- -
- 100%
- +
“They’ll follow us,” Nick announced.
“Then drive like a bat out of hell,” she panted back.
While he commenced doing just that, she wriggled out of the backpack and half-climbed over the backseat to strap Ellie, red-faced and furious, into her car seat. Laura wiped the pacifier off as best she could, and offered it to the baby once more. Yup. Mommy hell for her. But sometimes a mommy had to do what a mommy had to do. And given that they were careening along a twisting dirt road at something like seventy miles per hour, she wasn’t about to unstrap the infant and try to nurse her.
Nick muttered, white knuckled, “Mother of God, Laura, what are you doing here with Ellie?”
“Saving your life, apparently. Where did you learn to drive like this?”
“I’m told I did some Formula One racing in my previous life.”
“Had a death wish, did you?”
“Something like that.”
“Have you got more ammunition?” he asked.
Right. Because every prepared mommy hauled around extra ammunition along with spare diapers and a change of clothes for baby. She dug into the bottom of the baby bag for spare clips. She came up with two full fourteen-shot clips and counted back fast to the firefight in her head. “I’ve got nine shots in my weapon now and twenty-eight more here.”
He nodded tersely. “I’ve got five shots left. I don’t have spare clips. It was all I could do to buy an unregistered gun without getting arrested, let alone acquiring extra clips for it.”
Ellie was finally subsiding. Laura smiled at the vigorous sucking noises coming from the car seat. It was good to know her daughter had spunk when provoked.
“Where does this road go?” Nick asked.
“I have no idea. There’s not a straight road on the entire Cape. My suggestion is we keep driving until we get to some road the GPS recognizes.”
He nodded tersely. “How did you find me?”
“Carter Tatum found out William Ward was your attorney. When we discovered he’d been killed, I figured it couldn’t be a coincidence. Clearly, he had something the people out to get you want. Which meant you were bound to come looking for it, too. So, I staked out Ward’s house and waited for you to show up.”
“You know me too well.”
She shrugged. “Lucky guess.”
Nick smiled wryly. “Luck had nothing to do with it. I always knew you were brilliant.”
“Are you going to let me use that brilliance to help you, now?”
He sighed. “I wanted to keep you out of this. I knew it could get dangerous, and I didn’t want you or the kids to get hurt.”
She winced at the faint note of reproach in his voice. He was right. She’d been an idiot to put Ellie in danger. But she’d only expected a nice, quiet stake-out. As soon as they were safe, she’d make other arrangements for the baby.
“I appreciate the sentiment, Nick, but it’s time to let me help you. I’m good at this sort of thing, and I want my children’s father alive.” She carefully avoided adding that she wanted her lover alive, too. She had no idea whether or not he planned to remain with her now that his true identity was out in the open.
The dirt road abruptly intersected a paved road. Nick turned west and in a moment the GPS popped up a road map. They followed the residential street for a mile or so and turned onto a larger road. As Nick accelerated into the desultory traffic, she watched carefully in the rearview mirror for any sign of followers. No lights or cars were hanging behind them acting like tails.
They’d made it.
Her hands started to shake, and then her whole body got into the act. Nick glanced over at her in concern. “Are you okay?” he asked.
“No, I’m not okay. Would you care to tell me why those men just tried to kidnap you again?”
Nick frowned. “It looked to me like they were trying to kill us.”
She shook her head in the negative. “They didn’t shoot at you when you were running across the lawn. They only fired at your car. They didn’t want you to leave, but they didn’t want you dead. In the woods, only a few of the shots came anywhere near us, and I think those were mistakes. They were trying to scare us into surrendering but definitely weren’t trying to kill you. Which means someone wants you alive. I can only infer that means someone wants something from you.”
Her declaration put a heavy frown on Nick’s handsome features.
She continued, “Why weren’t you killed six years ago? Why the elaborate kidnapping instead? I’ll bet that’s the same reason those men weren’t trying to kill you tonight.” Lord, it felt good to finally ask the question. “What’s going on, Nick?”
Chapter 7
Nick sighed. Laura, of all people, deserved answers. Answers he was far from having, however. “I truly don’t remember anything of those five years. I swear,” he stated.
