The Baby Invasion (Destiny Bay-Baby Dreams) (12 page)

She sat across from him.
 

“Well?” he said impatiently. “Tell me. Where is she?”

He was just a man
, she was telling herself wildly.
Just a man. Even if he did throw knives and talk as if he might eat nails for breakfast. He was just a man, and a man could be talked into gentleness—sometimes.
 

“My name is Cathy Feenstra,” she tried as gingerly as one might offer a crust of bread to a lion. “Who are you?”

His rough sigh evidenced what he thought of this waste of time. “Robby Crockett,” he said shortly. “Where’s April?”

His glare was disconcerting, but she managed to hold her ground. “How do you know April, Mr. Crockett?” she asked, playing for time.
 

She didn’t know what she was going to do, but she knew she had to figure a way to get him out of here—or at least distracted enough so that she could call the police.

But he wasn’t listening. His sharp eyes had spied something. He leaned over and reached for it on the table, and then Cathy saw what it was. The matchbook.

“What’s this?” he said, reading it. “Wild Horses? Lake Tahoe?” He looked up fiercely. “Don’t tell me she’s gone back to her old ways!” He waved the matchbook in Cathy’s face.

Cathy held onto the cushion of her chair as though she were on a roller coaster ride and needed anchoring.
 

“What do you mean?” she asked in a very small voice.

“She used to be a show girl in Las Vegas. Sure, with those long legs of hers? She was real good, real popular. She used to go out with a lot of rich men, high rollers. How do you think she got herself the nest egg to get this house?”

Cathy nodded. “Oh,” she said softly.

His chest puffed out importantly. “I saved her from all that, you know. I had her working for me at my country and western club over on Pali. She’s my top hostess.”

“I see.” His top hostess. That sounded on the up-and-up. But if he was just April’s employer, wondering why she wasn’t coming in to work, why was he here?

“She’s done this to spite me. I’m sure of that.” His hand began to caress the knife again. “And it’s all because of those three rotten little babies. They ruined everything.”

His words sent a chill down her spine.
 
Whatever happened, she couldn’t let him near the triplets.
 

She couldn’t help glancing at his hand on the knife. Watching him caress cold—and very sharp— steel made her wince. This man was not getting more gentle. In fact, thinking about the babies seemed to be riling him up.

His face was darker than ever.
 

“She should never have had those things in the first place. I told her so, right from the git-go. But would she listen? Hell no!”

A horrifying thought came to Cathy. What if these were his children? All kinds of possibilities flew through her mind. What if he grabbed them and held them as hostages for April’s return? What if he decided he wanted to keep them? If she did call the police, they might side with him, if he claimed he was the father. She had to keep these babies away from this man, this Robby Crockett, at all costs.

She looked up and found him staring at the doorway into the hall behind her.

“Hey! What was that?” he demanded. “I think one of those little grasshoppers got loose.”

She swung around quickly and saw only the empty hall, leading to the stairway. “What? I don’t see anything.”

Robby was pointing at the doorway, waving his finger angrily. “There’s some kid out there. He was making faces at me around the corner.”

“What?” She turned and looked again, her heart beating, but there was absolutely nothing to see. “You must be imagining things.”

Still, his reaction was beginning to worry her. She rose from the chair.
 

“I’ll just go check,” she murmured, hurrying to the doorway and glancing out into the hall. There was a table and four chairs, a desk, a buffet up against the wall and a Persian carpet on the hardwood floor. There was no sign of life. The man was seeing things. Paranoid, probably. She turned to go back and bumped right into him.

He glared around the area. “Come out, you little brat,” he said, his voice harsh.

Cathy’s eyes suddenly caught sight of something underneath the buffet. It was Beanie’s round face, his grin wide and toothless. Her heart nearly stopped in her chest.

“Let’s go back, shall we?” she suggested, her voice high and shrill. She took Robby’s arm and tugged.
 

“How about a nice drink?” she said brightly, trying to edge him out of the hall and into the kitchen. “I’m sure there’s something in the liquor cabinet.”

