Undercover Daddy (15 page)

Luke put his mouth directly against her ear. “I hear footsteps.”

She didn’t, but then her pulse was pounding so hard that she could hardly hear anything.

He maneuvered her slightly and turned so that his back was to hers. Probably so he could get a better angle to see whom or what was making those footsteps.

But Luke shook his head, and she thought that meant the footsteps had stopped.

Where was this person, this would-be killer? Elaina didn’t have to wait long to find out.

A bullet slammed into the tree next to her head.

Luke pulled Elaina to the ground and dragged her to the other side of the oak. The bullet splintered into the tree, sending debris flying, but he couldn’t risk sheltering Elaina with his body.

Because he had to take aim and stop the shooter from firing again.

That bullet had come from behind them, and it’d landed within a fraction of an inch of Elaina’s head. It had taken a dozen years off his life to see how close she’d come to dying.

Again, he could blame himself. He shouldn’t have allowed this situation to happen. Yet, here they were trapped next to a deep ravine with a shooter behind them. They couldn’t jump in the riverbed. That would be nothing short of suicide. Ditto for trying to make it back up the hill to the SUV. That would put them out in the open and in plain sight.

To put it mildly, things looked bad.

A glance down at Elaina confirmed that she knew the severity of their situation. She looked scared but resolute. His glance confirmed something else that made him irate. There was blood on Elaina’s forehead, just above her left eyebrow. It’d probably been caused by a splinter, and it riled him to the core to see her hurt by some cowardly SOB who’d ambushed them.

Luke thanked God that her injury wasn’t any worse. At least she was alive. Plus, Elaina and he had one thing on their side. He’d pressed the emergency response button while he was still in the car. Backup was already on the way. Of course, they would have to hold off fire for at least twenty, maybe thirty minutes.

That would no doubt seem like a lifetime.

The next shot confirmed that. Hell. It hadn’t come from behind them, but from the front. Specifically, from the side of the SUV.

Luke cursed, grabbed on to Elaina and scrambled for a new position. It was meager at best. The tree wasn’t large enough to give them any real cover, and they weren’t just dealing with one gunman but two.

The next sound he heard had Luke mentally cursing even more.

Footsteps.

They were crunching on the gravel easement just off the road. By the SUV. But not toward the back of it where the second shot had originated.

Mercy. There were three of them.

He lifted his gun and aimed in the direction of those footsteps. Luke waited.

“I wouldn’t do that if were you,” a man shouted.

Luke looked to his left, and he saw the guy with the eye patch, the very person who’d tried to kill Elaina and Christopher a year ago.

The anger raged through Luke, but the man was holding a high-powered rifle rigged with a scope. And he had that rifle aimed at Elaina. If Luke tried to shoot now, this bozo would fire right at her. With that scope, he likely wouldn’t miss, either.

“Drop your gun,” the man said.

“Why, so it’ll make it easier for you to shoot us?” was Luke’s answer.

“My orders are not to kill you. Yet.”

Luke glanced around to make sure no one was sneaking up on them. He couldn’t hear footsteps, but that didn’t matter. If the trio were armed with rifles, they wouldn’t have to get that close to be deadly.

“What do you want?” Elaina yelled.

She was obviously as angry as he was, and that anger came through in her voice. Of course, that anger was slightly diminished by that bloody gash on her forehead.

“You know what we want,” the guy told them.

“If I did, I wouldn’t have asked.”

The man didn’t answer immediately. “Your former fiancé was working on a little project. We need the memory disk.”

It wasn’t a surprise, but knowing the why didn’t make it easier for him to figure out how they were going to get out of this alive.

“I don’t know where the disk is,” Elaina shouted. “If I did, I would have given it to the police.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. Kevin had the disk with him when he was at the lawyer’s office adopting your son. We know that because Kevin confirmed it.”

“To whom?” Luke demanded.

“Me. He trusted me. Obviously that wasn’t a wise decision on his part. Anyway, the only place he went after the lawyer’s office was to the house in San Antonio that he shared with Elaina.”

“And Kevin was killed early that evening when he left to get something from his office,” Elaina quickly pointed. “As you well know, since you’re the one who probably killed him, I left that night—after you tried to kill me.”

He didn’t deny it. He just stood there with that rifle pointed down at her. “But you took things with you when you ran. That memory disk had to be in those things because it wasn’t in the house. We checked.”

Elaina started to answer, but Luke nudged her to keep her quiet. He could go two ways with this. He could refuse to tell the man anything else, or he could tell him the truth and hope that it would disperse the three so that Luke would have a better chance at picking them off one by one.

