Operation Bassinet

by Joyce Sullivan

  He was behind her, she couldn’t see his face.

  Traffic moved sluggishly through the intersection. He nudged her with the weapon to cross the street. “What do you want?” she asked, trembling. Her legs were having difficulty obeying her instructions to keep moving.

  “A simple exchange. Your biological daughter for the Collingwood heir.”

  Stef’s stomach lurched. This was insane. She wasn’t going to trade one child for another! “You don’t need Kee—I mean, the Collingwood heir. They’ll pay the ransom. They have the five million dollars. It’s been ready for days.”

  His hot breath bathed her ear, sending chills down her spine. “Here’s a news flash. I need more than just the money. You’re going to bring me both.”

  Dear God, what was that supposed to mean? Stef’s eyes searched the windows of the shops they passed, hoping to catch a reflection of the man who’d taken her hostage. But the interiors were bathed with light.

  “I’ve timed the distance it’s taken you to walk this far. Thirteen minutes.” He slipped something into the pocket of her leather jacket. “Here’s a cell phone. I’m going to call you in precisely twenty-one minutes. You’d better be standing at the curb outside the Park Terrace with Riana. Do anything foolish and I will slit your real daughter’s throat and dump her in the Hudson. Understand?”

  Twenty-one minutes! Stef knew she had to stall for time. Mitch and The Guardian weren’t at the apartment. They were interrogating Sable. For all she knew Sable had confessed and both Mitch and The Guardian were speeding to her real daughter’s rescue.

  “How do I know you’re not lying to me? How do I know my real daughter’s still alive?” she said.

  A photo was thrust under her nose. “Here’s proof.”

  Stef stopped beneath a streetlight. Anguish roared through her like a tornado. She saw a solemn-faced, dark-haired little girl with a fringe of uneven bangs. She was sitting on a bed, holding the front page of the New York Times below her chin. Her blue eyes had a soft glow of hopefulness in them that tugged at Stef’s heart. Her arms ached to hold her, to reassure her that she was loved. Wanted. Was her daughter being held somewhere in this city?

  “How do I know you won’t hurt Keely?”

  “She’s instrumental to my plans. As long as the authorities cooperate, she’ll stay very much alive. She’s the key that will open the doors that need to be opened. She’ll be released once we’re safely out of the country.”

  We’re? Whom did he mean? He and Sable, maybe?

  She peered more closely at the Times front-page headline and the date, distrust reverberating through her. This photo had been taken the day before Keely was attacked, probably before the kidnapper knew he had the wrong child.

  Her throat threatened to close up with grief at the discovery. “This picture is a week old. How do I know she’s alive today?”

  “You’ll have to take my word for it.”

  Stef stood her ground. “That’s not good enough. Here’s my counteroffer. Take me to my real daughter. Prove to me she’s still alive. Then I’ll do whatever you say.”

  MITCH’S HEART hammered like a one-hundred-pound weight against his ribs. He had to get Sable to confess her involvement in Riana Collingwood’s abduction and to reveal where Stef’s daughter was being held. Of secondary importance was determining to what extent Brad Shelton and Tony Conklin had been involved.

  To Mitch’s extreme frustration, Sable refused to talk until her four-hundred-dollar-an-hour lawyer arrived in his well-earned Italian suit. Then when they played her the videotape Brad had taken of their meeting in Herman’s, Sable stuck to the same answers like a parrot, her face the color of wood putty.

  “Yes, I paid Brad to splice together several conversations that Ross and I had,” she freely acknowledged. “Brad needed the money and I needed someone I could trust. Ross had relegated me to an empty title on the Collingwood Corporation’s board of directors while he squeezed every dime of profit—and every ounce of humanity—from my company. I thought it was time to squeeze Ross into giving me more control.”

  Her blood-red nails fanned over her elegant desktop. “Ross was in a vulnerable position and there was a good chance the tape would upset his oh-so-perfect marriage.”

  Mitch wasn’t buying her explanation. “Be honest, Sable. You’d already had his baby daughter abducted. You wanted to completely destroy Ross’s life by ruining his marriage, too.”

