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James’s eyes widened. He picked up the can. His expression gave nothing away. “‘Formula,’” he read.
“Baby formula,” she said, wanting to be crystal clear in what they were seeing.
“Baby formula,” he repeated. She watched as he looked between the canister and the rubber-ducky onesie. They clearly didn’t have answers, but she did have a few guesses.
“If this house isn’t a secret, then maybe whoever was here is.” She took the onesie from his hand. His gaze followed it. “And I’m assuming Gardner never mentioned a baby to you.”
James shook his head. “No, he didn’t.”
“So, maybe he was hiding someone here? Someone with a baby? Or—”
“Or the baby is his,” James interrupted. And his blank expression gained some emotion. Anger. Concern. Something else.
Something Suzy found she wanted to combat or soothe. She wasn’t sure which. He was James Callahan, after all. A man she’d spent the last four months distrusting with a vengeance.
“I was going to say or this has nothing to do with Gardner, and whoever your source was wanted you here. Where there just so happened to be a baby at one point in time.” She motioned to the rest of the drawers and cabinets, all open and mostly empty. “We still have no evidence that Gardner is even linked to this place. Other than, like you said, the owner seems to love isolation and Shakespeare. But I can’t imagine he’s the only person in the world to like both. That could be nothing more than a coincidence.”
James opened his mouth, but whatever he was originally going to say died on his tongue. In a move that was so quick Suzy reached for her gun, James spun on his heel and hurried to the bookcase. He grabbed a book and opened it, determined. He shook his head.
“This may or may not have been his place, but Gardner definitely was here at one point.” He held the book up, cover open. From her spot, Suzy could see handwriting against the first page. “He didn’t like Shakespeare, but our mother did.” He tapped the signature. “She always signed the inside of her books.” He smiled. “I thought Dad gave them all away when she passed.”
Suzy looked down at the onesie in her hand. The rubber ducky was wearing a blue ribbon around its neck.
A not-so-great feeling started to mix with the adrenaline in her stomach. Confusion was never fun, especially when it came with urgency.
“So, if Gardner stayed here with a baby—”
The window next to the front door exploded in a spray of glass. Suzy flung herself to the floor as another window burst out of its frame. She didn’t have to be on her feet to know what was happening.
Whatever Gardner Todd’s secret was, it looked like whoever was outside was also looking for it.
And they’d brought guns.
* * *
THE FIRST SHOT pushed him to the floor. The second had him wishing he’d brought his gun in from the truck. The third, fourth, fifth and—hell, he’d lost count—the rest of the bullets that were plugging into the house had James low and crawling to the kitchen, hoping he and the chief deputy weren’t about to have a repeat of what happened at the warehouse.
Suzy was on the floor but, thankfully, not on her back this time. He gave her a once-over the best he could, given bullets were still flying. No blood or wounds that he could see. She lifted her head up enough to meet his eye as the cabinets above them splintered.
James didn’t waste any more time. He closed the distance between them and covered her with his body. She didn’t fight him. Which was good, because whoever was outside wasn’t done.
Once again James lost count in the barrage of bullets that continued to come. There was definitely more than one gunman. In fact, he guessed they were being shot at from both sides of the house, the way it was crumpling around them.
If they managed to not get shot, the house falling apart just might do them in.
James moved his head so his lips were right next to Suzy’s ear. “How much ammo do you have on you?”
“Not enough!” she yelled back. “Only the clip in my gun.”
James said a few choice words born of frustration. He just hoped their enemy’s show of force would empty their own reserves. Maybe they could get away with only one clip. It wasn’t like they had much choice. From what he’d already seen of the house, it was empty of anything worth fighting with. If the house was Gardner’s, and James realized he was already convinced it was, then at one point it had to have been well stocked with weapons. But now?
Now it was picked clean.
James was still trying to come up with a better plan than trying to take on what sounded like an army with only one clip when the gunfire finally stopped. The house continued to groan in the aftermath. Half of a cabinet door broke free and bounced off his back. There was no time to survey the damage.
“You okay?” James asked, voice low.
“I will be when we get out of here,” she replied hurriedly. James liked the fire in her voice.
