Delores Fossen - Christmas Guardian

Time for plan B. He phoned one of his agents, Cody Guillory, his right-hand man at Sentron, the private security agency that Jordan owned. Since Cody was pulling duty at headquarters, he answered on the first ring.

“I’m guessing whatever’s wrong got you out of bed?” Cody greeted.

“Yeah, it did. I have a situation,” Jordan replied. “Shelly could be in danger. She still has the same cell number and possibly the same phone she used when she worked for Sentron so try to track that. Discreetly. Let me know where she is.”

“Will do. Give me a couple of minutes. Anything else?”

Jordan looked at the baby and debated what he should say. Don’t let anyone know you have him, Shelly had warned. She’d even used another rare please. For now, he’d take the plea and warning to heart. “Just find her and send someone in case she needs help,” Jordan said, and he ended the call.

The only illumination came from the moonlight seeping in through the windows, but it was enough for him to see the basket. Jordan stared at the baby, whose eyes were drifting down to sleep, and because he didn’t know what else to do, he groaned and considered the most obvious scenario. Had Shelly given birth to his child without telling him? And if so, why wouldn’t he have heard rumors that he was a daddy? There’d been no signs, no hints, nothing to indicate that this child was his.

Except for the dark brown hair, dark brown eyes.

Like Jordan’s own.

Still, that didn’t mean he’d fathered this baby.

He needed to talk with Shelly, and even though it was clear she was in the middle of a personal crisis, he tried her number again. Again, it went straight to voice mail. This time he decided to leave a message.

“Shelly, we need to talk.” He wanted to say more, much more, but a cell conversation wasn’t secure. His number wouldn’t show up on her caller ID or phone records because all calls from his house and business were routed through a scrambler, but someone could get her phone and listen to any message he might leave.

Someone’s trying to kill me, she’d said. Even with the shock of finding the baby, Jordan hadn’t forgotten that. Like him, Shelly now owned a security agency. Even though she’d been in business less than a year, her startup agency provided services as bodyguards, personal protection, P.I.s.

And probably more.

That more had nearly gotten him killed a few times. Was that what was happening to Shelly now? Had a case gone wrong, and was someone trying to use the baby to get to her? Maybe she’d had no choice but to bring the child to him, but it damn well had been her choice not to tell him before now.

If the child was his, that is.

The phone rang, slicing through the silence and waking the baby. He started to fuss. Jordan had no idea how to deal with that, so he lightly rocked the basket. Thankfully, the little guy hushed, and Jordan took the call.

“It’s Cody. I tracked Shelly’s phone, no problem, but while I was doing that, I heard her name on the police scanner, and I zoomed in on the conversation with our equipment.” He paused. “About five minutes ago, a traffic cop responded to a failed carjacking just about a half mile from your place. It’s Shelly’s car.”

Oh, God. “How bad?”

“Bad.” And that was all Cody said for several long moments. “Shelly’s dead.”

That hit Jordan like a punch to the gut. He squeezed his eyes shut. “You’re sure it’s her?”

“Yes, I’ve tapped into the camera at the traffic light, and I can see her face. It’s Shelly, all right. Looks like a gunshot to the head.”

Jordan forced away the grief and pain and grabbed the basket so he could take the baby with him to his home office. He turned on his secure laptop. “Send me the feed from that traffic camera. Audio, too. And get one of our agents over there.”

“I’ve already dispatched Desmond—” Cody paused, and in the background Jordan could hear the chatter from the laser listening device that Cody was using to zoom in on the scene. “An eyewitness is talking to the traffic cop right now.”

The images popped onto his computer screen. Jordan saw Shelly’s car. The driver’s door was wide open. Her body was sprawled out in the middle of the street, limp and lifeless. Hell. If he’d just gotten to the door sooner, if he could have stopped her from leaving his place, then maybe she’d still be alive.

Another patrol car arrived, but Jordan zoomed in on the conversation between the traffic cop and a twenty-something woman dressed in a fast-food restaurant uniform. An eyewitness. Her body language and nearly hysterical tone told Jordan she probably hadn’t been involved in this as anything more than a spectator to a horrific crime.

“The man didn’t want her car,” Jordan heard the woman say, and he cranked up the volume.

“What do you mean?” the cop asked.

Tears streamed down the eyewitness’s face. “That man dragged her from her car and tried to force her into his black SUV. He was trying to kidnap her or something.”

Or something. Jordan was afraid he knew what that something was. This man wanted information about the baby. But why?

The eyewitness broke down, sobbing while she frantically shook her head. “The woman fought him,” she finally said, her trembling fingers held close to her mouth. “She tried to get away. But he shot her and then drove off.”

There it was. The brutal end of one nightmare and the start of another.

This wasn’t a botched carjacking. Shelly had been murdered. And Jordan instinctively knew the man in the SUV wasn’t finished.

The killer would come after the baby next.

Fourteen months later

December 22nd

Kinley Ford was after two things: Jordan Taylor and the truth. Tonight, she might finally get both.

If she didn’t get killed first, that is.

Because if he did indeed know what was going on, he might take extreme measures to stop anyone from finding out.

Swallowing hard, she stepped inside the reception area of the Sentron Security Agency to find the Christmas party in full swing. The place sparkled, not just with some of the guests in their glittery dresses. There was also an angel ice sculpture on a center table, and it was flanked on each side with white roses in crystal vases and bottles of champagne angled into gleaming, silver ice buckets.

Kinley dismissed all of that and looked around. There he was, on the far side of the room next to the massive Christmas tree.

Jordan Taylor.

He looked lethal. And was. She’d studied every bit of information she could learn about him. Over the years, he’d killed three people. All in the line of duty, of course. But that still gave him a dangerous edge that she would be a fool to dismiss.

Kinley hated to think of him as her last resort, but she had exhausted her list of persons of interest. She’d exhausted her bank account. And herself. She wouldn’t give up if she failed tonight—she would never give up—but she literally had no idea where to go next.

Beside her, her “date,” Cody Guillory, took her coat, then her arm and led her not in Jordan’s direction but toward a tall blond-haired man by the ten-foot-long table filled from corner to corner with party food.

“Anna,” Cody said using the alias she’d given him, “this is Burke Dennison.” Cody checked his watch. “In about three hours, he’ll be my new boss.”

Burke flashed a thousand-watt smile. With that sun-blond hair, blue eyes and tan, he looked every bit the golden boy he was. At thirty-one he was a self-made millionaire and about to take the reins of one of the most successful security agencies in the state.