by Jami Alden
Every muscle in Danny’s face seemed to tighten as he held out Anne’s picture to Ines. Ines studied it for several long seconds, then handed it back to Danny with a nod. “I remember her. She volunteered here for a little while, and then one day she didn’t come back.”
CHAPTER 8
The girl writhed in pain, sweat soaking her hairline as she let out another low, almost bovine moan. Patrick Easterbrook checked the girl’s IV and nodded for the nurse to pump another dose of fentanyl into the line. It wouldn’t come close to the relief that an epidural would provide, but it would take the edge off the contractions. He only had limited doses of the epidurals, and needed to save those for the C-sections.
Besides, he was a radiologist, not an anesthesiologist, so in theory he had no business putting in a spinal block on anyone. Then again, he shouldn’t be delivering babies, but here he was.
He snapped on a fresh pair of gloves and reached up under the girl’s gown, avoiding her accusing stare as he did so. She said something and spat at him. He didn’t understand the language—it sounded vaguely Eastern European to his uneducated ear, but the sentiment was clear.
“She’s nine centimeters dilated and 100 percent effaced,” he said to the nurse, who also kept her eyes averted from the girl’s angry stare. Patrick didn’t know the nurse’s name—didn’t want to know her name. It was better that way. He didn’t want to know any of the other employees in Gates’s enterprise. “It should happen in the next hour or so.”
The nurse nodded and offered the girl a cup. Ice chips littered the floor as the girl smacked the cup out of the nurse’s hand, her body convulsing with another contraction.
“You have to breathe,” the nurse said to the girl in heavily accented English. “Breathe through the pain.”
The girl’s only response was a low sob as pain overtook her.
Patrick’s cell phone buzzed inside his scrub pocket. He looked at the display and stepped out to take the call. “Hey Mel,” trying to keep his tone light. He was supposed to be at a radiology conference in Los Angeles, and his wife had an uncanny knack for picking up any tension over the phone lines. “Can we keep this short? I’m about to step into another session.”
“Okay, but I was hoping you could chat since you missed our call last night.” He could hear the pout in her voice. Still, just her voice was enough to make his tension ease a couple of degrees, reminding him of why this was all worth it. He’d do whatever it took to give his wife and daughter everything they wanted.
But it wasn’t just about money. Hadn’t been for a long time. Patrick would protect this operation at all costs if it meant keeping Melody and Jennifer safe.
“I know, but dinner ran late.” In truth, he’d been monitoring the girl whose water had broken late yesterday afternoon. In a stroke of good luck, Patrick was there anyway, checking up on the status of the other girls so he could report back on upcoming inventory.
Another lowing moan came from the room across the hall.
“What in the world was that noise?” Melody asked as Patrick hurried away from the noise, down the corridor into another section of the house.
“Just the TV in the hotel lobby,” Patrick explained. “Now did you have something you wanted to talk about, because really, honey, I have to run.” He was next to the lab now, where the nurses drew blood and monitored the girls’ hormone levels in preparation. Patrick had to hand it to Gates. Looking at the rambling farmhouse and barn from the outside, no one would ever imagine it contained a fully equipped blood analysis lab, two labor and delivery suites, and accommodations for up to thirty girls in various stages of pregnancy.
When he and James had first connected with Gates five years ago, it had been an ad hoc operation. If one of Gates’s girls got knocked up, James worked to find an adoptive family while Patrick made sure the girl and the baby were healthy until the baby was delivered. But they had quickly seen the potential upside of matching birth mothers and fathers who resembled the adoptive parents. Gates had put in the capital investment to build the facility and made sure he maintained a steady, healthy supply of girls of varying ethnicities and coloring. Before that, it had been a fluke when the birth mother so strongly resembled the adoptive parents. Now Gates had it worked out so adoptive families could practically custom order a baby that would fit perfectly within their family.
A tall blond girl was escorted past him by a woman who held her arm in an iron grip. With her blond hair almost to her waist and long limbs, she had the kind of Nordic perfection so many of their clients desired. Her issue would get them close to half a million, he had no doubt.
“Oh fine,” Melody said. “I just wanted to tell you I went over to check on Caroline last night. I still can’t believe what happened to Rachael.”
Patrick’s gut clenched as he listened to Mel rattle on. Yeah, he couldn’t believe it either. Couldn’t believe that, for a second time, Caroline had somehow survived unscathed. The woman had more lives than a damned cat.
“Did you know she hired a private investigator?”
Patrick’s stomach sank somewhere down around his knees. “She mentioned something about talking to someone.” Please don’t tell me Taggart decided to help her.
“Some great big hunk of man meat—no offense sweetie—named Danny Taggart. She says he’s helping her investigate James’s death, but I think she’s helping him with something else if you know what I mean.” Her tinkling laughter usually brought a smile to his face but right now it was like nails on a chalkboard. Danny Taggart. Of all the fucking bad luck.
For eighteen years Patrick and James’s secrets had remained safe. Now Caroline had invited Anne Taggart’s son to dig into her life and James’s, and God help him if they managed to uncover the truth.
