“So what do we do now?” Sally whispered hoarsely as Gavin switched off the car headlights and the motor.
“You stay here while I go in.”
“I’m coming too!”
“I’m not having you put yourself in danger on my account.”
“Who said it was on your account? I’m thinking of Anna.”
“I still want you to stay here where you’re safe.”
They were sitting outside a low, log cabin that had been constructed more like a small mansion and must look, Sally thought, very attractive in the daylight. Right now it looked dark and sinister, apart from one small chink of light that escaped through the heavy drapes at the main window.
The car they had been hoping to see, the metallic green BMW, was parked outside the main entrance towards which Gavin was now heading. He moved stealthily on trained feet and Sally felt her heart lurch uncomfortably as he reached the door and looked back at the car where she was still sitting. He was obviously checking to make sure she had stayed put.
As soon as he disappeared, which told her that the door had been left carelessly ajar, she got out of the car and went after him. Her trainers crunched slightly on the gravel, but she could already hear loud music coming from inside the lodge. Somebody liked traditional jazz and liked it hot.
Gavin was just inside the hallway when she slid in. He spun around, ready to attack or defend himself, but then seeing it was her, he tossed his eyes to the ceiling and motioned to her to be quiet.
Keeping close behind him, masked by his bulk, Sally crept forward, with Gavin every step of the way. When he pulled up abruptly at the partly open door that was spilling out bright light, she bowled into him. One of his hands came back and thrust her against the wall, his body pinning her there for an instant. Then he released her, pulled her forward and nodded towards the light.
She peered in curiously, fearfully, then drew back with a gasp. Inside the room, which was sumptuously furnished with tapestry throws and wall-mounted stuffed deer heads, a couple were embracing before a roaring open fire. Their bodies swayed to the rhythm of the background music.
It was the woman Arthur had described to them. And her partner was none other than Bruce, the man she had thought to be Rob’s brother. And Nadine, Anna’s mother, appeared to be making a meal of him.
Gavin put his mouth close to Sally’s ear and whispered. “Behold the mother of my child, my ex-wife and her little playmate.”
Just then, Nadine broke away from Bruce and they could see Anna sitting huddled in the corner of a sofa, her face full of misery, her eyes full of hate and fear as she clutched a cushion to her and watched the two people who had abducted her.
Nadine had her bag and was pulling out an envelope, which she handed over to Bruce. He gave a snake-like grin and opened it, taking out a wad of bank notes that even from where Sally stood, looked like a small fortune.
“Services rendered, big boy!” Nadine said, throwing back her head and laughing. Now you can go.”
She jabbed one, well manicured finger into the man’s chest and indicated the door with a jerk of her head. He looked reluctant to move at first, but she jabbed again and her expression became instantly ugly and menacing.
“Okay, okay! Thanks for the dough!” He waved the wad of notes beneath her nose, laughed sibilantly, then headed for where Gavin and Sally were standing.
Sally felt herself being almost lifted bodily from her position to the other side of the door and as Bruce came through, Gavin’s fist shot out in a fast uppercut that looked too good to be real. However, Bruce was instantly felled. He slithered to the floor with a mildly surprised grunt and lay there looking dead.
“What the hell…!”
Gavin had stepped into the room and was facing his ex-wife who was trying to decide how to arrange her face for best effect. Sally stepped over the comatose henchman and came to Gavin’s side, which earned her a look of stupefaction from Nadine.
There was a sudden commotion from behind Nadine as Anna recognised the two newcomers. She slithered off the sofa and projected herself across the room, ending up hugging Gavin’s knees, tears washing over her pale cheeks, sobs racking up through her small chest.
“Hi, baby! You’re going to be just fine. Go to Sally, sweetheart. Let her look after you, eh?” He pushed her gently across to Sally, who knelt down and hugged the little girl and felt her throat tighten as Anna hugged her back.
“So who’s your girlfriend, Gavin?” Nadine asked, head to one side, hand on one tilted hip.
Sally could see how the woman could fool any man into thinking she was beautiful and desirable. All that was skin deep. Not far beneath the attractive veneer she was ice cold and ugly and right now it was showing through. She wondered how long it had taken Gavin to find out.
Right now, Gavin was looking as mean as he could get. “You can forget your little game, Nadine. You’re not going to use Anna to get you back in favour with your pet millionaire.”
