Holden Read online

  Maybe this had been more than just mind-blowing sex.

  “You are regretting it,” she said. Nicky huffed and moved off him.

  That was Holden’s cue to move, too, and he eased off the bed and went into the bathroom. Despite the realization that this had just complicated the heck out of things, Holden was already thinking about being with her again.

  Soon.

  And with that on his mind, he came back into the bedroom and saw that Nicky and he were not on the same page when it came to sex. She was already out of the bed and getting dressed.

  “Are you regretting what happened?” he asked. And he hated that it felt like a punch to the gut that she might be.

  She didn’t look at him when she pulled on her jeans. “Not the way you’re thinking.” She put on her shoes and would have headed for the door if Holden hadn’t stepped in front of her to stop her.

  Holden tried to figure out what was going on in her head but couldn’t tell. She seemed angry or something, and he glanced at her arm again to make sure that wasn’t the problem.

  “I’m not in pain,” she insisted. “I just want to get back to work. I have Paul’s files to go through.”

  Since she obviously wasn’t in the mood to talk about what just happened, Holden leaned in and kissed her. Judging from the slight sound of surprise she made, Nicky definitely hadn’t been expecting that. Heck, he hadn’t been expecting it, either, but whenever he was around Nicky, he always seemed to be flying by the seat of his pants.

  Holden kissed her until that sound of surprise turned to one of pleasure, and she sort of melted into his arms. Considering he was still naked and that his body was revved up into overdrive, it felt better than good.

  And that was the problem.

  Holden understood why she was in flight mode, or at least why she’d been just seconds earlier.

  “I’m scared, too,” he admitted, and he wasn’t talking about the danger now.

  She nodded. “I just don’t want my heart crushed again.”

  Again?

  He nearly asked if he’d been the one to cause a heart crushing, but Holden knew that he had been. They hadn’t exactly been in a relationship before, but it had certainly been the start of one, and it had all come crashing down when Drury had nearly been killed.

  She looked down between them. At his naked body. “You’re very tempting,” she said, causing him to smile.

  He looked at her mouth. “Tempting,” Holden repeated.

  Nicky smiled, too, and that moment washed away some of the regret, some of the doubts about that possible heart crushing. But it didn’t last. That’s because his phone buzzed. Holden fished it from his jeans pocket, and they both saw whose name popped up on the screen.

  Kara.

  Considering the deputy was just up the hall, or at least that’s where she was supposed to be, this probably wasn’t good news.

  “Holden, are you in there?” Kara asked the moment he answered and put the call on speaker.

  “I’m here.” That sent him scrambling for his clothes.

  “You need to come right away and take a look at the computer that monitors the security,” she said. “We have an intruder on the grounds.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Nicky’s heart jumped to her throat, and just like that, the heat between she and Holden was gone. Oh, God. Had the kidnappers found them?

  “I’ll be right there,” Holden assured Kara, and he hurriedly dressed.

  Nicky made sure her clothes were fixed, too, and then followed him up the hall. Kara was in an office. Not an ordinary office, though. There were no windows in the room, and it was jammed with equipment. Six monitors, all with split screens to show every angle of the grounds. But it was dark outside, and it took Nicky a moment to look at each one.

  Nicky finally saw the man near one of the fences.

  There wasn’t much of a moon, but the camera was rigged like night-vision goggles. Without that, he would have just blended into the darkness, which was probably what he’d intended. But with the night vision, he looked a little like a ghost.

  “Are there security lights out there?” Nicky asked.

  Holden shook his head. “But there are plenty if he gets closer to the house. Those are motion-activated.”

  Good. So, if anyone tried to get near the place to start shooting, they should trigger the lights. The alarm, too.

  “He doesn’t appear to be armed,” Kara said, “but then he’s staying in the shadows so it’s hard to tell.”

  In this case the shadows were from a cluster of towering pecan trees and the night itself, and while the man might not have been armed, he was definitely hiding between the trees.

  “Try to zoom in on his face,” Holden instructed.

  This particular one didn’t have on a ski mask, but there were too many shadows for them to clearly see his face. Which was probably also part of his plan. After all, if he’d trespassed onto private property, then he was probably up to no good.

  Nicky glanced at the other monitors but didn’t see anyone else. Thank goodness. That didn’t mean they weren’t in danger, but at least they weren’t facing down an entire army of kidnappers. Not yet anyway. It could be this guy was sent to scope things out, maybe even to test the security system.

  But how had he found them?

  “Has Kayla had trouble in the past with people trespassing?” Nicky asked because she had to consider that this person may not even be connected to the attacks.

  Kara shook her head. “None that I know of. Everyone in the area knows she has a state-of-the-art security system.”

  So, the man was likely there because of them. Not exactly a thought to help settle her nerves.

  Nicky had her attention so focused on the monitor that she gasped when the sound shot through the room. Not the threat that her body had anticipated. But rather Holden’s phone buzzed.

  “Minton,” he said, looking at the screen. Holden put this call on speaker, too.

  “Can you see me?” Minton asked.

