Nanny 911 (3 page)

“No.”

She tipped her chin up toward the ceiling “What kind of duct work do you have running up there?”

Officer Murdock was definitely an odd sort of woman, certainly nothing like the polished beauty of his executive assistant, Elise, or any of the other poised and tailored belles he escorted to society events. “Standard issue, I suppose. Although the access panels do have sensors to monitor whenever one opens or closes.”

Michael Cutler seemed to think she was onto something. He looked up at the air-return grate over Quinn’s desk. “Murdock. Call Taylor down and scout it out. Looks like there’s more than one way to get into your office, Quinn. The right perp could even lower the package through that grate without ever setting foot in here.”

The bothersome blonde paused by the desk on her way out the door. “Couldn’t the break-in be something more simple? Like, someone you know—someone who wouldn’t raise any suspicions if they were caught on camera walking into your office?”

Quinn bristled at the accusation. “The people who work at GSS are family to me. I surround myself with people I trust without question.”

“Well, that’s a problem, then, isn’t it?” She flipped her ponytail behind her back, looking up at him with an earnest warning. “You may be trusting the wrong guy.”

“Randy, go.”

Her captain’s brusque command finally moved her out of the room. “Sorry. Climbing into the rafters now, sir.”

Apparently, Louis’s interest in waiting for answers on the break-in—or for the promised text message—waned once she’d left the room. “I’ll be in my office if you need me,” he excused himself, “and
do
call as soon as you find out anything.”

“Randy?” Quinn asked after they’d both gone and he was alone in the office with Michael.

“Miranda Murdock.” The police captain shook his head, as if Quinn’s wasn’t the first curious reaction the SWAT sharpshooter had garnered from the people she met. “Believe me, what she lacks in tact, she makes up for in sheer determination. There’s not a task I’ve given her yet that she hasn’t accomplished.”

“Other than successful public relations.”

“She’s raw talent. Maybe a little too eager to get the job done at times. She matched the highest score for sharpshooting on the KCPD training range.”

“You have faith in her.”

“She wouldn’t be on my team if I didn’t.”

“Quinn?” The familiar knock at his door told Quinn that his assistant, Elise, had an important message for him.

“What is it?”

Elise tucked her dark hair behind one ear, hesitating as she walked into the room. Quinn braced for whatever unpleasant bit of news she had to share. “The current nanny has gotten wind of the threat against Fiona and wants to quit.”

He adjusted his glasses at his temple, snapping before he could contain a flash of temper. “I’m having a Mary Poppins moment here. How many nannies do I have to go through to get one who’ll stay?”

“She’s afraid, Quinn.”

“There’s a guard with Fiona at all times,” he argued.

“Yes, but not with the nanny,” Elise patiently pointed out. “Quinn, she has every right to be concerned for her safety. The guard’s first duty would be to Fiona, not her.”

Where was the loyalty to his family? The sense of responsibility? The devotion to his daughter? She was the fourth woman he’d hired this year—after firing the one he’d caught drinking at the house, and the one who thought spanking his three-year-old was an option, and filing charges against the one who’d tried to sell pictures of his daughter to a local tabloid. “Where is she now? I’ll double her pay if she stays.”

“Um…”

“Daddy!” Quinn understood Elise’s hesitation when the tiny dark-haired beauty who looked so like her late mother ran into his office.

“Hey, baby.” Quinn knelt down to catch Fiona as she launched herself into his arms. He scooped her up and kissed her cool, wind-whipped cheek as her long, thin fingers wound around his neck. “How’s my little princess today?”

“’Kay.” Even though she couldn’t read yet, he turned her away from the hateful note on his desk and bounced her on his hip. Fiona batted away the gloves that were clipped to the sleeves of her coat and held up her well-loved, oft-mended hand-sewn doll. Fiona’s bottom lip pouted out as she pointed to the bandage taped to the doll’s knee. “Petwa has a boo-boo.”

Quinn pulled up the cloth leg and kissed it, suspecting he’d find a similar first-aid job under the knee of Fiona’s corduroy pants. Although the initial flush of her cheeks had concerned him, he was relieved to see that Maria, the nanny du jour, had at least taken the time to dress his daughter properly for the winter weather and brush her curling dark locks back into a neat ponytail before abandoning her.

