by Mia Sheridan
“Didn’t you see the news around then? The hunt for the baby stolen from Josie Stratton?” Jimmy asked, voice still somehow soothing, though Zach heard the underlying note of anger in his partner’s voice, even if Janelle Gilbert did not.
“I read about that crime, about that baby. But the father of that child, and the man who’d abducted that woman killed himself. This was clearly Charlie’s son. There was no denying it.”
“Where’d he go, Ms. Gilbert?” Zach asked, his voice low, menacing even to his own ears.
She looked hollowed out, her darkly circled eyes staring vacantly, lips bloodless. “He was placed with a couple who live in Kentucky, right across the bridge. A loving couple. He was placed with good people, Detectives. I made it right, the thing I’d gotten so wrong the first time. I made it right for Charlie.”
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Josie felt stir-crazy. At least at her own home, she’d had plenty of work to keep her busy, even if she had to accept the fact that she was being shadowed by members of the CPD. She paced Zach’s bedroom, looking out the window now and again to watch for his car pulling up to the curb outside his apartment building. It was after four o’clock and he’d left early that morning. Where was he and why hadn’t he called her?
She hated feeling caged. She rubbed her hands over her bare arms, trying to push away the resentment at Zach for leaving her there, trapped in a single room. He was working. He was trying to solve a case not just for her, but for the other women Cooper . . . Charles had murdered, including her own mother. Zach was out slaying dragons and she was bitter about it. She felt ashamed of herself.
And truthfully, her own desire to be alone was trapping her. She could go out to the living room where the other two officers were. She could chitchat with them, watch television, whatever it was they were doing. She just didn’t want to.
Josie sank down onto the edge of Zach’s bed, putting her hands over her face. It felt like there was a balloon in her chest, slowly expanding so that it would eventually burst, blowing her to smithereens.
She heaved out a breath, picking up the remote and turning the TV on. She settled on a cooking show and was able to zone out for half an hour as the chef went through the steps of preparing chicken marsala. When a commercial came on, she flipped around for a few minutes, pausing when she heard Zach’s name. Josie sat up straighter, watching as Zach exited a restaurant—what looked like a small sandwich shop—his arm around a pretty, flaxen blonde as he attempted to shield her face from the cameras, tucking her against him and dodging the questions that reporters threw at him. Josie’s heart stalled at the obvious intimacy between Zach Copeland and the unknown blonde woman, old feelings of betrayal and inadequacy rushing to the forefront of her heart and mind and causing a whooshing in her brain.
She heard the front door open and clicked the TV off quickly, standing and wiping her shaking hands down her hips as she listened to Zach greet the other two officers. Obviously, whatever she’d seen on the news had been from earlier.
The bedroom door opened and Zach came in, a strange look on his face that made her muscles tense. But then he smiled at her, even if his smile was a little sad.
“Where have you been?” she asked and cringed at the accusatory tone in her voice. Josie had the sudden urge to turn away, hide her face. She felt a scream rising up inside of her, a screeching wail that had been building since the day before. Zach had helped her release some of it the previous night, but it was gaining ground again, demanding to be heard.
“Working.”
“I saw you on the news,” she said, lacing her hands in front of her, casting her eyes down. “Coming out of a restaurant.”
Zach removed his gun and holster and set them on top of his dresser, turning to her. “Yeah. I grabbed a sandwich with my sister while we were waiting for some information to come in. I don’t even know how reporters were there. Maybe someone recognized me and called them.” He scratched his jaw. “This case has gotten big. Every reporter in Cincinnati is vying for a headline.”
His sister. “Your sister?” she whispered. “She . . . she doesn’t look anything like you.”
A small smile turned up his beautiful lips. And now that the haze of jealousy had cleared and she was really looking at him, he appeared so tired. Defeated almost. “I’m adopted.”
“Oh.” She frowned, thinking back to the things he’d told her about his family. “You didn’t mention it.”
“I forget sometimes.” He scrubbed at his face. “Josie . . .”
