Hush Little Baby

by Jennifer Rebecca

  Although, there is a frown playing on her gorgeous face.

  I come up behind her and wrap my arms around her before touching my lips to the corner of her mouth. She settles into me immediately, and I love that.

  “Why the long face?”

  She lets out a frustrated sigh. “The baby prefers Mozart to Def Leppard,” she pouts, making a smile spread across my face.

  “Well, we have the rest of our lives to impart your spectacular musical taste on her and all the babies who come after,” I tell her, turning her around so I can kiss her deep and wet.

  “All the babies who come after?” she asks, and the surprised look on her face is so fucking adorable.

  “Sure.”

  “How many babies are we talking about here?”

  “As many as you want,” I answer.

  “As easy as that?” she asks. “Just whatever I want?”

  “Yep.” I smile. “It’s as easy as that. I just want to build a family with you, and we’re already doing that, so I’m set.”

  She looks at me for a long time, studying me before blurting out, “I want four. Two girls and two boys, but I would take any combination.”

  “With you, that sounds like a beautiful family,” I say softly. “I can’t fucking wait.”

  “Well,” she says after a beat. Emma pats me on the chest quickly and blinks back the wetness in her eyes. “You better get going so you can come back and hover some more.”

  “Har de har har,” I say, rolling my eyes. “Maybe when I get back, I’ll let you hover for a change, over my dick.”

  The pupils in her blue eyes flare again, and I feel my dick thicken as I watch her lick her lips. Fuck me, my girl wants to ride my dick.

  “You better go,” she whispers.

  “Yeah,” I say. “I have my phone on me if you need anything.”

  “I’ll be all right.” She smiles. “See you later.”

  Emma follows me to the front door, and once I’m through it and heading to my car, I hear it close softly behind me. And then I drive to pick up my sister and take her to lunch, knowing the whole time I’m gone, she’ll be there when I get home, and nothing could be better.

  • • •

  “I’d like two orders of mu shu chicken, a cup of hot and sour soup, and an order of the cream cheese wontons,” my sister says delicately to the petite waitress at Imperial Dragon who cannot imagine one woman eating that much.

  “I’ll have the same,” I say, handing the server our menus.

  “Are you really going to take all that down?” I ask, because it really is a lot of food, even for Claire, who has always had an appetite that most women don’t.

  “Of course I am,” she replies, affronted. “It’s like my own brother doesn’t even know me anymore.”

  “You have to admit it is a lot of food.” I laugh.

  “It is,” she replies seriously. “But I am eating for three.”

  “Is that even a thing?”

  “It is!” she snaps before settling back in her side of the padded booth. “Besides, what about you, Mr. My Body is a Temple?”

  “What about me?” I ask with a laugh.

  “That’s a lot of food?” she mimics.

  “All right, all right,” I tell her. “Now tell me what kind of havoc and mischief you’ve been stirring up since I booted your ass from my station.”

  “You didn’t boot my ass from the station,” Claire says incredulously. “I was put on a light bedrest! There’s a difference, you know.”

  “Oh my mistake.” I smile.

  The waitress loads our table down with food, and Claire and I both tuck in. The soup is hot and tangy and just what I wanted. And truth be told, I was really over pizza and all of Emma’s pizza disasters. I’m not entirely sure I could watch her eat pineapple on pizza again. Last night, it was pineapple, bacon, and anchovies. That’s just not right, so today’s lunch is just what I needed.

  I watch Claire laugh at some story she’s telling about how she drove her husband to the brink of insanity—again—and doing it smiling. I’m happy to see her so blissful in her life after all she went through when she was a kid and the darkness we didn’t know she kept locked inside all this time. Now that Wes is in her life, it’s like the light she had as a kid is back, and I will always thank him for bringing her back to us, even if I don’t understand how or when she grew up.

  “What are you thinking about with that look on your face?” she asks me.