“There. She’ll be all fine now.” Stealing another kiss from Fiona’s sweet, round cheek, Quinn set her down and pulled off her hat and coat. He nodded toward the specially stocked toy box he kept behind the counter of the kitchenette at the far end of his office suite. “Okay, honey. You run and play for a few minutes while I talk to Elise.”

“’Kay, Daddy.”

He waited until the box was open and the search had begun for a favorite toy before he turned his attention to his assistant. He didn’t have to ask for an explanation. “The nanny didn’t call,” Elise told him. “She dropped Fiona off with me downstairs and left. I couldn’t convince her to stay.”

Quinn unbuttoned his jacket, unhooked the collar of his starched white shirt and loosened his tie, feeling too trapped from unseen forces and ill-timed inconveniences to maintain his civilized facade. He paced down to see with his own eyes that Fiona was happy and secure, playing doctor on her doll with a plastic stethoscope and thermometer.

He came back, scratching his fingers through his own dark hair. He needed to think. He needed answers. Now. “Can you watch her, Elise? I have work to do. I don’t want to leave until I resolve this threat.”

Elise’s mouth opened and closed twice before her apologetic smile gave him her answer. “For a few hours, maybe. But my parents are in town, Quinn. I’m supposed to be baking pies with my mother, and taking them to the candlelight service at church this evening. Besides, I can’t keep her safe. And if that threat is real…”

He had no doubt that it was. Three dead men in the Kalahari proved that. “You could come to the house. You know what kind of security I have there. There’s a panic room and armed guards.”

“And my parents?” He’d always admired Elise for her ability to gently stand up to him. “It’s Christmas Eve, Quinn.”

He was already nodding, accepting her answer, knowing it had been too much to ask. “Of course. I understand. I was just hoping I wouldn’t have to upset Fiona’s routine any more than it already has been.”

The vibrating pulse against his chest ended all conversation, blanked out all thought except for one more visual confirmation that Fiona was safe. Then he let the protective anger he felt purge any distraction from his system as he pulled his phone from inside the pocket of his suit jacket.

“Quinn?” Michael prompted, equally on guard.

He nodded, reading the message he’d been promised. “It’s the text.”

“What does it say?” Elise asked.

Quinn read the skewed nursery rhyme, filling in the abbreviations as he said the words out loud.
“Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary, how does your money grow? With silver bells and 2.5 million shells into 0009357:348821173309. Midnight tonight. Or there’ll be another present for your daughter.”

“What the hell?” was Michael’s reaction.

“It’s a riddle,” Elise needlessly pointed out.

“I get it,” Quinn assured them. “Mary was my mother. I have a memorial trust in her name. Whoever this coward is wants me to transfer two and a half million dollars into this account by midnight. Or…” He glanced over at Fiona’s laugh. He couldn’t imagine a world where someone had silenced that glorious sound. “I’ll transfer the money.”

“I don’t recommend that.” Michael took the phone from him, calling his tech guru Trip on the radio to get him up here to trace what Quinn was certain would be an untraceable number.

“What choice do I have, Michael? How can I fight the enemy when I don’t know who he is? And until we do find out where the threat is coming from, there’s no way to stop him from coming at me again.” He turned to his assistant. “Elise, contact my bank. Don’t let them close before I get there.”

“Yes, sir.” She hurried to her office to do his bidding.

Michael copied down the message. “What if you hadn’t understood the rhyme?”

“I don’t think this bastard is stupid. And he knows I’m not.”

Michael pointed toward the letter wrapped in the evidence bag. “This message says to make something right before New Year’s Eve. That’s a week away. It can’t be this simple, and he’s gone to too much trouble to have it all be over this soon.”

“Agreed.” Quinn propped his hands on his hips. “As long as I can keep Fiona out of this, I want to string this guy along until I can get my hands around his neck.”

Any further conversation stopped as the grate over Quinn’s desk swung open and Miranda Murdock lowered herself down through the opening to plop her combat-style boots on top of his desk. She’d stripped off her Kevlar and rifle and was brushing dust from her black uniform and snaggled hair. And she didn’t seem to see anything odd about making such an entrance.

“I think I found the way in, sir,” she reported to Michael, jumping down beside him. “Barring the whole ‘just walking through the front door’ scenario. Of course, the intruder would still have to alter the camera recording—and turn the sensors off for the few seconds it would take to get in and out.” She paused in her report, her sharp eyes turning to the side and widening enough that Quinn turned to see what had caught her attention.

