woods for years, and she abruptly remembered why she’d never liked this sort of work. She’d always been more at ease in urban environments and had gravitated to assignments in major metropolitan areas. Like Paris.
Ellie made an unhappy noise as some of the cold dew sprinkled her. Laura reached awkwardly to pat her. “Hush, sweetie. Mommy’s trying to be sneaky.”
Although how on God’s green earth she was going to pull that off with an infant in tow, she had no idea. It was pure insanity to try it. But for now, Ellie was stuck in the woods playing spy with Mommy.
Laura pushed forward a few more yards and the baby bag caught on a bush. Of course, it spilled. Swearing under her breath, she crouched and picked up miscellaneous baby gear and stuffed it all back in the bag.
She rose to her feet and continued forward.
If William Ward’s killers had broken into his house to kill him instead of in a simple mugging or drive-by shooting, that meant his killers also had orders to search for something. Something in this house.
She stopped in the shadow of a huge tree as Ward’s “cottage” came into view. The house had to have at least five bedrooms, if not more. If that was a cottage, then it was a cottage on serious steroids. The sound and smell of the ocean were unmistakable as Laura reached the edge of the woods crowding the rear of the structure. No wonder the killers had gotten away last night. This forest made for a perfect escape route.
She hunkered down to wait for someone to show up and prayed it would be Nick and not the killers coming back to finish their search. Time passed, and Ellie snoozed happily at her back. The baby was like having her own personal heater snuggled up against her. Laura’s legs got stiff, and she moved through the trees until she could see the front of the house. The front porch was brick with tall white pillars and looked strangely out of place on the otherwise Craftsman-style home.
“How tacky,” she muttered to Ellie.
Ellie stirred long enough to burble her disapproval of the architectural faux pas as headlights came into view on the road in front of the house. Laura plastered herself against a tree trunk as a sedan pulled up in front of the house. A tall form unfolded from the driver’s seat and Laura gasped in spite of herself. He might be wearing a gray wig and be hunching over as if he were decades older, but there was no mistaking Nick.
His head came up sharply, almost as if he’d heard her. But surely that wasn’t possible over the roar of the ocean behind him. She didn’t put it past him to sense her presence, however. In her experience, people often became incredibly intuitive in high-threat situations. And there was no denying that the connection between them had always been electric.
She watched tensely as Nick approached the house. He had the good sense to walk around the house and approach it from the back, out of sight of the road. She drifted along beside him, maintaining her cover in the trees. How was he going to get in? As far as she knew, he had no particular skills in breaking and entering. She was startled when he merely stepped up to the alarm pad by the back door and entered a series of numbers. He reached for the back door and slipped inside.
Her spy within was indignant at how easily he’d gained entrance. She’d have been forced to go through a lengthy and difficult process to bypass the security system and pick the door lock. But the woman within who worried about Nick was incredibly relieved that he was safely inside.
She was just stepping clear of the woods when a quiet sound in the dark threw Laura onto full battle alert. It was a car. Coming down the road with its headlights off. Nobody with honest intentions drove around on a cloudy night on an isolated road like this with no lights. Crud. She had to let Nick know he was about to have company. She eyed the open expanse of lawn between her and the house warily.
If she was going to go, it had to be right now before the darkened car turned into the drive. She took off running as fast as she could. God bless her personal trainer for the misery he’d put her through this past month. She wasn’t in the best shape of her entire life, but at least she wasn’t a complete marshmallow.
She darted onto the back porch as Ellie roused, complaining about being jostled around so hard in the baby carrier.
“It’s okay, sweetie. Go back to sleep,” Laura soothed as she pushed open the already partially ajar door. She closed it behind her and somewhere nearby, the house’s security system beeped, reactivating.
She slipped into the deep shadows of a coat room and then into a kitchen. She had to hurry. The bad guys would be here in a minute or so. “Nick!” she called out. She moved into a long hallway that led toward the front of the house. “Nick!”
He emerged from what looked like an office, looking thunderstruck. “Laura? What are you doing here?”
“Later,” she bit out. “We’re about to have company. The kind with guns.”
Nick darted to a window to look outside. “I don’t see anyone.”
“They’ve pulled around back, then. Can we open the front door without setting off the alarm system?” she asked urgently.
“Who cares? Let’s set it off. The police will be here in a few minutes and it’ll chase off these bastards in the meantime.”
She nodded and they stepped forward. That was when he spotted Ellie.
“You brought the baby with you?” he exclaimed incredulously.
“I’m a nursing mother, and I wasn’t exactly expecting armed men to threaten us,” she snapped. “Let’s go. They’ll be inside any second.”
Nick nodded.
She nodded back and he opened the front door. A piercing alarm screeched deafeningly as they raced across the front porch. Ellie lurched against Laura’s back and immediately commenced screaming at the top of her lungs. It was that special, baby-in-mortal-danger wail that absolutely demanded an instant response, and it was all Laura could do to keep running across the front yard toward Nick’s car and not stop to comfort her.
A bang behind her and a simultaneous metallic ping in front of her did get an immediate reaction out of Laura, however. Someone was shooting at them! Ducking instinctively, she looked over her shoulder. A dark figure was coming around the corner of the house.
Out of her peripheral vision, she caught sight of a second figure coming around the other side of the house. Plus a third man entering the house … she swore mentally. She and Nick were outnumbered, which meant they were also outgunned.
The two men advanced cautiously, not shooting any more after that first volley of shots aimed at Nick’s car. Then it hit her. The shooters must have disabled the vehicle so she and Nick couldn’t escape. Which meant they wanted to capture Nick.
No! Not again! He couldn’t disappear again. This time it would undoubtedly be for good. They’d capture him over her dead body. Super Mommy roared to the fore, and Laura fumbled frantically in the baby bag banging around at her side as she ran after Nick.
“Your car’s dead,” she panted. “Mine’s that way.”
He veered in the direction she pointed and sprinted for the woods with her on his heels.
Her fingers frantically identified objects inside the baby bag. Bottle. Diaper ointment. Pacifier. Dammit, where was her gun? Finally, she felt its cold weight and