  “I was just wondering when the cute little kid I taught to hit baseballs and patched skinned knees on grew up,” I answer. “I swear you were just baby in a little pink blanket Dad placed in my arms and told me it was my job to protect you for the rest of my life because you were precious.”

  “Lee—” My badass sister sniffles.

  “Obviously, he didn’t know what a hellion you’d turn out to be,” I finish, since we’re both uncomfortable with too much shared emotion.

  “Asshole!” She laughs.

  “Seriously,” I say. “You’re all grown up, and I don’t know where the time went.”

  “Well,” she says primly. “You and Wes were avoiding me.”

  “Yeah.” I smile at her happily, and she just rolls her eyes at me.

  We finish our meal with lighter conversation about babies and how our mother and grandmother are living their best lives planning for the impending arrival of more Goodnite kids. We talk about our late sister Bonnie’s kids and how great they are, how we think Brooklyn is a way better student than Claire and I were, seeing as she was just accepted to a big university in San Diego. How she had just told our parents and our mother will cried, and our dad also cried but he also tried to hide it even though we all know that he’s a big softy and that family is everything to him. We talk about how Eric is doing well in the army, and how scared that makes us at the same time we’re both so fucking proud. And how the baby, Seth, is the spitting image of me as a kid and is also funny as all hell.

  I pay the bill when it comes, because Claire told me it was my duty as her big brother to pick up the tab, which I was going to pay anyway, but still. I laugh when she promptly points out she didn’t even bring a wallet with her.

  And then we visit for another moment or so until a pained look slashes across her face.

  “Claire?” I ask, because I know in my heart something is wrong with my kid sister, and I’m not sure what I can do.

  “Lee,” she whispers as she grips the edge of the table in her hands, her knuckles turning white as her body begins to quake. “S-s-something’s wrong.”

  I push out of my seat and come around to her side of the table when she lets out a cry that rips my heart in two. What the hell is happening?

  “Let’s get you to the hospital, honey,” I say calmly. That was one of the things I remember from our early emergency training: Always keep calm and speak in a soft voice. “Can you stand?”

  She tries to push up but falls forward, gripping her belly instead.

  “I need an ambulance!” I shout as I pull my sister into her arms.

  “I’m on the phone with 9-1-1 now!” someone yells.

  “It’ll be okay,” I tell her as I hold her in my arms like I did when she was a baby and brush back her dark hair that matches mine and our dad’s before his turned gray.

  “Okay,” she says quietly as tears track down her face.

  “I promise.”

  “It has to be okay, Lee,” she cries. “Wes won’t survive it.”

  “It’ll be okay,” I repeat. What I do not say is that she is absolutely correct. If something happens to Claire or their babies, Wes won’t survive it. He was in a bad enough spot after she was kidnapped from their wedding rehearsal. He and I raced like madmen through the dark to get to her when we realized what happened. He wouldn’t be able to take anything else.

  Fortunately, we don’t have to think on things for too long, because then the paramedics show and load up my sister.

  “It’s too soon,”
she whispers, clutching my hand in the ambulance after they load her up. I climbed in right behind her. I wasn’t about to send my sister on her merry way to the emergency room. When they realize who she is, because GWT is a small town, they get us to the hospital faster than I thought possible.

  Claire is taken into surgery the second we hit the hospital doors. The doctor took one look at her and whisked her away.

  I call my parents and Wes, and then I wait.

  I’m always fucking waiting.

  Wes was in the field working the baby-snatcher case, so by the time someone got to him, he was rolling in here on two wheels and a panicked look on his face that we all shared. A nurse handed him a paper jumpsuit and made him promise to keep his underpants on, and then he was rushed away.

  “How long do these things take?” my dad asks the nurse.

  “Oh… about thirty minutes to an hour,” she says with a smile. Unfortunately, that’s the last smile we see from the hospital staff for a while, because Claire takes a turn for the worse in surgery.

  The babies aren’t that much better.

