“I’m going to get to my truck and take the gun out of the back. Do you want to wait inside it?”

She flashed him a wry smile. “What do you think?”

“I think you want to come with me, but I also think you’d better consider what’s good for Charlie. He needs his mom.”

“Point taken,” she conceded. They ran to the truck, and Lily slid inside while Chance took his revolver out of the locked case and handed her the keys. “If anything goes wrong, get yourself out of here, okay, Lily?”

“Chance, I—”

“Not now, sweetheart,” he said. “I’m in a hurry. Lock the doors. I’ll be back.” He leaned inside and kissed her. Her lips were cool and wet and perfectly delicious. He tore himself away and ran toward the back of the church.

Cowboy
Undercover
Alice Sharpe

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ALICE SHARPE met her husband-to-be on a cold, foggy beach in Northern California. Their union has survived the rearing of two children, a handful of earthquakes, numerous cats and a few special dogs, the latest of which is a yellow Lab named Annie Rose. Alice and her husband now live in a small rural town in Oregon, where she devotes the majority of her time to pursuing her second love, writing. You can write to her c/o Harlequin Books, 233 Broadway, Suite 1001, New York, NY 10279, USA. An SASE for reply is appreciated.

I’d like to dedicate this book to all readers who, just like me, love a good story.

Contents

Cover

Introduction

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Extract

Copyright

Chapter One

Chance Hastings couldn’t sleep. This in itself wasn’t unusual, not lately anyway. Between the extra ranch work an early fall demanded, his brother Frankie’s antics and his own personal chaos, his mind was just wound up too tight. What was unusual was that instead of being in his own cabin two miles over the ridge, he’d elected to spend the night at the main ranch house in the home in which he’d been raised. His father and his new stepmother, Grace, had taken a short trip to Oregon and Chance had volunteered to watch over the house as Frankie was rarely around anymore.

Finally admitting there was no point lying in bed with his eyes wide open, he got up and dressed by the light of the full harvest moon shining through the generous window. He’d always loved autumn in Idaho, especially around the ranching community of Falls Bluff. The golden fields rising to the mountains and the deciduous trees bleeding yellow, orange and red into the high evergreen forest engaged him at every turn.

His plan for the coming day included traveling out toward the mountains with his brothers Pike and Gerard to round up the heifers they wanted to move closer to the ranch for the coming winter. He might as well get a head start on things by saddling up three horses and loading them into the trailer. He paused in the kitchen to start a pot of coffee and leave his brothers a note about meeting him in the barn. He pinned the note to the corkboard by the door.

The perking coffee created a warm ambience in the kitchen that he rarely experienced anymore. Lily, who had shown up under mysterious circumstances nine months earlier and left after a sudden fright six months after that, still dominated the room, at least for him. He could almost picture her at the stove, an enigma of a woman who had wormed her way under his skin. He waited for the coffee to perk, but the more aromatic it became the less he wanted it. Instead, he headed for the mudroom where he retrieved his Stetson from the shelf on which he’d stashed it hours before, grabbed his coat and snagged his truck keys from the hook. As he clasped the doorknob and twisted, the phone back in the kitchen rang. His first instinct was to ignore it. He didn’t really live here. However, calls in the middle of the night always telegraphed urgency.

“Hello?” he said as he grabbed the receiver.

He heard breathing but nothing else.

“Hello?” he repeated.

A child’s voice said tentatively, “Is Mommy there?”

Was this someone’s idea of a joke? “Who is this?” he demanded.

“Charlie.”

Lily’s five-year-old boy? At three thirty in the morning? “Charlie, this is Chance Hastings. Where are you? Where’s your mom?”

“I don’t know,” the child wailed.

“Calm down, big guy. Are you lost?”

“I want Mommy.”

Chance’s brow furled as his imagination suggested all sorts of reasons for the child to have lost track of his mother. None of them were good. “Charlie? Your mom and you don’t live here anymore, remember? You guys left. Do you know where you went?”

Soft sobs filled Chance’s ear. “That’s okay,” he crooned. He could picture the boy’s blond hair and blue eyes, freckles scattered over tearstained cheeks. “I’m trying to help you. When did you see Mommy last?”

“Yesterday,” Charlie managed to choke out.

“Then what happened?”

“I went to school on the big bus.”

“That’s great. What’s the name of your school?”

“Miss Potter’s kindergarten.”

Chance doubted that was the actual name of a school. “Do you know where it is?”

“On the little hill.”

“Do you remember the name of the hill?”

“No.”

“Do you remember the name of the town you and your mom live in or maybe which state it is?”

“I forget. I want my mommy.”

“Okay, we’re working on it. What happened at school yesterday?”

“I made a picture.”

This was like pulling teeth. “Charlie, who are you with now?”

“Daddy.”

The phone in the kitchen was the old-fashioned rotary type. Chance’s grip on the receiver tightened. He didn’t know much about Charlie’s father, Jeremy Block, except that he’d done something severe enough in Lily’s eyes that she’d run from him with their child in tow and hid out here until Block sent someone to abduct and kill her a few months before so he could reclaim his son. The man had been adamant he was working for Jeremy Block.

The night that went down, Lily left Hastings Ridge Ranch, Charlie in tow. Chance didn’t know where Block lived and he didn’t know what had happened in the weeks following Lily’s departure.

He hadn’t wanted to know. He’d avoided the topic like the plague. “Where is your dad right now?”

“Asleep.”

“Has he hurt you?”

“No.”

“Okay, that’s good. Can you tell me anything about where he lives?”

“In a house.”

“What city?”

“Bossy.”

“Could it be Boise?”

“I guess.”

Another thought jumped to the foreground of Chance’s mind. Lily would never willingly let her son go unless she had no choice and that meant almost anything from abduction to murder.

“When did you go with your dad, Charlie?”

“Mommy wasn’t at the bus stop,” Charlie said, talking fast now, his voice wavering as he apparently turned his head and compromised the signal on a cell phone. “A man said he knew where she was. He drove the wrong way and I was scared. I told him to stop but he frowned at me. I fell asleep and it got dark and then we were at Daddy’s house but I want Mommy and he says I can’t see her and—”

“Charlie!” A masculine voice boomed from Charlie’s end of the line. “What are you doing, boy? Is that my phone? Who did you call?”

“I want Mommy,” Charlie squeaked.

The man spoke into the phone. “Lily? Do you really think you’re ever going to see him again?”

“This isn’t Lily,” Chance said.

“Then who—”

“I’m a friend of Charlie’s. Are you Jeremy Block?”

“What’s it to you?”

“The boy sounds upset. What’s going on?”

“Nothing that concerns you,” Block said, and severed the connection.

The ranch phone didn’t have a caller identification screen so Chance dialed the code to find out the number of the last call, jotted it down and dialed it. The call was answered by Block’s terse message to leave a number but now Chance knew that Charlie was in Boise or a nearby community with the same area code.

Chance called a Hastings family friend on the police force next, Detective Robert Hendricks, who had a knack for sounding alert and on the job no matter when you yanked him from slumber. Chance told him about the call. “Give me the number,” Hendricks said.

“You’ve got to rescue the boy,” Chance said.

Hendricks was quiet for a beat or two. “Gerard told me you didn’t want to know anything about Lily Kirk after she left the ranch. Was your brother mistaken?”

“No. I didn’t want to know anything. I still don’t. But it’s different now that Charlie is in jeopardy.”

“Charlie isn’t in jeopardy,” Hendricks said slowly.

Chance straightened his shoulders. “What? How can you say that? Are you forgetting Jodie Brown and what he did to Kinsey thinking she was Lily?”

“Stop for a minute, Chance. Jeremy Block is a respected district attorney in Ada County down in Boise. Lily ran out on him and took their child with her. She has a documented history of being unstable. He filed for and won temporary custody in her absence. It sounds as if he finally got his kid back. As a father, I can understand how good that must feel. The fact is Lily is the loose cannon, not him.”

“But Jodie—”

“Jodie Brown was a career criminal with a record as long as your arm. Block sent him to prison for drug trafficking twelve years ago. He says that’s the last time he saw him. He figures Jodie was out to take revenge on him by abducting his wife and demanding a ransom. Block denies having anything to do with Jodie since years before when he won the conviction. There is no indication he isn’t telling the truth.”

“What does Jodie Brown say about this?”

“He’s dead. His truck ran into a tree a couple of days after he left your ranch. His blood alcohol was .20. Case closed. Except that there’s a warrant out on Lily but I understand she’s disappeared.”

“If Jeremy Block knew where to find his son, he knows where to find his ex-wife,” Chance said, and despite Hendricks’s insistence that Jeremy Block was Man of the Year material, felt a chill.

“Not ex,” Hendricks said. “There’s been no divorce.”