“What do you plan to do, Gavin? Kidnap her again? As far as the authorities are concerned, she’s his official daughter and I’m still his wife. He wants his little family back together again. If you try to take Anna away they’ll arrest you and throw you in prison. What are you, anyway, but a cheap security man! Nobody would believe your word against ours, against the official documents.”
Sally could see Gavin’s jaws clench, together with his fists. “I have the DNA evidence that Anna is my daughter. I also have evidence against your fine, upstanding husband that proves just what kind of father he is. Eye witnesses and even one member of the family who can no longer bear to keep quiet after what they saw. And how do you think the public will react to that – and to the fact that you knew about it and didn’t do anything other than run out on your own three year old child.”
“You can’t do this to me, Gavin. You wouldn’t dare.”
“Try me.”
“If you go against me I can see to it that you lose your silly security firm. You’ll never work again. How would you like that? You who always put work first and me second. Do you wonder I left you?”
“I had to work to pay your bills, Nadine. You left me because you found someone who had enough money to keep you in the way you wanted to be kept. But it’s dirty money you’re living off. There’s not an honest dollar anywhere in your husband’s account and when you get back to the States I think you’ll find there are certain government bodies waiting with leading questions.”
“I want my daughter!” Nadine shrieked the words and suddenly there was a gun in her hand and it was pointed, not at Gavin, but at Sally.
Sally got slowly to her feet, her heart thumping, her legs turning to jelly. She grabbed hold of Anna and pushed her behind her, shielding the child with her own body. At the same time, Gavin stepped in front of Sally and spread his arms in supplication.
“No guns, Nadine. That way people get hurt - killed maybe.”
Sally tugged at Gavin’s jacket. “Gavin, for God’s sake, be careful. She’s crazy.”
“Crazy, am I?” Nadine had heard her words. “Yes, maybe I am, but then, wouldn’t you be crazy if you saw a multi-million dollar deal being flushed down the tubes. Send the kid over here. I want Anna over here – now!”
The gun was wavering in her hand, but even from across the room, Sally could see that the woman was pulling on the trigger. It could go off at any moment and Gavin would die, then it would be her turn.
This is not happening! It’s not real! It can’t be!
“Put the gun down, Nadine!”
The explosion took them all by surprise. Even Nadine herself, who had pulled the trigger, recoiled, her face as white as parchment. Sally clung desperately to Anna behind Gavin’s back. The room seemed to be full of the odours of cordite and hot metal. And the perspiration of fear.
“Anna, get over here or I’ll kill your friends, honey!” Nadine had recovered and was calling out to Anna, who pulled immediately away from Sally and went towards her mother before Sally could stop her. “You know I’ll do it, don’t you. Remember your dog!”
The child’s face twisted with mental agony as she placed herself at Nadine’s side.
“You were never an animal lover, Nadine,” Gavin said. “Any more than you loved children.”
Sally noticed that his voice was strained and he was clutching at his arm where a dark red stain was slowly seeping through his jacket.
“Gavin, you’re hurt!” she whispered.
“I’ll survive. It’s only a flesh wound.”
Sally was enraged. She turned on the woman with the gun. “You bitch! What kind of woman are you, any way?”
“A desperate one, honey,” Nadine said in a low voice, then her face locked rigid as another person joined them, someone who had entered by the back door and had possibly been listening to the entire conversation.
“Give me the gun, Nadine. You’re frightening our visitors.”
The soft, velvety tones held all the menace it needed to reduce Nadine to a quivering mass. She turned and looked at the short, stocky figure that had come up behind her and the gun went limp in her hand.
“Lorn!” Nadine seemed to shrink before him. “I was only doing it for you, so you could have your daughter back. You always said how your life was lacking without children. I’m your wife, so that makes Anna your daughter, right?”
“Wrong.” The man took the gun from his wife’s hand and placed it in his pocket, then he turned his attention to Gavin and Sally. “I’m too old to have young children around me. Take your daughter, Calder. And your pretty lady friend. Take them and go. All business between you and I is terminated. I never want to see hide nor hair of you again.”
“I think you’ll find that a little difficult, Macey. No doubt we’ll meet again. In court.”
“Only if you can find me, Calder. This isn’t the only hideaway. There are others, far more discreet than this one. Take your little family and forget about me.” He turned and fixed Nadine with a stony stare. “That includes you, sweetheart. Take her with you, Calder. She’s no more use to me.”
