Holiday in Stone Creek Read online

  Footsteps sounded on the stairs, then in the hallway, and Rachel burst in. “Mommy, we found beef stew in the fridge and—” she stopped, registering the sight her mother made, lying there on the bed. Worry contorted the child’s face, made her shoulders go rigid. “Why are you crying?”

  Stepping behind Rachel so she couldn’t see him, Jack glared a warning at Ardith.

  Ardith stopped wailing, sat up, sniffled and dashed at her cheeks with the backs of both hands. “I was just missing your daddy and the other kids,” she said. She straightened her spine, snatched tissues from a decorative box on the table between the beds, and blew her nose.

  “I miss them, too,” Rachel said. “And Grambie and Gramps, too.”

  Ardith nodded, set the tissue aside. “I know, sweetheart,” she said. Somehow, she summoned up a smile, misty and faltering, but a smile nonetheless. “Did someone mention beef stew? I could use something like that.”

  Rachel’s attention had shifted to the cheery fireplace. “We get our own fireplace?” she enthused.

  Jack thought back to the five days he and Rachel had spent navigating that South American jungle after he’d nabbed her from Lombard’s remote estate. They’d dealt with mosquitoes, snakes, chattering monkeys with a penchant for throwing things at them, and long, dark nights with little to cover them but the stars and the weighted, humid air.

  Rachel hadn’t complained once. When they were traveling, she got to ride on Jack’s back or shoulders, and she enjoyed it wholeheartedly. She’d chattered incessantly, every waking moment, about all the things she’d have to tell her mommy, her stepfather, and her little brother and sister when they were together again.

  “Your own fireplace,” Jack confirmed, his voice husky.

  He and Ardith exchanged glances, and then they all went downstairs, to the kitchen, for some of Ashley’s beef stew.

  ASHLEY WAITED UNTIL she was sure Olivia and Tanner were sound asleep, then crept out of the guest suite. The night nurse sat in front of the television set in the den, sound asleep.

  Behind Ashley, Mrs. Wiggins mewed.

  Ashley turned, a finger to her lips, hoisted the kitten up for a nuzzle, then carried the little creature back into the suite, set her down, and carefully closed the door.

  Her eyes burned as the kitten meowed at being left behind.

  Reaching the darkened and empty kitchen, Ashley let out her breath, going over the plan she’d spent several hours rehearsing in her head.

  She would disable the alarm, then reset it before closing the door behind her. Drive slowly out to the main road, waiting until she reached the mailboxes before turning her headlights on.

  Ginger, snoozing on her dog bed in the corner, lifted her golden head, gave Ashley a slow, curious once-over.

  Ashley put a finger to her lips, just as she’d done earlier, with the kitten.

  A voice bloomed in her mind.

  Don’t go, it said.

  Ashley blinked. Stared at the dog. Shook her head.

  No. She had not received a telepathic message from Olivia’s dog. She was still keyed up from the family meeting, and worried about Jack, and her imagination was running away with her, that was all.

  I’ll tell, the silent, internal voice warned. All I have to do is bark.

  “Hush,” Ashley said, fumbling in her purse for her car keys. “I’m not hearing this. It’s all in my head.”

  “It’s snowing.”

  Unnerved, Ashley tried to ignore Ginger, who had now risen on all four paws, as though prepared to carry out a threat she couldn’t possibly have made.

  Ashley went to the nearest window, the one over the sink, and peered through it, squinting.

  Snowflakes the size of golf balls swirled past the glass.

  Ashley glanced back at Ginger in amazement. “Well, it is January,” she rationalized.

  “You can’t drive in this blizzard.”

  “Stop it,” Ashley said, though she couldn’t have said whether she was talking to the golden retriever or to herself. Or both.

  The dog simply stood there, ready to bark.

  Nonsense, Ashley thought. Olivia hears animals. You don’t.

  Still, either her imagination or the dog had a point. Her small hybrid car wouldn’t make it out of the driveway in weather like that. The yard was probably under a foot of snow, and visibility would be zero, if not worse.

  She had to think.

  As quietly as possible, she drew back a chair at the big kitchen table and sat down.

