“Hell,” he mumbled under his breath.
Jackson spotted something.
Or rather some
one.
Chapter Sixteen
From the moment Jackson answered Steven’s call, Bailey’s heart had started pounding. It was too late for this to be a casual, how-are-you check-in; and since Jackson had been getting message and text updates throughout the night, this call meant something out of the ordinary had happened.
“There,” Jackson said, pointing to the spot on the screen.
Even with him pointing, it still took her a moment to see what had put the alarmed expression on his face.
There was someone scaling the fence.
Oh, God. Not again.
The person was dressed all in black and blended right into the night. In fact, if it hadn’t been for the multicolored Christmas lights, she might not have seen him at all. But she did see him, and she saw the rifle he was carrying.
“I have someone on the way to intercept him,” Steven explained. “The house is locked down and every inch of it wired, in case someone tries to break in. I’ll call when I have more info.”
Jackson shut his phone and reached for the intercom button on the wall. “Tracy?” he said.
When the nanny answered, Jackson told her to get to the nursery immediately, but Bailey didn’t wait for Tracy to arrive. She gathered up Caden in his blanket so he would be ready to go. Her son obviously didn’t appreciate being awakened, because he started to fuss.
Jackson made another call, to someone on his staff, and he told everyone to go to their panic room. He also called the sheriff and asked him for assistance. Maybe, just maybe, that would be enough to stop whatever was happening.
Bailey tried to console Caden by kissing his cheek and gently rocking him, but perhaps the child could feel the tension in her body. Even though Steven seemed to have this situation under control, she couldn’t help but be terrified for her baby’s safety.
“It’s just one person,” Jackson reminded her. He put his arm around Caden and her.
“One desperate person,” she said under her breath.
Maybe Shannon or Robin. Maybe Evan or even Ryan. But one desperate person could do a lot of damage with a rifle.
“How many men do you have out there?” Bailey asked.
“Four, including Steven. All of them are armed. Plus, we can track this person’s every move with the new security system that was just installed. He won’t get far.” Or maybe
she
wouldn’t get far, because it very well could be a woman beneath all those dark clothes.
“Go to the panic room,” Jackson insisted, the moment Tracy rushed into the room.
But he wasn’t just directing the order at Tracy, Bailey realized. He was talking to her as well.
“We’ve been through this before, and I’d rather stay out here in case you need help,” Bailey insisted right back.
She braced herself for an argument, but his attention went back to the laptop screen. Bailey saw the shadowy figure make its way through the shrubs, and each step brought it closer to a confrontation with Steven and his men.
Each step also brought the intruder closer to the house where he or she would be in firing range with that rifle.
“Go ahead to the panic room,” Bailey told Tracy. “If things get worse, I’ll join you.”
Tracy gave a shaky nod and took Caden from her arms. Bailey gave her son several kisses, which he tried to bat away. Obviously, he was cranky and still sleepy.
Jackson kissed the baby as well, and motioned for Tracy to leave, but he kept his attention on the monitor.
“Here,” he said, handing her the gun he had next to his laptop. “I’ll grab another one from my office. Keep watch on the screen, and if anything happens, yell for me.”
Oh, she would do that all right. Bailey didn’t want this monster anywhere near the house.
She heard Jackson run down the hall toward his office, and she saw more movement on the screen. Steven and his men were forming a circle around the intruder. It shouldn’t be long before they had him. Then they’d know the identity of the person who’d been making their lives a living hell.
The intruder froze. Maybe because he heard Steven. He lifted the rifle, taking aim.
Oh, God.
She prayed he didn’t shoot one of the men before they could take him down.
Bailey was still praying when she heard the sound. At first she thought it was Jackson hurrying back from his office. But it hadn’t come from the hall, it came from the front of the estate. It sounded as if someone had slammed a car door. Had one of the servants gone out for something? If so, Jackson wouldn’t be happy about that, because he’d ordered them all to the panic room.