Laura nodded and crossed her arms expectantly, announcing silently that she wasn’t going to back off this time. Her child had just been put in mortal danger, and she was at the end of her prodigious patience. Not that he blamed her. He just hoped she’d forgive him when she heard the entire, sordid tale. Although, it wasn’t like he forgave himself.
He picked up the story reluctantly. “That trip I took a few days ago was to Boston to pay a visit to my old attorney, William Ward. It turned out he was able to fill in some pertinent details of the two years prior to my kidnapping.”
When Laura opened her mouth to ask about it, he raised a hand gently for her to let him continue. She nodded and subsided.
“I’ll fill you in on that in a minute. The morning after my face got splashed all over the news, William called me. He said he had important information to show me. He insisted I come up to his house on the Cape immediately.”
“What was it?” Laura blurted.
“I don’t know.”
Her hopeful expression fell.
“But when we get somewhere safe, I have a flash drive in my pocket that I took from the secret drawer in William’s desk. I’m hoping it’ll give us some answers.”
“How did you know about his house’s security code, not to mention this secret drawer?”
He made a face. “William was practically a second father to me. I spent a lot of time with him and his wife on the cape. He represented me when I turned eighteen and took over Spiros Shipping. He’s been my attorney ever since.”
“Who do you think killed him?”
“I have no idea.”
Laura mulled things over, and Nick let her. In his experience, she was eminently reasonable when left to her own devices to figure a thing out. He only prayed that reason led her to accept his words as truth.
They were off the Cape and approaching Boston proper before she finally asked soberly, “Why do you think someone killed your lawyer?”
“I can think of about a billion reasons,” he answered grimly.
She nodded in agreement. “I’ve been reading on the internet about the sale of Spiros Shipping after you dropped out of sight. I’m assuming someone faked your permission and sold it out from under you?”
“I don’t know if they coerced me into signing something or just forged my signature. I can’t imagine ever giving anyone permission to sell the family business.”
“Who hated you enough to steal your business?”
He briefly considered pulling off the road to address her question but decided she’d be less likely to attack him if he were at the wheel of a moving car with her and Ellie in it. He answered carefully, “When you arrived at William Ward’s house, I was browsing through the most recent documents on his computer.”
“And?” she prompted cautiously.
“And it turns out that shortly before I met you in Paris, I took a secret trip to Las Vegas.” Laura went still. She must see it coming. He continued grimly, “I wasn’t alone on that trip. It turns out I was secretly married there to a woman named Meredith Black.” The name felt strange on his tongue. Vaguely unpleasant, like the remembered taste of bitter medicine.
If Laura had been still before, she went statuelike now. Alarmed, he alternated between glancing over at her and keeping an eye on the highway.
Finally, he couldn’t stand the suspense of her complete nonreaction any longer. “Talk to me,” he urged.
“What do you want me to say?” Laura’s voice was hollow. Hoarse. Unlike how he’d ever heard it before. Guilt and self-loathing consumed him. He’d caused the woman he loved this pain.
He spoke in a rush. “I swear. I have no recollection of her whatsoever. I don’t know why I married her, and I surely don’t know why I got involved with you in Paris so soon afterward. I can only assume the marriage was an impulsive thing and didn’t work out. Maybe I was drunk and it was all a big joke.”
“A joke?” Laura choked out.
“A really, really bad one?” he offered. Based on the thunderous frown settling on her brow, Laura clearly failed to see the humor. He didn’t blame her.
He drove in silence while guilt and misery ate at his gut from the inside out. It was his worst nightmare come true. Something—someone—out of his past had the power to destroy everything he and Laura had built between them, including their happy little family. He’d contact this Meredith Black woman and get a divorce. The woman could have whatever financial resources had been left to Nikolas Spiros. He’d make it all better.
But then Laura asked, “Why hasn’t she come forward or contacted you now that your face is being splashed all over the news?”
“Maybe she hasn’t heard about me.”
Laura snorted. “You’re an international sensation. The playboy billionaire back from a mysterious, six-year absence. She’d have to be living in a cave not to have heard about you.”
