Like any good field operative, she’d left the doors unlocked and the key fob inside the vehicle. She dived for the passenger door and flung herself inside awkwardly, half-lying across the front seat so she wouldn’t crush Ellie, while Nick leaped into the driver’s seat and punched the ignition button. He wasted no time throwing the vehicle into gear and stomping on the gas. The car jumped forward.
Shots behind them announced that the bad guys had reached the road. The car squealed around a curve and the shooting behind them stopped.
“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?”
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