The Baby Mission

by Marie Ferrarella

  “You called him?” There hadn’t been any time, unless she’d done it while he was filling out her insurance papers at the registration desk.

  C.J. looked away, in no mood for a lecture. “I told him I was pregnant, A baby is usually the end result of that condition.”

  Cupping her face, he made her look at him. “You weren’t that sure,” he reminded her.

  She pulled her head back. So he was Tom’s champion now? “I don’t count.”

  A very soft smile curved Warrick’s mouth as he said quietly, “Yes, you do.” And then he straightened. “Thorndyke doesn’t know he has a daughter.”

  Their last conversation together, the one that was littered with words like, “no strings” and “hey, how I do I know it’s even mine?” played itself over in her head. She’d hated Thorndyke for that, hated him for making what they’d shared seem tawdry and cheap. The one time she’d let her guard down and it had to be with the wrong man.

  And now her partner was just making things worse. “He doesn’t want to know.” She raised her voice. “Will you leave it alone, Warrick? He’s like you. No strings.”

  Warrick’s brows narrowed over stormy eyes. There was no way he’d allow himself to be compared to the other man. “He’s not like me. I’d want to know. I wouldn’t have left you to begin with.”

  The tightly reined-in emotion in his voice surprised her. “You didn’t,” she told him.

  He’d almost lost it just then. Maybe this whole baby thing had him more wound up than he thought. Warrick cleared his throat. “Yeah, I know. Do you want me to find him?”

  Did he really think she didn’t know where her baby’s father was? “No need.”

  Warrick looked into her eyes. He was the detail person and she was the one who went in like gangbusters, but it was stupid of him to think for a second that she wouldn’t keep tabs on Thorndyke, if only to make sure there was space between them.

  “You know where he is, don’t you?”

  “He’s in D.C.,” she told him crisply, and then added, “And if you get in contact with him in any way, I’ll rip your heart out.”

  He laughed softly, letting the matter go. After all, it was her life. And maybe he was even a little relieved that she didn’t want to see Thorndyke, though there was no way he would ever have admitted to that.

  “Always the delicate lady.”

  A little of the luster returned to her eyes. “And don’t you forget it.” There had been only one detail about her pregnancy that she’d planned. “Now, are you going to be the baby’s godfather?”

  The request, coming out of the blue, almost rendered him speechless. It took him a second to recover. “I’d be honored.”

  She shrugged, trying not to let him see how much it meant to her to have him agree to be her baby’s godfather. “Just be there. Otherwise I’d have to substitute one of my brothers and that’s like putting a double whammy on the baby. Grossly unfair.”

  “Wouldn’t want that.” He rose. It was time to go. There were only five hours until morning. “So, you want me to draw up a list for you?”

  The question caught her off guard. She thought of the case she’d been poring over when this had all started. “Of suspects?”

  “Of possible names.” She was unbelievable. “Damn it, C.J., you just gave birth. How can you be thinking about serial killers at a time like this?”

  He didn’t understand, did he? Now it was personal. “Because I just gave birth to a little girl not unlike thirteen other little girls, that’s why I can be thinking about bringing this scum in. Each one of these thirteen victims had a first day, Warrick, just like my baby. Each one of them was someone’s little girl.”

  He understood where she was coming from, but he was shooting for something far less complex. Leaning over her bed, he tucked the blanket up around her waist. “Stop being an FBI agent for a few minutes, C.J. Just for tonight, be little what’s its-name’s mom.”

  He had no idea what she was experiencing, C.J. thought. How hard it was to keep the tears from forming in her eyes. Maybe it was just her hormones, running amok, but she was filled with so much love, so much everything that it was a miracle she was even able to draw a breath in. It felt so crowded inside of her.

  But there was no way anyone, not even Warrick, was ever going to see just how vulnerable she actually could be. Weakness was always exploited, intentionally or otherwise.

  “Okay,” she finally allowed somewhat cavalierly. “But promise me you’ll keep me posted about the case.”

  “Right.” There was no way one word about the case was going to reach her ears from his lips until she was back to active duty, he thought, smiling at her. “I’ll call if there’s any breakthrough.”

  That was too easy. She knew him better than that. “I’m not kidding.”

  “I know.” Warrick took her hands into his and looked into her eyes, his expression softening just a little. Until a few hours ago he would have said that he was as close to C.J. as he was ever going to get. He’d been wrong.

  Maybe it was just the excess of emotions he was feeling, he thought, searching for a reason for what was going on inside of him. “Don’t you ever relax?”

  C.J. pressed her lips together. “The last time I relaxed, I wound up pregnant.” She instantly regretted the confession, but as she watched his eyes, she realized with relief that Warrick was being sympathetic.

