunes and scrub brush. Dense fog socked in the gulf. Fog and rain and night cloaked the car in darkness.

From what Kit could see, the area appeared seedy and deserted. The few shanties they passed stood on stilts like shore birds, but they too looked empty, boarded up as if anticipating a bad storm.

The driver pulled off on an even narrower side road and stopped between two tall dunes. He cut the engine. Kit grabbed for the door, planning to leap out with her son and run. The door was locked.

Her gaze jumped to the driver as she heard the whir of the privacy window and saw him turning toward her.

Chapter Six (#ulink_3d79f79d-0f8c-5d74-8405-0593ea17d467)

Kit hurriedly rummaged through her purse, looking for anything she could use as a weapon. She found nothing. Not even a metal nail file or a set of keys. For the first time in her life, she wished for a gun and the knowledge to use it.

The driver reached back and grabbed her arm, taking the purse from her with his free hand. She had the impression that he could have crushed her arm with the strength in his fingers alone, but he didn’t. His grip was almost gentle, but firm. He left no doubt in her mind who would win if push came to shove.

“Take it easy, Mrs. Killhorn,” he commanded as he dropped the purse on the seat beside him, but kept his hold on her arm.

“Don’t call me that.” She jerked free, as angry as she was afraid. “Derrick Killhorn hired you, didn’t he?”

“I told you, no one hired me.”

“Someone hired you to kill me and take my son,” she cried in exasperation. “It had to be Derrick.” Or Sanders.

The driver held up one of his large, weathered hands. “Hold on, I didn’t bring you here to kill you or steal your son. If anything, I probably saved your life.”

“What?” She glared at him. He didn’t look like a crackpot.

He took off the chauffeur’s cap, tossed it on the seat beside him and raked a hand through his full head of dark blond hair.

“I know you aren’t a chauffeur,” she said as she watched him shrug out of the uniform jacket and loosen his shirt collar. She remembered the anger she’d seen in his eyes—anger aimed at her. “Who are you?”

“I’m a carpenter.” He met her gaze. “I make furniture.”

What kind of answer was that? She felt her head spin. “Why would a carpenter want—”

“There was another limo and driver who were to pick up you and the baby. It was to come thirty minutes later than I did. That’s the one Sanders hired.”

Derrick had told her she’d taken the wrong limo. For once the man wasn’t lying.

“If you’d gotten into the other limo, I doubt anyone would have ever seen you again,” he said matter-of-factly.

She shuddered at the calm certainty in his voice. “How do you know that?” And for that matter, how did he know who she was, that a limo was going to pick her up, that Sanders had hired it?

He held up his hand and shook his head at her as if he found her lack of patience daunting. “I overheard Sanders making the arrangements. You were to go to Huntsville to an out-of-the-way ranch. Derrick would have been waiting there for you. All the arrangements were made before Sanders even talked to you. It was Derrick’s plan. Sanders just carried out his orders.”

She felt sick inside but still didn’t want to accept it. “And you just happened to overhear all this?”

He nodded. “I’ve been following Sanders for seven months.” He sounded weary. “I’ve also been listening to him through the wonders of modern technology.”

She frowned. “You bugged him? Isn’t that illegal?”

He raised a brow as if to say that he’d done other things much more illegal than that. That scared her.

“Seven months?” The man was determined, she thought. “Why?”

He shrugged as if it should have been obvious. “I couldn’t find you myself. I knew Sanders was looking for you. I thought with the Killhorn resources he had a better chance than I did.”

She felt hesitant to ask the next obvious question. “Why did you want to find me so badly?”

“To talk to you.”

She raised a brow. “You went to all that trouble just to talk to me?” He was a crackpot. Oh, God, could things get any worse? She held tightly to Andy and the baby carrier and glanced out at the fog and darkness. Rain fell in a thick gray sheet and drummed on the roof of the limo. How was she going to get away from this man?

“Originally that had been the plan.”

Originally? The word snapped her attention back to him. Now he wanted more than to talk to her? “Are you a cop or something?”

“I’m Luke St. John. Jason’s brother.”

Chapter Seven (#ulink_11abe172-46e7-5a76-b475-ccce5e193594)

Luke St. John? Sanders stared down at the name on the A-1 Rent-a-Ride rental form. St. John? Someone Derrick had hired? Now he wasn’t so sure. It was too much of a coincidence not to be a relative of Jason’s. Headed for Huntsville? He doubted that. But just seeing the name neatly printed on the paper, Sanders assumed that Luke St. John, whoever he was, knew about the plan to rent a limo and take Kit and the baby to Huntsville. How? But maybe more important, why had St. John used his real name on the rental agreement, as if he wanted Sanders to know that he knew?

No, Sanders thought, St. John wanted Derrick to know. Did Luke also believe that Derrick had killed Jason?

Sanders left, drove to the nearest pay phone and called the private detective Derrick had hired to find Kit when Sanders had failed. It gave Sanders no little satisfaction that the P.I. had been unable to find Kit.