He frowned. Laura was right. Why hadn’t this Meredith person contacted him? Or had she? Was she the urgent reason William Ward had insisted on him coming to the Cape to discuss?
“Did she have control of your financial assets while you were gone?” Laura asked.
“I don’t know. Possibly.”
“Then your return would throw a serious monkey wrench into her life. You’d be a massive problem for her.”
He laughed with scant humor. “Gee. Thanks.”
“Sorry. Just trying to think like my enemy.”
Warmth burst in his gut. If Laura considered Meredith her enemy, he almost felt sorry for the woman. But not quite.
Laura made an angry sound under her breath. He’d bet she wasn’t even aware of having made it. Her unconscious loyalty warmed him all the way down to his soul.
“You truly have no recollection of her whatsoever?”
“None.”
“Convenient,” Laura muttered.
Alarmed, he glanced over at her. “I’m telling you the truth. I have no idea why I married her.”
“She must be hell on wheels in the sack,” Laura commented sourly.
Nick laughed. “I’ll take you any day of the week and twice on Sunday over any other woman on the planet in that department.”
Laura threw him a vaguely skeptical look. “The thirty-year-old mother of two with a body under attack by gravity and who needs a slave driver of a personal trainer to keep her even remotely non-jiggly these days?”
“Yes. Exactly,” he replied firmly.
She didn’t look convinced.
He swore mentally. Just how much damage control did he have ahead of him to convince Laura that, in spite of this wife, she was the love of his life?
“Could your wife be behind tonight’s kidnapping attempt?”
The idea shocked him into silence.
Laura continued, “But why?”
“She wants to renew our vows?” he quipped.
“Not funny,” Laura retorted.
He sighed. “I imagine she wants to aggressively renegotiate control of my estate.”
“With a gun pointed at your head?”
“Precisely.”
“Bitch,” Laura breathed under her breath.
Nick laughed quietly. “My sentiments exactly.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Give her whatever she wants to divorce me.”
“She has probably taken almost everything you own already.”
He shrugged. “I’m not concerned about the money. I can always make more. I just want to get away with my life and my soul intact. I refuse to live always looking over my shoulder, worried that she might come after you and the kids someday.”
Laura’s expression snapped closed. Unreadable. Stubborn enough to give him a severe and unpleasant jolt. “Are we okay?” he blurted.
“No, Nick. We’re not okay. You’re married to another woman. You knew who you were and didn’t tell me. And now your past has put not only you, but me and Ellie, in danger.”
He nodded slowly. He couldn’t blame her for feeling any of that. But there was also no way he was giving up on them. He’d fight to the death to keep her and the kids.
They drove in heavy silence to his hotel and he led her up to his room. He’d just fished William’s flash drive out of his pocket to plug into his laptop when Laura’s cell phone rang. He frowned. It was nearly 2 a.m. Who’d call her at this time of night? Was it Adam, waking up from a nightmare and needing his mother’s voice to comfort him? Guilt at tearing Laura away from their son speared through him.
But then he heard a shrill female voice babbling through the line and Laura’s face drained of all color. Panic unlike anything he’d ever experienced before, including the moments after he first woke up in his box, ripped through him. Adam. Oh, God. What had happened to his son?
Laura was going to throw up. “What have you done?” she gasped in a horrible, unrecognizable voice at Nick. She shoved past him and ran for the toilet in the tiny connected bathroom.
“What happened? What’s going on?” Nick demanded right on her heels. “Whatever I’ve done, I’ll fix it. I swear.”
“They’ve kidnapped him,” she sobbed. “Adam and Lisbet are gone. Marta was drugged and just woke up. The police are at the house and the FBI’s been called.” Her stomach rebelled then, and she emptied what little she’d had for dinner into the toilet.
Ice-cold terror washed over Nick’s face. “Is there a ransom note?”
“No.” Laura splashed cold water on her face. It didn’t do a thing to drive back the nausea washing through her. She rinsed her mouth and headed into the bedroom.
“What else did Marta say?” Nick demanded.
