A Widow's Guilty Secret (17 page)

Suzy didn’t even wait for Nick.

She flew to the back office of the defunct campaign center. Scanning the area, she saw a single closed door and made for it. The door was locked. Infuriated, frightened, she didn’t even wait for Nick. Instead, she managed to kick it hard enough to get the door off its hinges.

Tears sprang to her eyes as she found herself looking at her only family. Lori was bound and gagged and tied to a chair. Andy was on the floor, his eyes shut.

Terror instantly shot through her as Suzy dropped to her knees and gathered her son to her. The next moment, the terror abated when she saw the infant stir and open his eyes.

“Oh, Andy, you’re alive. You’re alive,” she cried as tears of relief and joy filled her eyes, and then spilled out.

With Andy nestled against her, she turned toward her sister to free her. But by then Nick had come in and he quickly made short work of the ropes holding Lori bound to the chair and the duct tape over her mouth.

The second the gag was off her mouth, Lori cried, “Where’s that horrible man?”

Apprehension vibrating in every fiber of her being, Lori was looking past Nick, searching for Kellerman. At this point, she was afraid that he would burst into the room and kill them all, just as he’d threatened her he’d do, once her sister came for them.

“On his way to the jail soon. The man I asked to tail Kellerman called for backup. They just got here. Don’t worry. Kellerman’s not going to be a threat to any of you anymore,” Nick assured her as he removed the last of the rope from her wrist, doing it as gently as he could. He still heard her suck in her breath, stifling a cry. “Sorry about that,” he apologized.

“You just freed my nephew and me, trust me, you have nothing to be sorry about, Detective,” Lori told him as she rubbed her wrists and tried to get the blood flowing through them again.

“How did you know I would be here?” Suzy asked Nick as she continued to hug Andy to her. The way she felt right at this moment, she didn’t think she would ever be able to let her son go.

“I didn’t know,” he told her. “I followed you here. After that tongue-lashing you gave me,” he explained, “I knew something had to be up.” Since Lori was within earshot, he refrained from adding that he thought her behavior particularly suspect after the night they’d just shared.

Suzy blew out a breath, happy that Nick had managed to catch on quickly instead of thinking she was just some nut job with a screw loose.

“I don’t know how I’ll ever be able to thank you,” she told him sincerely.

He grinned at her, more relieved that she was unharmed than he could ever begin to put into words. “Oh, I’ll think of something,” he promised her.

A warm feeling began to mingle with the one of utter relief. Her eyes crinkled as she smiled at her lover and the protector of her family.

“If you don’t, I will,” she promised.

Chapter 16

S
uzy moved to one side, getting out of the way as the EMTs Nick summoned wheeled the unconscious Kellerman out of the abandoned campaign headquarters. The ambulance, its lights momentarily dormant, was waiting just outside the front door.

As a precautionary measure, one of the paramedics had also checked out Lori and Andy, pronouncing them to be none the worse for their harrowing ordeal. Andy had even fallen asleep right after the paramedic had finished.

Lori had taken the sleeping infant and was escorted to one of the squad cars, where she was content to stay out of the way and wait for Suzy and Nick.

Suzy watched as the man who’d almost killed her disappeared into the ambulance. “Who
is
he?” she asked Nick. “I still don’t know.”

“His name is Frank Kellerman. According to the information we have, he was Senator Merris’s top aide,” he told her.

That was the only thing that Nick could answer. He knew the man’s identity. That had been checked into and verified after he’d been brought into the police station.

As for the rest of the questions surrounding this investigation, they still resided in the realm of the unknown. That included who the aide was currently working for and exactly what, if anything, Kellerman had to do with the three murder victims the graduate students had discovered during their dig.

Had Kellerman killed the three men? Or, if he hadn’t, did he know who had? And what did any of this have to do with Melinda Grayson’s apparent kidnapping?

Juarez had filled him in on the video that the dean had tried to call him about. That, too, answered only one question—that her disappearance was due to a kidnapping. But it raised so many more questions in its wake. If the professor
was
the victim of a kidnapping, why hadn’t there been a ransom demand made, the way there had when Suzy’s sister and baby were kidnapped?

What sort of game were the kidnappers playing?

Suzy nodded toward the departing ambulance. “He was the one who’d been calling me.” It was a statement, but there was a question wrapped up in it. “What did he want with those photographs that Peter took? The man Peter wanted to blackmail is dead.”

There was more than one person in those photographs. Which meant that there could be more than one vulnerable target—or not, Nick thought.

“Either Kellerman wanted to blackmail someone—or eliminate the possibility of that person being blackmailed by getting rid of the evidence.” He sighed, running his hand through his unruly hair. He was still having trouble getting his heart rate down to a respectable rhythm. “Right now, your guess is as good as mine,” he confessed to her.

He wasn’t exactly feeling triumphant as a police detective, but at the moment, that all took a backseat to what he
was
feeling good about—the fact that he had arrived just in time to save the woman he’d fallen in love with from becoming one of Kellerman’s victims.

This last event, he realized, had helped him put his life back into perspective. He was a cop and he loved being a cop, but being one—even a good one—hadn’t made him feel whole. Loving Suzy, being part of her life,
that
was what had finally made him whole again.

And, he’d almost lost it all practically at the very moment that he’d found it.

“That was a very brave thing you did, going out on your own like that, trying to rescue your son and your sister.”

She was about to demur, denying his praise, but she didn’t get the chance just yet because he continued talking.

“—and if you
ever
do anything like that again, put me through anything like that again, I’ll have you locked up for your own good faster than I can say ‘I love you, Suzy,’ do I make myself clear?” he demanded.