He moved into a half crouch, careful to keep out of the view of the windows. Suzy followed until they were at the back door. Whatever slugs their mystery gunners had been slinging had trashed it and the windows. The walls were mostly intact.
And probably the only reason they were still alive.
James moved to the other side of the door as Suzy took up a spot next to it. He had a moment of déjà vu. He held up his finger to keep her quiet and peered out of one of the bullet holes.
Less than a second later, he was certain that one clip was not enough.
He reached out and took Suzy’s wrist.
“We need to hide,” he said urgently. “Now.”
Chapter Five (#u74f89d21-a7a7-576e-bf3d-447dc5830b05)
The world around them was moving so fast, but James couldn’t help feeling as if they were moving as slow as dirt. It didn’t help that not one or two but at least six men were closing in on the house from the backyard alone. It also didn’t help that the only hiding place he could think of was hard as the dickens to get to. At least, when that hiding place was the attic and you were hopped up on adrenaline and trying to get a beautiful woman in a slinky dress up into that attic.
With no ladder.
As soon as he pulled the string down and the door opened, James had Suzy by the waist and was shimmying her upward. Under different circumstances, he might have taken a beat to appreciate the way her body felt beneath his hands. Just like Suzy might have, under different circumstances, had some words to say when his hands cupped her backside with vigor, pushing her up until she could pull herself the rest of the way. As it was, they both kept their mouths clamped shut.
The moment Suzy cleared the opening, she spun around and held out her hand. James was already one step ahead of her. He jumped, thanked his lucky stars that he was a tall man and managed to grab the lip of the opening. Before he could start pulling himself up, a sound he’d been hoping not to hear until he was hidden exploded through the house.
Someone had kicked the front door off its hinges.
James pulled all the way up, once again was thankful that one thing he’d kept from his Air Force days was his workout routine. Suzy grabbed his back and then his belt. Then it was his backside she was cupping.
Another bang sounded as what was left of the back door was opened with force.
James grabbed on to the closest beam and pulled with all of his might. The moment his feet cleared the opening, Suzy reached through the space and grabbed for the string attached to the door. James twisted around and put his arms around her waist in time to keep her from falling out. After two swipes she got it, and together they closed it as quickly and quietly as they could.
With absolutely no time to spare.
No sooner was the door in place than a series of voices could be heard in the room beneath them. James and Suzy didn’t dare move. He didn’t even release his hold around her middle, and she didn’t complain.
“Check the closet and bathroom,” one man barked.
“If they’re in here, we got them already,” said another. His drawl was pure syrup. “Nobody can take that much lead.”
“They can if you’re crap with your aim,” said another man. The voice was a higher pitch than the other two. Younger. “You should have let me do the shooting, and not Ryan and skunk for brains here.”
“I was fifty-fifty on killing him or keeping him alive,” the first man said. “Either outcome I can work with.”
“No one’s in here,” the person with the Southern drawl called from the bathroom. “The house is empty.”
“So, whose truck is that, and where are they?” It was the third man who asked, and something in the back of James’s mind rattled around at his voice. It sounded familiar. If only he could see the three people beneath them.
“It could have been Sully’s boy who got free earlier,” the first said. “Came out here to warn Hank that we were coming and left on his bike. Might explain how they got away before we got here.”
James couldn’t help but tense up. He felt Suzy turn her head enough to look at him. A lot of good that did in the dark. While there might have been more than a few Hanks in Alabama, James knew of only one who would be tangled up with his brother. If Hank had been at the house, then there was no doubt Gardner had once been there, too.
“Well, what do we do now?” the drawler asked. “We got all the boys here and no one to question.”
The sigh was so loud, James heard it as though the man was in the attic with them.
“Looks like we’ll just have to hunt down Hank and make him tell us where he hid the boy before anyone else finds out Gardner Todd’s son is out there missing.”
If James tensed at the mention of Hank’s name, he turned into a statue at this new information.
Gardner had a son?
He had a nephew?
Suddenly everything fell into place. The urgency to meet in person. The secret he’d been trying to tell James.
Gardner had a son.
A son who was in trouble now.
