Operation Bassinet

by Joyce Sullivan

  She was crying

  Mitch stiffened as he tried to deflect the sound of Stephanie Shelton’s anguished sobs. His stomach felt as if it were lined with hot tar. The only thing that made the situation bearable was the hope that she’d soon be reunited with her lost child.

  Careful to allow her some dignity, he kept his gaze averted from her moist eyes. “Pack a bag for you and your daughter.”

  “Why?” Her tone was charged with rebellion.

  Then Mitch made the mistake of looking at her.

  Her green-gold eyes were as dangerous as riptide and fringed with long sooty lashes. He was none too happy that he was making personal observations about the length of her eyelashes.

  He was too seasoned a cop to let himself get sucked in by a pair of pleading eyes. Deliberate detachment firmed his voice.

  “You’re coming with me. You’re both under my protection until this is over.”

  Dear Harlequin Intrigue Reader,

  We wind up a great summer with a bang this month! Linda O. Johnston continues the hugely popular COLORADO CONFIDENTIAL series with Special Agent Nanny. Don’t forget to look for the Harlequin special-release anthology next month featuring USA TODAY bestselling author Jasmine Cresswell, our very own Amanda Stevens and Harlequin Historicals author Debra Lee Brown. And not to worry, the series continues with two more Harlequin Intrigue titles in November and December.

  Joyce Sullivan concludes her companion series THE COLLINGWOOD HEIRS with Operation Bassinet. Find out how this family solves a fiendish plot and finds happiness in one fell swoop. Rounding out the month are two exciting stories. Rising star Delores Fossen takes a unique perspective on the classic secret-baby plot in Confiscated Conception, and a very sexy Cowboy PI is determined to get to the bottom of one woman’s mystery in an all-Western story by Jean Barrett.

  Finally, in case you haven’t heard, next month Harlequin Intrigue is increasing its publishing schedule to include two more fantastic romantic suspense books. That’s six titles per month! More variety, more of your favorite authors and of course, more excitement.

  It’s a thrilling time for us, and we want to thank all of our loyal readers for remaining true to Harlequin Intrigue. And if you are just learning about our brand of breathtaking romantic suspense, fasten your seat belts for an edge-of-your-seat reading experience. Welcome aboard!

  Sincerely,

  Denise O’Sullivan

  Senior Editor, Harlequin Intrigue

  OPERATION BASSINET

  JOYCE SULLIVAN

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Joyce Sullivan credits her lawyer mother with instilling in her a love of reading and writing—and a fascination for solving mysteries. She has a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice and worked several years as a private investigator before turning her hand to writing romantic suspense. A transplanted American, Joyce makes her home in Aylmer, Quebec, with her handsome French-Canadian husband and two children. A visit to the castles populating the Thousand Islands in the St. Lawrence Seaway gave her the inspiration for THE COLLINGWOOD HEIRS series.

  Books by Joyce Sullivan

  HARLEQUIN INTRIGUE

  352—THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS

  436—THIS LITTLE BABY

  516—TO LANEY, WITH LOVE

  546—THE BABY SECRET

  571—URGENT VOWS

  631—IN HIS WIFE’S NAME

  722—THE BUTLER’S DAUGHTER*

  726—OPERATION BASSINET*

  CAST OF CHARACTERS

  Ross and Lexi Collingwood—He was the Baron of Wall Street. Their precious baby daughter was kidnapped thirty months ago and never returned. One month after the Collingwoods are tragically murdered in an explosion, the Find Riana Foundation receives a ransom demand for the child.

  Stef Shelton—Her world is shattered when she discovers that the daughter she has been raising is not her flesh-and-blood child.

  Mitch Halloran—The Guardian hired this determined LAPD detective to bring Riana home safe and sound.

  Keely Shelton—She’s Riana Collingwood by birth.

  Emma—Would Stef’s real daughter be found alive?

  Brad Shelton—Had he switched his infant daughter with Riana Collingwood?