Luke went with the second option.

“Those things that Elaina took with her from the house? Well, they’re in the car,” Luke informed him. “Thanks to you, those things are now in the river. If they haven’t been destroyed by the crash or the water, they probably won’t last long. In fact, they might be floating away at this very moment.”

That got a reaction. The man lifted his head and looked in the direction of the SUV. He was probably waiting for his comrade or boss to tell him what to do. He must have gotten some kind of signal because he nodded toward the gunman who was behind Luke.

That minor distraction was all Luke needed. He shoved Elaina face-first onto the ground, he aimed, and he fired at the man with the eye patch. One shot to the head was all it took, and the man crumpled into a heap.

Luke didn’t stop there. Staying low, he rotated his body and took aim at the gunman behind them.

But it was too late.

The man had already stood and had his rifle targeted right at them. He looked as if he knew what he was doing, and Luke didn’t doubt that the guy was a pro. A hired gun. Dressed head to toe in winter camouflaged hunting clothes that explained why Luke hadn’t been able to spot him earlier.

“My advice?” the guy snarled. “Don’t move.”

Luke didn’t, mainly because he couldn’t risk getting killed. If this goon eliminated him, then Elaina stood little to no chance of making it out of there. Worse, they might be able to drug her so that she’d tell them the location of the safe house. They might go there to search for the disk and create God knows what kind of dangerous havoc. Christopher could be in danger.

And that wasn’t going to happen.

The gunman tilted his head slightly and mumbled something. Luke realized he wasn’t speaking to them but to a tiny grape-size communicator on the collar of his hunting jacket.

“What’s happening?” Elaina asked.

Luke knew she couldn’t see since her face was practically right in the dirt, but he wasn’t so sure it would do her any good to witness that big guy aiming another rifle at him. And the gunman seemed a little riled that Luke had killed his comrade.

“It’s a standoff,” Luke told Elaina.

“Not quite,” the gunman countered.

Luke wasn’t sure what he meant by that, but then he heard the footsteps again. They were coming from the direction of the SUV.

“The boss will keep an eye on you,” the gunman explained in such a fake cheerful voice that Luke wanted to slug him for that alone. “While I search the car. For your sake, that disk had better be there.”

“Why, so you can kill us anyway?” Luke challenged while he kept his ear tuned to those footsteps.

He needed to keep this situation under control until backup arrived. Control, in this case, likely meant being held at gunpoint by the “boss” while the goon went down into that ravine. Luke liked those odds—him against the idiot responsible for all of this.

Because Luke needed a back-up plan, he had to put Elaina in a position to evade and escape. He eased away from her. She immediately sat up and looked around. From the corner of his eye, he could tell that she was looking at him. Probably for answers about what they were going to do next but he couldn’t risk taking his attention off the gunman. After all, the man didn’t need Elaina and him alive to do the search.

The footsteps stopped just a few yards away, and the gunman hurried toward the creek.

Luke shifted toward the newcomer, knowing he was about to come face-to-face with the person who’d already attempted to kill them. There would likely be another attempt within the next couple of minutes.

“Agent Buchanan, Elaina,” the woman greeted them. “I’d hoped it wouldn’t come to this. Drop the gun, or I’ll shoot Elaina.”

Elaina lifted her head. Luke did, as well, and he speared the woman’s gaze.

He found himself looking down the barrel of an assault rifle.

And the woman behind the trigger was Brenda McQueen.

E
LAINA HADN
’
T KNOWN
exactly whom she would see holding that rifle on them, but she wasn’t surprised to see Brenda. After all, the woman was one of their main suspects.

“Drop the gun,” Brenda ordered Luke. “Or Elaina dies, right here, right now. You might not be her real husband, but I don’t think you want her blood on your hands.”

Elaina held her breath. Waiting. Luke had probably been trained not to surrender her weapon. Plus, if he was unarmed, it would make them both targets.

“If she kills me,” Elaina said to him. “Then you’ll just shoot her. That way, one of us will be around to raise Christopher.”

“Oh, that’s so touching,” Brenda mocked. “But Agent Buchanan cares for you. He can’t let you die. He’s too honorable to do something like that.”

“Let me die,” Elaina whispered.

But he didn’t. And Brenda was right—there was no way that Luke would stand there and watch her die.

Luke lowered the gun and eased it onto the ground in front of them. Brenda didn’t waste any time, she kicked it out of his reach.

“You have to know where that disk is,” Brenda challenged, and she directed that challenge at Elaina.

