Roxanne Rustand - Deadly Competition

Clint just couldn’t send Sarah to daycare or preschool, not since someone had tried to kidnap her shortly after her mother disappeared. No, he needed someone he could trust to keep Sarah in his home—and keep her safe and secure. Sarah had been through too much. Clint wasn’t sure what she’d witnessed around her father’s death, but now she was a troubled little girl who desperately missed her momma, and who’d begun acting out at the least provocation if separated from her uncle Clint.

His ads for a nanny-housekeeper hadn’t yielded a single good prospect. Some applicants who called sounded uneducated. Lazy. Some asked “when the kid took naps and for how long.” One volunteered that a little strong cough medicine could keep a kid quiet for hours.

The few applicants he’d interviewed hadn’t been any better—from the one who’d actually been casing his house to the one who visibly withdrew in distaste at Sarah’s tentative approach.

So now he was struggling to be a substitute dad while trying to keep his construction company together and search for his sister, and he felt as if he was failing at every turn.

Looking for his shoes in the wall-to-wall rubble of toys filling his living room, he stepped over the scattered blocks, landed barefoot on a LEGO, bit back a yelp of pain and sank onto the sofa.

Sarah scrambled up into his lap and wrapped her little arms around his neck. “I want Mommy,” she said somberly, her eyes sad and defeated. “She does Band-Aids and kisses on owies.”

He closed his eyes against the familiar wave of pain that swamped him whenever he thought about what Leah must be going through, if she was even still alive. The terror and pain she might’ve faced on the day she disappeared. Had she been injured? Was she wandering aimlessly now, suffering from amnesia? Or was she being held against her will?

The darker possibilities haunted him, day and night, especially since right after Leah went missing.

The police had found signs of some kind of struggle in Leah’s little apartment above the pawnshop. The police thought she might have staged it to cover her tracks—and her involvement in her husband’s death, but Clint knew better. Leah had become a Christian six months before Earl died, and she loved her new faith—and Sarah—far too much to harm anyone, even the deadbeat Earl.

Shaking his head to clear his thoughts, Clint focused his attention on his young niece.

“Your momma wants to be back here, too, sweetheart,” he murmured, wrapping his arms around her. “I’m praying every day for that to happen.”

His cell phone vibrated against his belt, and he reached down to grab it. With luck, it would be his client needing to delay the appointment this afternoon….

He frowned at the unfamiliar number. Nearly let it ring through to his voice mail, then relented and caught it at the last second.

“Um…Hi, I’m calling because I understand you might be looking for a housekeeper and nanny?”

At the quaver in the woman’s voice, Clint’s instant, silent response was Not you, sweetheart. She sounded wary and unsure, and the faint note of desperation in her voice sealed his impression. The last thing I need is someone with troubles. I’ve got enough troubles. “I’m not looking any longer. Sorry.”

Silence. Then the woman cleared her voice. “Does that mean you found the right person, or you’ve given up? I promise you, you won’t be disappointed if you just give me a chance.”

He dropped a kiss on Sarah’s forehead, then set the child aside with one arm and stood. “That advertisement has run for a couple of weeks. I’ve changed my mind about wanting a nanny.”

“But you do need childcare. Right?”

“Look, miss—”

“And it would be convenient to have someone on-site—someone who would be available 24/7, if need be. I understand that there’s an apartment available as part of the deal?”

“Thanks for calling.” He started to pull the phone from his ear, but her soft, and now-determined voice drew him back.

“Look, I can be there in—” he heard animated voices in the background “—fifteen minutes, and I’ll only take five minutes of your time. Just talk to me. Please.”

She did sound more educated than the last few applicants who’d called…and young enough to keep up with a tornado of a three-year-old who never seemed to slow down. And if she was young, that might account for the wariness he’d heard in her voice at first. Maybe he’d just become too suspicious after his sister’s disappearance.

He sighed. “You have references?”

“You bet.”

“You’ve got transportation?” Again, he heard an exchange of voices in the background.

“Yes, I do.”

After reluctantly taking her name down and giving her directions to his place, he clipped the phone back to his belt and surveyed the wreckage that was his living room. Somewhere beneath two days’ accumulation of toys there was a carpet, something he rarely saw these days.

He needed help. No doubt about it.

Yet he still sensed that something wasn’t quite right about the caller. Trouble. She’s going to be absolute trouble.

But when he tried to use the callback function on his cell to cancel, there was no answer, and he could hardly leave home with a stranger on her way to his place.

“Come on, Sarah, let’s find our shoes. We have company coming over, and then we can go to town after our visitor leaves, okay?” He grinned at her. “Want to race?”

Sarah didn’t enter into the game of trying to find shoes. Her haunting, almond-shaped green eyes brimming with tears, she stood at the fireplace and stared up at the photo on the mantel taken of her and Leah last Christmas, just a week or so before her life irrevocably changed. “I want my mommy.”

He heard those four sad words every day, and they still had the power to wrench his heart.

Some days were better than others, but today had been a tough one. This morning they’d gone to the grocery store, and Sarah had glimpsed someone from a distance who’d vaguely looked like Leah. She’d become hysterical, and had been tearful and withdrawn ever since.

“We’ll find her, sweetheart. I promise I’m doing everything I can to find her.”

The toe of a pink shoe caught his eye. He went down on one knee to retrieve it from beneath a blue teddy bear, then stayed down and bowed his head in silent prayer. Please God, keep Leah safe, wherever she is, and help me find her. She’s all that Sarah and I have left. We need her back.

When Clint opened the door, he took one look at the vehicle parked outside and the woman on his porch and almost ended the interview right there.

“Bitsy’s Diner?” he said, eyeing the words emblazoned on the old pickup. If he wasn’t mistaken, he could see the shadow of luggage on the front seat. “I thought you said you had transportation.”

“I did. I borrowed it.” The woman tipped her head and flashed a tight smile. “I’m Mandy Erick, by the way. And you are…”

“Clint Herald.”

Her brown hair was pulled back into a high ponytail, framing a delicate face that appeared freshly scrubbed and without makeup. Her rumpled clothes—a pale lemon sweater and wrinkled jeans—looked like they were probably expensive labels.

Unless she shopped for designer bargains at Goodwill, she had to have come from money—yet he caught a definite hint of simmering tension and desperation that she quickly masked.

Again, warning bells sounded at the back of his mind.

Why would an attractive woman like this be so edgy? Was she running from something?

In a town the size of Loomis, people recognized each other. Knew each other’s families from way back. If you saw someone you didn’t know, he was probably your cousin’s best friend’s brother, or had gone to school with your sister…and you could do a quick and accurate character check by picking up the phone.