  Ginger relaxed a little, but she was still watchful.

  Just sitting at that table caused Ashley to flash back to the family meeting earlier that evening. Meg and Brad, Melissa, Olivia and Tanner—even Sophie and Carly and little Mac, had all been there.

  As the eldest of the four O’Ballivan siblings, Brad had been the main spokesperson.

  “Ashley,” he’d said, “you’re not going home until McCall is gone. And Tanner and I plan to make sure he is, first thing in the morning.”

  She’d gaped at her brother, understanding his reasoning but stung to fury just the same. Looking around, she’d seen the same grim determination in Tanner’s face, Olivia’s, even Melissa’s.

  Outraged, she’d reminded them all that she was an adult and would come and go as she pleased, thank you very much.

  Only Sophie and Carly had seemed even remotely sympathetic, but neither of them had spoken up on her behalf.

  “You can’t hold me prisoner here,” Ashley had protested, her heart thumping, adrenaline burning through her veins like acid.

  “Oh, yeah,” Brad had answered, his tone and expression utterly implacable. “We can.”

  She’d decided right then that she’d get out—yes, their intentions were good, but it was the principle of the thing—but she’d also kept her head. She’d pretended to agree.

  She’d helped make supper.

  She’d loaded the dishwasher afterward.

  She’d even rocked one of the babies—John, she thought—to sleep after Olivia had nursed him.

  The evening had seemed endless.

  Finally, Meg and Brad had left, taking Mac and Carly with them. Sophie, having finished her homework, had given Ashley a hug before retiring to her room for the night.

  Ashley had yawned a lot and vanished into her own lush quarters.

  She’d taken a hot bath, put on her pajamas and one of Olivia’s robes, watched a little television—some mindless reality show.

  And she’d waited, listening to the old-new house settle around her, Mrs. Wiggins curled up on her lap, as though trying to hold her new mistress in her chair with that tiny, weightless body of hers.

  Once she was sure the coast was clear, Ashley had quietly dressed, never thinking to check the weather. Such was her state of distraction.

  Now, here she sat, alone in her sister’s kitchen at one-thirty in the morning, engaged in a standoff with a talking dog.

  “I can take the Suburban,” she whispered to Ginger. “It will go anywhere.”

  “What’s so important?” Ginger seemed to ask.

  Ashley shook her head again, rubbed her temples with the fingertips of both hands. “Jack,” she said, keeping her voice down because, one, she didn’t want to be overheard and stopped from leaving and, two, she was talking to a dog, for pity’s sake. “Jack is so important. He’s sick. And something is wrong. I can feel it.”

  “You could ask Tanner to go into town and help him out.”

  Ashley blinked. Was this really happening? If the conversation was only in her mind, why did the other side of it just pop up without her framing the words first?

  “I can’t do that,” she said. “Olivia and the babies might need him.”

  Resolved, she rose from her chair, crossed to the wooden rack where Olivia kept various keys, and helped herself to the set that would unlock and start the venerable old Suburban.

  She jingled the key ring at Ginger.

  “Go ahead,” she said. “Bark.”


  Ginger gave a huge sigh. “I’ll give you a five-minute head start,” came the reply, “then I’m raising the roof.”

  “Fair enough,” Ashley agreed, scrambling into Big John’s old woolen coat, the one Olivia wore when she was working, hoping it would give her courage. “Thanks.”

  “I was in love once,” Ginger said, sounding wistful.

  Ashley moved to the alarm-control panel next to the back door. Racked her brain for the code, which Olivia had given to her in case of emergency, finally remembered it.

  Grabbed her coat and dashed over the threshold.

  The cold slammed into her like something solid and heavy, with sharp teeth.

  Her car was under a mound of snow, the Suburban a larger mound beside it. Perhaps because of the emotions stirred by the family meeting, Tanner had forgotten to park the rigs in the spacious garage with his truck, the way he normally would have on a winter’s night.

  Hastily, she climbed onto the running board and wiped off the windshield with one arm, grateful for the heavy, straw-scented weight of her grandfather’s old coat, even though it nearly swallowed her. Then she opened the door of the Suburban, got in and rammed the key into the ignition.