“Kevin kept a lot of things secret. The only thing he ever said about the project was that he was working for someone named T.”

“That’s old news,” Brenda insisted. “I’m T. And I paid that weasel fiancé of yours a lot of money that investors had given me. Kevin didn’t deliver, and now I’ve got those investors breathing down my neck.”

“Don’t expect us to feel sorry for you,” Luke snarled.

“Well, you should. That memory disk is nothing to you, but I’m within a week of being murdered if I don’t produce it. Believe me, my investors are not the sympathetic type, and I’m going to deliver that disk.” She turned back to Elaina. “Think back to the night Kevin brought the baby home. What did he have with him?”

“You really expect me to help you?” Elaina asked.

“If you want to live, you will.”

Elaina shrugged. “You’re planning to kill us no matter what I say.”

Brenda readjusted her aim. The rifle was no longer aimed at Elaina.

But Luke.

“Talk, cooperate,” Brenda ordered. “Or I kill Agent Buchanan.”

“Go ahead,” Luke offered.

But Elaina knew from the moment Brenda had made her threat that the woman would indeed carry it out. And just as Luke couldn’t let her die, Elaina couldn’t let that happen to him.

“See what happens when you get involved with someone,” Brenda commented. “You let your heart and other body parts do your thinking.”

Elaina didn’t necessarily consider that an insult.

“Well?” Brenda prompted. “What did dear ol’ Kevin have with him that night?”

Elaina could either lie or tell the truth. She went with the truth because she hoped that if she named an item that might have the disk, then Brenda would have to go after it. She likely wouldn’t attempt to kill them until she was sure she had what she wanted.

“Kevin brought home the baby and the adoption papers,” Elaina answered. “Christopher was in a carrier seat, and he was wrapped in a blue blanket. He wore a gown with a drawstring at the bottom and a knit cap with a little pom-pom on top. All of that is in the car. He also had a pacifier, a bottle and some disposable diapers. They aren’t in the car. I didn’t keep them.”

“Then you’d better hope that the memory disk is in one of the things you did keep. Because, you see, Elaina, I can make your deaths very quick and easy. Or I can decide not to do that.”

Elaina looked at Luke to see how he was handling those threats, but he had a poker face. Well, except for the slight lift of his right eyebrow. She didn’t know what it meant exactly, but Elaina figured he was about to do something. She only hoped that something didn’t get him killed.

“Backup will be here soon,” Luke informed Brenda.

“Yes. I assumed that you’d contacted them. We’ve got fifteen, maybe twenty minutes.” She glanced down at her watch.

Luke moved so quickly that it was practically a blur. He launched himself at the woman.

Just as Brenda fired the rifle at Elaina.

Luke tried not to let Brenda’s shot distract him. He tried to keep his attention aimed on tackling and disarming her. But he couldn’t stayed totally focused.

Because that bullet could have hit Elaina.

Hell, it could have killed her.

He aimed all his fear, rage and adrenaline at Brenda. He plowed into her, all the while listening for any sound that Elaina had been hurt. But all he could hear was Brenda.

Yelling and screaming at him, Brenda fought him, hard, and she was much stronger than Luke had anticipated. Still, he outsized her, and he had a more powerful motive for winning—Elaina. He had to get to her in case she needed medical attention. The only way for that to happen was for him to neutralize Brenda.

Luke used his body weight and sheer strength to put Brenda in a chokehold. He kicked the rifle from her hands and rotated both their bodies so that he could see what was going on with Elaina.

She was still there, by the tree, but the sleeve of her jacket had been gashed open, and he could see the blood. His worst fear were confirmed.

Elaina had been shot.

Her injury didn’t stop her from moving though. Wincing and holding her arm, she hurried to gather up both the rifle and his handgun. She managed to get the first but not the second when Luke heard the man’s voice.

“Hold it right there.”

It was the camouflaged gunman. He’d obviously climbed out of the riverbed when he heard his boss call for help. The man had dropped the boxes of items he’d taken from their car, and he was now holding a gun on Elaina.

“Don’t,” Luke warned her when Elaina started to aim the rifle at the man. It would be suicide. The guy was already cocked and loaded, and Luke figured a hired gun wouldn’t miss. Elaina, however, had no experience with weapons.

“Let Brenda go,” the man told Luke.

Hell. They were right back where they started, except this time it was worse because of Elaina’s injury.

“How badly are you hurt?” he asked while he still kept a chokehold on Brenda.

“I’ll live,” she said. “I promise.”

It was a promise that Luke knew she couldn’t keep unless he could get her to a hospital right away. She was losing way too much blood.