Gavin glanced at Sally, smiled through his pain and shook his head. “No. You keep her. You deserve one another it seems to me.” Then he looked at his daughter and his smile became warmer. “Come on Anna. Let’s go.”
Anna flung herself at him for the second time that evening, her face wreathed in happy smiles. She grabbed his coat sleeve, not noticing how he winced as she dragged him to the open door. Then she turned and held out her soft, baby hand to Sally.
“Sally!” she said. “Come on, Sally. You too!”
Gavin’s eyes met and locked with Sally’s. They looked glassy and she realised that they were swimming with unshed tears. She remembered how he told her that Anna had not spoken a word for about two years, ever since her mother ran off and left her with her step-father.
“Yes, I’m coming, Anna,” Sally said.
She swallowed the lump that had arisen in her throat and took Anna’s hand in hers. Together they left the lodge and walked slowly back to the car where Gavin called up his team of operatives on his mobile and gave them the location. He then contacted the police. His conversation was short and brief and it was obvious that they were not exactly ignorant of what was going on.
“Why didn’t you bring them in earlier?” Sally asked.
“Selfishness, I suppose,” he told her, brushing her cheek with the back of his good hand. “I wanted to be in on the kill.”
“They knew you had Anna, didn’t they?” Sally stared into the darkness, feeling Anna’s sleepy head getting heavier as the little girl nestled against her in the back seat of the car.
“Yes. I’ve been working with them to get evidence against Lorn Macey. They want him out of the country, so I guess he’ll be expedited back to the States and there’ll be quite a reception committee waiting for him there. He’s not exactly Mister Nice Guy in America, England or anywhere else.”
Sally felt her stomach sag slightly as a thought struck her. “So – no more work here for Calder Security Enterprises.”
There was a short pause before he replied. “No, I guess not.”
“Will you be going back to the States? You and Anna?”
“I guess we have to go back, yes. There’s a bit of unfinished business before this damned affair can be put behind us. And, of course, I have to see about finding a home for Anna and I. Maybe I’ll take some time off from business and just occupy myself with my daughter’s welfare for a while.”
“Her mother won’t try to get her back, will she?”
“No chance. Nadine only wanted to use Anna as a tool to pry a few million away from her rich husband. She never wanted children, but I didn’t find that out until it was too late. Anna was a mistake. She took us both by surprise. I thought maybe Nadine had changed her mind when she decided not to have an abortion, but I think even then she was working on Macey. Anna was only ten months old when Nadine left me and went to shack up with the boss. They cooked up a story against me, so I couldn’t get custody.” Gavin reached over the back of his seat and gently stroked his sleeping daughter’s dark head. “I stuck around as best I could to make sure she was all right and I think she was for a while. Then Nadine bolted. Took off with a younger man. She always was one for having a good time and Macey didn't come up to scratch. I don’t know why she came back. It doesn’t matter now. If she hadn’t, I wouldn’t have known about the abuse. It was a friend of hers that told me about it. And then, when I looked further into things I found he had a history of that kind of thing going back some. I couldn’t persuade them to let me take Anna away, so I took the matter into my own hands.”
Sally sighed. “You could still be in trouble with the authorities, Gavin, for what you did. You might even go to prison.”
“It’s possible, but I don’t think that will happen. Not now. We have too many witnesses. I expect your friend Rob will also give evidence.”
Sally licked her lips and thought how scared poor Rob had looked, but how proud he would be to be able to help Anna and her true father to finally get together. The child stirred in her arms and she hugged her close, glad that it was too dark for Gavin to see the tears in her eyes.
“You really love her, don’t you?” she said with a little break in her voice.
“I think she’s the greatest kid that ever lived,” Gavin told her. “And I hope she’ll have a bevy of brothers and sisters one day.”
“I never thought I’d ever hear a man say that,” Sally said, burying her face in Anna’s hair, struggling with feelings of envy and regret. And wondering if there was another man like Gavin somewhere, because it would be so easy to fall in love with him.
“Here they come,” Gavin said, jerking up straight in his seat and watching a procession of car headlights approaching from the distance like pin-pricks of white on black.
“So, it’s all over bar the shouting,” Sally said dully and felt Gavin look at her through the darkness.
“Yes. I daresay you could be right.”
The silence fell heavy between them.