The Mummy Mystery

He just stared at her for several long moments. “How the hell could you think that?”

“Well, it’s one of the few theories that makes sense. Maybe, like me, you desperately wanted a baby, and you decided this was the way to go about it. You might have figured that, once I gave birth, you could step in and challenge me for custody. And then you’d have the child you always wanted with your wife.”

Houston cursed, and it seemed to take him a moment to rein in his own fit of temper. “First of all, I’d forgotten about the embryos. I thought Lizzy and I had used them all on our last try at in vitro. And if I’d wanted a surrogate, I would have hired one—the best money could buy. I wouldn’t have tricked you into it.”

Gabrielle let that sink in. Slowly. And she repeated it to herself. It sounded … reasonable but it didn’t explain everything.

“Someone’s been following me since the hostage incident,” she admitted. “I keep losing him, but then he pops up again. The last time, three days ago, the person used a dark green Range Rover.”

Houston threw up his hands. “Maybe the gunmen from the hospital had an accomplice after all. Then again, it could be your imagination running wild. You seem to have a tendency to do that.” He pointed his index finger at her. “Look, I don’t care. Right now, I only want you to take me to my son.”

“He’s not yours!” she yelled. “Lucas is mine!”

The horse whinnied and pranced around, moving even farther toward the back of the stables.

Gabrielle immediately hated the outburst. She didn’t want the sheriff and the foreman to hear her and come in after her. She didn’t want to go to jail, because heaven knows how long it would take all of this to be settled. And in the meantime, the courts would no doubt give temporary and then permanent custody to Houston.

He had both biology and money on his side. Even though she hadn’t stolen the embryo or manipulated the situation in any way, she might not be able to prove her innocence.

“Where is he?” Houston demanded.

“Someplace safe.”

That was all she intended to tell him. She might not be able to keep Lucas from him forever, but she would try.

“Three days ago, I saw the license plates of the person who followed me,” she explained. “The person driving that dark green Range Rover. And I took a picture of the plates with the camera on my cell phone. I had a friend run them through the database, and I learned the vehicle belongs to you.”

“Me?” he challenged.

“You. And that’s why I believe you’re behind this. Why else would you follow me? The cops didn’t have the latest DNA results until yesterday.” That’s when they’d called and left her a message on her work cell phone, even though they could have known earlier than that. “And they only officially told you about Lucas just now. So how did you know three days ago to follow me?”

He couldn’t have, unless he’d known about all of this before today. “This doesn’t make sense,” Houston finally said.

For the first time since she’d heard those results, Gabrielle breathed a little easier. “No, it doesn’t. And if I’m to believe that you had no part in this, then who else would have done it? ”

His glare returned. “Maybe you. Maybe you figured I was your permanent meal ticket.”

Now Gabrielle was the one to glare. They were right back where they started. It was clear she wasn’t getting anywhere with this explanation or argument, and that meant it was time to leave.

Besides, she’d already been away from Lucas for nearly three hours, and it would take her thirty minutes or more to get back to him. She’d left breast milk in a bottle for the nanny to give him, but it wouldn’t be long before her son wanted to nurse. Ditto for her. She could feel the pressure in her breasts, and that wrestling match with Houston hadn’t helped matters.

“Lucas is my son,” she said, under her breath. Only hers. And it would stay that way.

She turned and started to walk toward the back doors, but Houston latched on to her arm and spun her around.

“I will see him,” he insisted.

Gabrielle decided to placate him—or rather, lie. “All right. You can see him tomorrow morning. I’ll call you with the address.”

He didn’t exactly roll his eyes, but it was close. However, the man’s voice cut off another stinging remark he was obviously about to make.

“Houston?” the man called out, and the front stable doors flew open.

Gabrielle darted to the side, next to the stall, but instead of going in it where she’d be trapped, she ducked around the front and then behind the tack shelves again.

“Dad,” Houston answered. “What do you want?”

Mack Sadler was an older, genetic copy of Houston. Houston didn’t look at his father, but he angled his body so he could keep an eye on Gabrielle.