She tilted her head. Something was wrong. The internal scream amplified.
He walked to her, wrapping his hands around her upper arms and guiding her to the edge of the bed where he lowered her gently, and then sat down next to her. She stared at him, her heart beating triple time. “Josie,” he started again and then stopped.
“Tell me,” she whispered hoarsely. “Just tell me, Zach.”
He met her gaze, those midnight eyes that spoke of goodness, of safety, of a life she’d only ever imagined. “We found your son.”
Her heart dropped like a boulder as a strangled cry emerged from her lips. She grasped at Zach’s shirt. “Where? Where is he?” she cried desperately.
He raised his hands and covered hers, holding her fists against him. “He lives in Kentucky. He lives right across the bridge, Josie. Fifteen minutes from here.”
Hot tears were flowing like a river down her cheeks as she tried to continue breathing, tried to control the quaking that had taken over her body. “Is he okay? He’s healthy? He’s okay?”
“Yes. He’s fine. He’s perfect. He’s an ordinary eight-year-old boy.”
Josie tipped forward, her head hitting Zach’s chest as she sobbed, still fisting the material of Zach’s shirt, holding on for dear life. My boy. My boy. He’s safe. He’s alive.
When she’d managed to catch her breath, she turned her head so Zach could hear her question. “Who has him?”
He used his hands, still held over Josie’s fists to gently push her backward so he could look into her eyes. In his expression she saw heartbreak, empathy, and conflict. He was struggling. He told her about the social worker they’d met with the day before, Janelle Gilbert, and about her attorney sister. He told her how Cooper . . . Charles had taken a tiny infant to her and asked for her help. He told her about the couple who’d adopted her child while she lay bleeding and devastated in a hospital less than half an hour away. “They thought it was a legitimate adoption, Josie,” he told her, his voice husky with sadness. He let go of her fisted hands, smoothing her hair back from her face. “They didn’t know.”
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Josie’s hands lay laced in her lap, her muscles tensed to the point of cramping as she waited for Mr. and Mrs. Davies to arrive. Their lawyer sat across from her and Zach, seemingly relaxed as she typed into her phone.
Zach put his hand on top of hers, squeezing lightly, and she shot him a small nervous smile. He looked exhausted, and she knew he was, because he was being torn in every direction as he both worked to locate Reagan and offer support to her. And she was grateful, so very grateful that because of him, she was able to turn her attention to her found child with the full knowledge that absolutely no stone was being left unturned in the hunt for her friend.
Zach removed his hand from hers just as the door opened and her own lawyer, the man Zach had helped her retain directly after she’d learned of her son’s fate, escorted them into the room.
As introductions were made and the Davies’s lawyer greeted them, Josie took in the attractive couple. The woman’s eyes were red and puffy as though she’d been crying, and her face was etched with shock. She was petite, with straight, shoulder-length brown hair and wide blue eyes. Her husband was tall with wavy dark-blond hair and a short beard. He glanced at his wife worriedly and then they took their seats.
They all stared for a moment, the couple obviously as curious about Josie as she was about them. These people who had been raisi
ng her child, these people who knew everything about him, whereas she knew nothing.
“My clients have been informed about the sequence of events, and the illegalities of their adoption of Reed.” Reed. Josie had been informed of the name his adoptive parents had given him, the name he’d gone by all of his short life, save for a handful of days when he’d been with Josie, but she couldn’t seem to think of him by that name. In her heart he was Caleb and thinking of him by any other name made him feel like a stranger to her. “They’d like to come to a mutual agreement as far as visitation,” the lawyer finished.
“Visitation?” Josie’s gaze whipped to the couple, who were staring at her with wide, sad eyes, their fingers laced. “He’s my son,” she said, her hands fisting in her lap. “He was stolen from me. I don’t want to visit him. I want him back. I’m his mother.”