“Let go of me!” Brenda yelled.

She rammed her elbow into Luke’s stomach, and because of the rifle pointed at Elaina, he knew he’d have no choice but to let her go—eventually.

Still, he had to do something. The gunman had the things from the car. That was everything that Brenda and he needed, which meant they were likely going to be killed now.

Luke couldn’t let that happen.

He came up with a quick plan. It wasn’t a good one, and it had nearly as many risks as just standing there and facing down these SOBs. He took a deep breath, said a quick prayer and he let go of Brenda.

Cursing and hitting him, the woman struggled to get to her feet. Luke waited until Brenda stood before he made his next move.

“Drop to the ground!” he shouted to Elaina.

Thank God she listened. Elaina dove in the direction of his gun, and he hooked his leg around Brenda’s. As he’d known it would do, it off-balanced her, and Brenda came crashing right back into his arms.

With the position of their bodies, the gunman wouldn’t have a clean shot for either Elaina or him, unless the guy planned to risk hitting his boss.

Luke tried to move fast, and while he was doing it, he tried to gain control of the howling, fighting woman who obviously wasn’t going to cooperate with his plan. He managed to put her back in a chokehold, and he dragged her in front of him to act as a shield. He didn’t stop there. He moved both of them in front of Elaina so he could protect her.

His plan had worked, but he figured it would work even better when he heard something he’d been praying to hear.

A siren.

Backup was about to arrive. Still, from the sound of it, help could be several minutes out.

Too much could still happen.

“I’m not going to jail,” the gunman informed them. And the man did something that Luke had not anticipated.

He aimed his rifle at Brenda.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Brenda yelled.

“Investing in my future. This way, if the memory disk is in these things, I’ll find it and market it on my own.”

Brenda cursed at him, and it wasn’t mild. She continued to call him names while she struggled and kicked to get out of Luke’s grip.

Luke faced a new dilemma. It was obvious the gunman would kill his boss if Luke continued to hold her in place. However, if he let Brenda go, then the guy would just shoot Elaina and him. What Luke needed was his gun. That would give him a chance to fight back.

The gunman made a sudden shift of motion. He angled his body away from Brenda.

And took aim at Elaina.

Luke looked down at her and saw that Elaina had not only moved out of cover to retrieve his gun, she’d pointed it at the man. Her hand was shaking, maybe because she was afraid, but he knew she could also be going into shock.

“Don’t!” Luke yelled, hoping to draw the gunman’s attention back to him.

When that didn’t work, when it seemed as if they were seconds away from a shootout—a shootout that Elaina probably couldn’t win—Luke had to take drastic action.

“Elaina, don’t shoot,” he whispered.

And he hoped like the devil that she’d heard him.

Luke shoved Brenda to the side, in front of Elaina, so that he could try to protect her. In the same motion, Luke snatched the gun from her hand. He took aim at the man.

He fired.

And fired.

And fired.

The man didn’t go down. Even though Luke knew he’d delivered direct hits to the gunman’s torso and chest. The seconds seemed to tick away, and the entire woods were quiet except their breathing and the howl of the approaching siren. Finally, the gunman fell to the ground.

Brenda immediately kicked Luke and went for her rifle. She might have succeeded if both Elaina and he hadn’t dove at the woman. Both landed hard against Brenda, and all of them fell into a heap.

The impact knocked Luke’s gun from his hands.

It was a race to see who would get it first, and while Luke fought to retrieve it, he was also mindful of Elaina. He didn’t want to risk further injuring her, but he couldn’t risk Brenda getting the gun, either. There was just enough time for her to kill them and try to escape.

Luke made sure that didn’t happen.

He grabbed on to the back of Brenda’s neck and shoved her against the ground. He anchored her in place with the upper half of his body and kicked the rifle toward Elaina. She grabbed it and then handed him his gun.

“Give me a reason to kill you,” Luke snarled to Brenda as he put his gun against her head. “Any reason.”

Just like that Brenda stopped struggling. But she didn’t stop cursing. Luke didn’t mind the profanity. He could handle anything as long as he knew Elaina was safe.

But was she safe?

She was pale and trembling, and her entire arm was now soaked with blood.

“I think I’m okay,” Elaina assured him with her voice shaking as much as body.

It wasn’t much of an assurance, and Luke knew she probably wouldn’t stay conscious for long. He needed to get her to the hospital immediately.

A sheriff’s car screeched to a halt right behind the SUV. Two men barreled out of the vehicle. Both were armed and ready. One was Sheriff Dawson, and Luke recognized the other as Agent Simon Roark.