  He shook his head. “I know this is a new concept for you, Jones, but try for middle ground.” He bent over the bed, intending to brush a kiss on her cheek. Caught off guard, she turned her head. Her lips made contact with his. It was hard to say who was more surprised.

  Something that had all the markings of an electric current snaked its way through her at lightning speed, making every hair on her body stand on end. She knew it was only a matter of extreme exhaustion mingled with being emotionally overwrought, but the end effect was still the same.

  Her heart was pounding almost as hard as it had when she was struggling to give birth.

  Very slowly Warrick lifted his head. His eyes held hers for a beat before he took a step back. He was as unsure of what had just transpired here as he had been about the feeling that had taken hold of him in the field office.

  “You missed your target entirely,” she said quietly, struggling for a fragment of composure. She felt as if she was going to shatter into a million pieces if he so much as blew in her direction. “I think you’d better get back on the firing range.”

  Warrick laughed then and ran his thumb along her bottom lip, wiping off the imprint of his lips. “Don’t worry about my ability to shoot straight. I can handle my own. See you tomorrow, Mommy.”

  That term was reserved for her daughter when she learned to talk. C.J. loathed couples who referred to one another that way. “Don’t call me that.”

  He paused. “‘Daddy’ doesn’t seem to fit, even if you do wear the pants most of the time.”

  She didn’t want him thinking of her any differently. Not because of the baby. And not because of what had just accidentally happened here. “I’m still C.J.,” she insisted.

  “Yeah,” he agreed. His eyes swept over her. “You’re still C.J. But as of two hours ago, you’re now a hell of a lot more.”

  He winked at her and left.

  Chapter 5

  That old familiar feeling came over her. The one where she felt as if she was in the right place, where she was meant to be.

  After completing three weeks of her maternity leave, C.J. absorbed her surroundings as she made her way from the elevator and down the hall. The last time she’d been here, she’d been done in by exhaustion, flat on her back and strapped to a gurney on the way to the hospital with a minutes-old baby in her arms.

  God it felt good to be back.

  She took a moment to gather herself together outside the office she shared with Rodriguez, Culpepper and Warrick, then pushed open the door.

  Culpepper was the first to see her. Portly, with a layer of musc
le beneath the fat, he rose to his feet and came forward.

  “Hey, looks who’s here, Rodriguez. How’s it going, Mommy?”

  Tossing her purse on her desk, she glanced toward her partner. “Warrick, did you warn these people about calling me that?”

  “Hey, I can’t help it if they all have the attention spans of baby gnats.” Their desks butted up against each other. He rounded his and came to stand by hers. “Speaking of baby, why aren’t you with yours?”

  She took a deep breath. Slightly stale air, lemon floor polish and Rodriguez’s ever-present jar of peanut butter. It even smelled good to be back here.

  “The doctor gave me a clean bill of health, said I was fit to report back for duty.” C.J. had left the appropriate papers down at personnel on her way up here. “She actually thought I would be a nicer person if I went off to work every day.”

  That was because even despite the work a new baby required, C.J. found herself going stir-crazy. The ability to multitask with speed was not always a good thing. It left her with too much time on her hands. She needed to fill that time with her job. Besides, ever since she’d become a mother herself, she had this overwhelming need to make the world around her a safer place to be for her daughter. She was doing it the only way she knew how.

  “Besides,” C.J. continued, “My daughter’s actually got the semblance of a sleeping schedule down, and I’ve been kept in the dark long enough.” She looked at Warrick pointedly, then turned her attention to the other two men who were part of the Sleeping Beauty Killer’s task force. “Can either one of you two fill me in?” She nodded toward Warrick. “My partner here refused to say a word about the case to me. Every time I asked, he kept changing the subject so much, I began thinking that maybe Warrick was the Artful Dodger come to life.”

  “Artful anything doesn’t sound like Warrick,” Ralph Culpepper hooted.

  “Never mind that.” She sat down at the edge of her seat, as if poised to leap up at any second, Warrick noticed. Same old C.J. “I need input,” she told them. “Someone brief me.”

  George Rodriguez raised and lowered his wide shoulders. At six-five, everything he did was big. “Nothing to brief, C.J., our boy’s laying low again. Maybe we’ll get lucky and it’ll be another three-year reprieve.”

  That wasn’t the way she saw it. “We’ll get lucky when we nail the son of a bitch.” As long as the serial killer wasn’t off the streets, he could always strike again. “So nothing’s been happening while I’ve been out of touch?” C.J. underscored the final word, sending an accusing glance Warrick’s way.

  “Well, Rodriguez, here, got engaged.” Culpepper slapped his partner on the back. Sitting, Rodriguez was almost as tall as Culpepper was standing.