  At that moment the man leaned out from the tree, and Nicky got a better look at his face. Yes, it was Senator Minton all right, but he quickly ducked behind the tree.

  Holden didn’t jump to answer, probably because he didn’t want to confirm that they were indeed on the property and watching.

  “I put a tracking device on your car,” Minton added. “That’s how I knew where you were.”

  “A tracking device?” Holden challenged. “How did you manage to get one of those when you were on the run?”

  “It was in the baby’s blanket. When I realized what it was, I left the baby in the alley and sneaked into the parking lot. I knew which car was yours because I saw you drive up in it.”

  Holden cursed, and Nicky hated that he would blame himself for this, but there’d been a lot of craziness going on in Silver Creek, and they hadn’t exactly been focusing on the car. She prayed that didn’t turn out to be a fatal mistake.

  “You left a baby in the alley,” Holden snarled. “Tell me why the hell you would do that, especially considering there was gunfire.”

  “I didn’t want to take her out into the open, and I knew those kidnappers weren’t going to do anything to harm her.”

  “And how did you know that?” Nicky blurted out. She couldn’t help herself. The anger hit her hard, and she wanted to throttle this fool for doing that to a baby. “They could have hurt her or worse.”

  “No,” Minton argued. “I heard them call her their two-million-dollar baby, and I knew they wouldn’t risk hurting her. They were shooting at the deputies.”

  “And at you?” Holden challenged.

  “No,” the man repeated. “Those men were never after me.” He paused. “Is the baby all right? And my son—is he okay?”<
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  “The baby girl is fine. I’m not sure about your son, though. I haven’t seen him.” Holden’s voice was filled with just as much anger as Nicky’s. “Now, tell me how you got the newborn girl?”

  “Some men had her in a car just up the street from the sheriff’s office. I was hiding, watching them, because I thought maybe they were the same men who’d kidnapped me. But they weren’t.”

  The anger was still there, but Nicky felt something else—surprise.

  “You’re sure?” she asked.

  “Positive. My kidnappers have held me for two weeks, and even though they wore masks, I know how they moved, and the sounds of their voices. The ones who had the baby wore ski masks, too, and they were on their phones a lot. Whoever they were talking to told them to put a tracking device on your car. They left the baby alone, I took her. That’s when I saw that she had a tracking device in her blanket.”

  Mercy. Nicky looked at Holden, and he shook his head, maybe telling her not to borrow trouble. But Nicky was already thinking the worst.

  Had those kidnappers put a tracking device on Nicky’s car, too?

  She frantically searched the screens and didn’t see anyone, but there were a lot of barns, two guesthouses and several other outbuildings. Maybe those kidnappers had managed to get past security and were already on the grounds.

  “I’m glad the baby’s safe,” Minton continued several moments later, “but that’s not why I’m calling. I need your help, and I’m not sure I can trust anyone else.”

  “And why would you trust me?” Holden snapped.

  “Because of Nicky. She’s been trying to find me.”

  “So has half the state,” Holden quickly pointed out.

  “Maybe, but I heard one of the kidnappers talking to a cop once. Or maybe the guy was an ex-cop. I could tell he had some kind of law enforcement background from the slang he used.”

  “Or maybe he just watched a lot of crime shows.” Holden kept his attention on Minton. The man hadn’t moved an inch. “How did you get away from the kidnappers?”

  “I offered one of them money. Lots of it. Not to the one who was talking with the cop, but the other one. He helped me escape, but something went wrong. Other kidnappers came after us. They killed him and tried to kill me. That’s why I need your help. I want you to assure me that my son and I will be protected.”

  Holden stayed quiet a moment. “Who hired those kidnappers who took you, and are they connected to what happened at Conceptions?”

  “Conceptions,” Minton repeated like a profanity. “Yes, they’re connected. Or at least I think they are. My kidnappers knew about my son, but they didn’t take credit for what went on. In fact, the one who didn’t end up helping me said it was a scam he wished he’d thought of.”

  A scam. Nicky hadn’t needed anything else to anger her, but that did it. “Who’s behind this scam?” she demanded.

  “My wife. At least maybe she is. Or maybe she only had part in kidnapping me.”

  Holden jumped right on it. “Why would you say that?”

  “Because my kidnappers never demanded a ransom. They just held me captive, and I had a lot of time to think about why they would do that. I think it was to give Beatrice some time to rob me blind.”

  That was one of Nicky’s theories, too, but that didn’t mean she was dismissing Beatrice’s involvement at Conceptions. The baby—the Minton heir—was the perfect way to hang on to some of her husband’s money.

  “If you think your wife is guilty,” Holden went on, “then why did you break in to Amanda’s room at the hotel?”

  “I was looking for something, anything to tie her to the Conceptions babies. She was a businesswoman, and I thought it was suspicious that she would become a surrogate. Especially a surrogate for a shady operation like the one going on at Conceptions.” Minton huffed. “Will you help me now?”