Chance blinked away that momentary shock. “Charlie said a man took him from the bus stop and drove him to his father’s house. Doesn’t that remind you of what Jodie Brown tried to do? Do you really believe Jeremy Block is telling the truth?”

“I really do,” Hendricks cautioned. “But more importantly, it’s all happening two hundred miles from here. The police in Boise are satisfied with his story so that’s the end of it although I will contact them about the child’s call so they can look into it.”

Chance slammed down the receiver. His father had taken Lily in nine months earlier and not said a word to anyone about her past but there was a good chance he knew something that might help. Chance had to know she was safe and not fighting for her life somewhere. He dialed his father’s cell and when no one answered, his stepmother’s. Both phones went straight to voice mail and he left the same message, an insistent request they call home as soon as possible.

Now what? Where was Lily? How did he find her?

He heard a vehicle outside. Undoubtedly Gerard or Pike had arrived early to help get ready for the Bywater trip. He dashed into the mudroom, glad for the company. He was betting Gerard knew all about Lily’s past from Hendricks. He switched on the floodlights before opening the door and exited the house as a woman stepped out of a red coupe.

The car looked familiar but the small woman standing in the glaring light did not. The three resident dogs had roused themselves from their beds in the horse barn to welcome the newcomer who didn’t seem alarmed by the excited attention of the two shepherds and the part-Labrador retriever milling around her legs. She wore her light brown hair parted in the middle and pulled back. Heavy black glasses dominated a pale face while a long shapeless gray cardigan dominated an equally drab dress that fell all the way to the top of brown cowboy boots.

“Chance?” the woman cried, taking a halting step forward and then stopping.

Chance’s mouth almost dropped open as he recognized Lily’s voice. For the tick of a heartbeat he tried to reconcile the woman before him with the sassy, blonde firecracker who had left here months before, and then he came out of his stupor and stepped toward her. “I just had a call from Charlie,” he said.

“You heard from my baby? When?” Her hands flew up to cover her face and her knees buckled. He reached her before she hit the ground. The dogs yipped with uncertainty.

“I’m okay,” she insisted. “Where is Charlie? Who has him?”

“His father,” Chance said.

“I thought so. Damn.”

He still couldn’t believe she was here and right on the heels of the past thirty minutes of revelations. He was touching her, almost holding her. He’d only done that once before and at that time, he hadn’t known she was still married. And at that time, at least at first, she’d melted into him...

“Come inside,” he said. “I just made coffee.”

“I need to talk to your father.”

“Come inside,” he repeated. “You’re trembling.”

“How did Charlie sound?” she asked as she allowed him to guide her up the stairs.

“Not bad,” Chance said because he couldn’t bear to tell her how frightened the boy had seemed. “I don’t know why he called here looking for you.”

“It’s my fault. I drilled this number into his head last summer when my cell phone died.”

The dogs hung back at the door. Chance led Lily to a stool and she sank down with a shuddering sigh. He found mugs and poured coffee. “I contacted the local police and asked a detective friend for help.”

“The police?” She took off the thick glasses and closed her eyes, squeezing the bridge of her nose with thumb and forefinger. “I wish you hadn’t done that,” she said, looking back at him. Without the glasses, her rich brown eyes came into focus and she looked more the way he remembered her.

“Yeah, I can understand why you’d rather not have to discuss your husband with the cops,” he said. “Did you know there’s a warrant for your arrest?”

“It doesn’t surprise me. It’s probably the first thing Jeremy did when he realized I wasn’t coming back.”

“What’s it for?”

“I’d lay my money on kidnapping my own child.”

“Because of your troubled past?”

She narrowed her eyes and he saw a flash of the old Lily. “I don’t have a troubled past. That’s Jeremy’s story, not mine. Where’s your dad?”

“He’s gone. He won’t be back for a few days. Tell me why you stole off into the night with Charlie. Not the time you did it three months ago when you left here. Before that, when you left Jeremy.”

She shook her head as she undoubtedly picked up the anger his words hadn’t been too successful at disguising. “You don’t need to know.”

“Listen, Lily. Jerk me around all you want but in the end, who else is going to help you? Dad is off in Oregon. There’s a good chance he’s out of signal range. Unless you have legions of friends I don’t know about, maybe we should just level with each other.”

“Don’t start this, Chance. You and I can’t agree on anything. There’s no point in involving you—”

“Involving me?” he snapped. “You come here in the middle of the night dressed like you’re auditioning for the role of the prim librarian in It’s a Wonderful Life. Your son, the best thing you’ve ever done as far as I can see, has been taken by his psycho father and you’re so frightened your eyes are spinning. Trust me, I’m involved.”

“I don’t want you—”

“I know. You made that real clear last summer. I’m not asking you to sleep with me, I’m asking you to let me help Charlie. Now, what do you say?”

She rubbed her forehead and he wondered how long she’d been driving. Where had she gone after she left the ranch? He waited for her to make up her mind, and when it seemed they would sit there in silence forever, he decided to wade in. “Block told the police Jodie Brown was acting on his own to take revenge on him for convicting him twelve years ago. By the way, Jodie died in a traffic accident before the police could question him. The case is closed as far as they’re concerned.

“Furthermore, Block is claiming you had a history of being unstable and that you took your son without giving him a chance to work something out with you.”

“He didn’t want a chance to work things out,” she said. “You don’t understand—”

“Of course I don’t,” Chance said. “You haven’t given me the opportunity to understand because you haven’t said anything. Start with something easy. How was Charlie snatched?”

Her fingers tightened on her mug as she leaned forward. “I had a flat tire yesterday so I was running late to meet him at the bus stop. Everything just seemed to go wrong and it got later and later. I called the school but the bus had already left so I called one of the other mothers and she said she would pick him up when she got her own child. I went to her house but Charlie wasn’t there. She said she’d arrived a minute late and seen him getting into a car with a man but he was smiling so she figured I sent another friend. She described him. It sounded enough like Jeremy—I could guess what was happening.”

“But it wasn’t Jeremy. Charlie told me a man he didn’t know told him he’d take him to see you but he drove to Boise instead.”

“Poor Charlie,” she cried. “He must have been frantic. Why didn’t I have a better plan for days like that one? Why did I live so far away from his school that he had to ride a bus? He hates buses. I should have found a different job closer to his school—”

“Calm down,” Chance said, patting her hand. “Is he in any danger from his father?”

She stared at him for a second. The look in her eyes twisted his heart but he ignored it. Then she finally shook her head. “Not immediate danger, no. Jeremy is in love with the idea of having a son, making a legacy, although the reality of it bores him. He can be violent, but mainly toward me. Near the end the violence was trickling down to Charlie. He’s not suitable to raise a child.”

“I guess that’s what he says about you, too,” Chance observed.

“I know. He’s twenty years older than I am. When you’re adrift and all of nineteen, that kind of attention from a man like him is pretty exciting. He could do anything, or so I thought. He raced cars, he rode horses, he flew a plane—anything. Long story short, I wound up pregnant. He insisted we get married and I thought I’d hit the jackpot. At first I barely noticed the way he didn’t want me associating with my friends or holding down a job. I just thought he wanted to take care of me. My father was an alcoholic. It was...nice...to have a man take charge for a change.”

“But eventually?”

“After Charlie was born, Jeremy started taking on high-profile cases to make a name for himself. It wasn’t enough to just be a prosecutor anymore. He wanted me as arm candy at parties to impress the ‘right’ people. I hated those parties and he knew it. In fact, I suspect he knew my heart wasn’t in our marriage anymore. At some of those parties, I felt so light-headed and disconnected I was afraid I was going to pass out. People looked at me funny and made comments I wasn’t supposed to hear about how I was a drunk like my father. The thing was, I didn’t drink anything but seltzer. Jeremy told me it was my nerves and for a while I kind of believed that. I was so blasted stupid I made things easy for him.

“Then one day I found a bottle of barbiturates in Jeremy’s desk drawer and I knew in a flash that he’d been drugging me so I’d appear intoxicated in front of other people. I worked up the courage to ask for a divorce. He said I was welcome to leave as long as I left alone. I protested, of course. I planned to take Charlie, but Jeremy promised that would never happen. He said everyone knew how paranoid I’d become, and that I drank. He said I’d trapped him by getting pregnant and everyone knew that, too, and felt bad for him. He said it would be better all the way around if I just died. That way he would get total control of Charlie and be a sympathetic widower to boot. He laughed when he said it, but you have to know Jeremy. His laugh has nothing to do with humor.”

“So you bolted,” Chance said. With her now austere hair and colorless clothes, she actually looked like the kind of person life beat into submission. He suddenly missed her bleached hair and dangling earrings and then it occurred to him that perhaps that persona had been as much a facade as this one.

