Bodyguard Under the Mistletoe (10 page)

Was her daughter in danger? A tremor raced through her, and she placed the last dish in the rack on the counter to dry. “What has Abby done?”

“She broke one of your rules, and she's scared that you'll be angry.”

She turned to face him. “Which rule?”

“First, you have to promise.”

Her imagination ran through all the potentially dangerous situations her daughter could have gotten into. “I promise.”

“When you first moved up here, Abby and Mickey were playing outside. They went exploring in the barn.”

“She knows better than that. I've told her a hundred times not to go into any of the outbuildings. It's not safe. There are—”

“You promised,” he reminded her.

“Fine.” Her lips pinched together. “What did the kids find?”

“A secret playhouse under the floorboards. They only went in there a couple of times. They accidentally left the lights on in the barn and the bulbs must have burned out.”

“A playhouse?” She rested her hand on her chest. Her heart fluttered as she thought of all the terrible things that might have happened.

“You've never heard of this before?”

She shook her head. “Never. But it's entirely possible that one of the Grant men built something like that as a weekend project. Maybe a root cellar?”

But why would anyone put a root cellar in the barn? She needed to see this secret playhouse.

After giving Abby a hug and assuring her that she was a much-loved child who should never, under any circumstance, go exploring without telling her mother first, Fiona followed Jesse to the barn.

Though they had the flashlight, Jesse opened the two wide doors at the front. Sunlight flooded into the barn, banishing the ominous dark. He picked his way through the discarded junk that had taken up residence.

Fiona saw every bit of this stuff—the tractor, the Jeep and the beat-up boxes of junk—as potential hazards. Abby and Mickey could have seriously injured themselves while playing in here.

“Wouldn't Burke or the sheriff have found this playhouse?” she asked. “They searched all over the barn.”

“You'd think so,” he said. “According to Abby's directions the playhouse is in this corner. On the other side of the barn from the workbench.”

Tucked into that corner was a stack of logs covered by a tarp. Jesse shone the flashlight on the floorboards. “You can see footprints here. They searched in this area.”

“I don't see a trapdoor.”

“It's hidden under the wood,” he said. “Abby said that when she and Mickey found it, the door was already open.”

“Somebody was in here. They hid the entrance.”

He removed the chunks of firewood, revealing a spot on the floor that was swept clean. Even though they knew what to look for, the latch wasn't noticeable. Jesse pulled up the trapdoor.

He shone the flashlight into a dark space. “Maybe you should stay up here.”

“Not a chance.” She needed to know what was down there, what had been hidden on her property.

Jesse climbed down a short ladder, and she followed.

After a moment of fumbling around, he turned on a lamp.

She stood in a small room, less than ten feet square. The floor was packed earth covered by two threadbare carpets. The ceiling was only six feet high—too low for Jesse to stand upright. The ceiling was insulated, as were the walls, and it was warm.

There was a single bed, a table and a lamp.

Jesse's eyes were grim. “I think we've found the place where Nicole was held prisoner.”

Richter lay flat on the floor of the hay loft in the barn, peeking down through a crack between the boards, watching the widow and her bodyguard as they opened the trapdoor hidden under a pile of wood.

His gun was cocked and ready. If they climbed out of that secret hiding place toting the ransom, he'd kill them both.

How the hell had he missed that trapdoor? He'd been all over this damn barn. He'd even pulled logs off the woodpile, thinking the ransom could have been tucked underneath.

She'd known. Fiona must have known.

The more Richter thought about it, the more he was convinced that she and Butch had a thing going on. She must have shown him the hiding spot.

He licked his lips, anticipating the moment when she'd shove a big, fat bundle of cash out of that hole onto the floor of the barn. He'd wait until they both climbed out and were patting each other on the back, congratulating themselves for getting their mitts on that money.

Richter figured he'd shoot the bodyguard first. He should've made sure he killed that guy before. Three bullets
weren't enough to stop him. This time, he'd go for a clean head shot. At this range, he couldn't miss.

Fiona climbed out first. Her long hair wasn't braided today, and her ponytail tangled around her shoulders. She stood below him, brushing the dust off her hands.

The bodyguard climbed up beside her.

Richter's trigger finger twitched.

But the bodyguard's hands were empty. He didn't have the ransom.

“I never knew that little room was there,” Fiona said. “Do you think it was meant to be a playhouse?”

The bodyguard slapped his hat back onto his head. “I think someone was living there. An adult.”

“Why?”

“It's set up nice and cozy with a bed and a lamp. The furniture has been there long enough to make marks on the floor. There's even electricity.”

“But why would anyone want to live there?”