  The Guardian—Ross Collingwood had been his best friend and had entrusted him with his children’s lives.

  Juliana Goodhew—She was looking forward to raising Lexi’s daughter as her own.

  Annette York—She’d killed her sister and brother-in-law out of hatred. Was she behind Riana’s kidnapping, as well?

  Sable Holden—Ross Collingwood had ruthlessly taken over her family’s company. To what lengths would she go to get her company back?

  For my friend Jude, my emotional barometer. And for Rickey, critique partner par excellence.

  Acknowledgments

  My sincere thanks to the generous people listed below who answered my tedious questions about their lives and their jobs for this story:

  Mathematician extraordinaire Tom McCormick, W. J. Van Dusen, Professor of Management, UBC Commerce.

  Sergeant John Martinez, one of LAPD’s finest.

  Detective Bob Arbour, Ottawa-Carleton Regional Police Service, and former bomb tech.

  Dr. Steven W. Maclean,

  who saves my wounded heroes and heroines.

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Prologue

  Thirty months earlier

  Stef wasn’t sure what woke her. Maybe the sound of the door closing in her hospital room. Or had the baby cried out? She hovered in a semialert state listening, her tired body yearning to tumble back into oblivion. She’d never been so exhausted. The last trimester of lumbering around New York City like an elephant in maternity clothes and thirty hours of labor had taken its toll, but she’d been rewarded with a beautiful baby daughter.

  Tears came to her eyes. She’d seen the pride on Brad’s face when he’d held Keely in his arms. Everything would get better for them now. She just knew it.

  “Brad?” she whispered into the darkened room. Had her husband changed his mind about staying over with her and the baby? Her whisper was swallowed up in the silence.

  Brad had spent last night in the recliner provided for new dads, but he had another job interview first thing in the morning. She’d sent him home at the end of visitor’s hours with instructions to get a good night’s sleep and wear the Brooks Brothers’ suit with the I’m-in-charge tie.

  Keely made a small sound in her bassinet like a mewling kitten. Maybe the nurse had come in to check the time of her last feeding. Stef turned on the bedside lamp and glanced at the clock. It was 2:53 a.m. With a guilty start, she realized it had been more than three hours since she’d last nursed her baby.

  Keely mewled again, sounding like a ravenous kitten.

  Stef felt an instantaneous tingling sensation in her breasts. “Okay, sweetie, I got the message. It’s chow time. Just don’t expect fast food.” She pushed herself up in the hospital bed, every muscle in her body protesting. Her stomach sagged like a deflated balloon.

  Getting out of bed was a Herculean effort. Maybe she should have insisted Brad stay. But he’d been so discouraged after he’d been laid off from his job as the New York City regional manager for Office Outfitters six months ago. He’d gone to countless interviews and the pres
sure of a first baby on the way hadn’t helped. She wanted him to be at his best tomorrow. They had a daughter to support.

  She shuffled to Keely’s bassinet, painfully aware of the stitches where no doctor should have to put a needle, the linoleum floor cool beneath her bare feet.

  Stef peered down at her daughter. A tiny miracle, even if she did look like a scrunched-up baby gorilla.

  “I’m here, sweetie. Mommy’s here.” She picked up her daughter from the bassinet—amazed anew by the tiny infant’s weight and warmth. She’d swear Keely had already gained a few ounces since birth.

  Her daughter snuffled against her breast, looking for nourishment. Stef sighed with equal amounts of pleasure and discomfort as her breasts started to leak. She gingerly eased herself down into the recliner and fumbled with the buttons of her nightgown and the clasp of the nursing bra.

  Keely latched on to her nipple hungrily and Stef basked in the special intimacy of the feeding bond between them. “You are my little girl, Keely Jane Shelton. I may not be the smartest or the richest or the prettiest mom, but you are my own gift from heaven and I love you with all my heart. I hope you like me and Daddy, because you’re stuck with us for a long time.” She gave her baby girl a teary-eyed smile. “We’re a family now, little one. Forever and ever. I promise.”