“More or less,” she said. “I started gathering every scrap of paper I could find, every receipt, anything that looked potentially valuable. I found a few photographs, made copies of records... Anyway, they’re all in a safety-deposit box in Boise. I’ve never tried to make sense of them, there was never time. I just knew I needed something on him if I was ever going to win custody of Charlie. I was hoping I’d find evidence of collusion or something. But then he came home one night and he had had a horrible day. He’d been riding high after winning a conviction against a child murderer and his name was being discussed in political circles. But then a kid hanged himself in his cell and the prosecutor’s office came under investigation. Jeremy was livid.

“Anyway, I didn’t say the right thing or look the right way, who knows? Jeremy hit me so hard I blacked out and when I came to, Charlie was sitting beside me, crying. I’ll never forget the look on his face. A week later, I’d made my plans and Charlie and I left. The mother of an old school friend took me in for a day or two and then she called your father and he offered me a job and refuge so that’s how I ended up here.”

“You never called the police?”

“No. I’d tried that before and wound up looking like a nutcase trying to ruin my husband’s reputation. It wouldn’t have done any good. Jeremy was respected, and feared, by so many people and I was a nobody.”

They both startled and got to their feet as engine noise came from the yard.

“I hope that’s not the police,” Lily said. By now they were at the back door and could see through the small window.

“It’s Gerard’s truck,” Chance said. “We’re going up to get the heifers today.” He opened the door and watched his brother approach. Gerard had had a couple of rough years, starting with the tragic accident that had taken the lives of his wife and daughter, followed by a spell of amnesia. But he’d come out on top when he fell in love with Kinsey Frost, the woman who helped him find himself in both a literal and figurative way.

Gerard stopped walking as Lily stepped out onto the porch beside Chance. He tipped his hat and said hello the way a cowboy does to a female stranger.

“It’s me,” Lily said, moving down the steps to intercept him.

He still looked confused.

“Lily,” she added, coming to a stop in front of him. Gerard looked from her to Chance. Chance knew that his older brother and Kinsey were probably the only two people in the world who understood what it had meant to him when Lily left and he crossed mental fingers now that Gerard wouldn’t spill it. He should have known he wouldn’t. Gerard gave her a hug and then looked around. “Is Charlie asleep in your car?”

“He’s not with me,” Lily said.

“Come inside,” Chance added. Lily turned to come back up the steps. In a moment of clarity, he saw the terror lurking in back of her eyes.

“Kinsey is going to be so sorry she missed seeing you,” Gerard added as they once again closed the doors on the three dogs. “She flew back to New Orleans to help her grandmother for a couple of days. How long are you going to be here?”

“I’m leaving in a few minutes,” Lily said. “I wanted to ask your father for advice. I thought maybe... Oh, I shouldn’t have come.”

“We can give advice, too,” Gerard said as they entered the house.

“A lot is going on,” she said, picking up the glasses she’d taken off when she first arrived. She folded them into a pocket and added, “Chance can fill you in after I’ve left.”

“No, Chance can’t,” Chance said but he suspected Gerard didn’t need too much filling in.

“Why?” Lily demanded.

“Because I’m coming with you.”

“You don’t even know where I’m going,” she protested.

“You’re going to Boise. You’re going to see Jeremy Block. You’ll need someone to bail you out of jail.”

A defiant expression crept onto her face. “You don’t have to do that,” she said, thrusting her chin high in the way the Lily he’d known before used to. That woman he had chided and baited and given a rough time and she had returned it all with a spirit that intrigued him to this day. “I don’t need someone to take care of me,” she added.

“Yeah, right. Anyway, we’ll stop at my place so I can throw some clothes into a duffel, tuck a big fat gun under the front seat and then we’re off.”

“What is it about men?” she asked no one in particular. “You all think you can rescue the damsel in distress.”

“Well, when the damsel shows up so early in the morning, what are we supposed to do?”

“Listen when she says no thanks.”

Silence ensued until Gerard cleared his throat. “May I say something?”

“Sure,” Lily said.

“Just take him along for the ride, will you please? He’s impossible when he gets like this and he might actually come in handy.”

She looked at Chance, who silently returned her scrutiny. She was beautiful under all that drabness, delicate and feminine as long as she didn’t start arguing. But he couldn’t wrap his head around the thought of her leaving on this mission all by herself. If she refused to let him come with her, he’d follow on her tail.

“Oh, all right,” she said.

“Unless Frankie shows up, you and Pike will have to get the heifers on your own,” Chance told his brother.

“We’ll manage,” Gerard said as he poured himself a cup of coffee and added with a wink, “You two kids be careful.”

Chapter Two

“Explain one thing to me,” Chance said.

Lily had been staring out the dark passenger window, her eyes gritty from fatigue. She’d asked Chance to take the wheel because she’d been driving for hours and knew her judgment was impaired. She turned her attention to Chance whose strong profile was undeniably spectacular, a fact she found irritating. She didn’t want to like him or need him or want him around and the fact that she felt all those things to some degree just plain irked her. “What do you want to know?”

“Last summer when Block sent Jodie Brown to take you, he had murder on his mind. If he had a warrant and had established custody of Charlie, why didn’t he just turn you in? Why all the drama and hysterics? Why take such a risk?”

She shrugged. “How am I supposed to know that? All I can figure is that he doesn’t want to share custody with me. Maybe Jeremy has the police in his pocket but if we end up in court, twelve ordinary people will get to hear my side of things. That might bring out distasteful facts about his true character. Plus, he’s no doubt looking ahead to his future campaign for governor. That’s his goal, you know. I could pose a liability to him.”

For a second she heard her father’s voice in her head. In a moment of sporadic sobriety he’d warned her not to look back, to keep focused on the future. You can’t change the past, he’d said, and he was right.

But you couldn’t run from it either and that’s exactly what she’d done.

“Does Block know about those papers you gathered?”

“Probably. I raided his file drawer that last day. Maybe he’s afraid I have something on him. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if I actually did? I need to get them out of my safe-deposit box and take a look.”

“Before you see Block?”

“I have to have some kind of ammunition.”

Lily closed her eyes, hoping to find a few minutes’ respite, but Chance had other ideas. “If he had murder on his mind before, why did he take Charlie this time and leave you free to continue causing trouble?”

Weariness had long ago seeped into every cell of her body. Talking was a struggle. She cradled her forehead with her hand. “I don’t think that was his plan,” she said. “Remember I told you about all the mishaps that made me late? I think he was not only making sure he could nab Charlie but that I would arrive home alone. But I didn’t go home. I called a neighbor who promised to call immediately if Charlie showed up. For hours I just drove around and then I thought of your father.”

“One more question,” Chance said.

“Please, I’m exhausted.”

“I know you are, Lily.” He put his hand on her arm and even through the sweater, his touch made a warm spot that spread toward her shoulder.

“One more,” she agreed.

“Where did you go when you left the ranch?”

“Reno. I figured hiding on a remote ranch hadn’t worked, so I decided to try a bigger city. I drove to Reno because I had a friend there who said she was leaving town for a few weeks to visit her boyfriend in Florida. She said I could use her apartment and sub at her old job as a waitress at one of the casinos outside of town. Now I’m wondering if my friend ran low on funds and told Jeremy where I was to collect a little quick cash.”

“She’s like that?”

“She could be. For all I know Jeremy set the whole thing up with her just to nail down my location. I don’t know. I try not to be paranoid.”

“With a warrant out for your arrest, you probably shouldn’t have taken Charlie over a state line.”

“I didn’t know about the warrant,” she said. “You just told me about it. It wouldn’t have made any difference though.” She turned in the seat. “I think that’s how Jeremy found me this summer. He must have accessed Idaho school records. My decision to send Charlie to summer school could have gotten me killed.”

They fell silent. She leaned to the side until her forehead rested against the passenger window and closed her eyes. For a few moments she waited for Chance to think of something else he wanted explained, and then she stopped worrying about it. The next thing she knew, Chance was shaking her shoulder.

“We’re here,” he said as she rubbed the sleep from her eyes. “What now?”

They were in Boise, downtown somewhere. She’d been gone for almost a year but she’d lived here most of her life. She finally recognized the café on the corner and placed their exact location. “My credit union is a few blocks that way,” she said, pointing north. “I want to get that stuff out of my safe-deposit box.”

Chance glanced at the clock on the dashboard. “It won’t be open yet. Let’s grab something to eat.”

“Not in this district,” she said. “Jeremy’s office is pretty close to here.”

“Just give me directions.”

Despite commuter traffic, they were soon approaching the suburbs and a plethora of fast-food establishments. Settling on one, Chance ordered himself a full breakfast but she stuck to coffee, knowing her nervous stomach wouldn’t take kindly to food.

What was Charlie doing right that moment? Had Jeremy employed someone to help him take care of him? Was Charlie afraid he’d never see his mom again? The poor little kid had a fragile spirit that she’d no doubt fostered by putting up with Jeremy’s abuse for so long. She wanted him to be braver about life than she’d been.