She glanced in the direction of the window, but it was too far on the other side of the room. If she went there to look out, she wouldn’t be able to see the computer screen. Right now, the screen was critical, because it seemed as if Steven was only seconds away from reaching the intruder.
She heard Jackson’s footsteps.
Finally!
Bailey didn’t like him being out of sight at a time like this. She volleyed her attention between the laptop and the open door of the nursery. Waiting.
The next sound she heard, however, sent her heart to her knees.
There was a blast. Some kind of an explosion. And it seemed to rock the entire house.
Everything inside her froze for a moment. The windows hadn’t broken. There didn’t seem to be any signs of damage to the nursery.
“Bailey?” Jackson called out, and he raced into the room. He had a gun in each hand. “What happened?”
She shook her head, studied the images on the screen, and it didn’t take her long to find what she was looking for. There, at the back of the house, one of the utility vehicles was on fire. That was obviously the source of the explosion.
“Where’s Steven?” Jackson asked, but he didn’t wait for her to answer. He hurried to the computer and looked at the images.
Steven was still there, near the intruder in the dark clothes, but he’d stopped, as if trying to figure out what was going on.
Bailey was trying to figure out the same thing.
There was another deafening blast that rattled the windows and sent things falling from the walls and tables. She held onto the laptop and frantically searched the screen. It would have been impossible to miss.
Another vehicle was in flames.
“The intruder couldn’t be doing this,” Jackson mumbled, and he cursed. “There must be two of them.”
In the back of her mind Bailey had already come to that conclusion, but hearing it spoken aloud turned her blood to ice. This wasn’t a simple trespassing. And worse, it was possible the intruder had been a decoy to draw Steven and the others away from the estate. It’d worked.
“I need you to go to the panic room,” Jackson insisted, and he put one of the guns into her hands.
This time Bailey didn’t intend to argue with him. She wouldn’t go into the panic room itself, but she would instead stand guard outside to make sure no one got in.
“Don’t do anything dangerous,” she heard herself say. And she pressed a quick kiss to Jackson’s lips.
She turned to run into the hall, but Bailey didn’t get far.
A bullet came crashing through the nursery window.
Jackson cursed and pulled Bailey to the floor.
Hell. This couldn’t be happening again. He’d taken too many precautions for this, and no one should have been able to fire shots into the house again.
The new security alarm went off, the shrieking sound piercing the room, and the cold winter wind started to howl through the gaping hole in the broken glass.
He grabbed the laptop from the table and pulled it onto the floor with them. First he had to silence the alarms so he could hear what was happening. He didn’t want an intruder to use the shrill noise to cover up an actual break-in.
Jackson punched in the codes for the security system and temporarily disengaged the alarm. Only for a few seconds. Just to stop the sound. And then he rearmed the entire system so that it would alert them if another window was broken or a door opened in any part of the estate.
“Find the shooter on the screen,” he told Bailey, and keeping low, he scrambled toward the window.
“Stay away from there,” Bailey warned.
But he couldn’t. Since the bullet had come through the window, that meant the shooter was out there, and not on the fence this time, or it would have tripped the sensors. Or it should have anyway.
“See if you can pinpoint the gunman’s location for me,” Jackson asked. He stood, staying to the side of the window and peeked out. Nothing.
“I see Steven and his men but not the gunman,” she said. “Oh, God, the man wearing the dark clothes is running. I think he’s heading back to the fence.”
He was probably getting away or creating a diversion so the shooter could get closer to the house. Had the two crossed the fence together? That would have tripped the sensors and alerted Steven, but maybe then the pair had split up. Steven and the others might not even know they were dealing with more than one intruder, but Steven had no doubt heard those blasts and the shot.
Another bullet came crashing through the window.
Jackson jumped to the side and tried to dodge the shards of glass that spewed across the room.
Yes, there were definitely two culprits.
Maybe more.
“Stay down!” Bailey shouted.