  Sable’s silvery eyes widened. “Oh, no, wait a minute. I had nothing to do with Riana Collingwood’s abduction. I may come across as the Wicked Witch of the West sometimes, but I would never hurt an innocent baby. Planning to bring Ross to his knees gave me an outlet for my rage over the takeover, but I couldn’t bring myself to pick up the tape from Brad. I knew I couldn’t resort to underhanded ploys to get back operating control of my company. Not when I was at fault for taking my family’s company public. Ross was just a shark in the larger pool I’d placed myself in.”

  Her gaze shifted from Mitch to G.D. “I called Brad and told him our deal was off, and that I’d help him get a new job.”

  “How did Brad react?” Mitch asked, tamping down on his impatience to catch her in a lie. Every guilty person wanted to tell their story in their own way.

  “He was angry. I’d let him down and he’d been counting on me. Ironically, now that Ross is gone, I’ve been handed more leadership of the company because sales figures have been falling. I could have given Brad a job.”

  “What day did you tell Brad you’d changed your mind?”

  Sable didn’t hesitate in answering. “Two or three days after I met him in Herman’s.”

  Mitch flipped through his notebook to the notes he’d taken of his interview with Mike Lipetzky. Sure enough, Sable’s answer meshed with what Brad had told Mike about a job offer that had fallen through and he was trying to decide whether he should take the initiative and strike out on his own.

  Strike out on his own. Mitch blinked as he reread those five words. How desperate had Brad been to get his beloved job back? Desperate enough that he’d captured Sable’s duplicity on tape? Mitch read his notes to Sable. “What do you think Brad meant when he told his friend he was striking out on his own?”

  She sent him a look of exasperation. “Obviously that he was going to find a job on his own.”

  Mitch propped an elbow on the edge of her desk. “Come on, Sable, you’re smarter than that. I wonder if Ross Collingwood would have given Brad his job back if he showed him this video footage of the two of you? Is that why you killed Brad, because you didn’t trust him to keep quiet?”

  Sable’s voice caught with horror. “You think I killed Brad? Oh, my God. That’s sick! All we did was tape a few conversations, I swear!”

  Mitch wasn’t letting up. Stef was at the apartment, counting on him to bring her news of her daughter. “We’d like to believe you, Sable, but there are a couple of facts that suggest you’re involved in the kidnapping. The kidnapper exited the hospital with Riana by rappelling to the ground from a window in the maternity wing. That’s the kind of escape route a climber would dream up. You’re a climber. So was Brad.”

  “What of it? That evidence would hardly convict me.” Sable glanced at her lawyer.

  Was she looking for help?

  Mitch stayed cool and applied more pressure. “Brad fits the kidnapper’s description.”

  Sable lost her temper. “Brad did not abduct Riana Collingwood. That’s ridiculous.”

  “Why? You just told us he was the type of man who’d be involved in an extortion conspiracy. Why not kidnapping?”

  “Because just like me, Brad was a decent person.”

  “So decent he switched his own daughter with the Collingwood’s daughter.”

  Mitch would have liked a snapshot of Sable’s face at the instant he dropped that neat little bomb. Her mouth formed an O large enough to swallow a small state. The news obviously came as a complete shock to her lawyer, too.

  “What?
” she whispered faintly.

  “You must have been angry when you realized he’d double-crossed you and switched the babies. Or was it Tony Conklin who pulled that off?”

  Sable covered her mouth with her hands and stifled a sob. Tears stained with her mascara trickled slowly over her fingers. “Are you saying that Keely isn’t really Stef and Brad’s daughter? Oh, my God. Does Stef know?”

  Mitch stared at her. Sable was either an incredible actress or she wasn’t behind Riana’s kidnapping. She hadn’t reacted at all to his mention of Tony Conklin’s name. He exchanged a worried glance with G.D.

  The four-hundred-dollar-an-hour lawyer rubbed Sable’s shoulder. “Gentleman, I believe my client has answered all your questions truthfully and without hesitation. This discussion is over.”

  The hell it was. Mitch couldn’t stand the thought of Stef being separated one more night from her real daughter. He walked around the table and squatted beside Sable who was sobbing into her hands. He lightly touched her elbow.