“Ms. Stratton,” Emery Davies said, her eyes imploring as she reached toward Josie, pulling her hand back as though it’d been an unconscious movement and she’d just realized what she was doing. “We can understand the deep devastation you must have experienced losing Reed the way you did. We do. We’ve spent the last few days crying tears not just for ourselves, but for you as well.” Her voice sounded so even, so . . . placating, and resentment made Josie’s throat constrict.
She stared. “You can understand?” She looked back and forth between them. “You can understand what it’s like to be drugged and kidnapped from your bed at night? Shackled to a wall? Deprived of food and water while sitting on a cement floor? You can understand giving birth all alone on a filthy mattress, and then having your child ripped from your arms never to be seen again?” Her voice had risen as she’d spoken, her heart pounding as pressure expanded in her chest. She gulped in a shuddery breath. “You can understand that?” she demanded of the pretty woman whose face had turned white as she’d spoken. The woman her son called Mom.
Emery Davies cast her eyes down. She was holding back tears as well. “No, you’re right, of course. We can’t understand that. We only know that the loss you must have felt—are still feeling—is unthinkable,” she said softly. She met Josie’s eyes and Josie saw the tears shimmering there. “But please, think of Reed. We’re the only parents he’s ever known. To take him from us would be to detonate a bomb in his life.”
Josie blinked at them, taking a moment to get hold of herself. They both looked so deeply troubled and she wanted to be understanding toward them, she did, and rationally, she was. But there was also this red haze that filled her brain when she looked at them. An unrelenting bitterness and, yes, she could admit it, jealousy, that gripped her and made her want to shake them. To scream. Surely there had been clues that the adoption wasn’t completely legitimate. Had they seen her story on the news? Had they ever wondered just once at the timing . . . had they decided to turn a blind eye? She didn’t know, but she couldn’t help wondering. Couldn’t help the deep hurt that rose up inside her when she thought of how she’d felt during that time, the debilitating grief she’d been crushed under, not knowing whether her baby was dead or alive, if he was suffering, if he was safe. These people could have stopped that pain. These people had been holding her baby while her arms were empty.
These people hadn’t even told him he was adopted. He didn’t know of her existence at all, had never once thought of the unknown woman who’d carried him within her, and that knowledge cut her to the quick. Because she’d fought so long and so hard, every day, rationing and struggling and surviving so she could give her child life. She gripped her hands in her lap as she attempted to gather control of her spinning emotions. “I know you’ve raised him, and to him, you’re his parents. It will be . . . an adjustment, I understand that. I would never remove you from his life. You can visit him in Oxford where I own a farmhouse. You can even help him get settled, make it as easy for him as possible. I’d be grateful if you would.”
The couple shot each other a wide-eyed glance and then Emery Davies bent toward her large purse where it sat on the floor and pulled what looked like a photo album from it. She handed it to Josie. Her hands were shaking. Josie reached out tentatively, taking the book from Emery’s hands. Their eyes met, these two women who desperately loved the same little boy. Josie looked down, a small gasp emerging from her lips when she saw the photo of the chubby baby on the front cover. She ran a shaking hand over it, her eyes greedily taking in every feature of her son’s face.
He looked like Charles, he did, she couldn’t deny that. But he also looked like her. She saw herself in his eyes, in the particular way his cheek muscles bunched when he smiled. Mostly, he was himself, the unrepeatable combination of genetics that had come together to form this perfect, individual boy. “He’s beautiful,” she said, her voice breathy with emotion.
She looked up at Emery and her eyes were glistening with tears. She nodded. “Yes. He is beautiful. And he’s smart, and kind. He’s the most special little boy I’ve ever known.”
Josie smiled, and for just a moment, she felt not a competitiveness with this woman but a bond. She looked down to the book, opening the front cover and looking through the pictures. His baptism, first birthday, grinning with blue frosting smeared across his joyful face, swim lessons, more birthdays, his front teeth missing. Josie flipped each page, more tears flowing, her eyes moving from one happy memory to another. “He’s had a happy life,” she said.
Emery and Jeb Davies nodded in unison, something desperate in their gaze. She knew what it was. She looked away. These were memories. But none of hers. Because she’d been robbed. She deserved the memories she’d make now. And her son deserved to know his mother.