“We’re down here,” Luke called out to them.

Luke didn’t waste any time. As soon as the sheriff and Agent Roark got to them, he passed Brenda off to them, and he went to Elaina. Behind him, he heard the agent call for an ambulance. Good. Because they were going to need one.

He pulled Elaina to him so that he could keep her warm and because he desperately needed to hold her.

“I’m sorry about this,” he whispered. He checked her wound, but there was so much blood, he couldn’t tell just how bad it was.

“Why
are
you sorry?” she asked, blinking.

“Because I should be the one hurt and bleeding. Not you.”

She managed a weak smile, but it faded as quickly as it came. “If I don’t make it—”

“An ambulance is on the way,” he said. He didn’t want to hear this.

Elaina apparently thought he should hear it. “Yes. But if something goes wrong—”

“It won’t.”

She huffed, but it, too, was weak and filled with breath. “You need to let me finish.”

“I know what you’re going to say. That if something goes wrong, you want me to take care of Christopher. You know I will. But nothing will go wrong. It can’t.”

She shook her head, reached up and touched his face with her fingertips. Her hands were as cold as death.

“Things don’t always work out for the best,” Elaina muttered. Her eyelids eased down.

“Both of us have firsthand knowledge of that. That’s why it’ll work this time,” Luke promised. “It has to work. Because I won’t lose you. Understand? I won’t lose you.”

But he was talking to himself.

Elaina was no longer conscious.

L
UKE PACED
. He sat down. Got up. And paced some more. None of that helped. He wasn’t sure how much more he could take of this. He had to know what was going on in that E.R. procedure room where the doctor was with Elaina.

“These exams take time,” Agent Roark commented. His fellow agent had followed the ambulance to the Luling Rehabilitation Hospital and was now sorting through the box of Elaina’s items that they’d retrieved from the riverbank.

Luke glared at Roark for that totally unhelpful observation. Of course, these things took time. The doctor had already been in there a half hour.

It’d seemed like a decade.

Roark checked his watch. “The sitter and Christopher should be here soon.”

Yes. Theresa and Christopher were indeed on their way from the safe house to the hospital. Luke prayed there’d be good news about Elaina before they arrived.

“You know, you could get your mind off things if you helped me go through these things,” Roark continued.

Luke glanced at the items the agent had placed on the table of the private waiting room. The last thing he wanted to do was work, but if he didn’t do something,
anything,
he might have to put his fist through the wall.

Once again, he’d nearly gotten Elaina killed.

He refused to believe that she could die. She couldn’t. Somehow, she had to make it through this. Then he could tell her how sorry he was. Maybe, just maybe, she’d forgive him.

Or maybe she’d order him out of her life.

He couldn’t blame her if she did.

“I don’t see anything in this charm bracelet that could hold a disk,” Roark informed him.

Luke was of the same opinion, but that miniature memory disk had to be somewhere. And he still needed to find it. Luke wanted Brenda and those investors out of Elaina and Christopher’s lives. He darn sure didn’t want these goons showing up in the near future to make a second attempt at finding the disk. So, that meant he had to find it and get it as far away from Elaina and Christopher as he could.

Drawing in a long breath, Luke sank down into the metal fold-up chair across the table from Roark. Luke stared at the items and tried to put himself in Kevin’s place. Kevin, a sleazy liar on the verge of becoming a rich, big-time criminal. Yet, in the middle of that big software modification venture, he’d illegally adopted Christopher.

A coincidence?

Luke didn’t believe in them, especially when it came to criminal behavior.

He picked up the clothes that his son had worn on the trip from the lawyer’s office to Elaina and Kevin’s home. A soft knitted cap with a tiny pom-pom on top. A long gown with a drawstring. And a blanket rimmed with satin. All in varying shades of blue.

Luke moved those three items, the denim infant carrier seat and the adoption papers to one end of the table. He added the purple stuffed bear and yellow bunny. He remembered that Elaina had said that Kevin had called Christopher their little bunny. Kevin’s pet name still didn’t sit well with Luke. But unless the memory disk was in the items that Elaina had already discarded, like the pacifier and bottle, then it was likely here.

So, where would Kevin have hidden it?

Luke mentally went back to that night, and he tried to imagine what Kevin would have been feeling. The excitement mixed with a hefty dose of caution. Maybe even fear. Maybe he even knew that there were killers after him.

Where was the one place Kevin would hide the tiny disk? A disk that could cost him his life or else give him the life he’d always wanted?

And suddenly Luke knew the answer.