Stork Alert by Delores Fossen

throats and mouths, and both were armed.
    “Lock down the place,” Nick ordered the housekeeper. “Secure all the doors and windows. And send someone to find Cooper.”
    “What’s going on?” Kelly asked. She hurried across the room and looked at the monitor. “My God. Are those the same two men who tried to kidnap Joseph and me?”
    “Could be.” And that meant these goons might try to do the same again.
    They wouldn’t succeed.
    Nick took the monitor, switched it to battery backup and began to race down the hall toward the nursery. Kelly was right on his heels. Nick threw open the door and spotted the babies playing on the floor. Greta was reading a story to them.
    The relief was instant. They were safe. For now. But Nick had to make sure it stayed that way.
    “What’s wrong, sir?” Greta asked.
    “We have intruders on the grounds. Call the sheriff just in case the silent alarm didn’t trigger when the men came over the fence, and then I want Kelly, you and the babies in the panic room.”
    Greta nodded. He saw terror in her eyes and in every inch of her body. “What are you going to do?”
    “I need to go out there.”
    Kelly was already shaking her head before he finished. “It’s too dangerous.”
    But she didn’t have a say in this. He couldn’t let those gunmen get any closer to the house. If that happened, they could fire shots inside, and anyone—including the babies—could be hit.
    “Lock the door when I leave,” he instructed. “And stay in the panic room.”
    Nick ignored Kelly’s protests and raced out to confront the enemy.

Chapter Ten
     
    Kelly’s hands were shaking as she locked the nursery door. Actually, she felt shaky all over, but she tried to contain her fear and concentrate on what had to be done.
    “We need to call the sheriff,” she said, and reached for the phone.
    “I’ll do it once we’re out of here,” Greta volunteered.
    First, though, she opened the door to what Kelly thought was a walk-in closet. But it was no ordinary closet. There was another door concealed at the back of it. Greta pressed in a code on a keypad tucked in the corner, and the door opened. Kelly soon saw that there was a short set of stairs that led to what Nick had referred to as the panic room. An apt word, since Kelly felt like panicking.
    Greta and she each scooped up a baby and hurried into the room. It was larger than the nursery and decorated in a similar style, but there were no windows, and the door that Greta used to shut them off from the rest of the house was metal. No doubt bulletproof.
    “You can use that to keep an eye on Mr. Lattimer,” Greta suggested, pointing to the security monitor on a table on the far side of the room. She put William on the floor to play, and Kelly did the same with Joseph.
    Kelly didn’t refuse Greta’s offer. While the woman made the call to the sheriff, Kelly stepped around the babies, who began to play with some stuffed animals, and hurried to the monitor. She quickly figured out how to use the tiny keyboard to switch camera angles.
    Kelly zeroed in on the intruders. Even though they had something covering the lower parts of their faces, she could see that one of them had dark hair. The other was at least a head taller and had a stocky build.
    They were in a pasture dotted with huge round hay bales, and were slowly making their way straight for the house. She did a quick assessment of their location and realized they were on the opposite side from the nursery and panic room. That didn’t mean they would stay there.
    “The sheriff’s on the way,” Greta relayed.
    Good. Unfortunately, they might need all the help they could get. But the question was—would the sheriff get there in time to stop something terrible from happening?
    Kelly used the keyboard to bring up new camera angles, until she found Nick. He was by one of the many barns, slowly making his way toward the men.
    Oh, God.
    He was going for a showdown, even though he was outnumbered.