“I made the sheriff tell me what he told you,” Mack announced. “Is it true? Did that Markham woman really steal one of those eggs Lizzy had stored and use it to give birth to your son?”

Houston blew out a long breath before he answered. “It seems that way.”

Mack went closer, and Gabrielle used the sound of the man’s footsteps to move farther behind the shelves. She began to inch her way toward the open doors. Maybe Houston’s father would distract him long enough for her to get out of there. That was a long shot, of course, but it was the only one she had.

“Well, hell.” Mack shook his head and propped his hands on his hips. “You gotta get the boy. He’s a Sadler, and he belongs here at the ranch with us. Where is he?”

“I’m not sure,” she heard Houston say.

“Then find him. Hell, I’ll find him.” Gabrielle made it to the door, but Houston was staring at her.

“Don’t worry, I intend to get the baby,” he assured his father. “But for now, I need just a little time to come to grips with this.” Houston paused, swallowed hard and tipped his head to the horse. “Could you see to Bear? I’m going for a walk.”

His father didn’t protest, though he did take his time looking at Houston before he started toward the horse. That was Gabrielle’s cue to get moving again. She darted out from behind the tack shelves and bolted for the door.

She started running. And she didn’t look back.

However, she didn’t have to look back to hear the sound of the racing footsteps behind her. Houston was following her.

Gabrielle wasn’t surprised. In fact, she’d expected it, but she had a good head start on him. She needed to make it to her car, which was still parked in front of the main house so she could try to drive away.

That wouldn’t stop him.

Houston would continue to follow her; but if she could just get back onto the highway, she might be able to lose him. Then, she could pick up Lucas and the nanny and go into hiding again. This time, she wouldn’t come out until she had all of this mess settled.

Gabrielle’s heart pounded harder with each step. Her lungs felt ready to burst. She was out of shape and hadn’t run since early in her pregnancy, but she used every bit of her energy and resolve to race across the yard and to the front. Thankfully, she’d left the car unlocked, and she jerked open the door and dove inside. Not so thankfully, her keys were in her pocket, and she had to dig for them.

She finally pulled them free, jammed the key into the ignition and started the car. She had barely touched the accelerator, when the passenger door flew open and Houston jumped inside.

“Keep going,” Houston demanded.

He wasn’t breathing hard and certainly didn’t look as if he’d just sprinted across his massive yard. But he did look intense. Eyes narrowed. Mouth tight. His jaw muscles were working hard against each other.

“I said keep going,” he repeated. “Drive. Take me to my son. Or I’ll call the sheriff and have him arrest you right now.”

Oh, God. Some choice. Revealing her son’s location or jail.

If she went to jail, it was all over. The nanny, Lily Rose, would eventually start making calls to find out where she was. That would in turn lead the police to Lucas. Then Houston would take him.

But if she pretended to cooperate with Houston, it might buy her some time.

Gabrielle put on her seat belt and drove away from the ranch. Houston put on his belt, too, and then turned to face her.

“I figure you’re up to something,” he accused. “You’re trying to decide the best way to ditch me. That’s not going to happen, Gabrielle. I didn’t come up with this so-called plan to produce a baby, but the child exists now, and I won’t walk away from him.”

Gabrielle knew she should just shut up, but she couldn’t make herself stop. “You might have to walk away when I prove you orchestrated this. I took a picture of the car that followed me, the one registered to you.”

He stayed quiet a moment. “Then why not just go to the police?”

“I considered it. But then I decided you’d have some kind of explanation, or enough cops in your pocket, that I’d be the one who ended up in jail.”

“I don’t own any cops, and there are several logical explanations. Someone could have used fake license plates. Or maybe the photo isn’t clear and you had your friend run the wrong numbers. Stating the obvious, again, but you could also be lying because you think I’ll give you a big payout for giving birth to Lizzy’s and my baby.”

Gabrielle huffed and took the turn to the farm road that would lead her to the highway. From there, she would take the interstate south, the opposite direction she’d need to go if she had any intentions of driving Houston to see Lucas.

