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“She says no one does. She did admit that there is an apartment over the garage, however, and another apartment in the house built for servant quarters. She just claims neither are currently occupied.”
He’d ask Robin about that.
“Airplane is gone, no flight plan filed.” Hammond paused. “Anything on your end?”
“An officer called rental car companies. Richard Winstead hasn’t popped up anywhere.”
“So he either borrowed a car or has ID in an alternate name.”
“I’d guess the second. He wouldn’t want to trust even a friend to keep his mouth shut.”
“No.” Hammond sighed. “I have a patrol officer down at Boeing Field. I can’t guarantee he won’t get called away, though.”
“Understood.”
“Your father doesn’t think he wounded the guy?”
“Dad says he went for chest shots. One knocked the intruder backward into the kitchen island, but he rebounded quickly, fired a couple more shots and fled. Had to be wearing a vest.”
“Hmm. I guess he didn’t expect to face an armed opponent.”
“That’s my take. He’d have killed Dad, but when he failed with the first flurry of shots, he wasn’t confident enough to continue the attack.”
“Hard to explain a GSW to his distinguished guests tonight,” Hammond said drily.
Seth felt a smile tug at his lips. “Yeah, a gunshot wound might be socially awkward.”
Hammond sighed. “So what’s the plan?”
“I haven’t had a chance to plan,” he admitted. “For tonight, we’ll go back to Dad’s house. If this was Winstead versus hired muscle, we should be safe tonight.”
“What’s your gut feeling?”
“He only said a word or two, but Robin seems sure that this time it was him. Hiring someone to grab the boy is one thing. You could claim the mother has gone on the run with him, and you’re concerned for your son’s safety. Hiring a killer is another story. From what she’s said, Richard Winstead has a major ego problem. He’ll need to kill her himself, not have it done secondhand.”
“Can’t argue,” Hammond said, sounding weary.
After promising to keep each other updated, they left it at that. Seth returned to the waiting room, pausing in the doorway before Robin saw him. She looked exhausted, drained, although he knew the minute she saw him she’d go back to pretending she was fine.
His heart muscle cramped. She was beautiful to him even now, without makeup, with her hair unbrushed, without the spirit that had sparked his interest at that first meeting. He ached to see her truly relaxed and happy, teasing...or flushed and dazed with passion. The punch in his belly reminded him of how very vulnerable she was right now. He couldn’t push.
He walked over to her, irritated when she straightened in the chair despite the sleeping weight of the boy and smoothed out the lines on her face.
“Sergeant Hammond hasn’t found Winstead,” Seth reported, lowering himself into a chair beside her. “Seems as if he’s getting the runaround from staff and the senior partner in the law firm. He’s determined that the small plane Winstead owns is not in the hangar, though. If he rented a car when he got down here, he did it under another name.”
“That’s sort of ironic,” she said.
He smiled crookedly. “Yeah, it is. He could have asked for advice from you on how best to do it.”
“Except I didn’t do it well enough.”
Seth let that go. Would he ever have met her if her latest identity had stood up to scrutiny? “According to the housekeeper, your ex is entertaining tonight at home,” he said. “If that’s true, he can’t linger here in Oregon.”
“Will we know?”
“Hammond is going to call the house, insist on speaking to him.”
“Oh.” Some of her tension slid away. “Then...then we don’t have to worry tonight.”
He laid a hand briefly over hers, balled on the arm of the chair. “I can’t forget that he wasn’t the one who tried to abduct Jacob. If you’re sure?”
“Positive.”
“Okay. That means we can’t totally relax. Once I see Dad, though, we’ll go back to the house. With some precautions, we should be fine.”