  Wes comes out a short while later, still in his paper suit but now covered in what has to be my sister’s blood, and his face is pale and scared. He looks up at me, and I stand instantly, making my way to him without thought.

  We walk down the hall toward the nursery window and see them pull the blinds quickly as doctors and nurses work on two tiny babies to keep them breathing.

  “What happened?” I ask as he leans his weight on the now covered window.

  “I don’t know,” he says, closing his eyes. “One minute, she was fine, and the next, it was like the light in her was just gone.”

  “Is she…?” I can’t bear to ask.

  “No,” he whispers. “At least not yet. They made me leave the room. Wouldn’t let me be with her. My wife could be dying ,and I’m not fucking there!” he growls, his voice hoarse, and tears track down his angular face.

  “And the babies?”

  “Not breathing.”

  Two words. Two fucking words no one wants to hear. I don’t know what to say to the man who was my oldest friend until the day he married my sister and became a brother, so we just stand there in silence together.

  “I can’t lose them,” he says. His voice no more than a pained whisper.

  “You won’t.”

  “I don’t know how I could walk in here a husband of one and a father of two, and now I could be leaving with fucking nothing,” he says. “Without them, there’s nothing left of me.”

  “It’s going to be okay,” I tell him the same words I gave Claire earlier, and I hope to God it’s not a lie. As soon as we have word on Claire, I’ll call Emma, but if my sister isn’t going to make it, I’m not going to tell her best friend over the phone, I’ll go home and tell her face to face so that we can deal together. But that’s not going to happen. I refuse to believe that it’s even a possibility.

  “Yeah,” he says, but I can tell by his tone he doesn’t believe it either.

  We stand there for another hour before a nurse comes into the hall and says, “Mr. O’Connell? We’ve been looking for you.”

  “Yeah?”

  “You can see your wife now,” she says with a smile that Wes is too far gone to see it does not say “sorry your wife just died.”

  “Is she?”

  “She gave us a scare, but she’s doing all right now.

  “And the babies?” he asks, and I hold my breath again.

  “Still looking pretty rough, but I think they’ll be all right too,” she answers.

  “Thank you,” he says to me while following the nurse.

  “Any time.”

  “Go get your girl,” he calls back before the metal doors close behind him, and I don’t delay in doing just that.

  As soon as I step back into the hall to say goodnight to my family and tell them all is well, my phone dings with a voicemail. I must not have had service deep in the hospital. I pull it out of my pocket and see I missed a call from Emma. She probably wants to know what kind of disgusting pizza I want for dinner tonight.

  But when I put the phone to my ear to listen to her voice message, everything changes, and not for the good.

  TWENTY-ONE

  * * *

  GOT IT FROM YOUR MAMA

  “Hey, honey, it’s me. I know you’re out with your sister, but I haven’t heard from you in a while. I hope everything is okay. Anyway, that’s not why I’m calling. I just got off the phone with the state lab, and they said the hair you found at the crime scene is a mitochondrial match to the defensive wound DNA found under Jane Doe’s fingernails. Anyways, let me know if you’ll be home for dinner. I’m feeling like pizza. Shocking, right?” And then she laughs her throaty chuckle that warms my heart and makes my dick hard. “I love you, Lee.”

  I hear the click as she disconnected with my voicemail and then nothing. I’m tired. It’s not only been a long fucking day, but it’s been a long fucking two weeks, so my brain is playing catchup. It’s like I’m wading through quicksand or deep underwater.

  And then something she said clicks in my brain.

  “The hair you found at the crime scene is a mitochondrial match to the defensive wound DNA found under Jane Doe’s fingernails.”

  The hair at the crime scene… The hair at the crime scene…

  Oh my fucking God, the hair I pulled off her douchey ex-boyfriend when we had words at the station. I told Emma it was found at a crime scene when I passed it off to her to run it. And now it’s a mitochondrial match.

  But that’s not a match match, so what does that mean?