“I didn’t lie,” she insisted, though she knew it wouldn’t do any good.

“How much money did you plan to ask for?” Houston wanted to know.

“None. Because Lucas is not for sale.”

Houston obviously ignored that. “How much? Because you know what? As much as this disgusts me, I’ll give you fifty million for him.”

She made a sound of outrage.

“Seventy-five million,” Houston countered.

That did it. Thankfully, there wasn’t anyone behind her because Gabrielle slammed on her brakes. Her tires squealed in protest, and she brought the car to a jarring halt amid the fumes and smoke of the rubber burning on the asphalt.

Gabrielle grabbed him by his shirt, gathering up wads of fabric in her fists, to make sure they would have a face-to-face conversation and complete eye contact. “I didn’t have Lucas so I could sell him to you, or anyone else. I had him because I’ve wanted a baby my entire life, and I didn’t want to wait until Mr. Right showed up so I could have a traditional family. Lucas is my family now. Your late wife might be his biological mother, but I carried him for nine months. I gave birth to him.”

She fought it, but the emotion clogged her throat, making her voice a whisper. Tears sprang to her eyes. “He’s my baby, and I won’t let you take him.”

Houston opened his mouth, probably to return verbal fire, but he stopped and glanced behind them. When he didn’t bring his gaze to hers, Gabrielle looked to see what had captured his attention.

It was a black car.

And it had come to a stop about thirty yards behind them.

“Is that the same car that you said was following you, the one that belongs to me? “ he asked.

Gabrielle turned fully in the seat so she could get a better look. Not that she needed it.

She recognized the black car with the heavily tinted windows. That tint made it impossible to see the driver or anyone else who might be in the vehicle.

“No. I told you that was a Range Rover,” she clarified. “The one behind us is a different vehicle, but I have seen it before.”

“When and where?” he snapped.

She fought through the fog in her head so she could remember. “The first time was the day I took Lucas home from the hospital.”

“The day you stole him.”

That should have given her another jolt of anger, but she was too concerned about that menacing vehicle behind them. “I didn’t steal him. After the hostage situation ended, the police had completed the DNA test on him, and I figured we were free to go. My mistake was in not telling the police that I used a donor embryo. Needless to say, I wasn’t thinking straight after being held at gunpoint for hours.”

“But you had something to hide,” Houston reminded her. “Because you went on the run.”

“Yes, because of that car back there. I thought it was following me, and I was afraid it might be someone involved with the hostage situation.”

“An accomplice?” he questioned.

She nodded. “I figured that was a strong possibility, so I asked for police protection. They didn’t have the resources to provide a round-the-clock guard, but they did say they would send an officer to patrol my neighborhood. I didn’t think that was enough.”

He made a sound that was possibly an agreement. If he’d lived through the hostage situation as she had, he wouldn’t have thought it was enough, either.

“I lost sight of the car that day,” she continued, “but it reappeared about a week later, outside the hotel where I was staying. That’s when I changed locations.” And why she continued to change.

The fear started to grow. That same fear that’d caused Gabrielle to be on the run for the past six weeks. “Please tell me you know who’s in that car. Is it someone who works for you? “ she asked, hoping.

“No.” And Houston didn’t hesitate, either. He took out his phone.

Gabrielle grabbed his wrist to stop him. “If you call the sheriff, he’ll take me into custody for questioning. Maybe he’ll even arrest me for what the cops think is an illegal surrogacy. If I’m arrested, you’ll never find Lucas.”

Houston volleyed glances between the car and her. The vehicle started to inch its way toward them. “You said you had Lucas hidden safely away?”

“Yes. Of course,” she answered, cautiously.

“Good. Because that’s not one of my vehicles back there, but it could belong to someone connected to the hostage situation.”

Her fear went up another notch, even though she’d already been through this mentally a hundred times. “But why follow me? If they want to eliminate a potential witness, why not just try to kill me?”

“Maybe because they haven’t had the right opportunity. Maybe they wanted to wait to kill you when they figured there would be no one around to see. Like now, for instance, when you’re on a deserted country road.”

