Shirlee McCoy - Mystery Child

Quinn couldn’t take chances with the little girl’s life.

She’d have to walk through the woods until she reached August’s property. She hefted Jubilee onto her hip, pried the little girl’s fingers from her neck.

“Just a little looser, sweetheart,” she murmured. “If I pass out from lack of oxygen, we’ll both be in trouble.”

Jubilee didn’t respond, but her gaze darted from Quinn to the ridge.

Her silent watchfulness wasn’t normal five-year-old behavior. Quinn worked with kids every day, had been teaching for years, knew exactly how most children Jubilee’s age would act. Typical five-year-olds didn’t stay quiet during long road trips. They didn’t stay quiet when they were scared or hurt, either. Of course, this wasn’t a typical situation. Quinn couldn’t really expect Jubilee to act in a typical way. Maybe she would start talking once she was reunited with her father. Daniel Boone Anderson. The name was scrawled across the sealed manila envelope that Tabitha had thrust into Quinn’s hands. Beneath that, an address and phone number had been printed neatly next to the word HEART. Jubilee’s father. His work address and phone number.

That’s all Tabitha had said about the envelope.

The envelope that Quinn had promised not to open. The one she’d left tucked under the driver’s-side floor mat in the Jeep.

A soft sound drifted through the darkness. Not leaves crackling or twigs snapping. Just a whisper of something that shouldn’t be there. A shifting in the air, a soft sigh.

Quinn froze, her arms tightening around Jubilee as she scanned the darkness. Nothing but shadowy trees and bushes, but the night had gone quiet again.

Was someone moving along the ridge? A dark figure darting through the trees?

She turned and barreled into a hard chest.

She screamed, the sound ripping from her throat as she tried to run. Someone snagged her shirt, dragged her back. She screamed again, Jubilee’s terrified howls mixing with hers.

A hard hand slapped over her mouth.

“Shhhhh!” a man hissed, but there was no way she planned to go quietly. She slammed her head into his chest, tried to knock him off balance. If she could loosen his grip, she and Jubilee might have a chance to escape.

* * *

Having a head shoved into his solar plexus wasn’t exactly how Malone Henderson had planned to spend the first morning of his vacation. A couple of eggs, buttered toast, some canoeing on Deep Creek Lake—that had been the plan.

A wiggling, squirming, head-butting woman was not.

Neither was a screaming kid.

He pulled the woman up against his chest, tightening his grip just enough to keep her from slamming her head into his chest again.

“Enough,” he said. “You want whoever ran you off the road to find us?”

The woman mumbled something against his palm. The kid shrieked even louder.

This was definitely not what he’d had in mind when he’d left HEART headquarters the previous day, fought his way through Beltway traffic and headed to the tiny vacation rental that he’d planned to spend seven very quiet days and nights enjoying.

“With how loudly the kid is screaming,” he said, hoping that reason would win out over terror and that Quinn Robertson would calm down enough to calm down the kid, “your brother isn’t going to need me to call in our location. He’ll find his way here all on his own. So will whoever else happens to be hanging out in these woods.”

Quinn stilled, all the fight seeping out of her.

The kid was another story. She sounded like one of the baby hogs Malone’s grandfather had kept on their Tennessee farm, squealing frantically for her mother.

Only Quinn wasn’t this kid’s mother.

If Malone’s boss Chance Miller was right, August McConnell’s other sister, Tabitha, wasn’t the little girl’s mother, either. Her mother was Boone Anderson’s deceased wife. Boone was the kid’s father, and five years of searching, five years of hoping and praying that the infant Boone’s wife had stolen away from him would be returned, had finally ended. Boone would have what he’d been praying for. He’d have his child back. Everyone at HEART was focused on making sure that nothing went wrong, that the little girl who might be Boone’s would arrive in DC safely.

If Boone hadn’t been on the way home from a hostage rescue mission in Turkey, he’d have been the one hanging onto Quinn Robertson listening to the kid scream. Boone had been notified of his daughter’s supposed return. He’d be stateside in thirty hours. Until he returned, Malone and Chance were taking responsibility for the child. There’d be lots of questions, lots of police and FBI involvement.

And Malone was going to be in the middle of it all until Chance arrived from DC. Another two hours maybe. That’s what Chance had said when he’d called to ask Malone to drive to August McConnell’s place. It had seemed like an easy enough thing to do. Malone was taking his vacation in a cabin not too far from McConnell’s property. All he had to do was wait around until Chance arrived.

Of course, things were never as easy as they were supposed to be. At least not in Malone’s experience.

And, this?

It was proving to be pretty complicated.

He eased his hand from Quinn’s mouth, took a step away. He hadn’t meant to scare her or the child. He’d been working out of an abundance of caution, making sure that the person crawling out from the roots of an old tree wasn’t armed and dangerous. He and August had found Quinn’s abandoned Jeep, they’d heard men moving through the forest, they’d assumed trouble. Doing that was a whole lot better than winding up dead.

“No more screaming, kid,” he said quietly.

“Telling her that isn’t going to make her stop,” Quinn muttered, taking a step back and then another. If she kept going, she’d fall into the hole he’d watched her climb out of.

“And running from me isn’t going to keep you safe,” he responded, snagging her elbow as her foot slipped between thick roots. The tree throw had been a good hiding place. He’d give her that, but she should have stayed put until her brother arrived, and she knew she was safe.

“Watch it,” he cautioned, pulling her away from the roots. “We don’t want to end our first meeting on a bad note.”

“We sure began it on a bad note. Where’s August?” she asked, shrugging away, her arms still tight around the little girl.

“Probably hiding until the kid stops shrieking.”

“She wouldn’t be screaming, if you hadn’t terrified her.” There was no heat in her words, no fear. For someone who’d been run off the road and chased through the woods, she seemed calm.

“I know, and I’m sorry. I wasn’t sure who was coming up out of that hole, and I didn’t want to be shot before I figured it out.”

She nodded, her attention on the girl. “It’s okay, Jubilee. Everything is going to be fine.”

She smoothed thick braids that fell over the kid’s shoulders.

Red braids?

It was too dark to see, but Boone’s little girl had red hair. At least, she had when she was a baby. Malone had seen the photo in Boone’s office, sitting right next to the one of his new wife and their children.

“Hush,” Quinn murmured against the girl’s hair, and to Malone’s surprise, the kid pressed her lips together and stopped screaming, the abrupt silence thick and heavy.

He glanced around, eyeing the shadowy trees and the heavy undergrowth. Anyone could be hiding there, and all it would take was one bullet to take Quinn or the little girl out. If that was the perp’s goal. If not, Malone would be the target. Take him out. Grab the kid. Get out before August arrived.

“Let’s go.” He took Quinn’s arm, leading her toward the ridge and the Jeep that was parked at the top of it.