Operation Nanny

“Just be careful, Lacey. Okay? I know it’s possible what happened to you today was random, but...”

But it wasn’t likely. She knew that already.

“I’ll be in touch,” she promised.

Meanwhile, she had some background checking to do.

* * *

JIM HADN’T FIGURED on hearing from Lacey Miles for a few days. He knew she’d already talked to the references he’d provided on his résumé, but he was pretty sure she wouldn’t have stopped there. He’d been watching her reporting for a few years now. He knew she was smart, prepared, resourceful and very, very thorough.

So it was with some surprise that he heard her voice on the phone shortly after lunchtime the day after the interview. “Mr. Mercer? This is Lacey Miles.”

He put down the Glock he was cleaning and sat up straighter. “Ms. Miles. How’s Katie? How are you, for that matter? Recovered from the attack?”

She didn’t answer for a moment, as if his questions caught her off guard. “We’re fine,” she said after a couple of beats of silence. “Just fine. I’m calling about the job you interviewed for yesterday.”

“Yes. Have you made a decision?”

“I have,” she said, her voice a little stronger. “I’d like to hire you to care for my niece. Were you serious when you said you could go to work immediately?”

“Yes, I was.”

“Then could you be here by four this afternoon? I have somewhere I need to go this evening. Somewhere I can’t take Katie.”

He frowned, not liking the sound of that. “You’re not going out alone, are you?”

“I beg your pardon?”

Damn it. You’re a nanny, not a Marine. Remember that. She’s your boss, not someone you’re protecting. “I’m sorry. You’re right. I have no right to ask you such a question. I just—After the bombing and what happened to you yesterday...forget I asked. Yes, I can be there by dinnertime. I just need the address.”

“Do you know how to get to Cherry Grove? East of Lovettsville, near the Potomac. There’s a big fountain in the center of town. Shaped like a cherry.” She couldn’t quite keep a hint of laughter out of her voice. “Trust me, you can’t miss it. If you’ll stop at the gas station across the street from the fountain, just ask for the old Peabody farm. They’ll tell you how to get here.”

“Got it,” he said. “I’ll pack a bag and be there by four. Will that work?”

“Yes. Thank you. We’ll give this a try and see how it goes.” She hung up before he could say anything else.

He punched in a phone number and waited. He got an answer on the second ring. “It’s Mercer.”

“Any news?”

“Yeah. I’m headed to Cherry Grove. This evening. She’s going out and needs me to watch Katie. Says we’ll give this a try and see if it works out.”

“It’ll work out,” the voice on the other end of the line said firmly. “You’ll make it work out.”

“Understood.” He hung up the phone, picked up his Glock and started cleaning the weapon again.

Chapter Three (#ulink_df1fea57-7493-5abf-9df7-e0edcce2aaca)

“What do you say, sweet pea?”

Katie gazed back at Lacey, her gray eyes bright with curiosity, as if she was trying to make sense of the question.

Lacey ruffled the baby’s blond curls and laughed self-consciously. “It’s okay, sweetie. If Aunt Lacey doesn’t know whether she’s done the right thing, she doesn’t expect you to know.”

“Wacey,” Katie said solemnly.

Lacey picked her up and gave her a hug. Apparently not in the mood for a snuggle, Katie wriggled in her grasp, and Lacey set her down on the floor again with a sigh. “You sure know how to make a girl feel better about her mothering skills, Katie.”

Katie flashed a lopsided grin and toddled off to the window, where she’d left her favorite stuffed cat sitting on the windowsill.

Lacey looked around the small front parlor, feeling entirely overwhelmed. When she’d decided to move herself and Katie out here to Nowheresville, Virginia, she hadn’t realized just how little of the farmhouse had been renovated. Half the sprawling old Folk Victorian house was still trapped in limbo, somewhere between demolition and reconstruction, and she had no idea how or when she’d be able to finish the work.

The contractor she’d hired to assess the status of the renovation had assured her that the foundation had been made sound, the roof was new and there were no safety hazards to worry about, although there had been some question about the safety of an underground tunnel the contractor had discovered in the basement, which was the only remaining part of the antebellum home that had burned to the ground a few years before the farmhouse had been built on its foundation.

But most of the upstairs rooms had yet to be repaired and painted. There was a whole bathroom in the master suite that had been completely gutted. And the sprawling kitchen at the back of the house was only halfway finished, though most of the remaining work was cosmetic rather than functional.

Poor Jim Mercer didn’t have any idea what kind of mess he was about to walk into.

Her cell phone rang, a jarring note in the bucolic peace of the isolated farm. She checked the display and grimaced when she saw the name. “Hi, Royce.”

“I heard you’re hiring a nanny.”

“Where’d you hear that?” she asked, wondering which employee of Elite Employment Agency had let that information slip to the wrong person.

“Oh, around. You know.”

Maybe it had been Jim Mercer himself who’d spilled the news. Maybe he’d decided to do a little background checking on her, as well. She couldn’t really blame him if he had, she realized. He had a right to know just what sort of mess he was walking into if he took the job. “You called to find out whether or not I’m hiring a nanny?”

“No,” Royce said in a tone of long-suffering forbearance. “I called to find out whether your decision to hire a nanny meant you were coming back to work.”

“Not yet. You said I could take a few months. Have you changed your mind?”

“If I said I had, would you come back to work?”

“No,” she answered flatly. “I need this time off, Royce. If you can’t give it to me, I’ll turn in my notice. Then when I’m ready to return to work, I’ll give one of the other networks a call.”

“No,” Royce said quickly. “I said you could have the sabbatical. I’m not going to renege.”

“I really do appreciate your understanding.”

“I hear the cops still don’t know who set the bomb or why. Do you think it had something to do with that piece you were doing on al Adar?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted. Not long before the car bomb that had killed Marianne and Toby, Lacey had spent several months in Kaziristan, a Central Asian republic fighting for its very existence. A terrorist group known as al Adar had risen from the ashes earlier in the year, after several years of near dormancy, taking advantage of an economic downturn in the nascent democracy to stir up trouble and violence. Her exposé on the troubling rise of the terrorist group had just been nominated for a Murrow Award for investigative reporting.

But al Adar hadn’t yet made a name for themselves outside of Kaziristan. They hadn’t really started exporting terrorism on a regular basis, despite a few aborted attempts a few years back.

Or had they?