  The engine sputtered once, then again, and finally roared to life.

  Ashley threw it into Reverse, backed into the turnaround, spun her wheels for several minutes in the deep snow.

  Swearing under her breath, she slammed the steering wheel with one fist, missed it, and hit the horn instead.

  “Do. Not. Panic,” she told herself out loud.

  Just how many minutes had passed, she wondered frantically. Had Ginger already started barking? Had anyone heard the Suburban’s horn when she hit it by accident?

  She drew a deep breath, thrust it out in a whoosh.

  No, she decided.

  Lights would be coming on in the house if the dog were raising a ruckus. The howling wind had probably covered the bleat of the horn.

  She shifted the Suburban into the lowest gear, tried again to get the old wreck moving. It finally tore free of the snowbank, the wheels grabbing.

  As she turned the vehicle around and zoomed down the driveway, she heard the alarm system go off in the house, even over the wind and the noise of the engine.

  Crap. She’d either forgotten to reset the system, or done it incorrectly.

  Looking in the rearview mirror would have been useless, since the back window was coated with snow and frost, so Ashley sped up and raced toward the main road, praying she wouldn’t hit a patch of ice and spin off into the ditch.

  I’m sorry, she told Tanner and Olivia, the babies and Sophie and the night nurse, the alarm shrieking like a convention of angry banshees behind her. I’m so sorry.

  HER KITCHEN WAS completely dark.

  Shivering from the cold and from the harrowing ride into town, Ashley shut the door behind her, dropped her key into the pocket of Big John’s coat and reached for the light switch.

  “Don’t move,” a stranger’s voice commanded. A male stranger’s voice.

  Flipping the switch was a reflex; light spilled from the fluorescent panels in the ceiling, revealing a man she’d never seen before—or had she?—seated at her table, holding a gun on her.

  “Who are you?” she asked, amazed to discover that she could speak, she was so completely terrified.

  The man stood, the gun still trained squarely on her central body mass. “The pertinent question here, lady, is who are you?”

  A strange boldness surged through Ashley, fear borne high on a flood of pure, indignant rage. “I am Ashley O’Ballivan,” she said evenly, “and this is my house.”

  “Oh,” the man said.

  Just then, the inside door swung open and Jack was there, brandishing a gun of his own.

  What was this? Ashley wondered wildly. Tombstone?

  “Lay it down, Vince,” Jack said, his voice stone-cold.

  Vince complied, though not with any particular grace. The gun made an ominous thump on the tabletop. “Chill, man,” he said. “You told me to stand watch and that’s all I was doing.”

  Ashley’s gaze swung back to Jack. She was furious and relieved, and a host of other things, too, all at once.

  “I do not allow firearms in my house,” she said.

  Vince chuckled.

  Jack told him to get lost, shoving his own pistol into the front of his pants. The move was too expert, too deft, and the gun itself looked military.

  Vince ambled out of the room, shaking his head once as he passed Jack.

  “What are you doing here?” Jack asked, as though she were the intruder.

  “Do I have to say it?” Ashley countered, flinging her purse aside, fighting her way out of Big John’s coat, which suddenly felt like a straightjacket. “I live here, Jack.”

  “I thought we agreed that you wouldn’t come back until I gave you a heads-up,” Jack said, keeping his distance.

  Considering Ashley’s mood, that was a wise decision on his part, even if he was armed and almost certainly dangerous.

  “I changed my mind,” she replied, tight-lipped, her arms folded stubbornly across her chest. “And who is that—that person, anyway?”

  “Vince works for me,” Jack said.

  Another car crunched into the driveway. A door slammed.

  Jack swore, untucking his shirt so the fabric covered the gun in the waistband of his jeans.

  Tanner slammed through the back door.

  “Well,” Jack observed mildly, “the gang’s all here.”

  “Not yet,” Tanner snapped. “Brad’s on his way. What the hell is going on, Ashley? You set off the alarm, the dog is probably still barking her brains out, and the babies are permanently traumatized—not to mention Sophie and Olivia!”