Rage, pure as pollen in the spring, filled James so quickly that he had half a mind to open the attic door and bring down a heap of pain on the men in the bedroom. Had they been the ones who had ordered Lester to kill his brother? Why were they after the boy? What were they planning on doing with him after they found him?
Every question pushed adrenaline into James’s muscles.
In the darkness of the attic, all he saw was red.
And then that red cooled.
Suzy moved her hand onto the arm he had around her stomach. Her fingers delicately wrapped his forearm. Then, in the smallest of movements, she brushed her thumb across his skin.
The rage in him quieted, and sense returned to him.
Jumping out and taking on the unknown number of armed men would only get him killed, and her, too. And then his nephew would still be in danger.
James squeezed her side to let her know he’d gotten the message.
“Go get Zach and the boys, and tell them to go ahead and hit the road,” the first man said. He must have been the one in charge at the moment. James committed his voice to memory. “Keep your phones on,” he called as one of the men’s footsteps went back into the living room.
“What do you want me to do?” the third man asked. Not the guy with the Southern accent. Again, James felt like he could almost place the man’s voice. “I mean, do we even know where Hank is?”
“No, but Sully does.”
“I thought he was gone. In the wind.”
“Doesn’t mean we can’t get him back. The sorry SOB has a lot of problems, but his worst one is how he feels about his people. We find that boy he took a bullet for, and I bet we could smoke him out.”
“If Sully hasn’t already bought a one-way ticket to the great fire pit in the ground.”
The first man laughed. It sounded like nails against a chalkboard.
“He may be soft, but Sully isn’t about to let a bullet do him in.”
Car doors shut in the distance. An engine turned over.
“And what if he doesn’t know where Hank is? Heck, what if Hank is already on his way out of the state with the boy?”
Zach, the boys and the man with the Southern twang must have been leaving. James tried to split his attention, to see if he could hear if one or two vehicles were driving off, but he very much wanted the same answers as the unknown third man did.
“You may not have been in for long enough to know about Hank, but I used to run with him a few years back. He’s not a stationary man, and definitely not a fan of the state. He came back for a reason. He won’t leave until he’s done whatever he needed to, and my guess is it wasn’t being the father to Gardner Todd’s kid. Now, let’s start with his old woman in—”
Music—the chorus of the song “It’s Raining Men,” to be precise, courtesy of James’s sister and how hilarious she thought it was to try to embarrass him when she called—filled the attic around them. He and Suzy both reached for his coat pocket and his phone, lit up and blaring.
“What the—”
James wrapped his hand around the phone and pulled Suzy up and farther into the darkness, just as a shot sounded up through the attic door.
“We need light!” she yelled. No point in trying to pretend no one was home when The Weather Girls were belting out one of their most famous hits.
James held up the phone, giving them some light. Another bullet embedded itself in the roof above them. As soon as Suzy could see, she was playing hopscotch across the ceiling beams. The last thing they needed was to fall into the bedroom.
“Whoever you are, you’re screwed!” yelled one of the men. James didn’t have the time to figure out which one it was. He canceled Chelsea’s call and used the phone as a flashlight.
The attic ran the length of the house and was by no means spacious. They hunched and clung to roof beams as they hurried to get out from above where the men were.
Not that that would make much difference when they decided to walk into the living room and unload a few more rounds into the ceiling.
“How close is the truck to the house?” Suzy asked James. A ripping sound pulled his attention to her dress just in time to watch the tear that was already there split all the way up to her hip. Lord have mercy—if they weren’t running for their lives, James would have had to really think on the lacy number she was wearing beneath it.
“How close is the—” he repeated.
Suzy cut him off. “The vent!”
James followed her line of sight to the attic vent at the end of the house. With a jolt of excitement, he understood.
“Close enough,” he said.
Another two bullets shot up behind him, too close for comfort. Suzy must have sensed it. The moment she got to another beam, she turned toward him, brandishing her gun.
“Move!” she yelled.
James didn’t have to be told twice. He hurried around her and kept going toward the vent while she did some shooting of her own. He counted four shots by the time he made it to the beam closest to the vent.