  “Sable, I know this is painful—maybe you got yourself in deeper than you ever imagined. I know you’ve taken good care of Stef’s little girl. Tell me where she is.”

  Sable lifted her head and Mitch knew the instant he gazed into her smudged, tear-filled eyes that this lead was rapidly fizzling toward an unexpected dead end.

  “I told you—I don’t know what you’re talking about, and I’ll take a lie detector test right now to prove it! I would never take a baby away from its mother.”

  Mitch rubbed his face. God help him, he believed her. She hadn’t hired Tony to keep tabs on Brad. Mitch’s jaw locked as he stared grimly at The Guardian. They wouldn’t be bringing Stef’s daughter back to her tonight.

  Tony Conklin had been working for someone else.

  STEF WAS TERRIFIED and disoriented. The kidnapper had given her a choice of traveling to her daughter via the trunk of the sedan or lying on the floor of the back seat with a blanket covering her. She’d chosen the back seat and the blanket option as the lesser of two evils, but what the bearded man who’d taken her hostage didn’t tell her was that the back seat included a shock from the stun gun if she so much as moved an inch. She tried to remain very still even though her body was cramped. Let him think she was still in a stupor.

  He’d taken back the cell phone. She had no idea how long they’d been driving or in which direction they were headed, but she assumed her captor was Tony Conklin and that he was taking her to the Catskills. She’d tried to ease the blanket away from her eyes in hopes of glimpsing an overhead exit sign on the thruway, but her angle was all wrong.

  Even though Stef knew she was asking for the impossible, she prayed that Mitch would find her, that he wouldn’t let her down when she needed him most. Not like Brad. As she lay drenched in the sweat of cold fear, she finally accepted what she had been fighting ever since Mitch had bulldozed his way into her life. She loved Mitch Halloran. The same bluntness and unflagging determination that had once irritated her, now seemed his most endearing qualities. Most women might worship his Hollywood good looks, but she loved the hurt little boy inside that facade who was the gate-keeper to his heart.

  When she saw him again, she might just tell him she loved him—just to scare the hell out of him.

  Stef felt a sharp pat on her back.

  “Wake up!” her abductor said. “We’re almost there.”

  Stef debated what she should do. Stay silent? Or respond? The kidnapper gave her another slap.

  “I know you’re awake,” he said in a condescending tone. “Each shock only lasts fifteen to twenty minutes.”

  If he weren’t her only link to her real baby, Stef would have thrown the blanket over his head and caused an accident. Her mouth tasted like chalk. “I was waiting for you to say please.”

  Her abductor laughed. “Very funny. Listen up. This is what’s going to happen if you want to stay alive. In about ten minutes we’re going to drop by my aunt Helen and uncle Fred’s house. They’ve been looking after Emma.”

  Her daughter’s name was Emma. Tears stung Stef’s eyes as she greedily absorbed this unexpected revelation.

  Her mind scrambled to catch up to what the kidnapper was saying. “I convinced them that their good-for-nothing son had knocked up a woman, who’d then turned around and abandoned the baby on my doorstep when Tony cut out on her.”

  Tony? Stef absolutely froze. Was he talking about Tony Conklin? She was afraid to ask, afraid to let him know that she knew anything. But if this man wasn’t Tony, then who was he?

  “Are you listening?”

  Sarcasm shot through her tone. “I’m taking notes.”

  “When I sent the ransom demand to the Find Riana Foundation,” the kidnapper continued, “I told my aunt and uncle that I had heard from Emma’s mother’s sister, and that she might be willing to take care of Emma. My aunt was relieved. She’s sixty-three and too old to be caring for a toddler. So you’re going to be Emma’s aunt Stef from Seattle, who flew to New York on an unexpected business trip and wants to collect her younger sister Lori’s child.”

  The kidnapper took on the tone of a teacher issuing orders to an unruly class. “You are going to be pleasant and reassure them that Emma will be fine with you. You will not do or say anything to alert them that this visit is not what it seems. They’re old. I’ve already had to dispose of their worthless son. I would hate to have to kill them, too, because you did something stupid.”

