by Jaycee Clark
And why he hadn’t, he didn’t really know, had no answer.
“You wanted your space. I finally gave it to you, as I respected you and wanted to respect your stubborn choice. I should have done what I really wanted to do,” he admitted quietly. “I should have followed you to New Mexico, or worked harder to just keep you in New Orleans. If you don’t want to live in D.C., we didn’t have to. I don’t know if I ever said that before. Yeah, I should have followed you and tried on the whole stalker scenario. Should have told my family sooner. Hell, I don’t know, Ella. I don’t know. I just know I made the wrong choices too. I fucked up. I’m sorry.”
Nothing made sense anymore.
The air felt heavy, and too still, too quiet, too . . . tight. Like a storm waiting to unleash its fury.
She muttered something. He rubbed his hand over her arm and she stilled.
Intense. It was all intense and messed up and it wasn’t just him that felt it either. Ian was currently in his scary-focused mode. Then again, it was family and it was a child. Ian would be intense anyway, but it was as if he was hunting prey. No other way to describe that focused energy. Just like before when his brother had returned.
Someone in the hall laughed again and he wished they would all go away.
He didn’t want to hear laughter just now.
He stood and leaned over her, brushing a strand of hair away from her forehead. Quinlan took a deep breath and realized she didn’t smell the same, sweeter somehow, with a tang of medicine attached. He kissed her forehead.
Quinlan paced back and forth across the room. Nine steps one way. Checking Ella again, noting she hadn’t stirred, he needed a bit more room to pace. The hallway was silent now as he stepped outside and left the door cracked.
Postpartum wing of labor and delivery.
Who had done this? When would she wake up so they could talk to her . . .
Too many questions.
The thought of never having known of his child, the fact that he might never know his child if . . . Panic sank its poisoned teeth deep. No, not going there.
He shoved it aside.
They’d find her. They would.
He walked the hallways. Only one nurse stopped him and asked if he needed help, and who he was visiting.
“My wife.” He froze and stared at the nurse. Shaking his head, he said, “My wife. I just need some air.”
As he walked away, the long block-patterned carpet muffling his footsteps a bit, he saw and heard another nurse speak to the first quietly. He wasn’t far enough away not to hear the first’s, “Oh, those poor people!”
He ignored them, walked to the end of the hall around the corner, through the door and finally back. At the nurse’s station, he asked, “Can I see the nursery?”
For a moment, the middle-aged nurse behind the desk just looked at him, then jerked her head to the side door that he thought led back to the waiting room. No, the stupid sign hanging from the ceiling clearly said Nursery.
The Nursery . . .
He took a deep breath and followed the nurse through the doors. It was still a hallway; others stood in front of the glass. Three others actually.
“Most of the time, the babies are with their parents,” the nurse told him.
He didn’t answer, just looked through the glass. It was old glass, still had the little wired lines in it from decades past.
Clear—what were those baby things called?—bassinets held a few babies. The others were empty.
He stood there staring at the sleeping infants. One moved, jerkily. That had always amazed him. So tiny, so fragile, and they moved like automatons to him. Little jerks and starts as if the gears weren’t quite working yet.
All babies looked the same to him.
Even the one clearly awake and moving, her tiny head covered with a pink-striped cap.
Where was she? Where was his daughter? Was she that tiny? How much had his daughter weighed? The girl safely bundled and wrapped behind the glass had a place card in her little unit. Even from here he could read that the baby had been eight pounds and three ounces.
Was his daughter smaller yet? And she’d been early. How early? What if she needed medical attention? Preemies did, he knew that. How early was too early?
He could count. Nine months. It was almost nine months to the damned day he’d met Ella. Yet, he didn’t know enough yet to know if the baby was only a little early or way early or . . .
God, he was going nuts.
The baby’s little old face scrunched up.
Tiny old faces.
Did his daughter look like her, all pink skin and wrinkly? Or was she smooth like the baby next to that little girl?
Did she have a lot of hair? Red hair. Ella had said she’d had red hair during her hurried speech.
An innocent baby. Who did she look like? What of her eyes? Did she have his dimple? His father’s eyes? Her mother’s eyes?
Where was she?
And how did he even begin trying to find her?
Chapter 23
Sunday afternoon
Dark . . .
Sounds . . . a quiet hiss.
Ella slowly came to.
She heard a slight beep and then the tightening of the cuff on her arm.
No.
No. They’d found her. They had her.
She gasped, jerked, and opened her eyes. Where was she? Where was . . .
Her chest felt heavy, her limbs funny, cold and aching. She was cold. Where was she? Her hands went to her stomach. Where was her baby?
Her baby?
Panicked, she glanced around. No bassinet waited beside her. No nurse came to see her. What was this place? She’d been in the clinics and knew the color scheme. The labor and delivery at the local hospital was pastels, yes.
The walls here were a soft green, but not pastels, more . . . something. She didn’t recognize where she was precisely, but she knew she was in a hospital. The scents, the feel, the fact she was hooked up to a blood pressure cuff and the IVs running into the back of her arm where the blood IV was taped down.
