A Father For Her Baby. B.J. Daniels
they passed stood on stilts like shore birds, but they too looked empty, boarded up as if anticipating a bad storm.
The driver pulled off on an even narrower side road and stopped between two tall dunes. He cut the engine. Kit grabbed for the door, planning to leap out with her son and run. The door was locked.
Her gaze jumped to the driver as she heard the whir of the privacy window and saw him turning toward her.
Kit hurriedly rummaged through her purse, looking for anything she could use as a weapon. She found nothing. Not even a metal nail file or a set of keys. For the first time in her life, she wished for a gun and the knowledge to use it.
The driver reached back and grabbed her arm, taking the purse from her with his free hand. She had the impression that he could have crushed her arm with the strength in his fingers alone, but he didn’t. His grip was almost gentle, but firm. He left no doubt in her mind who would win if push came to shove.
“Take it easy, Mrs. Killhorn,” he commanded as he dropped the purse on the seat beside him, but kept his hold on her arm.
“Don’t call me that.” She jerked free, as angry as she was afraid. “Derrick Killhorn hired you, didn’t he?”
“I told you, no one hired me.”
“Someone hired you to kill me and take my son,” she cried in exasperation. “It had to be Derrick.” Or Sanders.
The driver held up one of his large, weathered hands. “Hold on, I didn’t bring you here to kill you or steal your son. If anything, I probably saved your life.”
“What?” She glared at him. He didn’t look like a crackpot.
He took off the chauffeur’s cap, tossed it on the seat beside him and raked a hand through his full head of dark blond hair.
“I know you aren’t a chauffeur,” she said as she watched him shrug out of the uniform jacket and loosen his shirt collar. She remembered the anger she’d seen in his eyes—anger aimed at her. “Who are you?”
“I’m a carpenter.” He met her gaze. “I make furniture.”
What kind of answer was that? She felt her head spin. “Why would a carpenter want—”
“There was another limo and driver who were to pick up you and the baby. It was to come thirty minutes later than I did. That’s the one Sanders hired.”
Derrick had told her she’d taken the wrong limo. For once the man wasn’t lying.
“If you’d gotten into the other limo, I doubt anyone would have ever seen you again,” he said matter-of-factly.
She shuddered at the calm certainty in his voice. “How do you know that?” And for that matter, how did he know who she was, that a limo was going to pick her up, that Sanders had hired it?
He held up his hand and shook his head at her as if he found her lack of patience daunting. “I overheard Sanders making the arrangements. You were to go to Huntsville to an out-of-the-way ranch. Derrick would have been waiting there for you. All the arrangements were made before Sanders even talked to you. It was Derrick’s plan. Sanders just carried out his orders.”
She felt sick inside but still didn’t want to accept it. “And you just happened to overhear all this?”
He nodded. “I’ve been following Sanders for seven months.” He sounded weary. “I’ve also been listening to him through the wonders of modern technology.”
She frowned. “You bugged him? Isn’t that illegal?”
He raised a brow as if to say that he’d done other things much more illegal than that. That scared her.
“Seven months?” The man was determined, she thought. “Why?”
He shrugged as if it should have been obvious. “I couldn’t find you myself. I knew Sanders was looking for you. I thought with the Killhorn resources he had a better chance than I did.”
She felt hesitant to ask the next obvious question. “Why did you want to find me so badly?”
“To talk to you.”
She raised a brow. “You went to all that trouble just to talk to me?” He was a crackpot. Oh, God, could things get any worse? She held tightly to Andy and the baby carrier and glanced out at the fog and darkness. Rain fell in a thick gray sheet and drummed on the roof of the limo. How was she going to get away from this man?
“Originally that had been the plan.”
Originally? The word snapped her attention back to him. Now he wanted more than to talk to her? “Are you a cop or something?”
“I’m Luke St. John. Jason’s brother.”
Luke St. John? Sanders stared down at the name on the A-1 Rent-a-Ride rental form. St. John? Someone Derrick had hired? Now he wasn’t so sure. It was too much of a coincidence not to be a relative of Jason’s. Headed for Huntsville? He doubted that. But just seeing the name neatly printed on the paper, Sanders assumed that Luke St. John, whoever he was, knew about the plan to rent a limo and take Kit and the baby to Huntsville. How? But maybe more important, why had St. John used his real name on the rental agreement, as if he wanted Sanders to know that he knew?
No, Sanders thought, St. John wanted Derrick to know. Did Luke also believe that Derrick had killed Jason?
Sanders left, drove to the nearest pay phone and called the private detective Derrick had hired to find Kit when Sanders had failed. It gave Sanders no little satisfaction that the P.I. had been unable to find Kit.
Matthew Rustan, was a slimy, balding former high school basketball star with a paunch, a lousy attitude and a hungry look in his eye that made Sanders nervous. The first time Sanders had seen the man’s office, he could tell that all Rustan’s good years were behind him—in more ways than one. The walls were lined with high school trophies, yellowed newspaper articles and old team photographs. Still, the man was handy—and willing to work.
“I need you to go over my rental car,” Sanders said when Rustan answered. “I think there’s a bug in it.”
Thirty minutes later, the private eye slammed the rental car door and walked over to where Sanders stood waiting. “It’s clean now.”
“That’s it?” Sanders asked pointing to the cellphone size device the P.I. held in his hand.
He nodded. “This type works off a larger receiver, which can pick up pretty good as far away as five miles. Someone’s probably heard every conversation you’ve had.”
At least now he knew how Luke St. John had known so much. “One more thing. Can you run a check on a name for me?”
“Sure.”
Sanders reached into his pocket. He’d copied the driver’s license number off Luke St. John’s A-1 Rent-a-Ride rental agreement. Beside it had been written the word Montana, one of the states where the license number was usually the social security number. “Try this.”
* * *
LUKE ST. JOHN. Kit gasped in surprise at the name and felt herself go cold as she stared at him.
He reached into his pocket, pulled out his wallet and flipped it open. As he handed it to her, he snapped on the overhead light. Kit looked down at the color photo on his Montana driver’s license, then at the name. Lucas St. John.
He leaned over the seat to flip to a graduation photograph of a young man. Kit felt her throat constrict. Her heart