Free Hour of Need (Scarlet Falls) by Melinda Leigh Page B

crayons and paper tucked under the bowl in the center of the table. The fridge was covered with colorful, primitive drawings of stick people and grass and trees.
    “Would you draw me a picture?”
    “OK.” Carson breathed out the answer as if the request was a huge imposition.
    Great, he’d had the kids less than an hour and he was floundering already. Maybe that social worker was right to doubt him. A raw, wet sound jerked his attention back to the baby just as she spewed what appeared to be ten times more than she’d eaten all over herself, the car seat, and the floor.
    Karma had a sick sense of humor. The baby was an explosive.
    “I guess I have to get her cleaned up.”
    Carson huffed. “Better get used to it. She does that all the time.”
    Carson’s head was bent over his drawing. Grant lifted the baby out of her carrier, holding her at arm’s length. He found clean clothes in the laundry room. He wiped her off and changed her clothes and diaper, which took longer than field stripping and cleaning his rifle. But then his M-4 didn’t try to wiggle away from him. A bath would have to wait until he reconnoitered the baby-bathing facilities and did some research. Faith babbled and grabbed at her toes while Grant stuffed her into a one-piece suit with a zipper up the front. He drew the zipper up her chest, and she let loose again. Regurgitated formula splashed over both of them.
    Carson looked up from his drawing and heaved a long, disgusted sigh. The situation would have been funny if the prospect of Grant not being able to care for the baby wasn’t so terrifying.
    The social worker’s statement rang in Grant’s head. This baby is a challenge.
    Words that had seemed bitchy at the time now felt prophetic.

    With her pumps in her tote and snow boots on her feet, Ellie buttoned her wool coat, pulled on her gloves, and walked out the firm’s back door. She’d worked an hour over her official five p.m. quitting time to finish a rush client report, throwing off her evening schedule.
    She hurried around the building to the small parking lot. Still on her to-do list was a stop at the grocery store. The sun had fallen behind the buildings an hour before, and shadows stretched over the frozen ground. The wind whipped across the lot. Her boots crunched on the half-frozen snowpack. Ellie clutched her coat lapels together and dug her keys from her pocket. Her old minivan sat in the rear of the lot, where employees were required to park. Prime spots closer to the building were reserved for clients.
    Shivering, she passed into the shadow of a giant oak tree. She pressed the fob button, and her car doors unlocked with a chirp. Sliding behind the wheel, she started the engine and turned the heater on full.
    Something jabbed at her hip. Ellie jumped, her heart knocking against her rib cage.
    “Don’t turn around,” a male voice whispered.
    Without moving her chin, she rotated her eyeballs down and right. Just over the center console, a gloved hand pointed a gun at her lower back. As her eyes adjusted to the dark, she saw a shadow in her peripheral vision. A man lay on the dark floor behind the van’s front seat. Fear solidified in her stomach like ice.
    He motioned with the barrel. “Eyes front.”
    Her gaze snapped forward. Her panting breaths puffed out and fogged the windshield. There was no one in sight. The only other car in the lot was Roger’s Mercedes, and his office was in the front of the building. He’d never see or hear her. A hedge separated the law firm’s parking area from an oral surgeon’s lot next door. Not that it mattered. Their office wasn’t open on Tuesdays.
    Options whirled in her head. She couldn’t get out of the car faster than he could pull the trigger. The way the gun protruded from between the seats, there wasn’t room for her to try and grab it. The close quarters also made getting out of the way of a bullet impossible.
    He prodded her again. The muzzle poked her in the kidney. “Pull