Undercover Assignment by Dana Mentink

Author:Dana Mentink
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2022-03-28T20:00:28+00:00

TEN

Sam hugged his sleepy boy to his chest as tightly as he dared. The warmth, the heft of him, comforted Sam’s soul enough for him to forget his pounding headache. “Thirsty,” Oliver mumbled.

“We’ll go get some water.”

“Juice?”

Sam smiled. Not too sleepy to test his father’s resolve. “Water,” Sam said firmly.

“Snack?”

“All right,” Sam said. “But no sugar. It’s almost breakfast time.”

The negotiations concluded, Sam carried Oliver out of his room past the library. He wanted to see Daniella, but he trained his gaze away from the door that was partly open, not wanting her to think he was being nosy. The way he’d left things still churned uncomfortably.

He padded into the kitchen, finding the half-eaten plate of cookies from some guest snackers. Before Oliver could snag one, he whisked them out of reach. Daniella entered abruptly from the outside, Zara primed and alert.

He tensed. “What...?”

She put a finger to her lips. “There’s a lower level room,” she whispered. “Where?”

“You mean the basement?”

“No,” she said with a tinge of impatience. “Something else. Through a small window, Zara saw someone sneaking around.”

“But there’s no—” His mouth closed with a snap. “Not a room, a crawl space. We converted part of it to storage after we had water damage in the old lodge. I forgot all about it.” Clod, he chided himself. How could he have forgotten with so much at stake?

“Where’s the access?”

He guided her to a broom closet in the corner next to the refrigerator. “Trapdoor in the floor.” He wanted to say all kinds of silly things about how he should check it first, and maybe she should watch Oliver. Laughable, since he was not the trained professional. He’d have to put the kibosh on his protective instincts. He didn’t have the right to push her away and insert himself as her backup.

She didn’t wait for his comments anyway. Pulling open the door, she and Zara vanished inside. He moved Oliver away into the living room and sat him down with his snack. “I’ll be standing right there while you eat, okay?”

Oliver’s eyes widened but he nodded, munching away on his cracker.

Grabbing a frying pan in one hand and trying to look nonchalant about it, Sam readied his cell in the other and stationed himself in the threshold between the two rooms. If anything went bad, or Daniella flushed out the intruder, Sam intended to stop them in their tracks before they left the kitchen. They would not reach his son in the living room. That was dead certain. He would do what he could to help Daniella whether he had a right to or not.

Thinking of her trapped in that contained space with an intruder made his fingers ice over. What was it like to be married to a spouse who performed such a dangerous job? Spouse? Why had that thought crowded in?

“Pay attention,” he commanded himself.

Footsteps distracted him and he whirled to find Mae coming through the kitchen door, a bag of groceries cradled to her hip. She started when she saw him.

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