But where?
The door opened and she jerked at the sound.
They were coming. They were . . .
He stood in the doorway looking at her. Straight green eyes studied her, and a muscle bunched in his cheek. He took a deep breath, stepped into the room and let the door shut behind him. Still tall, still muscular and fit, still too . . . perfect.
A baby cry pierced through her. She started at the sound of it and realized it came from another room, maybe next door. Maybe across the hall.
It wasn’t her baby.
“Quinlan?” She looked around again. Hoping to see. Hoping to find . . .
He sat beside her and reached for her hand.
“You’re in the hospital.” His voice was the same as she remembered. Calm, cool, soothing.
She did remember it otherwise, a couple of times.
Images flickered in her mind. A house. A bed. Her breath came faster. A policeman and red lights. Another cop . . . a detective? Quinlan talking to her.
His eyes locked onto hers. “You’re safe now.”
She shivered, ice skittering beneath her skin.
“The baby? Do you—do you have her?” she asked, hoping, praying, hoping. Please. Please. Please.
He took a deep breath. A muscle jumped in his jaw. “Ella.” He sighed and looked away. “No. No, I don’t have her. No one knows . . . No.”
His eyes, always green, seemed to almost glow in the light. His features were not as smooth as she remembered. Instead they stood out, his skin tight over his cheekbones, the muscle still bunching in his jaw.
She realized his hand held hers and his fingers were softly rubbing the back of her hand.
“How—” She licked her dry lips. “How did I . . .”
Her heart fluttered and thundered in her chest. Panic clawed closer.
“Would you like some water? Or ice?”
Ice? She shook her head. “Wate
r.” What was wrong with her voice? She put her hand to her throat, which hurt.
He picked up the plastic pitcher beside her bed and poured it into the glass. Some sloshed out and puddled on the little rolling table. She remembered him doing this at some other point, but couldn’t quiet wrap her mind around it.
Something hissed and the blood pressure cuff tightened on her arm. Ella struggled to sit up and took a long drink from the straw he bent toward her, her throat hurting more as she swallowed.
Silence roared between them.
What did she say? She’d thought he’d known. She’d written to him, given the letters to Jareaux to mail. She’d worried he hadn’t known, but she’d written to him, and even if she had doubts about Jareaux, she’d always thought deep down that Quinlan knew.
“Why didn’t you write me back?” she suddenly asked, picking at the blanket.
She’d been so scared. So very, very scared and all alone she realized now. Perfect for them. Perfect.
“You never wrote to me.” The words bit out.
Her eyes jerked to his. “Yes, I did. Several times! Three letters. I never heard back. I told you about the baby. What I was doing, what I wanted. How when it was over . . . I wrote you.”
He opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again and then took a deep breath. “If you wrote me, I never received any letters,” he finally said, calmly and quietly.
Anger bit through the fear at his if.
She searched his eyes, then looked past him to the wall. Jareaux. Jareaux who hadn’t wanted her to call his office, his office who acted as if they didn’t know what she was talking about. Jareaux who had said he’d mail her letters. Jareaux who had blown her off because she wasn’t getting him proof quickly enough.
Jareaux who hadn’t wanted her to contact Quinlan because it might compromise the investigation, though he had offered to send her letters. She realized with sudden clarity the agent had never specified when he would send them. With a man like Jareaux, he probably hadn’t, she realized.
“I really am stupid.” Had she ever . . . No. And why hadn’t she just emailed him? Because she’d thought it was a chickenshit way to let him know. Always griping about the gadgets, gadgets she could have used and . . . And the Nursery had fed into her quirk as well. Living off the grid, a more natural way of doing things. Healthier for the baby and whatever other crap they had fed her.
“He never mailed them. I gave the letters to . . . someone . . . to mail,” she whispered. Stupid. She’d known it was stupid. Why hadn’t she given the letters to Mr. Richardson? Or his wife? They were nice. They would have mailed the letters. And she had already explained the situation to her nice grandparently neighbors. They still wondered and asked her why she had run. She was always running, wasn’t she? But she was helping the FBI, doing more, helping others, and of course she had given Jareaux the letters so that they could make certain she hadn’t said anything to compromise the investigation. Of course she had because she had naïvely trusted the bastard.
God, where was her baby?
“To whom?” he asked softly.
“What?” she asked.
“Who did you give the letters to?”
“It doesn’t matter, does it? He, they never mailed them, did he? Jareaux. Probably him. He lied. You never knew . . . Agent Jareaux . . . was it was all lies?” God, and the others. So many others. Who did she trust? Because she clearly trusted the wrong people. She thought she’d been helping . . .
“It matters to me. Why didn’t you just mail them?”
She shook her head and tried to sit up, her head pulsing with pain.
“Oh, no, lay back down.”
“I have to find her. I have . . .”