He shrugged. “We need to call the sheriff. There might be fingerprints.”

As they walked toward the open door of the barn, Fiona shook her head. “Too bad the ransom wasn't stashed in there.”

Richter eased up on the trigger. It was too bad
for him
that they hadn't found the ransom, but lucky for
them
. The widow and her bodyguard would live to see another day.

 

F
IONA STAYED IN THE
house with the kids while Jesse and a herd of law enforcement people inspected the small room under the floorboards in the barn. Though unaccustomed to having so many visitors at her mountain home, she'd been a political wife long enough to know the rules of
proper hospitality.
Offer them something to eat and make a fresh pot of coffee
. She whipped up a chocolate cake from a mix.

Drawn by the sweet aroma of baking, Abby and Mickey appeared in the kitchen door. Abby's little face crinkled with worry. “Mommy, are you mad at me?”

“Not mad. Just worried.” She pulled her daughter into a hug. “You know I always love you.”

“Love you back.”

“You did the right thing by telling Jesse about the secret place. You can always tell me anything. You know that, don't you?”

Abby nodded. “Can we go out to the barn and say hi to everybody?”

“No,” Fiona said, firm and final. The sheriff and his deputies would be annoyed by kids underfoot. But more important, she wanted to shield the children from all the fearful events surrounding Nicole's kidnapping.

Abby tilted her head to one side. “Can we have cake for lunch?”

“If you finish your fruit and sandwich, you get chocolate cake for dessert.”

“I'm hungry,” Mickey said in plaintive tone. “Now.”

“Fifteen minutes until lunch.” She'd set up drawing projects on the dining-room table. “First, I want you both to make me a picture of Christmas.”

They dashed off. She barely had time to swirl frosting across the sheet cake when there was a knock on the back door. Since she'd been told in no uncertain terms to use the dead bolt at all times, Fiona had to flip the lock before opening the door.

Carolyn charged inside, talking as she came. “She was
there, right there under your barn. Can you believe it? We had helicopters searching and bloodhounds and—”

“I want to hear everything,” Fiona said, “but quietly. I don't want to scare the kids.”

“Right.” Carolyn lowered her voice to a whisper. “They've found several blond hairs that surely belong to Nicole. And she scratched her initials into the wood near the door. So close. She was so close.”

Jesse came into the house and shut the door. “Fiona, they need you at the barn. To take a closer look and see if you can identify any of the furniture or bed linens.”

“Sure, no problem.” She turned to Carolyn. “I feel terrible that Nicole was held here. Like you said, she was so close. If I'd gone out to the barn, I would have heard her. I could have helped her.”

“You're not the only one who feels like she should have done more.” Carolyn's fist clenched as if grabbing a missed opportunity. “At the very beginning of all this, I could have stopped Nicole from riding off by herself.”

There was plenty of reproach to be spread around. “You're not to blame.”

“I know you're right. But why do I feel so guilty?”

Intuitively, she knew the answer. But it was difficult to put into words.

When her husband died from a heart attack, she had tried her hardest to figure out why it happened. She needed a reason, needed to make sense of the tragedy. It had to be somebody's fault. She'd blamed his doctors for not catching the warning signs, blamed his coworkers for not responding quickly enough, but mostly she'd blamed herself for not taking care of him properly.

“Much of what happens in life is beyond our control,”
she said. “We can regret what happened to Nicole. Or be angry about it. But the kidnapping wasn't our fault.”

“I'm not in control?” Carolyn frowned. “I don't much like that idea.”

Of course not
. She was a CEO who took her responsibilities seriously. “Do you feel guilty about the bad weather when it snows?”

“No.”

“Or when the Broncos lost last weekend?”

“Definitely not my fault,” Carolyn said. “I used to think if I wore orange underwear, they'd win. Not true.”

“So you regret the loss. But don't feel guilty.”

Abby and Mickey raced into the kitchen, waving crayon drawings of Santa and reindeer. In unison, they shouted, “Lunch, lunch. Munch, munch.”

“I'll take care of these two,” Carolyn said. “What should I feed them?”

“Sandwiches. The fixings are in the fridge.”

“Dijon? Maybe Brie?”

“They're children, Carolyn. Mayo and cold cuts are fine.”

Fiona grabbed her coat from the peg by the door and walked with Jesse toward the barn.

“I liked what you said about guilt. Wise words.”

Never before had anyone accused her of wisdom. It felt a bit uncomfortable. “Life's too short to waste time feeling guilty. I just go with the flow.”

“Do you?”

“Like the California girl I am.” She pantomimed surfing. “Wherever the waves take me, I go.”