Didn’t he?
She handed the album to Emery but the woman gestured no. “It’s yours. I have copies of all those photos. Please, keep it. I brought it so you could take it home with you.”
Josie slowly took it back. It felt like a consolation prize, like the woman thought the pictures of her son’s life would be enough. They weren’t enough. But she held tightly to it anyway. For right then, it was all she had. “We need to talk about the . . . transfer,” she said. It was such a cold word, but it was the one her attorney had used, and so it was the one she used as well. Defeat appeared on Emery’s face and Josie saw that Jeb tightened his hold on her hand. A tear rolled down the woman’s cheek, but she sat up straight, obviously pulling herself together. Despite herself, admiration rose inside Josie. Emery Davies wasn’t going to crumble. At least not now.
“Please let us tell him,” Emery Davies said softly. “Please. Just give us a week. He doesn’t even know he’s adopted, yet. We were . . . waiting for the right time. And now . . . well, it will all be a blow. A terrible blow. Please, just a week, it’s all we ask,” she said, her voice breaking on the last word.
Josie measured her for a moment, watching the woman struggle, her heart softening even if she didn’t necessarily want it to. It was far more simple to see these people as adversaries than as allies. She knew eventually she would have to see them as the latter for her son’s sake, but right then, she had to do what was easiest or risk falling apart. She nodded. She needed a few days anyway. The last couple had been a whirlwind of emotions and lawyers, and meetings with the police as they broke down exactly how the crime of Caleb’s illegal adoption had been committed. She’d fallen into bed each night and slept like the dead. She still needed to get a room set up for Caleb, figure out how to enroll him in school . . . “Yes, of course. Take a week.” She stood. “My lawyer will be in touch.”
Emery and Jeb Davies stood shakily, and the lawyers followed suit. At the haunted look in Emery’s eyes, Josie again had the sudden desire to reach out to the woman, to comfort her, but she didn’t. She glanced at Zach and he was looking between them, his expression worried, deep conflict in his eyes.
They left the office, and Josie walked with Zach down the hall and outside into the warm, clear day. They headed toward his car and got inside. When he didn’t immediately start the ignition, she turned, looking
at him questioningly. “Are you sure about this?” he asked softly.
She tensed, drew back. “What do you mean, am I sure? God, Zach, I thought you of all people would be on my side here.”
He turned to her, his eyes intense. “I am on your side. Only your side.” He massaged the back of his neck that way he did. “But, Josie, I’m adopted too. I just . . .” He exhaled a pent-up breath. “I always knew I was adopted, but even so, I can’t imagine what it would have felt like to be ripped away from the only family I’d ever known at eight years old. It would have been . . . God, those people were my whole world, Josie. My family. My safety.”
Bitterness and hurt warred in her chest. What he said made her feel like nothing, like she had no right to the child who had been cruelly stolen from her, the child she’d yearned for since he’d been torn from her arms. She knew she was being unfair. She knew it. Zach was just expressing his concerns to her, but she couldn’t help the deep sense of . . . betrayal his words were eliciting. She looked away, out the window. “Of course it will be hard. Don’t you think I know that?” Tears threatened but she held them back. “I’ll get him counseling if I have to. It will take time. I’m prepared for that. But he’s my child, Zach. Mine. And he deserves to know me too.”
She flashed back suddenly to the moment they’d been separated, their cries blending as they’d wailed for each other. Didn’t her child carry that heartbreak too? Wasn’t there something visceral inside of him, a nameless longing that would only be made right by their reunion? Or did she carry that grief alone? For a moment she felt such crushing loneliness she didn’t think she could bear it. “I will not stop fighting for him,” she whispered. “I can’t.” I don’t know how.
“Josie,” he said, his voice throaty as he reached for her. She let him take her hands in his, but they sat limply in his grasp. He looked defeated, still torn. “Stay at my apartment again tonight or I can stay with you.”