His hands on her shoulders held her down and panic spider-webbed over her skin. “Ella, you almost died. People are out looking. The letters matter to me, who?”
“Jareaux.” She didn’t elaborate.
“Fine.” He only cocked a brow and shook his head. “We can get into all that later. Or again. The FBI wants to talk to you.”
“Agent Jareaux? I don’t want to talk to him.”
He sat on the edge of her bed now. “Yes, and another agent . . . Sabino. You know them?”
“I don’t want to see him. Jareaux, I don’t want to see him.” He’d lied, led her, used her just as much as . . . “He lied . . . before. I tried to tell him. He . . .” Everything was so messed up. She rubbed her forehead.
“He’s the FBI, they are trying to learn what they can with you, to find our baby, and apparently there is some sort of investigation and . . .”
“Now he’s worried about the investigation? He didn’t seem concerned a few days ago, or hell, even last week. He was too busy with another investigation. Too busy to help me get out of the mess he put me in. I didn’t find the proof quickly enough for him. Said he didn’t have time to babysit me or hold my hand. On second thought, yeah, maybe I will talk to him.”
“Ella, it’s the FBI, they look for missing kids. Right now, that’s our priority. We need all the help we can get to find her.”
Anger flamed through the panic she was shoving back, but like a rising tide, she could feel it building.
“I know that, Quinlan,” she whispered. “I know what they do, or say they’ll do. I was helping them—him.” She closed her eyes and admitted, “I listened to Jareaux when he said I could help them. When he said I was in the perfect situation to help them.”
She felt him still, could feel the tension tighten around him. She opened her eyes and met his, glittering emerald green and just as hard.
“You were what?” he asked quietly.
She licked her lips. “Helping them—the FBI—or trying to. I did what he said. Jareaux. I tried . . . But I think he lied. Maybe about all of it. I wrote you letters telling you about the baby and how when the investigation was over I wanted us to be a family. I was sorry. Am sorry. Doesn’t matter now . . .”
She dropped her head back on the pillow.
“You were helping the FBI with some sort of investigation because Jareaux asked for your help and he didn’t mail the letters you wrote to me?”
“Missing babies, missing women from the place where I worked.”
He nodded, the skin across his face tight, a muscle bunching in his jaw. He opened his mouth, then shut it. He took another deep breath.
They didn’t have time for this. Again she tried to sit up, if she could find Lisa she might . . .
“Lie down,” he told her.
She shook her head. “I have to find her, Quin. I have to look. Lisa . . . I have to . . .”
Again he put his hands on her shoulders and gently pressed her back down. “Ella,” he said, his voice quiet steel. “You almost died, and if you think I’m going to let you get up and waltz out that door so you can finish the job, you can damned well think again.”
Her eyes filled.
“I have to find her,” she whispered, felt the warmth of tears trickle down her cheeks.
“We will. You have to heal, though.”
The panic she’d been holding back crested and broke over her, sending chills quaking through her body. “She’s so little, Quin. So little. Early, she’s early.”
“How early?” he asked, trying to keep her calm.
“Over three weeks early. You can check with Dr. Merchant or Radcliffe, though I don’t know if they’ll be honest. I don’t know anything anymore, Quinlan. I just know I want my baby. I have to find her. I have to—” Again she tried to sit up, but he pressed her down again.
“Calm down. Please, look at me, Ella. You can’t help by leaving and collapsing, but you can talk to the FBI, or whoever. They have questions about the baby, the locals have questions, the state police. Ian, my brother, he’s talked to them, he and his wife are great at finding things and are here in New Mexico right now.”
“They are? Really?” She thought back to their time together.
He grunted. “If there’s anything to find, he�
�ll find it. You need to concentrate on helping us at this end.”
“She’s so little, Quinlan. And she’s early. What if something was wrong. How will anyone know? How will we find her? What if whoever has her isn’t nice? What if she’s . . .”
“No ifs. We’ll find her. Now, look at me.”
She met his gaze. A shadow dusted his jaw.
“How did you get here? Do you remember?”
Exhaustion slid through her veins. What drugs were they giving her?
She took a deep breath. “Journal . . . I have a journal. I wrote it all down who I thought was behind it, not Lisa though,” she muttered.
“Who?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know exactly. One of the doctors, I think. The midwife? I don’t know. I don’t know!” The image of her friend holding her baby. “Lisa, Lisa helps them.” She gripped his hand. “I wrote it all down, not the Lisa part!”
Fractured and broken images skittered through her brain. The couch in her living room, the other room with gray walls, a hallway.
“Where’s the journal?”
“I started one for the baby, but added other stuff. I think they took it, I don’t know, it was in my bag. There was another on my laptop, but that was in my bag too. Where’s my stuff?”
He shook his head.
“I made a copy of my journal and a few other things on a flash drive. I gave it to my neighbors to keep.”
“Flash drive?”
“To keep stuff safe, in case anyone looked.” Because someone always seemed to be watching, trying to talk her into giving up her baby.