“That’s it. Adam and his nanny are gone. There are signs of a struggle in the playroom. Lisbet must have put up a fight. The kidnappers have a six-hour head start and could be anywhere by now.”
She couldn’t stand still and moved around the room searching it frantically for she knew not what. Nick finally caught her in his arms and held her board-stiff body tightly against his until the worst of her panic passed.
“They’ve got my baby,” she wailed. “He must be so scared. If they hurt him—” she broke off on a sob “—oh, God.”
“I’ll kill Meredith if she’s behind this,” Nick gritted out.
Laura was swinging back and forth between terror and rage so fast she could hardly keep up with it. She gazed up at Nick with tears streaming down her cheeks. “What do we do?”
He gripped her shoulders tightly and stared into her stricken gaze, clearly willing her to hold it together. “We fight. We do whatever it takes to find him and get him back safe and sound.”
Under his hands, she squared her shoulders. “You’re right. Nobody’s messing with my baby and getting away with it.” Death dripped in her voice. Super Mommy had just gone over to the dark side. Whoever’d kidnapped Adam was going to pay in blood. She would find her son and get him back.
Perceptive as ever, Ellie started to fuss in the crib in the corner.
Nick suggested, “You take care of Ellie. I’ll make the arrangements to get back home.”
Laura nodded and stumbled to the crib the hotel had sent up while Nick called the airport and hired a private jet to take them back to Washington with all possible haste.
Nick joined her in the bedroom. “A plane will be ready in an hour. We’ve got about twenty minutes before we have to leave for the airport. The concierge will have a taxi waiting for us downstairs.”
Ellie’s tiny body snuggling tightly against hers calmed Laura enough that she could begin to think rationally. When the baby had fallen asleep in her arms, she said quietly, “I’m not entirely sure your wife is behind this. At least not directly.”
“Why’s that?” Nick asked in surprise over his shoulder as he threw his things into his suitcase.
“If she was involved in your original kidnapping, surely she was told when you were rescued. Which means she’s had a year to react to your escape. Why this, why now?”
“If she was involved with my kidnapping, then she’d have known I suffered a memory loss. If I didn’t come forward for a year, she might have figured I was never going to identify myself as Nikolas Spiros.”
“Either way,” Laura reasoned aloud, “she had no reason to believe you were ever coming back. Why would she have planned an elaborate kidnapping of your son? Because believe me—nobody got through my house’s security without some serious planning.”
Nick made a rueful face. “Maybe she found out I’d visited my old attorney and figured I was going to make a run at getting my company back.”
Laura thought aloud. “Okay. She had a motive to grab Adam. But still. Just a few days to hire a kidnapper, get him in place, find your son, figure out how to get past my estate’s formidable security, and execute a kidnapping? That’s just not plausible.”
“Who else could it be?”
She answered grimly, “It’s not like you and I don’t have other enemies. What about AbaCo? Could they be trying to blackmail you into not testifying against them?”
Fury glittered in Nick’s gaze. “They most certainly have experience with kidnapping and the personnel to pull one off on short notice. And they know you and the children are my life. But going after a child? Those bastards …” His voice trailed off as he choked on his fury.
She knew the feeling. “The trial starts next week. If they have Adam, we’re going to have to find him fast.”
“I know just the person to ask if AbaCo has Adam.”
“Who?”
“AbaCo’s CEO.”
“Werner Kloffman?” Laura echoed. “Where on earth would we find him? High-profile people like him tend to move around the globe and don’t exactly advertise their whereabouts.”
“What do you want to bet he’s in Washington pulling strings and trying to get the government to drop its case against his company?”
“Good point. If you’ll step aside and give me access to your laptop, MysteryMom needs to contact a few strategically placed people within the government.”
“MysteryMom?” Nick asked.
“That’s my email handle when I’m doing work for DaddyFinders, Inc. I built up a pretty decent informant network over my years of searching for you.”
He looked at her soberly. “I am eternally grateful you never gave up on me. You and I won’t give up on Adam, either. We’ll find him.”
A sob threatened to erupt from her chest, but she shoved it down. Her baby boy needed Super Mommy firing on all cylinders right now.
