Operation Bassinet

by Joyce Sullivan

  Mitch felt an adrenaline bomb ignite in his gut, along with a healthy dose of admiration for Stef. She might be grasping at straws trying to pin the kidnapping on Sable alone, but at least she was thinking. Cooperating.

  He sat in the armchair next to hers, close enough that he could see the spatter of freckles across her upturned nose. Had her husband ever appreciated what an incredible wife he’d had? “Did Brad find another job?”

  Stef shook her head, her dark hair swinging in a glossy curtain around her pale face. “He tried, but he couldn’t find something he felt passionate about.”

  In Mitch’s humble opinion, providing for your wife and child was a passionate enough motivation to find a job. Any job. But quite possibly Brad hadn’t been job hunting as seriously as he’d claimed because he and Sable had come to an agreement about the split of the ransom. Maybe they’d even had a falling out that had resulted in that first ransom attempt being aborted.

  He leaned over and touched her arm, feeling a corresponding tightness in his chest at the soft vulnerability of her skin. A wary prickle skated across the back of his neck warning him that he was allowing himself to get physically close to her again. “This will probably sound insensitive, but I’d like to know more about how your husband died because it could be important.”

  Her slender throat worked as she swallowed hard. “Rock climbing was one of his hobbies. He took it up after Office Outfitters sponsored a rock-climbing day to reward employees for good performance evaluations. Brad was one of the recipients. He got hooked and he kept it up to reduce stress. He went to the Giant’s Kneecaps by himself to spend the afternoon—it’s a popular place for climbers. But he was the only one there at the time. The police explained that he must have lost his hold and fallen. His head hit the rocks. They said he died instantly.”

  He gentled his tone, detecting the unbridled fear and the confusion his last question had created in her. “When did this happen?”

  “Two months after Keely was born.”

  “Was there an autopsy?”

  She took an uneven breath. “Yes. It ruled his death accidental. Why? What are you implying?”

  Mitch met her gaze unflinchingly. “Let’s look at the facts as we know them. Whoever snatched Riana exited the hospital from a second-floor window and rappelled to the ground. Then Riana was somehow switched with your daughter. A ransom demand is received by the Collingwoods, but it’s aborted. Two months later your husband dies in a climbing accident under suspicious circumstances with no witnesses. You tell me how that adds up to you.”

  She jerked her arm free of his touch, the gold flecks in her eyes firing sparks. “You know, I’m really starting to hate you. You think Brad switched our daughter with Riana, then committed suicide because he couldn’t live with himself?”

  Across the room Mitch heard Juliana’s soft gasp. He half expected The Guardian to intercede with a few charming three-syllable words. But he didn’t.

  Mitch hated what he was doing, too, but he had to keep pushing her. The kidnapper could make contact again at any time. At least he’d gotten Stef to voice her worst possible fears. She’d known her husband better than anyone.

  “Suicide is one possible explanation,” he admitted. “Or maybe someone helped him fall.”

  Chapter Four

  “Peekaboo!” The kidnapper awoke to a boisterous shout and the insistent tugging of tiny fingers on the blankets.

  “Emma? What are you doing up at this hour?” the kidnapper mumbled sleepily. Good grief, it wasn’t even dawn yet. Through a half-raised eyelid the kidnapper noticed the little girl was wearing a crown on her head and a chunky bead necklace over her nightgown. On the edge of the bed was a small pile of picture books.

  “Read me a story?”

  The kidnapper groaned. How had she gotten in here without Uncle Fred or Aunt Alice noticing? The kid was worth billions of dollars and she was running around loose. “Go back to bed, Emma. It’s too early for stories.”

  Emma behaved as if she didn’t understand English.

  The kidnapper tried to ignore her and drift back to sleep. But Emma climbed onto the bed chattering gibberish about stories and horsies. Before the kidnapper was fully cognizant of what was happening, she’d looped her necklace around the bedpost and was riding astride the kidnapper’s hip, giggling, “Giddy up!”

  A split second later the necklace broke and beads scattered onto the pine floorboards in all directions.

