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hed in, lifted her hand, and smacked her on the side of the head.
“Hey!”
She pulled her hard against her breast. “You scared the life out of me.”
“MA!” Button squawked.
As Nealy clutched Lucy and gazed at the irate baby, she knew she’d reached one more crossroad in her life.
There was no sign of the dark blue Taurus. The space in front of the garage that held the motor home was empty. And Nealy was gone.
Mat had already searched the house for clues, but what he’d found—Nealy’s satchel partially packed with her clothes—didn’t tell him anything he didn’t already know.
His fear was growing by the minute. Something was very wrong. The girls should have been back by now, the motor home should be here, and Nealy—
He heard a car door slam and raced to the front porch in time to see her emerge from the passenger side of the Taurus. He didn’t mean to yell, but he heard himself do it anyway.
“Are you all right? Where have you been?” He rounded on the Secret Service agent who was standing next to her. “What happened? Have you been hassling her?” He didn’t wait for the guy to answer, but confronted Nealy again. “Where’s the motor home? Where are the girls?”
She turned away from him as if he didn’t exist. Just then, the motor home lumbered into the drive with the female agent behind the wheel.
“The girls are inside Mabel,” she said so coolly she might have been talking to a stranger. Then she gazed at Williams. “How much time can you give me?”
“Not much, Mrs. Case. We have to report in.”
Mat’s stomach sank.
“Not until I say so,” Nealy replied. “I need at least an hour.”
Williams regarded her unhappily. “I don’t think that will be possible.”
“Unless you want to be known as the agent who lost Cornelia Case for the second time, you’ll make it possible.”
He seemed to realize the deck was stacked against him and gave a slow nod. “An hour.”
DeLucca stepped out of Mabel. Lucy followed, with Button hanging heavily from her arms. Lucy wasn’t in any hurry to get closer to him, which pretty much told Mat everything he needed to know about who was responsible for whatever had happened.
He gazed at her as he took Button away. “Get in the house.” The baby curled against his chest as if he were the world’s most comfortable pillow. Her eyelids drooped.
Lucy shot Nealy an imploring look. “He’s going to kill me.”
“We’ll all go inside.” Nealy walked ahead, not looking at him, her spine straight as a flagpole.
He watched the agents disperse, one toward the front of the house, one toward the rear. Nealy lived like this all the time, he realized, with people watching her, guarding her, hounding her. He’d understood it intellectually, but that was different from watching it happen.
They headed for the sunporch. Lucy was looking for a fingernail she hadn’t already bitten to the quick and trying to figure out how to tell him what he’d already figured out. His sister Ann Elizabeth had been fifteen when she’d taken off in the family car, but she hadn’t brought a baby with her.
Lucy slouched into the brown wicker armchair, doing her best to bristle with attitude but not pulling it off. Nealy, looking stiff and formal, positioned herself in the opposite chair as if she were getting ready to preside over an unpleasant staff meeting.
He sat on the couch and lay sleepy Button next to him, then shifted his legs so she couldn’t roll off. Nealy regarded him as if he’d just crawled out of a piece of spoiled meat.
“Can I assume this is off the record?”
He deserved it, so her snipe shouldn’t have made him so mad. “Don’t push me.”
“A simple yes or no will do it.”
She knew he’d never exploit the girls, but he took his medicine and said tightly, “Off the record.”