Nick must have sensed her momentary weakness because he said encouragingly, “Lisbet’s with him. She’ll protect him as fiercely as you would.”
She nodded gamely, refraining from suggesting that Lisbet might very well be dead and out of the picture by now. She knew all too well how important it was not to dwell on the negative, but instead to focus on hope and determination and keep moving forward.
Nick’s arms came around her. She clung to him tightly. Despite the unresolved problems between them, they were united in purpose when it came to retrieving their son. And that was all that mattered for now.
She disentangled herself from his arms and headed for Nick’s laptop computer.
Nick woke up as gray dawn crept around the jet’s window blinds, surprised that he’d managed to catch a nap. Fear for Adam slammed into him moments after his eyes blinked open, so heavy on his chest that he could hardly breathe. He tossed and turned in the uncomfortable airplane seat, tearing himself apart with guilt over having brought this danger to his son. Thankfully, Laura was asleep stretched out across several seats and Ellie was crashed in a playpen. He slipped out of his seat and tiptoed over to check on Ellie. The poor baby’d had a rough night last night and was sleeping deeply.
This aircraft was equipped with Wi-Fi, and he used it to connect his laptop to the internet and check the morning news. The gossip sites were having a field day over his return to the public eye. Even serious news outlets were commenting freely on the status of the Spiros fortune now that Nikolas Spiros was back. Analysts were speculating gleefully on whether he would attempt to seize control of his company from the German firm that had owned it for the past half-dozen years.
A limousine met them at the airport when they landed and whisked them south to Laura’s estate in Virginia. The mansion was crawling with police and FBI investigators who had frustratingly little information to share about Adam and Lisbet’s disappearance. The FBI kidnapping expert on scene seemed alarmed by the lack of a ransom note.
When Laura pushed the fellow to speculate on who’d taken her son, the FBI man hinted that perhaps whoever’d taken Adam didn’t feel a need to leave a note but felt the message was loud and clear enough without one.
Nick’s jaw tightened grimly. Which was a fancy way of the guy saying he thought AbaCo had Adam and that the kidnapper’s intent was clear—stop the child’s father from testifying against the company.
It didn’t help matters that, by midafternoon, the estate’s front gate was crowded with luridly curious reporters. The FBI had felt it would be best to go public with the story, plastering the news with pictures of Adam and putting the public on notice to look out for the little boy. It was a close call to say who hated the media attention more—him or Laura. Both of them were stretched to the breaking point by the lack of progress and the feeling of being trapped in their own home.
Finally, as they picked at the sandwiches a red-eyed Marta put in front of them, Laura’s laptop beeped to indicate an incoming message. She leaped from her seat to check it.
“It’s for MysteryMom,” she said tersely as she opened the message. Instinct had warned her not to reveal all her sources to the FBI team that had invaded their home. She’d kept her MysteryMom identity and email account to herself since the FBI was monitoring all her phones and other email accounts. Nick moved to her side quickly. The message, short and to the point, popped up. Kloffman is borrowing a home from friends at the following address. A posh street in the Washington, D.C. suburb, Old Town Alexandria, was named. The message was not signed. Not that he cared who had sent it, other than to want to thank the person someday … after Adam was safe.
Laura murmured under her breath, “We’ll have to sneak out past the FBI and the police.”
He nodded slightly. “I’ll engage them in conversation while you make arrangements for Ellie.”
He went downstairs and didn’t engage in conversation as much as he threw a tantrum, demanding that the law enforcement agencies do something. Personally, he understood that they had no leads to go on and their hands were tied until the kidnapper made the next move. But he kept that opinion to himself as he ranted and generally forced everyone’s attention onto him while Laura had a quiet word with Marta about watching Ellie for the night and milk in the freezer.
Laura slipped into the living room and made eye contact with him. He allowed her to talk him down off his fake ledge and the police were more than happy to let the two of them retire upstairs to the privacy of their suite.
“Are we good to go?” he asked Laura when the door shut behind her.
“Yes.”
He eyed the black turtleneck and slacks she’d laid out on the bed. “I gather you’re planning to break into the guy’s house?” he asked doubtfully.