“Even so, this guy is legitimate,” Melody continued. “I Googled him, and it turns out his firm is the one that found that kidnapped girl over in Atherton, and his brother uncovered the plot to kill Alyssa Miles.”
Patrick closed his eyes as a cold sweat of panic bloomed across his shoulders. Yeah, he knew all about Danny Taggart and Gemini Securities and their uncanny ability to get to the heart of the truth, no matter what the evidence said.
They had to find those records James was stupid enough to keep, the ones he was stupid enough to threaten to use against Gates and Patrick when they refused to let him out of the operation. James always did have more of a guilty conscience about the operation, but in the past four years since his grandson had been born, the guilt had kicked into high gear. It was different before Gates came into the picture, he insisted. Back then, they were finding better situations.
Patrick had hated to see him killed, but he agreed with Gates and Marshall that it was the only way. They couldn’t let James’s newfound misgivings ruin them all.
He felt a soft brush against his arm. He looked down at the nurse.
“It’s coming,” she mouthed.
“Honey, I really need to go,” he said. “I’ll be home tonight.”
Half an hour later he placed another call, this time to Marshall, on an untraceable prepaid cell phone. “The shipment has arrived. Seven pounds, five ounces, baby girl as requested.”
The nurse walked by with a blanket-wrapped bundle in her arms, and Patrick ignored the wails coming from the delivery room. She’d known she wouldn’t keep her baby. She’d get over it.
“Great,” Marshall said, and Patrick could almost see his green eyes light up with greed. “I’ll tell them to wire the funds tomorrow. You’ll get your cut within the week.”
In time to pay his malpractice premium, his mortgage, Jennifer’s college tuition, and alimony to his bitch of a first wife whose extravagance got him into this business in the first place. She’d been sucking him dry ever since Patrick announced he was leaving her for Mel, making sure he could never get out from under Gates’s thumb, even if he wanted to.
No matter. There were lots of childless couples all over the country with deep pockets, willing to pay a
nything to get a healthy baby, especially one likely to resemble one or both of the adoptive parents. Business was good, his cut was generous, and as long as they kept Caroline Medford from screwing everything up, the business showed no signs of slowing down.
“I don’t understand why it was such a big secret,” Caroline huddled against the damp January chill as they walked to her car. Danny was about a millisecond from taking off his heavy leather coat and draping it over her shoulders before he stopped himself.
That was too much of a lover-like, boyfriendy gesture, something he would have done in the past. Danny wanted to get back in her pants, sure, but he didn’t want to create any confusion about their relationship in the meantime. Instead he opened the passenger door for her, settled himself in the driver’s seat and cranked up the heat.
She didn’t even question that he’d drive her car. Just like before.
He forced himself to get his mind out of the past and back to what they were dealing with, namely his mother’s volunteer work at the girls’ shelter, and why she was so determined to keep it secret. According to Ines, Anne had started volunteering there in May, around the date they found in her appointment book. It was there that she met James Medford.
James had been coming to the shelter regularly for a couple of years, according to Ines. He’d show up every once in a while and meet with the director and various residents. Ines had no idea what the meetings were about. They were always conducted behind closed doors, and since her English wasn’t very good, she wouldn’t have been able to understand anyway.
“So why didn’t you or the director ever go to the police when Anne turned up missing?” Danny had asked. Between the news stories and his father’s own publicity, Anne’s picture had been plastered across the state for the first six months after she disappeared. Ines would have had to have seen it.
Ines looked at him like he was crazy. “I couldn’t risk getting deported. I didn’t have my green card then, and I needed this job to send money back home to my kids.”
Danny tried not to let his anger show—nothing they could do about it anyway. But it was maddening, to think all the time they’d been searching for her, someone had been holding back one tiny, but critical piece of information.
“Who knows what she was thinking?” he said as he pulled into the street. “Maybe she wanted to stick it to Dad with her secret life, make him squirm, wondering where she was, who she was with, when really she was doing volunteer work. You tell me why women play the games they do,” he said as he turned onto the highway.
Caroline’s dark eyes narrowed into a glare. “I have no idea what was going on in your parents’ relationship. But it was obvious to anyone she was unhappy. Not all women play games, Danny.”
“Right. They just tell you they want one thing when really they want something else entirely.” He could have bitten his tongue in half. That didn’t sound like a guy who was indifferent to what happened in the past. He needed to stop being such a chick and get over it already. “So now we know the connection between James and Anne—”
“Do you think they were sleeping together?” Caroline said, distaste at the idea apparent in her tone.
He’d second that. Even though he had suspected his mom of having affairs, he didn’t want to think about her actually sleeping with anyone. “No idea, and I don’t really want to go there. For now let’s focus on what we know—that they knew each other—and figure out what was going on before she died.”
“We need to talk to the girls who lived there.”
Danny took the exit off the freeway near Gemini’s offices. “If LaTanya has the records in a networked computer Toni will have them in minutes. If not, there are other ways to get access.” If the shelter received money from the county, they would most likely have records of who had lived there over the years. Barring that, Danny was always up for a little B&E, providing it was in the name of a good cause.
He turned the Mercedes into the Gemini parking lot and braced himself. His brothers had been on his ass, leaving messages left and right ever since they’d learned he was with Caroline the day before when Rachael Weller was killed.