Fiona. Standing in the middle of his office, her doll dangling to the floor beside her, looking up at the tall blonde woman as if a dusty angel had just descended from heaven.

Miranda’s lips twitched before settling into a smile. “Hey.”

The tiny frown that creased Fiona’s forehead gave her an expression that was more concerned than afraid, or even curious. “You falled.”

The SWAT officer looked up at the open grate, still swinging slightly from the ceiling where Fiona was looking. “Um, no. I crawled. And climbed. And…jumped.” She plucked a clump of cobweb from her hair, glancing toward Quinn and her commanding officer with a questioning plea before pointing a finger at his daughter. “But, you shouldn’t try that. It’s too high. I’m, you know, taller. And a grown-up.”

But the explanation had taken too long and Fiona had moved on to her real concern. Quinn’s hands curled into fists at his sides as Fiona walked right up to Miranda and held up her doll. “Petwa falled.”

“Oh. Um, well…” She snapped her fingers. “That’s exactly why you shouldn’t crawl through ceilings.”

Fiona stared.

Quinn gradually relaxed his protective stance. Not everyone got small children, nor knew how to communicate with them—and he suspected Miranda Murdock was on that list. But he could see she was doing all she could to allay Fiona’s worries.

“Not that your dolly—Petra, is it?—would do that. She needs to stay close to you. On the ground.” Seemingly as flummoxed by his daughter’s fascination as she’d been with Louis’s idle flirtation, she looked to her captain for help. “Sir?”

Michael nodded a dismissal. “Prove to me that you can get back out through that heating duct, and I’ll have Trip check the sensors there to see if they’ve been triggered by anyone else in the last twenty-four hours.”

That,
apparently, she could do. Needing no more encouragement, the twenty-something female officer climbed up on the desk and pulled herself back up into the ventilation duct in a skilled combination of pull-up champ and gymnast.

“She’s…different, isn’t she?” Quinn observed.

“Like I said, Murdock is gung ho. She’ll get the job done.”

“Michael.” Quinn usually found his instincts about people to be unerringly accurate. “I have another favor to ask of you. Just how much faith do you have in Miranda Murdock?”

Michael’s blue eyes narrowed. Perhaps he’d just had a similar brainstorm. “You’ve supplied my team with nothing but the best equipment since we first started working together. Your vest design saved my life from a bullet once. I figure I owe you.”

“Then I have a proposition for you.” Quinn scooped Fiona into his arms, drawing her attention away from the dusty blonde angel and the grate that had closed over their heads. “
We
do.”

Chapter Two

Miranda stilled her breathing, calmed the twitchy urge to blink and squeezed the trigger of her Glock 9 mil, landing five shots, center mass, through the paper target’s chest. Then just for good measure, and because the accuracy score of her shooting range trials was one thing she could control, she angled the gun and put a hole through the paper target’s head.

“You shouldn’t be alone at Christmas,” Dr. Kate Kilpatrick advised. The police psychologist was always full of advice during their sessions. “If your brother is still over in Afghanistan—”

“He is.”

“—then maybe you could volunteer at one of the city mission shelters, visit a shut-in in your neighborhood or invite a friend over for lunch.”

And just which of her friends would be available on Christmas Day? Certainly none of the men on her team. They all had families—wives, children, in-laws. They’d be real gung ho about giving up holiday family time to keep the “odd man out” on their team from being alone
on Christmas Day. Lonely was one thing. Pity was another.

Miranda pulled off her earphones and pushed the button to bring the hanging target up to the booth for a closer inspection. Instead of heeding Dr. K’s recommendation to find some company after her mandated counseling session that afternoon, Miranda had come to KCPD’s indoor firing range in the basement of the Fourth Precinct building to blow off steam.

All that touchy-feely stuff Dr. Kilpatrick wanted her to talk about got stuck in her head and left her feeling raw and distracted when they were done. Randy Murdock was a woman in a man’s world. Her brother, John, a KCFD firefighter who’d reupped with the Marines after the love of his life had married someone else, had raised her to understand that when the job was tough—like being a part of KCPD’s SWAT Team 1—that what she was feeling didn’t matter. Four other cops, and any hostages or innocent bystanders, were counting on her to get the job done. Period.