  Wailing, Emma jumped off the bed onto the floor with a thunk that made the old floorboards shake and the beads rattle. “Mine! No!” She crouched, trying to gather the beads in her tiny hands.

  Stifling an urge to yell, the kidnapper threw back the covers and turned on the bedside lamp. Shouting wouldn’t make Emma’s screeching stop. This brat had been one complication after another since day one. Life would have been much simpler, and much different, if the first ransom attempt hadn’t been aborted.

  The kidnapper thought back to the day of the Collingwoods’ funeral. There had been too many wasted frustrating days spent agonizing over what could have been. What could still be—despite everything—thanks to a generous infusion of Ross Collingwood’s money.

  The plan was coming together, each part carefully examined for flaws and fitted into the master plan. The kidnapper knew The Guardian would follow the ransom instructions to the letter. He wouldn’t involve the police or risk Riana’s life. Not after the last time.

  The kidnapper shushed Riana. “Don’t cry, Emma. I’ll help you pick up the beads. I’m sure Gamma can put them back on the string and make your necklace good as new.”

  Big crocodile tears stretched down Emma’s cheeks as she lifted her face trustingly toward the kidnapper. Her lower lip jutted out like a river bank, stopping the flow of moisture. “There’s a good girl.”

  Together they crawled across the floor gathering the beads into a cheap plastic beer mug that had held pens on the desk.

  Emma tried to squeeze her fingers underneath the curved front of the dresser. “There’s some under there!” she cried, sniffling. “I can’t reach.”

  “Don’t cry. I’ll move the dresser. Stay back.”

  The kidnapper hefted the ugly maple dresser to one side. As Emma pounced on the stray beads like a kitten pursuing a shadow the kidnapper noticed the jagged line of a saw mark in a plank where the dresser used to stand. The plank was about six inches wide and twenty inches long and there wasn’t one nail in it. If someone had lifted the plank to repair a pipe or wiring in the space between the floor joists, he’d done a sloppy job.

  The kidnapper knew Uncle Fred, a professional electrician, hadn’t cut that floorboard. Uncle Fred and Aunt Alice’s son had done it. And he’d probably had something to hide.

  The kidnapper took Emma by the hand. “Come on, Emma. You want to watch cartoons?”

  Emma hopped like a bunny. “No cartoons. I want Little Mermaid!”

  “Okay, but you have to be real quiet so you don’t wake Gamma and Pappy.”

  After settling Emma in front of the TV with some juice and a handful of cereal, the kidnapper returned upstairs and used a dinner knife to lift the plank.

  A shoe box was concealed in the space under the floor.

  The kidnapper removed the lid of the box. Damn! Leave it to that stupid SOB to leave evidence lying around.

  The box contained a handgun, ammunition, a stun gun, several types of hospital identification bracelets and a birth announcement torn from a newspaper with the names circled. “Bradley and Stephanie Shelton of Queens, New York, are thrilled to announce the birth of their first child, a daughter, Keely Jane Shelton.”

  The kidnapper noticed the date of the child’s birth and the name of the hospital and smelled a double cross.

  The child downstairs was not Riana Collingwood.

  HAD BRAD been murdered?

  Stef recoiled from Mitch in horror, wanting to hit his sensual mouth and break a few of his very perfect teeth. She’d vowed to love, ho
nor and cherish Brad, not suspect him of being a criminal.

  Stef squeezed her fingers into tight fists assailed by soul-crushing doubts about the man she’d loved. Had Brad even had an interview the morning after Keely and Riana had been switched? Or was it a story to cover his tracks? Maybe all the job interviews he’d supposedly gone to were fictitious.

  She couldn’t even believe she was entertaining the idea that her husband had been involved in Riana Collingwood’s kidnapping. But to not do so might put her baby’s life at risk, might delay finding her.

  “Why would someone want to kill Brad?” she choked.

  Mitch’s cobalt gaze didn’t waver from her face. “Because he had a falling out with whoever he was working with. It’s the most logical reason. He’d switched the babies, but his accomplice obviously didn’t know that. There was one ransom attempt three days after the abduction, but it was aborted. The falling out could have occurred then. There might have been an argument over when to initiate a second demand and what to do with the child. Or the falling out could have happened later when Brad began to get anxious with the unanticipated delay.”