Not only did they want to know if there was anything to the land connection, thanks to the GPS locators all three brothers wore at all times, Derek and Ethan knew damn well he’d slept over at Caroline’s last night.
He took Caroline’s arm in an unconscious gesture and guided her up the stairs and into the building. Kara Kramer looked up from the receptionist desk. Danny checked his watch. It was only twelve-fifteen.
“Shouldn’t you still be in school or something?”
Kara sat back in her seat. “I’m doing my work-study program in criminal justice. Toni signed off on it.”
“As long as you’re making yourself useful.”
Kara rolled her eyes and held up a ball of wadded up papers. “Ben has me working on his expense reports.”
Danny didn’t envy her for a second. Moreno was great in the field, but his organization in the office majorly sucked. Then again, it was no secret Kara was nursing a giant crush on the security specialist, leftover from the fall morning when Ben had helped rescue Kara from kidnappers who would have sold her to a bunch of wealthy perverts willing to pay top dollar to deflower virgins.
Ben, who loved female attention in all its forms, indulged Kara but was careful never to cross the line, even though Kara made a big deal of reminding everyone she was eighteen now.
Ethan was in the lobby waiting for them, having seen them on the video monitors as they approached. “So Danny, what’s the sitch?” His laser-blue eyes flicked meaningfully to Danny’s hand resting on Caroline’s arm.
Danny tamped down the urge to snatch his hand back like he was afraid of getting cooties. Let Ethan speculate all he wanted about what was going on with him and Caroline. If it wasn’t true yet, it would be soon.
“Go get Derek and meet me in the conference room.”
Five minutes later, both Ethan and Derek were glaring daggers at him. Anne’s appointment book lay in the middle of the polished wood table.
“Why the fuck didn’t you tell us about this?” Ethan yelled, slamming his hand down on the table.
“The real question,” Derek said, his quiet tone somehow more menacing than Ethan’s explosion, “is how long have you been keeping this from us to protect your husband?”
“What are you talking about?” Caroline asked, her head tilting forward like she wasn’t sure what she’d just heard.
“It’s quite a coincidence,” Derek said, walking around the table until he stood next to Caroline’s chair, “that the book would suddenly turn up when we find Mom’s body. And well after your husband is dead and unavailable to answer questions.”
“Derek, back off,” Danny growled. He’d had his initial doubts, but he knew in his bones Caroline wouldn’t have kept evidence like that from them, no matter how angry she was at Danny.
Caroline jumped in to defend herself. “Are you kidding me, Derek?” Danny had to give it to Caroline. There weren’t too many women who could go head to head with Derek when he was turning on the cold menace, but Caroline was too pissed to be nervous. “Do you really think I would keep something like that from you?”
“If it meant protecting your husband. You dumped Danny flat on his ass. Why should we think you’d have any loyalty?”
That stung, Danny could tell. Caroline closed her eyes and swallowed hard, and when she opened them up they were shiny with tears. “Whatever you think happened between me and Danny, I loved him,” she kept her eyes carefully averted from his, and Danny felt something twist open in his chest. “And you guys were like little brothers to me. I never would have done that to you.”
Derek and Ethan looked at each other. Their expressions didn’t change, but Danny knew they were having one of their annoying twin to twin telepathyfests, deciding what to do about Caroline. They needed to understand the decision had already been made, case closed.
“Carolin
e, will you excuse us a minute?” Danny asked. He walked over to her chair and muscled Derek out of the way so he could help her stand. “I need to talk to my brothers in private.”
“Why, so you can talk about me and how you think I hid evidence that would help you find your mother until it was convenient for me to reveal it?” Caroline tried to jerk her arm out of his grip as he steered her to the door. “You told me you believed me, Danny.” Her eyes were dark, pleading for him to trust her.
And the hell of it was, he did. In this anyway. He had from the moment she’d first shown him the book. “And I meant that,” he said, so soft it was almost inaudible. But it was enough to send a wash of relief across her face, for her to reach up and squeeze his arm in reassurance. Sometimes, like right then with her smiling up at him, her beauty hit him like a sucker punch to the nose, taking away his breath, making him dizzy as stars exploded behind his eyes. With her creamy, flawless skin and soft pink mouth, her hair tumbling in waves around her shoulders, she could have easily been the sixteen-year-old he’d fallen in love with practically at first sight.
Danny used every shred of restraint to keep himself from bending his head and covering her mouth with his. But he knew he’d never hear the end of it from Derek and Ethan. Hell, he was in for a major ass chewing as it was. “Go wait in my office—second door on the left. You’ll see my name on the door.”
He turned to face Ethan and Derek, their hostile stances almost identical.
The best defense was a good offense with these two. He walked over to where they stood and got right in their faces. “Lay the fuck off her. She’s been through enough lately without you two jumping all over her.”
“Is this the same guy who accused me of thinking with my dick not too long ago?” Ethan asked, catching Danny with an openhanded blow to the chest for emphasis.
“You’ve got to admit it looks bad, Danny,” Derek said. “She was married to that guy for ten years, and she never came across it?”