Chance plowed his way through half the menu, proving what Lily knew from months of cooking on the ranch: Cowboys could eat. As he was wadding up wrappers and tossing them into the bag, he met her gaze. “You should have something besides coffee,” he said.

“Maybe later. Is it still too early for the credit union to be open?”

He turned the keys and the clock flashed on. “Yeah. Let’s stay right here in the back of this dark little parking lot until it’s time.”

“I guess,” she said. What else were they going to do?

“Great.” He smothered a yawn with his fist as he pushed the lever to half recline the seat. “I’m going to catch forty winks. You okay?”

Did he mean beyond the gnawing nerves and the constant worry? “I’m fine,” she said.

With a little smile, he tipped his dark brown Stetson down over his face, crossed his arms over his chest and seemed to go to sleep in about thirty seconds flat.

For a while, she stared at the comings and goings in the parking lot. Who knew so many people bought their breakfast at a drive-through? That made her think of Charlie who loved fast food and her eyes burned. She wanted to be on the move, not stuck here waiting.

She looked over at Chance when he made a soft little sound as his hand slipped from his chest. She caught it before it landed on the gearshift, carefully returning it to rest beside his other hand.

In a way she wanted to remove his hat and gaze at his sleeping face. Without the cynical glint in his dark eyes that often caused her to look away, would she glimpse the man she’d felt pull at her heartstrings so many months before?

She allowed herself to remember the night last April when they’d been walking alongside the river. Wildflowers had perfumed the air and the still-cold water gurgling against the rocks sounded like music. They’d stopped beside a tree and she’d leaned against it and before she knew it, he had cupped her face with both of his hands and told her she looked beautiful in the moonlight. His gentle voice and soothing caresses had been a balm to her broken spirit so that when he finally kissed her, she was flooded with feelings she’d given up hope of ever experiencing.

Eventually, he’d unbuttoned her blouse and lowered his head to kiss her throat, his lips warm against her cool skin. She’d wanted him with every fiber in her body, yearning for the moment when he stripped her bare. That moment never came because she’d been yanked back to reality when the plaintive call of a coyote rose from the ridge. The terrible decisions she’d made concerning men and desire all seemed to storm through her head as the lonely cry echoed over the valley. She’d withdrawn emotionally and he hadn’t been so far gone that it escaped him. With a sigh, he’d raised his head and looked down into her eyes and she’d bolted, running back to the ranch house like a scared rabbit.

Their budding romance had died that night and eventually turned into an acerbic interchange of half-veiled insults and sarcasm.

Yet here they were.

“Knock it off,” she scolded herself. “Think of something pleasant.”

* * *

“LILY? LILY, WAKE UP,” Chance said for the second time that day, he shook Lily’s shoulder.

She was slow to respond at first and then she sat bolt upright. “Oh, God, I fell asleep. What time is it?”

“Almost one. We slept for hours.”

She rubbed her forehead. “Well, at least the credit union will be open. Let’s go.”

Once inside the building, Chance looked askance at all the security cameras and wondered if anyone there knew about the warrant out for Lily. Thanks to the black glasses and baggy clothes, she looked more like a refugee from a homeless camp than a patron of a downtown banking establishment, but would someone call the cops as soon as she announced her identity? He decided to keep his fears to himself and just stay alert for any sign of trouble.

She went through the security measures to access her box and disappeared with the attendant. A few minutes later, she returned, a couple of fat manila envelopes peeking from the top of her oversize handbag. He took her arm and they left together. The whole thing had taken less than fifteen minutes.

“We need to find someplace private to go through and sort all this,” she said as she hugged her purse as if it was a precious baby. “I’d forgotten how much stuff I collected.”

“Let’s get a room somewhere,” Chance said.

“Good idea.”

They found a room and paid using Chance’s credit card and name. Once inside, Lily removed the thick glasses before upending both envelopes onto the small round table. The contents came spilling out.

“Yikes,” Chance said. The thought of trying to make sense of all that paper was mind-boggling. Maybe he should have stayed at Hastings Ridge and rounded up heifers, which was a lot more fun than pushing papers around. Of course he didn’t say any of this to Lily who would just remind him he was here because he’d wanted to be.

She flashed him an understanding smile and sat down. “I think we should get the clippings into one pile, receipts into another, memos into a third and miscellaneous off over there.”

For more than an hour they sorted and organized in near silence. Chance was anxious to do something about Charlie and he knew Lily was, too. It made sense to try to find something she could use against Block in some way, but it seemed unlikely they had sufficient time to make such a discovery.

“Let’s go to your husband’s house,” Chance finally said. One more useless receipt and he was going to scream.

“No. He doesn’t get home from work until six thirty or so.”

“So we’ll get there before he’s home.”

“Not a good idea. I want to catch him unaware.”

“You said earlier that he knew you’d come after Charlie.”

“I know, but he doesn’t know when or how. Be patient.”

“We’re not going to be able to wade through all of this in one afternoon,” Chance said, gesturing at all the bits and scraps of papers before them.

“You’re probably right. I’m going to go take a shower and change clothes. I hope the clothes in my emergency escape suitcase still fit.”

Chance walked over to the window. He stood looking out into the parking lot for a few minutes. Was she getting gussied up for Jeremy Block? That was a disquieting thought.

With a sigh, he returned to the papers. Thirty minutes later, his heartbeat quickened as he detected the first clear pattern he’d come across in the form of several orders from a florist shop in Boise. He stacked them apart in order of ascending dates. The deliveries were spaced at intervals of seven days and all went to the same address. Without knowing his way around this city, he had no idea if they went to an individual or a business. For all he knew, they could be flowers Block purchased for his office or his secretary’s desk or even for the house he’d shared with Lily.

For a second he rubbed his eyes. The long nap in the car had taken the edge off fatigue, but he was still tired. Sleep had been so elusive lately. He felt if he laid his head down he’d fall into slumber for a hundred years and wake up ready to punch Block in the nose, reunite Charlie with his mother and take them both back to the ranch and...

Wait a second. Was this about Lily and the fantasy he entertained on long nights that someday he and she...

Oh, please, don’t go that route, he cautioned himself. Don’t pretend because she needs your help she actually wants you.

He looked up when a noise at the bathroom door caught his attention. Lily emerged with her soft brown hair waving around her heart-shaped face. Gone were the baggy dress and long, limp sweater, and in their place, tight black jeans, a black form-fitting top and a brown leather belt that matched her boots. She’d gone from plain Jane to a country-Western knockout and he swallowed a jolt of desire that shot through his body like a lightning bolt.

“Feel better?” he managed to say in a voice that sounded remarkably steady.

“A lot better,” she murmured. Her gaze dropped to the stack in front of him. “Did you find anything?”

He tore his mind from the lovely curves and dips of her body around which the top had molded itself. “I don’t know. Where is Vance Street?”

“Vance. I’m not sure.”

He punched the address into his phone and showed her the resulting map. “That’s over in the Tower District,” she said. “Mostly condos.”

“But you and Jeremy didn’t live there?”

“No. His family had money of its own. When his father died, he left Jeremy a house and a little land right outside the city. Jeremy pictures himself lord of the manor.”

“He sent flowers to this address once a week for several months near the end of the period when you lived together.”

“Flowers? Really?” she said as her huge brown eyes came alive. “Jeremy hates cut flowers. I don’t think he ever bought me a single rose. There must be a special reason why he did that.”

“It could be nothing,” Chance cautioned.

“Or it could be he was seeing someone else,” Lily said. “Oh, my gosh, I bet he was having an affair. This is great!” She started pacing the room again, gesturing, suddenly animated. “If he’s involved with someone else, maybe I can use that as leverage.” She grabbed her handbag off the back of a chair and the baggy gray sweater from the bed. “Let’s go check out that address.”

He took the keys from his pocket, ready for action of any kind.

* * *

1801 VANCE STREET turned out to be located within a small villa of condos arranged around a central courtyard, all encased within the confines of an ornate iron fence. At this time of year, the pool had been drained and covered in preparation for cold weather. The trees were a riot of color, leaves drifting to the ground as the wind teased them loose.

They found a row of brass mailboxes built into a small arch near the street. The name on 1801 was V. Richards.

“Vicky, Valerie, Vivian?” Lily mused.

“Or Vincent, Victor, Val,” Chance said.

“How do we find out?”

“We ask.”

She looked around at the complete absence of other people and raised her eyebrows.

“Look, at the risk of making you mad, how about you let me knock on the door and see what I can find out.”

“Why you?” she said. “I’ll do it.”

“What if this person is actually home and what if you know them or they recognize your face? You aren’t disguised, remember?”

“I know. But so what?”

“So they call Block, Block calls the cops, Charlie spends the next twelve years living with daddy dearest.”

“Oh.”

“Just go sit in the car, okay?” he coaxed.

“Okay, but don’t mess this up.”