Oh, God. He could be right.

“Start driving,” Houston instructed. “But keep your speed down.”

She glanced at the car, nodded and got her own vehicle moving. Thankfully, the black vehicle stayed put.

“If the gunmen did have an accomplice, would he have known that you had a child?” Houston asked her.

Gabrielle didn’t have to think long about that. “Probably. Lucas was born in the hospital not long after the gunmen stormed the place. After I delivered him, the gunmen made the nurse take him and put him in the nursery because they wanted all the babies in one place.”

She shuddered and bit her bottom lip to keep those nightmarish memories at bay.

Houston cursed and shook his head. “Could this accomplice know that he’s my son?”

She started to say no, but the truth was, Gabrielle had no idea, because she didn’t know who these people following her were. She’d been a lawyer long enough to know that leaks happened. Information could be misdirected. And people could be bribed.

“Oh, God,” she whispered.

“Yeah,” Houston agreed. “There could be a good reason why the accomplice hasn’t already killed you. They might want you to lead them to Lucas. That way, they have you, Lucas and about a billion dollars they can demand for my son’s ransom.”

Gabrielle’s gaze flew to the rearview mirror.

The black car was coming right at them.

Chapter Three

Houston wanted to curse. How the hell had he let this situation come to this?

He should have tackled Gabrielle when she ran from the barn, or else forced her to stay put while he made arrangements to go and get the baby. He damn sure shouldn’t be sitting on a backcountry road with would-be kidnappers who might be ready to pounce.

A billion dollars was lot of motive to get a potential kidnapper to force Gabrielle into revealing Lucas’s location. God knows what they would do to her to get the information they wanted.

Houston laid his phone on the dash so his hands would be free. “Do you have ammunition for this?” he asked, taking the Saturday-night special from the back waist of his jeans.

She gave a shaky nod but didn’t take her eyes off the black car behind them. “In the glove compartment.”

Houston jerked it open and started to load the gun.

“What should I do?” she wanted to know.

“Keep driving.” Not that he thought that would solve their problem. The car would probably continue to follow them. But anything was better than just sitting there waiting for the worst to happen.

Houston finished loading the gun then he grabbed his phone.

“No!” she insisted. “You can’t call the sheriff. What if he’s in on this? If the DNA information was indeed leaked to the men following us, he might have been the one to do it.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“Well, as a minimum, he told your father about Lucas, something you asked him to keep to himself.”

“True. But you don’t know my father. He can be a very persuasive man. He probably convinced the sheriff I was on the verge of suicide or something.”

Sheriff Whitley was decent and honest. But Houston didn’t know his deputies nearly as well. Or any of the people who worked in the sheriff’s office. One of them could be in on this, and Gabrielle was right—a call to the sheriff might be giving yet more information to the wrong people.

“I’ll hold off calling him for now,” Houston let her know. He angled the visor so he could use the attached vanity mirror to keep watch on the car behind them. As expected, it was still there. “But I need to talk to Dale, my foreman.”

“You can trust him?”

“If I couldn’t, he wouldn’t be working for me,” Houston said, assuring her. He scrolled through the names, hit the call button, and Dale answered on the first ring. “You okay?” his foreman immediately asked. “For now. But I got a problem and I need your help. This stays between us, got that? Not a word of it to my father.”

“I understand. What do you need me to do?”

“First, I want you to get two ranch hands, ones you trust. Ones who are good with a gun and can keep a calm head. Have them take one of the trucks and drive out to Farm Road six six one, so they can follow me. I’m in Gabrielle Markham’s blue Ford. She’s the one who just drove away from the ranch. We’ve got someone who’s tailing us, and I’d like a chance to talk to that someone.”

Dale’s breathing was suddenly audible. So was Gabrielle’s, and she gripped on to the steering wheel so hard that she’d likely have bruises. She was scared and had good reason to be.

Hell, he was scared, too.

Not for himself. Not even for her. But for the son he’d just learned he had.