  I press the Call Back button from my voicemail app and put my phone to my ear. It rings and rings, and then I hear, “You’ve reached Dr. Emma Parker. If it’s an emergency, please hang up and dial 9-1-1. Otherwise, leave me a message.”

  “Hey, baby. I just got your message. Give me a call back when you get this. It’s important. I love you,” I say and then disconnect. And I do it with a sinking feeling in my gut.

  What is mitochondrial DNA? I have to find out. This feels like the break in the case I’ve been waiting for. But… what does it have to do with Emma’s ex, Jerrod? I do not like that he’s involved in this in any way.

  I hit Redial on my phone and lift it back to my ear. I have to talk to Emma. Something doesn’t feel right here, and I’ve been gone way too long. I should have been home hours ago.

  It rings and rings, and then, “You’ve reached Dr. Emma Parker….”

  “God dammit,” I bite out.

  Why isn’t she answering her phone?

  “Hey, baby, it’s me again. Call me as soon as you get this? Humor a nervous soon-to-be dad, okay?”

  And then I hang up.

  I need to find out about this DNA thing and fast, and I need to get to Emma.

  “Is everything all right?” my dad asks. I didn’t notice his approach, so he took me by surprise.

  I look up at him, and I can tell he sees the answer written across my face, but I reply anyway, “I don’t think so.”

  “What can I do to help?”

  “Do you know anything about mitochondrial DNA?” I ask. My dad had my job when Claire and I were kids. He went on to be Chief of Police for the township. He’s one of the best police officers I’ve ever known, so the question isn’t for nothing.

  “I’m sorry, son,” he says, and I can tell by his tone that he really means it. “What do you need to know for?”

  “It has to do with a case I’m working,” I answer him. “Emma left me a message while I was deeper in the hospital with no service, saying there was a mitochondrial match to the first victim, a Jane Doe, but now Emma’s not answering, and I need to know.”

  “I think I can help you,” the sweet nurse who came to Wes to tell him Claire was going to be all right says. “You’re asking about mitochondrial DNA?”

  “Yeah,” I reply. “What can you tell me about it?”

  “Mitochondrial DNA is l
ike a little circular ring of DNA found in the mitochondria,” she says, smiling kindly.

  “And this is important?” I ask.

  “It is, because it comes almost exclusively from your mama,” she explains. “So if you have a mitochondrial match, that would be a mother and her child kind of match.”

  Holy fuck.

  A mother and her child kind of match.

  Emma’s douchey ex is the son of my killer.

  “Did that help?” she asks, looking a little unsure.

  “More than you could ever know,” I answer, dropping a quick kiss to her cheek before turning to my dad. “I gotta go. Call dispatch and send them to my house.”

  “Why?” he asks, suddenly alert. It wasn’t too long ago that he was shot and almost died trying to rescue my sister. To Dad, family is everything.

  “Just a gut reaction,” I answer immediately.

  “And you think Emma is in trouble?”

  “Yes,” I answer him without hesitation.

  “Then you better get moving,” he says. “I’ll call dispatch.”

  “Thanks, Dad.”

  “I love you, Lee,” he says as he pulls his phone out of his pocket and starts dialing a familiar number.

  “I love you too,” I tell him as I turn and head out of the hospital.

  I unlock my phone and hit the Redial button again. It rings and rings.

  “Come on, Emma. Pick up.”

  And then, “You’ve reached Dr. Emma Parker….”

  “Fuck!” I bite out. “Goddammit, Emma. Answer the phone.”

  I hang up and pull my keys from my pocket, realizing my car is still at Imperial Dragons, so I race back into the hospital. Dad sees me immediately.

  “Lee? What are you doing back?”

  “My car is still at the restaurant,” I answer. “I rode here with Claire in the ambulance.”

  “Here,” he says, pulling his keys from his pocket and tossing them to me. “I’m right out front in the ER lot.”