And the current of her emotions was sweeping her inexorably toward him. Ahead of them—in the barn—several law enforcement officers were working hard to find clues.
Behind them—in the house—her daughter demanded attention and reassurance. But when she was with Jesse, everything else faded into the background. His presence commanded her full concentration. She liked that feeling, liked how she felt when she was near him.

“There was a time,” he said, “when I had a situation that turned out wrong. It was bad, real bad. I blamed myself. The guilt nearly did me in.”

“It helps to talk about things that hurt,” she said.

“Maybe later.” He forced a smile. “The sheriff is waiting.”

When she looked toward the barn, she saw Sheriff Trainer with his arms folded across his chest and a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. “I'm not a fan of tobacco, but that man looks like he needs a smoke.”

“He's ticked off at himself. His trained forensic people haven't found much, and it took a lead from a couple of four-year-olds to locate the secret room.”

As she approached, Fiona smiled, hoping that an offer of cake and coffee would make the sheriff feel better. “Good afternoon, Sheriff. If you'd like a snack—”

“Not now.” He stubbed out his cigarette. “Why didn't you tell me about this secret room?”

Taken aback, she said, “Because I didn't know.”

“This is your property. Your barn. How is it possible that you didn't know?”

She had several logical reasons: she never went into the barn, wasn't here when it was constructed, had no reason to suspect a hideout. But she refused to dignify his question with an explanation. It was absurd to think that she'd been concealing evidence from the police. “Is there a reason you wanted me to come out here?”

His mouth puckered as if sucking through a thin straw.
“Nicole Carlisle was held captive in your barn. The dead body of Butch Thurman was found in your front yard. Hell, you found him.”

No cake for you
. “It almost sounds like you're accusing me.”

“I don't believe in coincidence, Fiona. You're in the center of this mess. And I want to know why.”

In the past, she might have politely demurred, hoping that someone else, like Jesse, would step up and fight her battles. But she needed to stand up for herself. “Don't blame me.”

“Why shouldn't I?”

“Your men searched in the barn. They couldn't find the trapdoor.”

“What's your point?”

Aggression didn't come naturally to her, but she pushed back at him with an accusation of her own. “Maybe your own men missed finding the secret room on purpose. They might be the ones with something to hide.”

Agent Burke emerged from the barn and waved to her. “In here, Fiona.”

Grateful for Burke's timely summons, she brushed past the sheriff.

Jesse leaned close to her ear and whispered, “Nice job, surfer girl.”

“I was rude,” she said.

“He deserved it.”

For the second time that day, she climbed down into the secret room. Burke and Jesse followed. Both men had to duck to keep from hitting their heads on the low plywood ceiling.

The extra-large Agent Burke looked especially cramped in the small space. “Take a careful look around, Fiona. Tell me if any of the furnishings look familiar.”

“Why?”

“This stuff came from somewhere. If we find the original owner, we might figure out who built this room.”

She reached up and touched the ceiling. “This looks like plywood that was being used to build my studio. I can't really tell if it's part of that load or not, but we had plenty of wood and insulation lying around. I have invoices somewhere.”

“When was that construction taking place?”

“Three years ago.”

Only three years ago? She swallowed hard, uncomfortable with the idea that some unknown person had built a secret hideout in her barn so recently. They'd had plenty of opportunity. Before she moved up here, the property had been vacant, except for when Belinda lived here.

“What about the furniture?” Burke asked.

The single bed had a painted metal frame with rails—unlike anything in the house. There was a bedside table with a drawer and a shelf made of particleboard covered with a wood veneer. “I'm pretty sure that the Grant family never owned such inexpensive furniture.”

On the edge of the frame at the foot of the bed was a ragged scar where the paint had been scratched away. She touched the mark.

“We think a chain was fastened there,” Burke said.

Fiona shivered. “She was chained to the bed?”

“A long chain. It gave her a fair amount of mobility.” He pointed to Nicole's initials carved into the wall near the ladder. “She could reach this far. I think he was trying to make her comfortable.”

Fiona shuddered. “By confining her?”

“As prisons go, this is a Hilton.” Jesse pointed to the
lamp on the table. “There was light. The bed isn't bad. And this whole place is insulated so it's warm.”

“He gave her clean clothes,” Burke added.

“In the proof-of-life videos,” Jesse said, “Nicole didn't appear to be suffering.”

Fiona knew better. She knew Nicole was putting on an act to keep others from worrying. For someone like her neighbor, a woman who loved the outdoors, not being able to see the sun and feel the wind would be torture. Fiona had only been in here for a few minutes, and it already felt as if the walls were closing in on her.