  Chapter One

  Logantown, Pennsylvania

  The lost Collingwood Heir was alive and well and living beneath this roof.

  Former L.A.P.D. Detective Mitch Halloran stood on the front step of the modest house, a cold spot forming in his stomach as he leaned on the doorbell.

  He was dreading the task ahead of him. He had to tell this family that their daughter wasn’t theirs. That two female infants had been switched at birth. Whatever pride he felt in proving himself right about the ransom note and the DNA sample that the Find Riana Foundation had received eight days ago was lost in the sickening reality that he was about to plunge this innocent family into a nightmare. With the single-minded determination he’d learned from his grandfather who’d served as a marine in the Korean War, Mitch told himself he’d make it all work out. This wouldn’t be a repeat of the Lopez case. He’d do everything in his means to get them back their own daughter.

  Surely it wasn’t too much to ask for two miracles.

  The front door opened and Mitch looked into one of the most appealing faces he’d ever seen. It belonged to the woman he’d seen with Keely four days ago when he’d conducted surveillance on the house to filch a sample of Keely’s DNA.

  Eyes that were green and gold reminded him of a lucky marble his real dad had given him when he was about six, and they shimmered at him, laughter in their depths. A scattering of freckles drifted across sexily curved cheekbones and dotted a nose that tilted up at the end.

  “What are you selling?” she demanded, curling her hands into fists and planting them on her hips. She was wearing a blue-and-green silky blouse that seemed kind of see-through and Japanese and left no doubts that she was wearing a skimpy blue bra underneath. “I’m all yours if you’re hawking chocolate bars with almonds.”

  “I’m sorry, ma’am, I’m not soliciting. My name is Mitch Halloran, and I’m the director of the—”

  “No chocolate bars?” she interrupted him, looking genuinely disappointed.

  Mitch held out his empty hands, his gut twisting at her cheery attitude. “Not a one. Sorry, ma’am.”

  “All right, then, what do you want? I already signed one of the petitions for the new soccer field.”

  Mitch sighed. She wasn’t making this easy. He handed her his business card. “Mrs. Shelton, please. I’m the Director of the Find Riana Foundation. We’re searching for Riana Collingwood, and I’d like to speak to you and your husband privately. It’s very important.”

  She snatched the card from him, then held up her hand, palm out, like a traffic cop. “Stay here.” To Mitch’s annoyance, she slammed the door in his face.

  He sighed and leaned a hip against the wrought-iron railing, wishing he hadn’t left his raincoat in the car.

  The chill of a November wind bathed his cheeks, seeped into his chest. Mitch felt uncomfortably out of place on this quiet street with its middle America working-class appeal. Having grown up in a large metropolitan city, he hadn’t minded the noise and the pace and the towering in-your-face size of New York City. But the tranquil motion-picture perfection of this street bothered him.

  Lights blazed in living room and kitchen windows up and down the block. He could smell the scents of meals lingering invitingly in the air. Halloween had come and gone. Fake tombstones and bedraggled scarecrows populated the lush lawns and shreds of gigantic spider webs and pieces of plastic skeletons dangled from bare tree branches. It was nothing like the neighborhoods of stucco bungalows, concrete driveways and parched yards he was used to in L.A.

  Halloween was one of the many holidays, along with Father’s Day, Thanksgiving and Christmas that he’d grown to hate ever since Paddy, his grandfather, had died. The crime stats always went up—murders, suicides, break-ins, robberies. He’d seen people resort to desperate acts when the reality of their personal and family situations failed to live up to the impossible expectations planted in their minds by TV shows, movies and magazines.

  Peace on earth. Right. Most people would settle for peace in their own home a few nights a week.

  Holidays to Mitch were a brutally painful reminder that he had no family.

  The door opened behind him. Mitch swung around. Stephanie Shelton had engaged the chain lock and was eyeing him up and down suspiciously, a phone plastered to her ear.