She tugged again, and this time he gave a little. “Let’s just go take a look.
 
Okay?”

She didn’t risk looking back until she had Robby in the kitchen. Then she turned and gestured wildly at her child.
 

“Go to bed,” she mouthed. “Go, now!”

Beanie laughed softly, obviously amused by the contortions she was putting her face through.

“Go!” she ordered again, pointing up the stairs. Her heart was pounding so hard she was afraid she would faint. She stepped into the kitchen quickly and closed the door, muttering a prayer.

She found him staring at her, his dark face full of suspicion. “I know what you’re doing, lady,” he said, his voice low but scary.

She swallowed hard and began to shake her head.

“You’re trying to get me drunk, aren’t you?” he went on accusingly.

She started to speak but his hand came down on her shoulder. “It won’t work,” he said evenly, his eyes piercing. “I came here to find April and that’s what I’m going to do. If you won’t tell me where she is, I’ll have to try something else.”

Her knees felt like rubber. “I swear,” she whispered, getting desperate. “I swear I don’t know where she is.”

He nodded slowly, his hand still on her shoulder. “Okay. If that’s the way you want to play it, I’m going to have to get rough.”

Fear quivered through Cathy, tightening her throat so that she couldn’t speak.

“I know what I’ll do,” he said softly, menacingly. “I’m going to take those babies over to my club and hold on to ‘em until April decides to give me a call.”

He nodded in satisfaction, a wicked smile curling his lips.
 

“That ought to do the trick, don’t you think?” He looked around the room. “Got a box or something I could carry them in?”

There was no way she was going to let him get his hands on those babies. Resolve grew in her, pushing back fear, turning her cold inside. She had to do something. Anything. She had to save them.

She glanced around the room quickly, furtively, trying to find a weapon. There was a cast iron skillet sitting on the stove, and the butcher knife in the drawer to the right of the sink. She quickly judged her chances of lunging for the knife. He was big, but if she moved fast enough...

The kitchen door creaked. They both turned to look, and there was Beanie with a wide grin, eyes alight with mischief.

Robby let out a growl and started toward him. Without thought, Cathy grabbed the huge cast iron pan and brought it down on the back of the big man’s head as hard as she could, then watched in horror mixed with relief as he crumpled to the shiny vinyl floor.

Scott was having a nightmare.

He’d come home from
Mickey’s
feeling antsy, restless, like there was something he should be doing that he was forgetting to do.
 
He glanced over toward Cathy’s house, but he knew it was too late to stop over.
 
Tomorrow would be soon enough.
 
He went to bed.
 

And all he could think about was Cathy.
 
His head was full of her look and scent, full of the feel of her.
 
He’d lain down on his pillow sure he would dream sweet dreams of soft hands and warm, moist kisses.
 

But he was wrong.

The bad dream had begun almost as soon as he’d closed his eyes. Tiny people had invaded his life. They clung to his legs as he tried to walk. They jumped down into his arms from trees. They hid in his cupboards and leapt out at him when he wasn’t looking. They bounced across his floors. They came pouring out of his faucet when he tried to take a shower. They were everywhere, laughing and smirking and having a wonderful time at his expense.

And then they had him down, like Gulliver and the Lilliputians. Tiny ropes were binding his hands, tiny wires held back his legs, and he was struggling, trying to get away—and there was Cathy coming toward him, her arms out, and he reached for her and drew her close so that she could save him

Suddenly he was wide-awake. He lay very still, eyes open and staring at the ceiling. There wasn’t a sound, and yet something was going on. He could sense it.

He slipped out of bed and went to the window to look out. The moon illuminated a ghostly figure running from the house next door toward the street. It was Cathy and she was carrying something, but he couldn’t quite make out what it was, and then she disappeared around the side of the garage.

He stood there for a moment, digesting what he’d seen, and then he snapped more fully alert and sprang into action, pulling on clothes as he ran down the stairs toward his front door. It never occurred to him to mind his own business. Not once.