“Your faith in me is truly heartwarming,” he said. “Here, take my hat with you so I don’t stand out so much.” He waited until she got back in the car, then he walked down the narrow path to 1801. He wasn’t surprised when no one responded to the doorbell as it was a late weekday afternoon. He imagined the tenant of the condo was still on his or her commute. He walked around the grounds looking for someone, anyone, and finally spied a middle-aged guy raking leaves out by the pool/patio area.

“Excuse me,” he called. “I have a delivery out in the truck for 1801, V. Richards. They’re not home. Is there a manager here or anything?”

“I’m the manager,” the man said, leaning on his rake. He gave Chance a once-over, probably deciding he didn’t look much like a delivery man but glad for anything that interrupted the raking, especially as the fading light must make the job a tough one. “What can I do for you?”

“Is it safe to leave a package outside the door? It’s pretty heavy. I wouldn’t want it to be a problem for the recipient to get it inside by themselves.”

“Yeah, it’s safe enough. That door doesn’t face the street. If Valentine needs help, all she has to do is ask for it. She’s a nice enough kid.”

“Kid?”

He laughed. “Everyone under thirty is a kid to me and she’s way under. Probably nineteen or so.”

“Does she live alone?” Chance asked and immediately wished he hadn’t. But the manager didn’t seem to find the question intrusive.

“Oh, you mean how does a gal her age afford this place? Easy. She’s a student. Her parents pay the bills and they wanted her someplace safe.”

“So she lives off her folks and goes to college,” Chance said, hoping he sounded like a jealous guy who had had to support himself his whole life and begrudged Valentine her address on easy street.

“Yeah, tough, right? She’s been here for two years now. Well, kids these days, you know.” His gaze suddenly focused over Chance’s shoulder and he straightened up. “Hey there, Mr. Hasbro.”

Chance turned to see a grumpy-looking man in his late sixties. “The circuit breaker blew again. You need to fix it pronto.”

“Sure thing, Mr. Hasbro. As soon as I finish raking...”

“No, now. Betty is in the middle of making my dinner.”

“I’ll be right up, sir. Just have to get my tools.”

“Don’t dawdle,” the older man said and stalked off.

“His breaker wouldn’t blow if his wife didn’t overload it,” the manager confided to Chance. “Just leave the package,” he added as he set aside the rake and hurried off.

“Well?” Lily asked as he slid into the passenger seat.

“You were right, it’s a woman, but I don’t know. The manager said she is a nineteen-year-old student.”

“She sounds perfect,” Lily said. “Jeremy likes his women young and innocent.”

“Her name is Valentine Richards,” Chance added. “The manager seems to think she’s a nice kid.”

“That’s all he said?”

“Pretty much.”

“It’s going to have to be enough,” Lily said.

“Enough for what?”

“Leverage. You don’t send a woman flowers for weeks on end without there being a motive.”

“Maybe, but Lily, even if he was having an affair, you left him. Unless this woman is a convicted criminal, he’s just an abandoned husband with a girlfriend.”

“But it appears he was seeing her while we were married.”

He shrugged. “Today’s morality doesn’t necessarily blink at infidelity.”

“It’s all I’ve got,” she added. “Are you coming with me or not?”

“Let’s get it over with,” he said as he felt around under the seat with his right hand, reassured when his fingers brushed the smooth leather of the holster into which he’d slid his .38 over twelve hours earlier when they’d stopped at his cabin.

* * *

SHE KNEW HER way around the city, taking backstreets, avoiding long-winded lights, anxious now to get this over with.

“You can’t just walk into his house and have a simple conversation with him, you know,” Chance said.

She flashed him a quick look. He’d all but disappeared in his dark clothes in the dark car. Just the glint of the whites of his eyes and the occasional street lamp illuminating his face. “That’s exactly what I’m going to do,” she said. “I’m going to tell him I know about his affair with Valentine. That’s my leverage.”

“He’ll chew you up and spit you at the police department.”

“Doesn’t matter. It’s a chance I have to take. Maybe he’ll listen to reason.”

“Maybe he’ll listen to Smith and Wesson,” Chance said, and took the gun from under the seat. The thought of the two of them eye-to-eye with a gun in the middle made her anxiety level shoot through the roof.

She pulled the car over to the side of the road, parking between street lamps where darkness prevailed.

“We’re here?” Chance said, looking around.

“No. The house is a block over. I didn’t want anyone to recognize my car. Come on.”

They walked quickly. She knew a shortcut that consisted of a nature trail owned by the home owners’ association and took him that way. They erupted onto the street she’d called home for five years. The thought of stepping foot on Jeremy’s property made her physically ill. The only worse scenario was losing Charlie. She would not leave here until she’d at least seen him. “I’m going to try reason,” she muttered to herself as they drew closer.

Chance sighed. “Nothing you’ve said about this guy screams reason, Lily. Listen, let me go in first,” he added. He shoved the gun into the back of his jeans. “I’ll be reasonable. He won’t know who I am so he won’t be expecting anything. I can at least make sure Charlie is in the house and—”

“No,” she said softly but with fire in her tone, pulling on his arm to stop him from proceeding. “The house is right up there. Someone could be guarding the gate. You stay back here so he doesn’t see you.”

“Have you forgotten what your husband did to you, Lily? Are you crazy?”

“He’s not going to risk killing me in his own home.”

“You are crazy. You’ve told me what he did to you in his own home.”

“I was a lot more timid back then. And I didn’t have Valentine Richards to use as ammunition. Please, Chance, just wait for me. Like you said on the ranch, I might need someone to bail me out of jail.”

With that, she continued walking, relieved beyond belief when Chance didn’t follow. She didn’t look back until she reached the gate. There was no sign of Chance.

“Evening,” a man said.

She turned to face the gate. She’d never seen the man standing there.

“May I help you?” he asked.

“Who are you?”

“Name’s McCord,” he said. “Who are you?”

“I’m Jeremy Block’s estranged wife. I need to talk to him.”

McCord’s face registered surprise as thick eyebrows wrinkled his brow. He was a stocky, fifty-year-old guy with an ex-boxer’s nose and a smoker’s gravelly voice. “I reckon he’ll be surprised to see you.” He rolled open the gate for her and she followed him up the walkway to the big black door.

“Mr. Block is probably in the study,” McCord said as he gestured for her to enter the house. Stepping inside felt like entering a time warp.

“Is anyone else in the house?”

“Besides me? Just the gal Mr. Block hired to watch the kid.”

“Then Charlie is here,” she said, her gaze flying up the stairs. She veered that direction but McCord stepped in front of her.

“He’s here. But you came to see his father, right?”

“After I say good-night to my boy,” she said.

“No can do,” McCord said and started to reach for her arm to prevent her from climbing the stairs. She dodged his grasp, walked to the study and yanked open the door.

Jeremy glanced up from his seat behind his desk. He was on the phone.

“Wait outside,” he barked, his gaze traveling from Lily to McCord. “I’m in the middle of something important.” He turned in his swivel chair so that his back was toward them. McCord grabbed Lily’s arm and pulled her out of the room. He closed the door and pointed at a chair set against the wall.

Could she get past him and run up the stairs? Charlie was up there, so close now she could almost feel him in her arms.

“Don’t try it,” McCord said, accurately reading her body language.”

“Please, Mr. McCord. Charlie is my child.”

“I don’t want to hurt you,” McCord said and firmly pushed her down onto a chair. He planted himself square in front of her. “But that doesn’t mean I won’t.”

Chapter Three

For twenty-one minutes, according to the clock in the foyer, Jeremy kept them waiting. Lily had no choice but to accept the fact she wasn’t getting past McCord, but that didn’t keep her gaze from repeatedly traveling to the second floor and the open balcony railing that surrounded it. She was so nervous and stressed her hands trembled in her lap and she had to clench them together to keep herself from exploding. More than once, she caught McCord casting her a distasteful glance.

What exactly had he been told about her?

At last Jeremy’s voice told them to come into his study.

“You can leave,” he told McCord as they entered. McCord turned and left, closing the door behind him.

Looking straight at Lily, Jeremy trotted out what she called his campaign smile. “Well, look who came home,” he said. He did not get to his feet. His sandy-colored hair showed a few gray streaks, his eyes were so blue she knew he wore contact lenses to boost the color. He was dressed for the office in a custom-made gray suit. It was one of the more expensive worsted wools, which probably meant he had been in court that day.

Was he handsome? Not in the way Chance was, not with classic features, broad shoulders and a devilish smile that ignited the color of his eyes. But he was commanding. His cold eyes could look warm when he put in the effort and he knew how to twist words more adroitly than a clown manipulating balloons into giraffes.

She stepped to the far side of his desk. “First of all, this is not my home. Secondly, of course I came. You stole my son.”