  “Turn around,” she said to him.

  “What?”

  She made a circling motion with her finger. “Turn around.” A tiny red heart was painted on her fingernail.

  “Hmm-humph? No, not Russell. I’d say more like Dennis—” she paused as Mitch glowered at her. “Nice and…um, where did you work before you came to the Foundation?” she asked sweetly.

  Mitch propped a hand on the door frame. “L.A.P.D.—the Robbery Homicide Division,” he replied, making a mental note to have a little chat with the hot-line phone staff.

  “It’s him.” The door slammed in his face again. He heard the chain slip off, then the door popped open. Mitch was annoyingly aware of the outline of her bra beneath that top. Stephanie Shelton was slightly nutty and very hot. There was an intriguing line of golden flesh visible between the hem of her shirt and the black leather belt riding her hips. “Come in. The house is a mess, but that’s life.”

  The house was not a mess. It was lively and colorful and an irritatingly normal example of how Mitch thought average nondysfunctional, middle-class families lived. He followed her through an entryway cluttered with a child-size pair of red boots, library books and Halloween decorations into a funky living room painted in dramatic colors and furnished with a beige sofa piled with pillows and two gargantuan armchairs. The armchairs covered in olive velvet made him think someone had a grandmother who’d liked Victorian furniture. In an alcove off the kitchen Mitch could see the child whose abandoned drinking cup he’d swiped the other day—dancing along with a furry critter on the TV.

  “Have a seat, Mr. Halloran.”

  “Is your husband home, ma’am? I’d really like to speak to both of you.”

  Those green and gold eyes shone with dewy tears. “My husband died two years ago in a rock climbing accident.”

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t know,” Mitch said, caught off guard. The list of babies they’d been investigating had been too long to do thorough background checks on each family. They’d received confirmation from the lab about the DNA match less than two hours ago.

  He took a seat on the sofa as Stephanie Shelton perched on the edge of one of those gargantuan chairs and folded her arms across her chest, bringing even more attention to the color of her bra beneath the transparent fabric of her blouse. “Why would someone from the Find Riana Foundation want to talk to me? Wasn’t she th
e little girl of that famous couple who were killed in an explosion last month?”

  “Ma’am—”

  “Please, stop calling me that. Teachers and librarians swathed in polyester prints are ma’ams. My name’s Stef.”

  Mitch started to sweat. Damn, she looked so defense-less—so your-best-buddy’s-younger-sister nice. She’d already lost her husband. An image of her dancing around the garbage can when he’d staked out her house four days ago, two fingers held up in a two-point salute after she and Keely chucked a decaying jack-o’-lantern into the can, shimmered vibrantly in his conscience.

  His news was going to kill her.

  He cleared his throat and told himself to remain unplugged from the drama. “Stef, are you aware of the date Riana Collingwood was kidnapped?”

  She frowned. “I think it was the day after my daughter was born. I remember seeing it on the news a couple of days after Keely and I were discharged and being relieved that we weren’t still in the hospital. Of course, the Collingwood baby wasn’t born at the same birthing center, but still, it made me nervous.” She shuddered. “I couldn’t imagine how horrible it must be for that baby’s parents to have their child taken like that. But I still don’t understand why you’re here. I didn’t know the Collingwoods.” Her eyes were clearly puzzled.

  In the other room Mitch heard Keely singing a catchy tune about apples and bananas. He mentally cursed a blue streak as the icy hole inside him bore painfully into his soul. There was no way to put off saying the words that would change this woman’s life into a living hell.

  He laced his fingers together. “Mrs. Shelton, I have evidence which leads me to believe that whoever abducted Riana Collingwood switched her with your daughter.”

  Stef Shelton started to laugh. “This is a joke, right? My brother-in-law put you up to it? He’s such a jerk—” The words died on her lips as her gaze met his. Mitch looked steadily back at her, trying to stay as detached as possible, while fear spontaneously combusted like twin gold flames in her eyes.