  Stef was repulsed. Whoever this arrogant jerk was, he’d just admitted to killing someone, probably Tony!

  She swallowed hard, dredging up the courage to ask what had really happened to Brad. How had he been involved in this? She didn’t know if she’d get another chance to ask. “Did your cousin kill my husband?”

  The car swerved on the road. “Your husband is dead?”

  “Yes, two years ago July seventeenth. He went climbing with someone named Tony at the Giant’s Kneecaps. He fell and Tony disappeared.”

  “That explains a lot,” the kidnapper replied. “So Tony knew your husband. Tony came to see me later that night in a panic, insisting we had to attempt another ransom demand. He said someone he knew was growing suspicious and might connect him with the kidnapping. I didn’t know at the time he’d double-crossed me and switched the babies. He was a loose cannon and he was going to ruin everything. If it makes you feel any better, he died July seventeenth, too.”

  No, that didn’t make Stef feel better, but at least she knew now that her husband had not heartlessly involved their baby in a kidnapping.

  The car slowed. “Climb up onto the back seat and make yourself presentable,” the kidnapper ordered.

  Stef struggled to obey his instructions. The muscles in her arms and legs were cramped and she felt dizzy. She smoothed her hair as she looked out the window at their surroundings. Night-cloaked fields stretched off in all directions. They were in the middle of nowhere at the foot of a lane that led to a small, neatly kept, white farmhouse. A light burned on the front porch.

  Stef’s heart clenched. This was the house where her daughter had said her first words and taken her first steps. Oh, God, just let her be healthy. I can make the rest better, she told herself. It was all she could do not to charge out of the car calling for Emma.

  She licked her dry lips, flexing her fingers and her toes, trying to bring feeling into the traumatized muscles. There wasn’t another house visible in any direction. She knew the kidnapper had both a gun and the stun gun. She couldn’t blow this. “What’s my younger sister Lori’s last name supposed to be?” she asked.

  “Rogers. I told Aunt Helen that she bums around from bar to bar, dancing topless.”

  Great. “It shouldn’t be too hard to invent a life for myself as Emma’s aunt that will beat that. What am I supposed to call you? I don’t even know who you are.”

  “My name’s Darren,” he said. “Darren Black.”

  In a blinding flash of recognition, Stef remembered the newspaper article Mitch
had shown. Annette York had publicly admitted that she still loved Darren Black, the college mathematician she couldn’t bring herself to marry because he didn’t measure up to her sister Lexi’s husband.

  So Darren had stolen the one thing Ross Collingwood had valued more than money—his baby daughter.

  “Darren,” Stef said very softly. “Why didn’t you ransom Emma back sooner?”

  “Because Annette was enjoying Lexi’s misery.”

  That was sick. Stef tried to stop the quaking in her limbs. Darren still loved Annette. He’d do anything for her. Even kill Keely if it would make Annette happy. Oh, God, she needed Mitch now.

  “THEY’RE BA-ACK!”

  Mitch’s stomach fisted into a knot as Keely raced down the long hallway of the apartment to the front door to greet them with Juliana in hot pursuit. Stef would be devastated when he told her they’d hit a dead end.

  Keely launched herself toward Mitch’s knees in a running tackle. “Hiya, Mitch! Hi, G.D.!”

  “Hey, jelly bean!” Mitch caught her giggling, squirming body and pumped her up and down a few times as if he were doing bicep rolls. He’d have thought Stef would be on top of him, asking for news, the moment they came in. “Where’s your mommy, kiddo?”

  “She’s not with you?” Juliana asked.

  Mitch felt the world drop out beneath him. He checked his watch and exchanged a worried look with G.D., careful not to say anything that might upset Keely. “We sent her back in a car three hours ago.”

  Where the hell was she? G.D. was already pressing his cell phone to his ear. “I’ll check with the team who dropped her off.”

  “I’ll take Keely to the kitchen,” Juliana said meaningfully, her face pale with concern.

  Mitch paced as G.D. contacted the team leader. His heart shrunk to the size of a pebble when G.D. verified that Stef had been dropped off at four forty-five.