  “It was a high-profile crime,” The Guardian elaborated. “There was a lot of pressure on the police to apprehend the abductors. A decision may have been made to lie low for a few weeks until the pressure cooled. Your husband may have been trying to learn where his daughter was being held, which roused his accomplice’s suspicions. It’s very important, Mrs. Shelton, that we keep an open mind and consider every possibility, no matter how terribly painful those possibilities may be.”

  “I assure you my mind is wide open,” Stef said, digging in her heels and glancing from Mitch to The Guardian. They were like night and day, in manner and looks. The Guardian was dark and coolly controlled. Mitch was blond and explosively intense. “I’m just wondering why you aren’t considering the possibility that Sable switched the babies without Brad’s knowledge? Do you know something I don’t?”

  Mitch cleared his throat. “Trust us, Sable is high on the suspect list. And now that we know Brad learned to climb through a company-sponsored program, we’ll nose around and find out how knowledgeable Sable is about the sport. But Riana’s kidnapper was definitely male—brown hair, medium height, medium build. The nurse got a glimpse of him before he zapped her with a stun gun.”

  Nausea swirled in Stef’s stomach. The description fit Brad. He hadn’t been an in-your-face kind of guy. She couldn’t imagine him striking a woman. Using a stun gun suited his passive-aggressive nature.

  “I see,” she said. Was she imagining it or were Mitch’s eyes softening, offering her encouragement? She felt the fight ebbing out of her, reality sinking in.

  “What was Brad’s frame of mind after you brought Keely home from the hospital? Did he behave like one would expect a new dad to behave? Did he seem stressed?”

  She licked her dry lips, experiencing a jab of pain as she remembered the look on Brad’s face when the doctor had announced that they had a baby daughter. Had there been something significant in his reaction?

  “Brad was disappointed that Keely wasn’t a boy, even though we’d had an ultrasound and knew we were having a girl. The first week or so he was really nervous about holding her—especially bathing her or changing her diapers. I thought he was finally feeling the responsibility of being a parent, but we didn’t talk about it. I mean, he was unemployed and he needed to find a job to support his family. Talking about it would have only put more pressure on him. But you only have to look at a picture of him holding her to see how much he loved Keely.”

  She couldn’t tell what kind of impression her answer made on Mitch. His cobalt eyes shielded his thoughts. But she found strength and comfort from the squared width of his shoulders and the determination etched in his jaw. He was going to bring her baby home no matter what, wasn’t he?

  “Was he depressed? Showing signs of not sleeping, not eating, not bothering to get dressed?”

  “A little,” she admitted reluctantly. “I went back to work when Keely was five weeks old and Brad was home taking care of Keely in a little two-bedroom coop. But I think new mothers experience that—the day goes by and you’re still in your pajamas because the baby is fussy. Brad found the isolation hard to deal with.” She didn’t mention that she’d found it difficult to return home to find her husband anxious to escape their baby when she would give anything to be the one staying home caring for Keely. “I tried to give him lots of free time when I was home. He’d play pickup basketball or meet a buddy for a beer. Sometimes he’d go biking or rock climbing.”

  “How were things at home the days before the accident?”

  Guilt swirled in Stef’s belly. Having a new baby was overwhelming. Could she have done more to help Brad cope with the pressure? She’d been exhausted, too, trying to nurse Keely around her flight schedule. “Keely had had a cold and was up a couple of nights in a row. Brad was edgy and had cabin fever. He was waiting for me at the door when I got home. He wanted to go rock climbing so I shooed him out the door and asked him to buy diapers on the way home.”

  Mitch nodded as if he were memorizing all her answers, taking them apart and analyzing them. “Here’s another one of those tough questions. Take a breath before answering if you need to, okay? Did he say anything to you or kiss you goodbye in a way that might suggest he knew he wasn’t coming home?”