  Nicky saw the debate in Holden’s eyes. Yes, he could call the sheriff’s office, but he could be leading them into an ambush if those kidnappers were nearby. The goons could have put Minton up to this and could be hidden nearby with a gun pointed at him.

  “Go back over the fence and toward the road,” Holden finally said, “and I’ll have some of my cousins come and get you.”

  “That’s not safe,” Minton argued. “I need to stay hidden or else they’ll find me.”

  Holden didn’t have time to respond though because there was a sound. A series of soft beeps. It took Nicky a moment to pick through all the screens and see what had caused those beeps.

  A dark blue SUV.

  It was coming up the road directly toward the house, and the closer it got to the house, the more security lights flared on.

  “Are you expecting anyone?” Kara asked.

  “No,” Holden answered.

  And he drew his gun.

  * * *

  FROM THE MOMENT Holden had seen Minton on the monitor, he’d known this was going to be trouble. He just hadn’t expected trouble to come so soon.

  “Should I call the sheriff?” Kara asked.

  Holden knew that Grayson and the others were neck-deep in this investigation, and this could still turn out to be nothing. But Holden figured that was wishful thinking on his part. Best to go ahead and alert Grayson, especially since it would take backup a while to get there.

  “Call him,” Holden answered, “but tell him about Minton. Minton might have tampered with the sensors on the back fence.”

  Or else Minton could have been forced to tamper with them. Holden still wasn’t convinced that the senator was alone, and the kidnappers could have put him up to this. There were still questions to which they didn’t have an answer, though.

  Who was controlling the kidnappers?

  “What can I do to help?” Nicky asked as Kara made the call to Grayson.

  His first instinct was to tell her to hide, and he still might do that, but for now Holden opened the storage cabinet and took out a gun that Landon had told him would be there. In fact, there wasn’t just one gun but three. Holden only hoped he didn’t need them and that what he was doing was overkill.

  “Keep watching the monitors,” he told Kara. “I’m going to the front of the house to see if I can get a better look at our visitors. There’s an intercom by the front door so you can talk to me through that.” It would free up his hands if he didn’t have to hold his phone.

  “Should I go with you?” Nicky asked.

  “Not a chance. Wait here.” But he had to add something else. Something she wouldn’t want to hear. “If anything goes wrong, I need you to stay in here and get down, understand?” he asked.

  Holden waited until she nodded before he brushed a kiss on her mouth and hurried to the foyer. There were stained glass windows on each side of the door, and he looked out just as the SUV was coming to a stop in the circular drive.

  There were no other vehicles visible on the grounds because Holden had parked in the garage. There were some lights on in the house but none that their visitors would be able to see from the front.

  Holden waited. Watching for any movement inside the SUV, but it was hard to tell who or how many were inside because of the heavily tinted windows.

  He pressed the intercom button. “Kara, can you zoom in on the SUV?” And he immediately heard the clicks on the computer keyboard Kara was using.

  “I’ve zoomed in as much as I can, but the windows are too dark.”

  “Try getting a different angle from one of the other cameras,” he instructed. “Nicky, you keep an eye on Minton.”

  Holden moved away from the intercom but left it on so he’d still be able to hear Nicky and Kara. He, too, tried a different angle. He went to the window in the living room and peered around the edge. The security lights hit the windshield just right so that Holden could see the silhouette of
someone inside.

  Or rather two silhouettes.

  A driver and someone in the front passenger seat.

  That didn’t mean, however, that there were only two of them because if these were the hired thugs, there could be more in the backseat.

  “Minton’s on the move,” Nicky blurted out.

  Hell. Holden didn’t need this now. “Is he coming toward the house?”

  “Not at the moment. He’s skirting along the fence line, though. There’s a barn about an eighth of a mile from where he is, and he could be trying to get to it.” Nicky paused. “He looks scared, and he keeps glancing over his shoulder.”

  Holden didn’t like the sound of that at all. Of course, there wasn’t much he liked about any of this. The only silver lining was that the babies were tucked away at the safe house.

  He hoped.

  The knot in his stomach tightened, and even though he knew this wouldn’t help steady Nicky, it needed to be done.

  “Don’t take your eyes off Minton,” Holden told her. “But call Landon and make sure everything’s okay.”

  He had no trouble hearing Nicky suck in a hard breath. Practically a gasp. Something he totally understood. It cut him to the core that their attackers might have found a way to get to Landon and the babies, too.

  The moments crawled by. Not his heartbeat, though. It was racing now and so was his breath. Still, all Holden could do was wait and listen as Nicky called Landon and filled him in on what was happening.

  “They’re all okay,” Nicky finally said. “Landon says to keep him posted.”

  Holden would, if he could. “Where’s Minton right now?”

  “Still skulking toward the barn. Still looking around as if someone’s going to jump out at him. He’s getting close enough to the barn, though, that he’ll trigger the security lights. If someone really is tracking him, that’ll make it much easier for them.”

  Yeah, but there wasn’t much Holden could do about that now. If and when Minton made it closer to the house, he’d deal with it then. But since the barn doors were wide-open, Minton would be able to run inside even if the lights gave away his location.