He met her coming around the corner of the garage again and caught hold of her before she could race past him back into the house.

“Cathy, what’s going on?”

She stared up at him, her eyes huge and slightly glazed. “I’m going,” she told him, talking very fast.
 
“I’m getting out of here. I’ve gotta go.
 
I’m taking the babies. Most of them are already in the van.
 
I’ve gotta go.
 
Gotta go.”

He could tell this was more than a sudden whim. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

She shivered. “He came. The man from the phone calls.”

“What? Where is he?”

She cringed and avoided his gaze. “Lying on the floor of the kitchen.”
 
She winced.
 
“I hit him with a frying pan.”

“What?”

She looked up defiantly. “I had to. Listen, his name is Robby Crockett. He runs some club where April worked as a hostess. He’s big and he’s mean. He’s got a knife. He threw it. He hates babies and thinks those little ones have come between him and April in some way.”
 
She tried to pull away.
 
“I’ve gotta go.”

Scott gave her a hard look. “I think it’s time to throw in the towel and call the police, Cathy,” he said quietly.

“No!” She grabbed his hand and held it tightly between her own, looking up at him with tragic eyes.
 

“We can’t do that, Scott. Really, we can’t. God knows what they’ll do to those babies. They might even give them to Robby Crockett. He might…he might be their father!”

Scott stared at her for a long moment. He read the intensity in her eyes, the determination in the set of her jaw. He also saw the goodness in her, the sweetness, the need to do what was right.
 

“What can I do to help?” he asked huskily.

Her face didn’t soften. She was keeping tight control in order to get through this.
 

“Watch him. Could you? I’ve still got one more baby to carry down and I’m so afraid he’ll wake up before I’m finished.”

He nodded. “Sure. Let’s go.”

He followed her into the house and went straight for the kitchen. There was the large, leather-jacketed man in a heap on the floor. Though he was still breathing, he wasn’t stirring.

Cathy came down the stairs with the last baby and he looked up and saw her, feeling a wave of awareness sweep through him. He’d always thought he’d lived a pretty full life, but meeting Cathy Feenstra had added a whole new dimension to his existence. What had he ever done without her?

“Got any rope?” he called to her softly as she hurried past him.

“There’s no time to look for rope,” she whispered back urgently. “Besides, tying him up would be so...so premeditated, somehow.”
 

She looked at the man and shuddered. She pressed the baby she carried more tightly to her shoulder.
 

“I just want to get out of here.”

He followed her hurried progress to the van. Inside there were six car seats of various sizes, and she strapped the last baby into the empty seat, then turned to say goodbye, pulling the sliding van door shut as she did so.

“Thank you so much for all you’ve done, Scott,” she said earnestly, her control still holding her stiff. “Could you do one last thing for me? Could you keep an eye on what happens over here—from a distance I mean.”

He was shaking his head.
 

“No, Cathy,” he said softly.
 
“I’m afraid I can’t do that.”

She blinked at him worriedly.
 
“Why not?”

He stared down at her.
 
“Because I’m not going to be here.
 
I’m going with you.”

Relief chased disbelief across her pretty face.
 
“Are you sure?
 
I thought you didn’t want---”

“Forget what I said,” he advised her.
 
“Forget anything I’ve ever said.
 
I want to help you.
 
And if that means I’ve got to haul a van full of babies to Lake Tahoe, that’s what I’ll do.”

She melted against him, laughing softly.
 
“Scott.”
 
She looked up and there were tears rimming her eyes.
 
“Oh Scott, thank you so much.”

“Don’t thank me,” he told her in a rough whisper.
 
“My motives are purely selfish, believe me.”

Scott released Cathy and ran back home to lock up and grab a jacket.
 
When he returned he noticed the strange car parked in front of April’s house—a big, long, white Cadillac convertible with a set of longhorns mounted on the hood, the points spread almost to the width of the car.
 
On the door was painted, in sparkling fluorescent orange, “Crockett Country-Sad Songs and Good Company”.