“The law sees it the other way around.” He nodded at his phone. “I should warn you. The police will come as soon as I ask them to. They have a warrant—”

“I know about that.” She’d had twenty-one minutes to cool her heels and face reality and what she’d decided was that she was going to have to do the whole thing the legal way and that meant going through the system. “Listen, Jeremy,” she pleaded. “Just let me see Charlie. I have to know he’s okay.”

Jeremy chuckled. “How very melodramatic. Of course he’s okay. He’s back where he belongs and no longer at the mercy of his unpredictable mother.”

Lily’s chin tilted. “You might be able to fool other people, Jeremy, but you can’t fool me. I’m the one who lived here. I’m the one you set up to look like a lush. I’m the one you knocked unconscious. And then there’s that minion you sent to kill me, Jodie Brown.”

“You’re delusional,” he said. “I think you always have been. Well, you know what they say drugs and alcohol will do to a person.”

“I found the barbiturates in your desk.”

“So what? The prescription is in your name, prescribed by your physician to relieve anxiety. I was very troubled when I discovered you were mixing them with booze. I even talked to him about it. He was going to hospitalize you for observation, but you disappeared about then. I swear, getting custody of Charlie was a walk in the park.”

“If it was such a walk in the park then why did you employ Jodie?”

“I knew nothing about what he did,” Jeremy insisted.

“Did you kill him when he failed?”

“I believe he died in a drunk driving accident. Surely you’re not blaming me for that, too?”

“You think you’ve covered all the bases, don’t you? Let’s try this one. I know about your affair with Valentine Richards.”

He leaned back in his chair, a man in his domain, a confident man who could lie without effort. “I suppose you found out about her when you snooped through my files.”

“It doesn’t matter how I know about her. You were cheating on me. I wonder what your precious community would think of you if they knew that.”

“As usual, you have it wrong. Valentine was an intern in my office. Sweet girl. Lost her grandmother while she worked here. I wanted to cheer her up so I sent her flowers.”

“You hate flowers.”

“But she loved them.”

“I love them, too. That never made a difference to you.”

“Are you jealous?”

“Oh, please. I just find it interesting that you’ve finally met someone who makes you think beyond yourself. Maybe you’re ready to give me a divorce now.”

“No,” he said.

“Why?”

He smiled. “Because you want it so badly.”

“I don’t need your permission,” she said.

“If you’re hiding from me, it’s going to be tricky to show up in court. And oh, then there’s that nasty warrant.”

Bantering with Jeremy was wasting time. Maybe that was the point. Maybe the police were about to arrive. If that was the case, then she was going to at least see Charlie before it was too late. She walked across the room, grabbed the doorknob and advanced on the staircase.

Jeremy caught her arm and pulled her around. She stumbled on the stair and fell against him. A visceral wave of distaste filled her body as she struggled to stand on her own. He slapped her face so hard her neck snapped to the side. She put a hand up to her stinging cheek and stared into his flat eyes. “Get away from me.”

He lowered his head until his mouth was close to her ear. “I could kill you tonight and explain it away however I want. No one on earth would give a damn, not even Charlie, not after a while.”

“You never give up, do you, Jeremy. Stop trying to bait me. It doesn’t work anymore.”

Pounding footsteps from the top of the stairs broke a stalemate. They looked up to see a young woman rushing across the open mezzanine. She stopped short at the head of the stairs and looked down at them.

“What’s going on?” Jeremy said.

“It’s the boy,” the woman responded.

Lily tore herself from Jeremy’s gasp and ran up the stairs. Jeremy was right behind her. “What about Charlie?” Lily demanded as she reached the quivering woman who glanced at Jeremy, then back at Lily.

“I’ve looked everywhere,” she said. “He’s not in his bed. I don’t know... I don’t know where he is.”

Lily tore down the hall. She entered Charlie’s room. It was filled with toys, many of them still in their boxes. The bed was empty. The other two appeared in the doorway as Lily stared at the rumpled sheets. She set her palm against the pillow. It was cool to the touch.

“Is he hiding somewhere? Did he run away?” Jeremy asked.

“I don’t know,” the woman responded. Lily walked to the window and examined the sill. Then she looked at the wooden window casing. Scratch marks clearly revealed the window had been pried open from the outside. She looked out the open window and saw nothing but the blackness of night. The light that should have illuminated this side of the yard wasn’t burning and the moon hadn’t yet risen high enough to help.

Her baby had been taken from this room. Had Chance done it? It was possible and if so, at least Charlie was safe. She’d been inside the house for more than thirty minutes, so he could have had time to do this. Her heart slammed against her ribs. Was Chance that rash and impulsive? Yes, at times. But he was smarter than that, she was sure of it. The thought of him trying to help her and actually jeopardizing his freedom—for surely if he had done this and was caught he would wind up in jail—well, it made her sick inside.

“Damn that spoiled brat,” Jeremy said under his breath. “If he ran away—”

Lily whirled around, ready to slap him as hard as she could. “How dare you call Charlie—”

“How dare you?” He caught her raised hand and twisted it down to her side but didn’t release it. For the first time he seemed to be interested in what she’d been staring at. He pulled her out of his way and turned to examine the window in silence. She knew the gouges on the wood were unmistakable. At last, through clenched teeth, he addressed the other woman. “I employ you to watch my son. You’re his damn nanny. Where the hell were you while this was going on?”

“In the other room,” she admitted. “I know you said to sit here with him, but my eyes kept drifting closed. I don’t know why I’m so blasted sleepy. I knew I had to do something so I went to my room to find a book. I guess I sat down on the bed. The next thing I knew I was yawning myself awake. I wasn’t out that long, I swear I wasn’t.”

“You were gone long enough for this to happen, you nitwit.”

“Yes, sir,” she said, looking down at the floor. She bent and picked up a piece of paper. “I didn’t see this before,” she said. “Maybe it fell when I threw back the blankets. Oh, my gosh! It says: A son for a son. White—”

Jeremy snatched the paper from the nanny’s hand before she read another word. “Give that to me,” he said as he released Lily’s wrist.

“What does it mean?” Lily demanded. She couldn’t believe Chance would leave a message as inflammatory as that. In fact, she knew he wouldn’t. That meant someone else had taken Charlie. But who? “Who is White?” she asked.

Jeremy met her gaze but didn’t respond, at least not to her. Instead he turned to the nanny. “Get downstairs and tell McCord to search the grounds. I want to know exactly how my son was taken from this room.”

She nodded nervously and began to turn. Jeremy cleared his throat. “And Janet? Don’t say a word about this to anyone else, do you understand? Not even the police. It’s your fault the child is missing. Don’t make it worse for yourself by blabbing to anyone but McCord.”

“Yes, Mr. Block,” she said as she scurried away.

Lily planted her fists on her hips. “What does that note mean, Jeremy? Who is White?”

He looked at the paper again, then folded it in half. “Don’t you have enough problems of your own?”

Had he always been this much of a nutcase? Did he really think anything that happened to her mattered in the face of what was happening to their son? “Why aren’t you calling the police? And you shouldn’t be touching that paper. There may be fingerprints—”

“I will handle this my own way,” he interrupted.

“You know something, don’t you?” she said in a burst of understanding. “You know who took him and why. Someone named White. Tell me.”

The hateful look in his eyes as he raked her over went straight to her gut. He tore the note into pieces and opened his hand to let them flutter to the carpet. She wanted to catch them and paste them back together. She couldn’t understand how he could destroy the only link they had to Charlie’s abductors.

“It’s some enemy of yours, isn’t it?” she implored. “Oh, my poor Charlie. How can you stand there and let this happen? Don’t you care anything about him? Please—”

He grabbed her shoulders and shook her. “God, you’re annoying. I’ll get Charlie back safe and sound but I’ll do it my own way in my own time. No police. Not unless you want Charlie dead.”

Lily swallowed a lump of air. She wasn’t sure what to do except get out of that house.

“Now I have to figure out what to do about you,” he added.

“No, you don’t. I’m leaving.”

He stepped in front of her. “I don’t trust you. You aren’t going anywhere.”

“Move out of my way.”

“So you can run to the police and in some misdirected gesture of sacrifice, tell them everything you’ve seen and heard? I’ll have to waste time quieting them down and by then it will be too late for Charlie. If you want him to live, you’ll stay out of this and you won’t involve the police. For now, I have things to do and you’re in the way.”

His fist connected with her cheekbone and she stumbled backward. Grabbing her arm, he pulled her from the room and all but ran her down the stairs, his fingers digging into her arm. He propelled her into his office, opened the closet, tore her purse from her shoulder and pushed her inside. The door slammed in her face, encasing her in blackness. The click of the lock echoed in her ears.

And then it was silent.

* * *

CHANCE WAITED UNTIL he heard the front door close behind Lily and the man she’d called McCord, then jumped over the gate. He dashed to the cover of the trees and hunkered down for a minute as his eyes adjusted to the dark. It seemed odd to him that the outside was so poorly lit but at least he didn’t think he had to worry about cameras picking up his every move.