Jackson would for now; but soon, very soon, he had to return fire to keep this person from getting closer. However, he couldn’t just blindly fire shots into the night, because his own men were out there.
“Where are Steven and the others?” Jackson asked Bailey. “And what about the sheriff?” But it was still too early for the sheriff to arrive. He was a good twenty, maybe twenty-five minutes out, and while it’d felt like an eternity, this ordeal was only about ten minutes old.
He glanced at her and saw she had her gaze nailed to the laptop. “Steven and one other man are running after the intruder. Two of your men are coming back toward the house.”
Good. “Where are they?”
She shook her head. “Somewhere on the grounds at the rear of the house. It’s hard to tell exactly where they are.”
Hell. “Hard to tell” meant he couldn’t shoot and try to end this situation.
But that wasn’t true for the gunman.
He sent three rounds, one right behind the other, slamming into what was left of the window.
“I need an exact location,” Jackson pressed. Because the sooner he had that, the sooner he could fire, and then he could get Bailey out of there and on the way to the panic room where she belonged.
It sickened him and riled him to the core that she was in danger again. Bailey had already been through way too much to have to deal with bullets coming at her again.
“I see your men,” she finally said. “They’re approaching the estate from the back, where that car is still burning.”
Good. That meant they weren’t on the west side of the house where the shots were coming from.
“Don’t get up,” Jackson reminded her.
He took a deep breath, darted out from cover, and fired through the gaping holes in what was left of the window. He figured it would take a miracle for him to hit the shooter, but that wasn’t what this was all about. He needed his own diversion, a way of getting the shooter to back down so it would buy Bailey some time.
Jackson fired two shots, keeping track of how much ammunition he used. He had several magazines in his pockets, but he didn’t want to go bullet-to-bullet with someone hell-bent on killing them.
Four shots came tearing right at him.
He cursed and ducked back against the wall. So much for his plan of buying some time. More shots came one right behind the other.
Jackson glanced at Bailey to make sure she was okay. She wasn’t. She was on the floor, shaking, and had a death grip on the gun and the laptop. However, despite the chaos all around them, she was still focusing on the computer screen.
“I see the shooter!” she shouted over the din of the bullets.
Since this guy didn’t seem to be letting up, Jackson made his way back across the room and to Bailey. Somehow, he was going to have to get her into the hall despite the fact that the bullets all seemed to be landing right around the door they would have to use to make their exit.
First though, Jackson needed to try to get a visual on everyone so he didn’t end up shooting the wrong person.
He kept his ear pinned to the sound of the shots so he could tell if they changed directions, and he also studied the computer monitor. He saw who he thought must be Steven. The Christmas lights helped with the illumination, but it was still night, and everyone was wearing dark clothes. From what he could tell, two of his men were definitely at the rear of the house, and they appeared to be trying to sneak up on the gunman.
“What now?” Bailey asked, her voice trembling.
Jackson was about to tell her they were moving to the panic room. Or rather, she was.
But just like that, the shots stopped.
So did Jackson’s heart.
He damn sure hadn’t wanted bullets coming at them, but if the shooter was firing, they had a good idea where he was.
“The doors and windows are all locked,” Jackson reminded Bailey, hoping it would help level her breathing.
Or were they?
He’d turned off the alarm after the glass had shattered. There’d only been—what?—a minute at the most between the time the first shot was fired and his cutting the sound of the alarm so he could hear if anyone broke in. Hell. He hoped someone hadn’t managed to get through one of the doors or windows during that short time before he reengaged the system.
If so, Bailey and he could be ambushed.
Jackson reached up and turned off the lights. It probably wouldn’t help at this point, because the shooter obviously knew where they were; but he didn’t want the overhead light to make it easier for the shooter to see them if and when he got Bailey out of there.
“Come on,” Jackson instructed. “Stay down and move fast. I want to get out into the hall as quickly as possible.”
She pulled in a hard breath and nodded. Her eyes were wide with fear, but she didn’t panic. Far from it.
“We’ll protect Caden,” she insisted.