  “I’m sorry,” Ashley said.

  A cell phone rang, somewhere on Tanner’s person.

  He pulled the device from his coat pocket, after fumbling a lot, squinted at the caller ID panel and took the call. “She’s at her place,” he said, probably to Olivia. A crimson flush climbed his neck, pulsed in his jaw. And his anger was nothing compared to what Brad’s would be. “No, don’t worry—I think things are under control…”

  Ashley closed her eyes.

  Brakes squealed outside.

  Tanner’s voice seemed to recede, and then the call ended.

  Brad nearly tore down the door in his hurry to get inside.

  Jack looked around, his expression drawn but pleasant.

  “Cherry crepes, anyone?” he asked mildly.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “I KNOW A PLACE the woman and the little girl will be safe,” Brad said wearily, once the excitement had died down and Ashley, her brother, Jack and Tanner were calmly seated around her kitchen table, eating the middle-of-the-night breakfast she’d prepared to keep from going out of her mind with anxiety.

  Vince, the man with the gun, was conspicuously absent, while Ardith and Rachel slept on upstairs. Remarkably, the uproar hadn’t awakened them, probably because they were so worn-out.

  Jack shifted in his chair, pushed back his plate. For a man who believed so strongly in bacon and eggs, he hadn’t eaten much. “Where?” he asked.

  “Nashville,” Brad replied. Then he threw out the name of one of the biggest stars in country music. “She’s a friend,” he added, as casually as if just anybody could wake up a famous woman in the middle of the night and ask her to shelter a pair of strangers for an indefinite length of time. “And she’s got more high-tech security than the president. Bodyguards, the whole works.”

  “She’d do that?” Jack asked, grimly impressed.

  Brad raised one shoulder in a semblance of a shrug. “I’d do it for her, and she knows that,” he said easily. “We go way back.”

  “Sounds good to me,” Tanner put in, relaxing a little. Everyone, naturally, was showing the strain.

  “Me, too,” Jack admitted, and though he didn’t sigh, Ashley sensed the depths of his relief. “How do we get
them there?”

  “Very carefully,” Brad said. “I’ll take care of it.”

  Jack seemed to weigh his response for a long time before giving it. “There’s a woman’s life at stake here,” he said. “And a little girl’s future.”

  “I get that,” Brad answered. His gaze slid to Ashley, then moved back to Jack’s face, hardening again. “Of course, I want something in return.”

  Ashley held her breath.

  Jack maintained eye contact with Brad. “What?”

  “You, gone,” Brad said. “For good.”

  “Now, wait just one minute—” Ashley sputtered.

  “He’s right,” Jack said. “Lombard wants me, Ashley, not you. And I intend to keep it that way.”

  “So when do we make the move?” Tanner asked.

  “Now,” Brad responded evenly, a muscle bunching in his jawline. He could surely feel Ashley’s glare boring into him. “I can have a jet at the airstrip within an hour or two, and I think we need to get them out of here before sunrise.”

  “Can’t you let Rachel and her mother rest, just for this one night?” Ashley demanded. “They must be absolutely exhausted by all this—”

  “It has to be tonight,” Brad insisted.

  Jack nodded, sighed as he got to his feet. “Make the calls,” he told Brad. “I’ll get them out of bed.”

  Things were moving too fast. Ashley gripped the table edge, swaying with a sudden sensation of teetering on the brink of some bottomless abyss. “Wait,” she said.

  She might as well have been invisible, inaudible. A ghost haunting her own house, for all the attention anyone paid her.

  Brad was already reaching for his cell phone. “When I get back from Nashville,” he said, watching Jack, “I expect you to be history.”

  Jack nodded, avoiding Ashley’s desperate gaze. “It’s a deal,” he said, and left the room.

  Ashley immediately sprang out of her chair, without the faintest idea of what she would do next.

  Tanner took a gentle hold on her wrist and eased her back down onto the cushioned seat.

  Brad placed a call to his friend. Apologized for waking her up. Exchanged a few pleasantries—yes, Meg was fine and Mac was growing like a weed, and sure there would be other kids. Give him time.