He had a smile on his face, but she had a feeling that he was dead serious.

“You can’t threaten me like that for trying to save—wait,” she cried, coming to a verbal, skidding halt as her brain replayed Nick’s last words in her head. “What?” she demanded, grabbing hold of Nick’s shirt to anchor him in place in case he had any plans on walking away from her without answering her question. “What did you just say to me?”

His expression never changed. “That I’d have you locked up—”

“No, no, not that part,” she said impatiently, waving away his words. “The other part.”

“You mean about loving you?” he asked innocently.

“Yes!” Suzy practically shouted the word at him. “That part.”

He continued looking at her innocently. “What about it?”

“Do you?” she cried incredulously. Then, just to make it completely clear, she added, “Do you love me?”

This was a potentially fragile limb he was climbing out on and he knew it, especially since Suzy hadn’t said anything even remotely in kind to him. But nothing ventured, nothing gained and he was growing extremely tired of spending his time gaining nothing.

“I wouldn’t have said it if I didn’t,” he answered her simply. Then, because he didn’t want her to feel obligated to reciprocate—he only wanted to hear her say it if she did so from the heart—he switched to a lighter tone and said, “Seems to me that you’re going to need someone to keep an eye on you for a while, just to make sure that everything’s all right.” His smile was from the heart—and intended for hers. “I can’t think of an assignment I’d welcome more.”

She wasn’t certain if Nick was teasing her—or on the level in this case. “So you don’t think Andy and I are out of danger?” she asked uneasily.

“I’m not sure anyone is until all the pieces are put together and we find out exactly who killed your husband and just who’s behind all the killings. Not to mention what this has to do with Professor Grayson’s kidnapping, or who ordered Kellerman to take Lori and Andy.”

“So you don’t think Kellerman was acting on his own?” she asked. That would have at least made things a lot simpler for her. Because, if that were true, with Kellerman out of the picture, she could breathe more easily.

“Kellerman doesn’t strike me as the type for independent thinking. He’s more the lackey type, which means that he’s trying to ingratiate himself to someone who he thinks is holding all the cards.”

She thought of the senator, Kellerman’s late boss. With him dead, that meant that Kellerman was now dancing to someone else’s tune. “You mean ‘the king is dead, long live the king’?”

Nick nodded. “Exactly.”

She brushed her hand along her forehead. This was definitely making her brain ache. “My head hurts.”

Suzy saw the look of concern that flashed through Nick’s eyes. She hadn’t meant to make him think something was wrong, but on the other hand, she found it comforting that someone cared about her, about her welfare and even how she physically felt. It had been a long, long time since someone—other than her sister—had.

“It’s just a headache,” she told him, waving it away. To prove that she was really all right, she said, “I guess you have to take my official statement now, right?”

Rather than leave now that everyone else was gone from the premises, Nick paused for a moment longer and brushed her hair away from her face. He laced his other hand through hers.

She thought to herself that she had never felt such a gentle, loving touch before.

“Tomorrow,” Nick told her. “There’s time enough for that tomorrow.”

Suzy took in a long, shaky breath, then gave him her bravest smile. “I’d like to get it over with today if you don’t mind.” She knew that Lori would want to put the entire ordeal behind her as quickly as possible, too. He could take both their statements.

He nodded. At this point, he wasn’t about to try to talk her out of anything. “Whatever you want.”

She liked the sound of that.

* * *

The whole thing took longer than he’d expected.

When it was over, Nick took all of them home, acutely aware of the bullet they had all dodged today—literally.

Once at her house, which he insisted on thoroughly checking out just in case, he helped Suzy feed her son and get the infant ready for bed. Lori had murmured something about going to her apartment, but it was obvious that she would have felt more at ease spending the night with someone.

Suzy was quick to sense that. “You can stay here as long as you want, Lori. I owe you more than I can ever repay for what you went through. For what it’s worth, my home is your home—you know that.”

“Thanks,” Lori said sincerely. “But it’s not your fault there was a psycho on the loose.” And then she smiled at her sister and Nick. “Now, if you don’t mind, I really need to soak in the tub for a long time—maybe even a week,” she speculated glibly. “So I’ll just say good night now.”

“Good night,” Suzy called after her. “And thanks again!”

Lori raised her hand over her head, wiggling her fingers to show she’d heard but continued to make her way up the stairs.

“You know I’m not leaving tonight,” Nick said to Suzy the moment her sister was out of sight.

“I was counting on it,” Suzy told him as she laced her arms around his neck. “As a matter for fact, I’m not sure if I’m ever letting you go again.”

“Works for me.” He smiled into her eyes, then made her a solemn pledge. “I’ll keep you safe, Suzy, you and Andy and your sister,” he added, knowing what her family meant to her. What they had begun to mean to him. “I swear, I’ll keep you safe.”

“Busy,” Suzy countered, brushing her lips against his as she said it. “I was hoping you’d keep me busy. I do love you, Detective Jeffries.” She punctuated her statement by kissing him between every word she uttered.

She was doing it again, he thought, his pulse accelerating. She was making him crazy. Making him realize that for once in his life—and once was all it took—he’d lucked out. This time, he
knew
he’d found the right woman for him.

“That, too,” he murmured agreeably just before they both lost themselves inside the fire that had just been ignited between them.

* * * * *

Don’t miss the next story in our

VENGEANCE IN TEXAS
series,

A RANCHER’S DEADLY AFFAIR

by Jennifer Morey,

available February 2012 from

Harlequin Romantic Suspense.

* * * * *

Keep reading for an excerpt of
Colton Showdown
by Marie Ferrarella!

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