Later, he would have to come to terms with that. Later, he’d celebrate and file away all the emotions and old pain that was now right at the surface. Lizzy and he finally had the baby they’d always wanted, and that baby was at risk.

“Houston, are you okay?” Dale repeated.

“I will be when you get those ranch hands out here. Don’t call Sheriff Whitley yet. Instead, phone my old friend, Jordan Taylor, the security specialist in San Antonio, and have him run the license plate, VSM seven six eight,” he read from the black car that was following them. “And I need you to do one final thing.”

“Just say the word.”

In some ways, this would be the most unsavory request of all. But it was a necessary one. “Check through the records of the ranch’s vehicles and see who last used the green Range Rover and when.”

“Will do,” Dale assured him. “I’ll call you when I have news, and I’ll get help out to you right away.”

Houston hung up and put the phone on the seat next to him so he could reach it in a hurry.

“Which way should I go?” Gabrielle asked, drawing Houston’s attention back to her. The sign ahead pointed to the turn for the highway.

“Stay on this road,” Houston instructed.

It was deserted, which meant there would be no one around to help if those guys started shooting, but he knew this road like the back of his hand, and Gabrielle and he might need to take one of the old ranch trails if necessary. That would be a last option, but Houston wanted to keep that possibility available.

“If that’s the gunmen’s accomplice back there and he’s really after Lucas, then he won’t kill us,” he tried to assure Gabrielle.

Not intentionally, anyway. But such an accomplice would likely want to keep Gabrielle alive only so they could get Lucas’s location.

Which she probably wouldn’t give up.

So they could indeed kill her, and then figure out another way to get the child. Houston was expendable, too, because they could always get the money from his father, who was wealthy in his own right. But Houston didn’t want to let things get that far.

Best to stop this now, so he could go about seeing his son.

Gabrielle sucked in her breath. “They’re speeding up.”

Because Houston had his attention nailed to the other vehicle, he noticed it immediately. Gabrielle sped up, too.

That was all right for now; but within two miles or so, there were some deep curves, and Houston didn’t want her losing control of the car and slamming into the thick trees that lined the road.

Houston got the gun ready, just in case. He watched the black car come closer. And closer. It was closing in on them fast.

“Brace yourself,” Houston warned Gabrielle.

But the words had hardly left his mouth when the black car bashed into their rear bumper. The jolt tossed them forward, a fierce jerking motion that caused his teeth to hit together. He tried to steady himself and kept a tight grip on the gun.

“You’ll have to slow down ahead,” Houston warned her.

The car rammed into them again.

Houston heard the scream bubble up in Gabrielle’s throat, but she clamped on to her lip to stop the full sound. She was obviously terrified. So was he. If they both died right here, right now, what would happen to his son?

Gabrielle did as he asked and slowed down, which only made the next jolt even harder. The black car was bigger, and obviously, the driver wasn’t concerned about damage, because he bashed into them again. And again.

This time though, the car didn’t fall back to launch another assault. It stayed pressed right against their bumper, and the driver sped up.

The SOB was trying to make them crash. And with those curves ahead, he just might succeed.

“Hit your brakes.” Houston had to yell over the sound of the metal grinding against metal.

Gabrielle did, and that kicked up a curtain of smoke and sparks. But they still didn’t stop. The black car kept propelling them forward, even though it was now a slow, creeping speed.

Houston quickly thought of the road that lay ahead, and just on the other side of the upcoming curve, there was a ranch trail to the right. It was wide enough for Gabrielle to turn onto safely.

He hoped.

Then, maybe she could get far enough ahead on the trail so that they could stop and try to protect themselves. If he could get some cover, like an outcropping of rocks or a cluster of trees, he’d be able to make a stand. Against who or what exactly, he didn’t know, and that bothered him. Houston had no idea if he was up against one or many, because it was hard to see through the tint on the windshield. It was also possible that some of the car’s occupants could have ducked down and out of view.

The smoke from the brakes and tires was so thick now that he could hardly see the car behind them, but he could feel it. The driver was trying to push them to the right, off the road. And for now, Houston would use that to his advantage.