The gun constituted a last-resort measure not to be taken lightly. Bravado aside, he had no intention of shooting anyone if there was any other choice.

Eventually, he knew his sight was as good as it was going to get and he made his way across the manicured lawns to the house where he carefully peered in through a low window. It turned out to be the kitchen—empty. The next window opened onto a dining room that was dominated by a black lacquer table and the most pretentious-looking candelabra he’d ever seen. For a second he stared inside, wondering what bothered him so much, and then he had it. There were two chairs at the table, one at either end, like on a movie set when they wanted you to understand that the people who dined there didn’t have much to say to one another.

Had Lily endured dinners in this setting? Chance, who had grown up with four other men and a rotating roster of stepmothers, couldn’t imagine the numbing silence and the thought that Charlie might soon eat a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich in this mausoleum was just flat-out depressing.

Farther along, he found a living area that looked as though it had never been lived in, and then popped his head up to find himself peering into a smaller room that seemed to be a den or a home office. It, too, appeared empty and he was about to turn away when the chair in the corner suddenly spun around and a man appeared.

Chance immediately ducked out of sight, but the impression of the man stayed vivid behind his eyes: late forties, stern, arrogant. Blue eyes like Charlie’s. He held a cell phone in one hand and avidly tapped a pencil against the wooden arm of the chair with another. The window was slightly open, but try as he might, Chance couldn’t make out what was being said. He scampered away, careful to keep his head down.

That had to be Lily’s husband. But where was Lily? And where was McCord? He decided to skirt the entire perimeter of the house. The harvest moon that had seemed to illuminate the world on his ranch in the middle of the night was subdued here by the massive size of the house and the shadows it cast. Maybe in a couple of hours it would rise high enough to overcome this obstacle, but Chance fervently hoped he and Lily were back in the motel room by then.

And maybe Charlie, too. Maybe Jeremy Block would come to his senses and be reasonable.

Sure. And pigs could fly.

Careful to avoid the patches of light that shone through the windows, he almost tripped when he turned the corner and came across something in the grass. He knelt down to investigate. Someone had left a metal ladder lying on the grass. By the feel and heft of it, a long one.

Why would anyone leave a ladder lying on the grass? He looked up at the bank of windows overhead and saw two lights placed far enough away from each other to suggest two different rooms. Probably upstairs bedrooms; one of those might be Charlie’s. He played around with the possibility of raising the ladder and checking it out but decided against it.

Besides, maybe someone had been washing second-story windows today and got lazy or put the ladder down flat so a small boy wouldn’t be tempted to climb it and fall. Who knew?

Like a moth drawn to a flame, he retraced his steps to the office window and chanced another peek. This time the door was opening. He shrank back against the rock siding, then slowly inched his face close enough to see inside. Lily stood in front of the desk, her body so taut she almost vibrated. Block stayed seated and managed to look bored as she spoke.

Did he dare nudge the window open farther? No, he decided, too risky. Besides, he could pretty much guess what they were saying. One thing was clear: there was no love lost between them.

After several minutes, Lily turned on her heels and rushed to the door. She ripped it open and slammed it behind her. That was his girl, temper, temper. But Block was out of his chair in a flash, hurrying after her and the look on his face chilled Chance’s blood. The door swung closed behind them so whatever happened next occurred without Chance witnessing it. And in his gut he knew nothing good was going on inside that house.

Self-preservation kicked in and he began to wonder where McCord was. If the older man did carry out a cursory patrol of the yard every once in a while, shouldn’t he be showing up soon? And exactly how was he going to get out of this yard when the time came to escape? He found the answer to that when he literally ran into a tree growing close to the tall fence. He could shimmy up the trunk and jump down on the other side.

Desperate to know what was going on, Chance crept around to the garage side of the house and smelled smoke. The lights were still off, but he stopped short when he saw the glow of a cigarette as someone sucked on it. Squinting, he could just make out the figure of a man leaning against a white car, an acrid pale cloud hanging in the air around him.

A door opened from the house into a nearby carport. A woman stood framed in the light. “Mr. McCord?” she called with an edge of panic in her voice. She flipped on a weak outside light and McCord pushed himself away from the car and swore.

“Turn the damn light off,” he said.

“The little boy is missing! There’s a note and everything. Mr. Block said you should find out how the child was taken or if he’s still on the grounds. And we’re to tell no one about this.”

“Have you called the cops?” McCord asked as he emerged into the light. He was a stocky man with an almost bald head.

“Mr. Block insisted no police. He’s furious with me.”

“What about the kid’s mother?”

“Is that who she is? He’s furious with her, too. I think he hit her. I better get back inside. Hurry, check the grounds.”

She ran back inside the house. Chance expected McCord to turn on the outside floodlights if they had them and sure enough, within seconds the yard jumped from black to living color. He moved at once into one of the few remaining shadows but he had the feeling McCord had witnessed the movement. The older man would come looking and chances were he packed a firearm.

Even more to the point, Lily was apparently trapped inside the house. The maid said Jeremy had hit her. His fists clenched. How badly was she hurt? How could he get her out of there?

Slinking behind a grape arbor still thankfully covered with drooping yellow leaves he could hide behind, he pulled his gun, but paused to try to think.

Who in the world had taken Charlie?

* * *

LILY GRASPED OVERHEAD for a light cord to pull. She couldn’t find one and there was nothing on the wall. Then she remembered the switch outside the door. The shelves behind her felt like they were covered with office supplies. What could she do when Jeremy returned? Give him a bad paper cut?

She kicked at the door until her foot hurt. She pounded her fists against the heavy wood panel to no avail. She yelled and shouted and had the horrible feeling no one could hear her or that if they did, they would simply ignore her.

Who had taken Charlie and what did they want with him? Her stomach clenched into a knot as she pictured his eyes filled with fear. How could Jeremy be so cavalier about his child’s safety? If Jeremy wasn’t blowing smoke, then going to the police might prove deadly for Charlie... How did she chance that her lying, cheating husband might actually be telling the truth for once?

She swore under her breath.

A sound on the other side of the door froze her solid for a second and then she frantically started patting the shelves again, feeling for something, anything she could use as a weapon. Her fingers brushed the cool metal of an aerosol can. She grabbed it and another one next to it. She depressed the nozzle sprays and was rewarded with nothing but puffs of air. That’s what they were: compressed gas meant to blow the dust from a computer keyboard. Their contents were useless, but they were heavy enough to buy her a moment or two if she used them as projectiles.

The lock clicked and she jumped. This was it. Raising the cans to face height, she squinted against the sudden infusion of light and threw the cans as hard as she could. She opened her eyes in time to see one strike a dark head while a tanned hand caught the other.

“Damn!” Chance said. “Ouch.”

“Chance! I’m sorry, I thought you were Jeremy!” She threw herself against him and he caught her, hugging her close for a second, then he raised a hand and gently touched the uninjured part of her cheek. “When I get my hands on that man—”

“Not now,” she said. “How did you get in here?”

He gestured at the window. The yard beyond was brilliantly illuminated. “But I don’t know how we’re going to escape,” he said. They heard a yell from outside. “I bet they found the ladder over on the far side of the house. Is that how they took Charlie? Through the window?”

“Yes.” She wasn’t sure how he knew Charlie was missing but now wasn’t the time for conversation.

“We’ll have to make a dash for that tree over by the fence. Are you up to it?”

His gaze studied her face and she could imagine what he saw. She knew one eye was swollen because she could feel it with her fingers and she suspected the warm sticky substance on her cheek was blood from Jeremy’s last punch. “Don’t worry about me,” she said. “But Chance, if I’m stopped and you’re not, promise me you’ll find Charlie.”

“Lily...”

“Promise me.”

“I promise. Come on.”

He stuck his head out the window, then turned to look back at her. “The tree is about twenty feet to your right. Can you climb trees?”

“If I have to.”

“Then go. I’ll be behind you. I have something to do here.”

“What?”

“Lily. Go.” He picked her up, and swung her outside.

“See if you can find my purse,” she whispered. “It has the car keys.”

“Will do.” He released her. She dropped to her feet and took off at a dead run. She found the fence and kept going until she got to the tree. Chance showed up earlier than she’d anticipated and hoisted her onto a limb over her head. She scrambled along until she got close to the top of the iron fence and threw herself to the ground on the other side, landing facedown, all but knocking the wind out of her lungs. Chance landed a few seconds after her, but he came down on his feet and absorbed the shock in his legs. He immediately stood and pulled her upright. She saw with relief that he held her purse in one hand.

They ran across the street, thankful to be out of the light.

“I don’t know how we avoided being seen,” Chance said as Lily led them to the nature trail.

“I don’t, either. What did you do in Jeremy’s office besides find my purse?”

