A Father For Her Baby

She straightened to find Sanders smiling at his nephew as if he’d never seen anything quite so amazing. Her heart ached with the need to trust him, to trust someone. She reminded herself of the time Derrick had wanted her to have a risky test late in her pregnancy to determine the sex of the baby. She had refused. Sanders had sided with her, saying it was too dangerous. Derrick had been furious but he’d backed down. From then on, she’d trusted Sanders to be on her side when it really mattered.

“I left the doctor’s office that day to go to the construction site to see Derrick,” she said. Killhorn Condominium Complex, the largest development in the history of Big Sky, Derrick had bragged.

“Why didn’t you let me drive you?” Sanders asked now.

Did he really not know what happened that day? Kit felt a chill and glanced toward the oak grove behind the house. Sunlight caught in the branches and dropped shadows into the dense undergrowth. She had the horrible feeling that someone was out there, watching, listening. Derrick.

She shifted her gaze back to Sanders. Seven months ago. That’s when her life began to unravel. The day her husband’s ex-wife, Belinda, showed up at her door.

Belinda had stared at Kit’s swollen abdomen in shock. “I heard Derrick had a new wife but—”

“Derrick and I are expecting in June,” Kit had said quickly.

Belinda laughed. “I can see that you’re expecting, but that baby isn’t Derrick’s. I ought to know. I saw his test results. Derrick’s sterile.”

Sterile? Kit felt the earth crumble beneath her. She was one of the few people who knew Belinda could be telling the truth. Not even Sanders knew that the baby Kit carried wasn’t Derrick’s.

“That’s ridiculous,” Kit had said, fighting months of uneasiness about the odd circumstances surrounding her marriage. She clung to one statement her new husband had made. Derrick had promised her more babies, as many as she wanted. “What about the child you lost, the miscarriage?”

“What miscarriage?” Belinda gave Kit a pitying look. “I left Derrick because he tried to get me to secretly adopt a son for him. The man’s obsessed. He thinks not being able to father a son makes him less of a man.” Belinda shook her head. “And now he’s conned you into telling everyone this is his baby. He really got him an innocent this time.”

Kit had been stunned. Did Derrick want a son badly enough that he’d lie to her?

When she’d questioned him about Belinda’s claim that evening, he’d adamantly denied it, calling Belinda a liar. Kit had wanted to believe him. But the next day, when she’d seen Belinda at the doctor’s office with a black eye and a cut lip, she’d known the cause before Belinda even confirmed her suspicions. Derrick had done it because of what Belinda had told her.

“Why did you go to the job site without me?” Sanders asked again.

“I wanted to talk to Derrick about Belinda,” she said.

“Belinda? What lies is she spreading now? She’d do anything to hurt Derrick. I’m sure if you’d seen him on the job that day, he’d have straightened this whole thing out.”

“I did see him.”

Sanders frowned. “Derrick said he hadn’t seen you since that morning at the house.”

It came back in a flash of memory. Walking through the skeletal frame of the partially built block building, ducking beneath scaffolding, at first calling for Derrick, then moving forward silently as she followed the sound of raised voices. Deeper and deeper into the empty interior, she went, until she stood above the two men, looked down on them arguing below her.

And later, stumbling as she tried to flee, knocking over the stack of lumber. Her husband looking up at her. Had he really not seen her? “I saw him. I saw them both.”

Sanders looked confused. “Them? It was after quitting time. Was one of the crew still there?”

She nodded. “A young man. I heard Derrick call him Jason.”

Sanders closed his eyes and shook his head as if understanding had finally dawned. “Oh, Kit, you must have overheard the argument Derrick had with some college kid he’d fired.”

“It was more than an argument.”

“Come on, Derrick said the kid took a swing at him. But it couldn’t have been much of a fight, because it was over by the time I got there, and I couldn’t have been far behind you.”

“How did Derrick seem when you arrived?”

Sanders shrugged. “He was upset. He’d left the keys in his pickup and when he saw it was gone, he thought Jason had stolen it.”

“That was all he was upset about?”

“Well…” Sanders paused, then continued with a shrug, “You know how he feels about that truck. He was afraid the kid would wreck it. But then he realized you must have taken it.”

“What made him think that if he didn’t see me there?”

Sanders raised a brow. “The kid’s motorcycle was gone. And so were you. I’d told him you’d left the clinic before I’d arrived. Who else would dare to take Derrick’s new pickup?”

“You didn’t see anything at the job?” she asked hopefully.

He frowned. “Like what?”

Tears filled her eyes. She shook her head slowly. Derrick had told Sanders just enough to cover for himself. “I know what I saw.”

“What did you see, Kit?”

She blurted it out, desperate to say the words aloud, to finally tell someone. “I saw Derrick kill that man.”

Chapter Three (#ulink_f3198c90-53f7-5b33-8409-18caacbe9ba4)

“What?” Sanders stared at her. “Why would Derrick kill one of his employees?”

“I don’t know why,” she cried. “But I saw Derrick hit him with something.” She started to describe the tool.

“A crowbar,” Sanders interrupted, frowning.

“After Derrick hit him, the man fell to the ground.” Her body began to tremble, her breath came hard and fast, her mind filled with the horror of the memory. “Then Derrick lifted him and dropped him in a tank filled with water.” Tears coursed silently down her face. “The man struggled, but Derrick held him under. I saw the whole thing.”

Sanders said nothing for a few minutes. “Kit, Derrick told me the same story but with just a little different ending. He said he tossed the kid into the tank to cool him off, letting him up as soon as he quit fighting. Then Derrick ordered him off the job site, and the kid left. And he told me about the fight before he knew you had taken off.”

“He’s lying. Don’t you see—he made up that story after he saw me. I stumbled into some lumber. He looked up. He knows I saw what he did.”

“Kit, I’m telling you, he didn’t see you. And he certainly didn’t—”

“Is everything all right, Kit?” asked a male voice from the house.

Kit turned to find her boss, Tim Anderson, in the doorway. “Fine, Tim,” she said, unable to hide her relief that he’d come home early. “But would you mind taking the babies inside? I’ll join you in just a minute.”

“You didn’t tell him, did you?” Sanders said after Tim had closed the door.

She shook her head. “I haven’t told anyone. Just you.” She glanced toward the grove of trees, unable to shake the feeling that they were being watched.

“I understand now why you ran, Kit.” He sounded sympathetic, but also sad. “I just can’t believe you’d think Derrick could kill someone. Let alone that he’d somehow gotten away with it.”

“Everyone knows how powerful the Killhorns are in Big Sky—in the whole county.”