  Tears scalded Stef’s eyes. She gulped twice before replying. “No. He didn’t do either of those things. Or leave a note. He just took off. That’s why I don’t think he committed suicide. The police didn’t seem to think so, either, because they asked me some questions like that.”

  Juliana had materialized at Stef’s side with a box of tissues. Her brown eyes were warm and compassionate and she deflected Mitch’s frown for interrupting his interrogation with a try-and-stop-me look. Stef was really beginning to like her, especially when Juliana proceeded to sit on the coffee table, visibly aligning herself with Stef in a show of emotional support.

  Mitch flicked his gaze uncertainly from Juliana to Stef, and back to The Guardian. Stef almost laughed when The Guardian shrugged his shoulders as if he wished Mitch luck for pitting himself against two females.

  The ex-detective focused again on Stef. “Did Brad have life insurance?”

  “Yes. One of the guys he plays basketball with sold him a two-hundred-and-fifty-thousand-dollar policy as soon as Brad told him we were expecting.”

  Stef stilled a twinge that that purchase had been a little out of character for Brad. But it wasn’t a huge sum of money. A house cost more than two hundred thousand dollars these days.

  “I’ll need the date the policy was purchased.”

  She wrapped her arms around herself, feeling cold and tired. “Of course. I can give it to you.”

  Something warm patted her knee. Mitch’s hand. The heat from it traveled up to her core, warming her from the inside out. “I think you’ve had enough for tonight. Get some rest for tomorrow. We’ve got a lot to do.”

  “Such as?”

  “Visiting Sable. I hope you’re a good actress.”

  Stef smiled thinly. “I think I can rise to the occasion.” All that experience of telling passengers the beige lump on their meal tray was chicken ought to count for something. “I’ll say just about anything to save my baby.”

  ANNETTE YORK had plenty of time in prison to think about her defense. And plenty of time to think about Darren.

  After everything she’d gone through, she was not going to be executed for Ross’s and Lexi’s murders. Not when she’d been so close to having everything that had belonged to Lexi. The prosecution had very little corroborative evidence—she’d been too smart to leave a trail.

  And the butler’s daughter would be foolish to take the stand to testify against her, especially when Annette’s lawyer could force her to reveal the reason for her marriage to Hunter Sinclair—and Cort’s true identity. Oh, yes, the media would have a field day with that information!

>   Goody Two-shoes Juliana wouldn’t put a helpless little baby in danger. Cort might be abducted like his older sister had been.

  What Annette needed was a messenger she could trust to deliver a warning to Juliana. Who she needed was Darren.

  She’d trusted him more than she’d ever trusted another man in her life. He’d loved her, thought she was beautiful and had begged her to be his wife.

  Sometimes in those transitional moments just before she fell asleep or just as she was waking up, she thought of him. Remembered how soft the brush of his beard was against her fingers. Against her breasts. Remembered the warm fervent kisses they’d shared and the way his hazel eyes had lit up when he entered a room and spotted her.

  That she’d missed the most.

  She closed her eyes to blot out the pain of seeing Darren at the funeral. She’d hurt him again when she’d brushed him off. She knew he didn’t understand why she couldn’t marry him. But she couldn’t hurt him by listing all the reasons he couldn’t be her husband. None of which had mattered to her until Lexi had come home pregnant and engaged to a billionaire. And Darren, a college mathematician, had suddenly ceased to measure up to Annette’s mother’s high standards.

  Annette sighed and brushed at a tear gathering in her eyelashes. Her parents were dead now, as were Ross and Lexi. With Cort still alive, she wouldn’t get the Collingwood fortune, but an acquittal would leave her free to reap a satisfactory amount of attention off this tragedy. Convince the world that she’d been a victim, too. Her lawyer had already received five offers for movie deals.

  And there was always Darren.

  He’d never belonged to Lexi.

  And somehow the old dream of being his wife, having his children—children whom she’d love equally with all her heart, seemed the one true course of action. She’d hoped he might visit her in prison, but he hadn’t.

  She’d get her lawyer to arrange an interview with that journalist from the New York Times. She knew just how to summon Darren to her aid.