He pressed her bag into her hands. “Wiped my prints away and kicked in the closet door from the inside. I didn’t want your husband knowing you had outside help. You didn’t tell him I was with you, did you?”

“No,” she said as she extracted the car keys. Would Jeremy believe she was capable of kicking open a door? Maybe, maybe not, but at least he’d wonder.

Lily took the passenger seat. A few seconds later, Chance directed the car onto the quiet road. “Where’s the nearest police station?” he asked. The moon illuminated the pavement and they drove without lights for several seconds before they’d turned away from Jeremy’s neighborhood and traffic began to appear. The headlights went on and they sped up.

“We’re not going to the police,” she said.

“But the man hit you, Lily. He locked you in a closet...”

“I’m not important. It’s Charlie we have to worry about. Jeremy says if the police get involved, the kidnappers will kill Charlie.”

“And you believe him?”

“I don’t know what to believe,” she said. “But for now, no police. I have to find out who took Charlie. It’s someone named White, I think.”

“We’ll find him,” Chance said.

Too caught up in her thoughts, she didn’t respond. A son for a son... That implied revenge. It had to be tied to Jeremy.

Chapter Four

“Jeremy knows who took Charlie,” she said. “And for some reason, he’s keeping it to himself, which to me implies he has something to hide.” They were digging through the papers Lily had gathered before leaving her husband. The former neat stacks were now in a state of disarray as she grabbed one reprinted article after another. “Look for the death of a man,” she coaxed.

Her voice was too highly pitched and the papers seemed to slip through her fingers. Chance wanted to tell her to calm down but he knew better than to even suggest such a thing.

“There was no demand for ransom, right?” Chance asked.

“No.”

“Is it possible Jeremy staged the kidnapping to throw you off?”

“Why bother? I’m just a pesky gnat to him.”

“Don’t underestimate yourself,” Chance said. “You can be a hell of a lot more than pesky when you put your mind to it.”

“Thanks,” she said with a sudden smile.

“What’s to keep us from calling the cops?”

“Jeremy said—”

“The man lies as easily as a duck quacks.”

“But this time he may be telling the truth. I can’t risk it until I know more.”

Chance stopped arguing. All it took was one glance at her bruised and bloodied face to make the veins pop in his forehead. No one knew better than he how focused and relentless she could be, but the fact that Jeremy felt he had the right to strike her made his blood boil.

Boiling blood aside, the bigger issue was Charlie. Little Charlie, stolen from his bed, held...well, why? As a hostage? As retribution? What did a five-year-old kid have to make retribution for? Who in the world would take out their hatred for a man on his very young child?

No one sane. Ergo, a lunatic had Charlie. And a lunatic might harm the boy if threatened.

“Here’s something,” she said, holding up a piece of newspaper. “A man Jeremy prosecuted died of cancer while serving a life sentence. It says, ‘Levi Bolt, 68, expired Wednesday—’”

Chance cut her off. “His parents would have to be in their eighties. Keep looking.”

They fell silent as they searched. “Look at this,” she said a few minutes later. He glanced at her face to find that the blood had congealed and her eye had swollen almost closed. He stood up.

“Lily, let me help you clean those wounds.”

“Not yet,” she said. “Read this to me. It’s not long.”

He took the paper from her hand and read the article aloud.

“‘Police today reported an inmate apparently committed suicide early Saturday morning by hanging himself in his cell. Darke Fallon, estimated age eighteen, was found at 3:25 a.m., January 14. He was being held pending proceedings that were to have started on Monday to determine competency. Prison medical staff attempted life-saving measures before transporting him to Charity Hill Medical Center where he was pronounced dead. Results of toxicology tests were unavailable for review.

“Fallon is accused of the January 10 murder of Mr. Wallace Connor, 21, of Greenville, Idaho, who was found knifed to death in a Boise motel where he had reportedly traveled for a job interview. Twenty-four hours later, police spotted Connor’s truck. The driver, Darke Fallon, confessed to the murder but shortly after arrest, ceased cooperating with police. He claimed Connor picked him up while Fallon was hitchhiking from his home in Bend, Oregon, but that could not be confirmed. State appointed attorneys swore to fight demands for hypnosis to establish identity. It is unknown if Mr. Fallon leaves any survivors. The prosecutor’s office, headed by Jeremy Block, refused comment.’”

“How could the police not find a trace of him?” Chance mused aloud. “Apparently no fingerprints, no family stepping forward, no Social Security number, no one has ever seen or heard about him before? That seems so unlikely in this day and age.”

“I know, I know,” Lily said, “But his parents would be young enough to steal Charlie.”

“If he had any. Did Jeremy talk about this suicide to you?”

“I’m not sure. What’s the date again?”

“January 15.”

“That’s right around the time Jeremy finally knocked me out and I decided to leave. I told you there’d been a suicide at the jail in a cell before he came unglued. This must have been the one.”

“Was there a follow-up investigation after his death?”

“Probably.”

“There must have been fallout over the suicide,” Chance said. “Did you ever hear why the kid killed himself before his trial?”

“No.”

Chance skirted through other clippings. “There’s nothing else here.”

“I’ll search the internet,” she said, and picking up her phone, went to work. After a half hour they knew a little more but not much.

“Wallace Connor came from Greenville, right? That’s pretty close to an area called White Cliff,” she finally said. She sat for a moment, then looked up at him. “White. Maybe the word white in the note wasn’t a name of a person but a place.” She scanned the screen. “White Cliff appears to be a survivalist community.” She groaned and closed her eyes. “Talking kind of hurts,” she admitted. “I must have bitten down on the inside of my mouth when Jeremy hit me.”

“Wait here,” Chance said, and taking the ice bucket, walked to the machine near the outside stairs. Back in the room he gave her a cube to suck on and made a compress by wrapping the rest in a hand towel she held against her face. “I’ll take over the search,” he added.

“There’s a lot in here about that survivalist community you mentioned,” he said after he’d continued reading. “One reporter tried to find out if Fallon had ever lived in White Cliff but got nowhere. Apparently the police had the same lack of success.”

“How about Wallace Connor?” Lily garbled around the ice cube.

“They say he left behind his parents and a younger sister. Robbery was the supposed reason for the murder because his wallet was empty and a lapis lazuli ring the desk clerk noticed when he checked in was missing from his hand. The police caught Fallon the next day. He was driving Connor’s truck. He told the cops his name, admitted he killed Connor and then shut his mouth and never said another word to anyone about anything. His lawyers were court-appointed. His competency hearing was scheduled for the Monday after he died. His suicide seems to have been the end of it.”

“It’s a dead end,” Lily said bitterly.

He set aside the phone. “No, not a dead end, just a twisty road. We’ll figure something out. Come on, let me wash your face and get some antiseptic and a bandage on that open cut. No, don’t argue with me.” He pulled her up by clasping her arm, grabbed his toiletries kit from his duffel and gently pushed her ahead of him into the bathroom.

She sat on the edge of the tub as he bathed her face in warm water, dabbed on the ointment and covered the open wound with a bandage. The occasional whimpers that escaped her lips made him furious. How dare that jerk touch her.

“Am I pretty again?” she asked as she stood, a little playfulness creeping back into her voice.

He put his hands on her shoulders and studied her face. “Not yet, but you will be.”

“Hold me,” she said softly.

He drew her closer and put his arms around her. She fit perfectly, as he knew from experience, and though he swore to himself he would not react to her closeness or the way she clung to him, he could feel his body stirring.

“I’m so scared,” she whispered against his neck.

He drew back to look at her face, but his gaze landed on her mouth, and mindful of her injuries, he leaned forward and gently touched her lips with his.

They’d kissed a few times several months earlier. To him, her lips had been everything delicious and tasty in the world. Honey and scotch, summer nights, a good dinner. He’d wanted to bed her with a vengeance and had worked on seducing her for weeks, but one torrid fifteen minutes had led to her bolting away from him for good.

So what? There were more women in the world than men and he’d known his share. Frankly, he seemed to have a knack for finding women who wanted what he wanted—a satisfying romp in the hay, no heartstrings engaged. His father had been married seven times. Seven times! Women came and went, the trick was not to block the door.

And then came Lily.

Tricky, complicated, troubled, on the run, dangerous.

She pulled away from him and studied his face. “Thank you for rescuing me from the closet.”

“You’re welcome.” He touched her good cheek. Her skin was so soft.

She nodded briskly and disengaged herself from his embrace. He longed to keep his fingers linked behind her back, longed to hold her in his arms all night. He knew she was distracted and sick with worry and so was he... Oh, give it up, his brain scolded, and he withdrew his hands.

“We need to talk to those survivalists ourselves,” he said as they returned to the room. He looked away from the bed, which suddenly seemed to take up almost all the floor space. She sat down in the chair in front of the table and shook her head. “I know. It’s wild land up there, people are scattered and many are suspicious of outsiders. I guess we start by finding White Cliff.”

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