  She hadn’t even known he was seeing anyone. “Is that true?” Squirming ever so slightly in his seat, Rodriguez nodded. “Who is she?”

  Culpepper answered for him. A new grandfather, he looked upon his partner as a son. He was accustomed to doing most of the talking. “You know that cute little receptionist on the second floor?”

  C.J. thought a minute. Her eyes widened as she realized who Culpepper was talking about. “You mean that little-bitty dark-haired one who looks like she wears size-one clothes?”

  Culpepper grinned at Rodriguez, who was taking a considerable interest in the file he was holding open in his hands. “That’s the one.”

  Talk about the long and the short of it. “What are you going to do, Rodriguez,” C.J. asked, “carry her around in your pocket?”

  “For starters,” Culpepper laughed, nudging his partner and winking broadly.

  Rodriguez had only been at the Bureau for three and a half years. She still thought of him as “the new guy.” “Well, I’m very happy for you, Rodriguez. Don’t forget to let me know when the wedding is.”

  Culpepper sat down and leaned back in his chair. “Hey, talking about weddings, I hear there’s a rash of those going on. Any of you remember Tom Thorndyke, that tall dude who used to work down the hall?” He looked from Warrick to his partner and then at C.J. “You went out with him, didn’t you C.J.?”

  Damn it, why did her heart just skip a beat? She thought she’d drummed that bastard out of her system. “Once or twice,” she allowed. She congratulated herself for keeping her smile in place. “What about him?”

  Warrick slanted a look at C.J. There was no way he could prevent the conversation from continuing without alerting the other two men that something was wrong. No one else knew that the absent special agent was the father of C.J.’s baby.

  Culpepper’s chair creaked. “Word is he’s getting married.”

  “Married?” The word tasted like dried cardboard in her mouth. She struggled to sound only mildly interested. Anger mingled with surprise. “Really? To who?”

  Culpepper scrubbed his hand over his face, thinking. He prided himself on always getting his facts right. “Somebody he met while on the job. One of the bean counters.” Every organization had them. Even the Bureau. “She moved out with him when he transferred. Got the story from the guy who used to be his partner.” He glanced at C.J. “All these weddings, must be something in the water, eh, C.J.?”

  “Must be.”

  She knew that Culpepper wasn’t trying to be insensitive. The oldest of them by twenty years, it was probably his fatherly way of suggesting that she herself find someone to marry, to give her baby a proper father. He had no way of knowing that he’d struck a bad chord.

  Picking up her purse, she pretended to look through it. “I think I left something back in the car.” Dropping the purse, she rose to her feet, keys in hand. “I’ll be right back.”

  “Pictures of the baby, I’ll bet,” Culpepper chuckled. He looked at Rodriguez. “They’ve always got pictures.”

  Warrick hurried after C.J. She’d managed to get far ahead of him in the hall. He lengthened his stride.

  “Hey, Jones, wait up. Didn’t the doctor tell you not to start jogging the same day you went back to work?” Catching up to her, he took hold of her arm, bringing her to a halt. “C’mon, C.J., stop for a minute and talk to me.”

  She didn’t want to talk to anybody. She wanted to kick something, break something. Vent. But because Warrick had placed himself in the line of fire, she took it out on him.

  “Did you know?” she demanded.

  He didn’t know if she was hurt or about to spit fire. With C.J. it was hard to tell. “I—”

  Her eyes narrowed accusingly. “Did you know?”

  He made it a point not to lie. Especially not to a friend. The closest he came was to omit mentioning things. But there was no space for that here.

  Warrick threw his hands up. “Hell, C.J. what do you want me to tell you? Yes, I knew. I heard via the grapevine last week just like blabbermouth in there.” He silently cursed Culpepper. Why couldn’t the man have been out of the office when she came back?

  “And you didn’t tell me.” How could he? she demanded silently. How could he have known and not told her?

  “Why should I?” He hadn’t told her because he didn’t want to reopen any wounds that might have been healing. “You said you moved on, remember? You told me in the hospital that you didn’t want to get in contact with him—ever.”

  “I didn’t. I don’t.” Confusion was running riot through her. She honestly thought she was over the man. But if so, why this sudden onslaught of pain? What the hell was wrong with her? “It’s just that…” Anger creased her brow as she looked up at him. “Damn it, War, here I thought he didn’t want to get involved and it was that he just didn’t want to get involved with me.” And being rejected stung. “I guess it just hurts my pride, that’s all.”

  He bracketed her shoulders with his hands. Wanting to protect her. Knowing she’d bite off his head if he even hinted at it. “Just goes to prove how stupid the guy really was, letting someone like you go. Look, I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want you reacting this way. He’s not worth it, C.J. You know it, I know it. End of story.
”

  “Yeah, end of story,” she echoed, then thought of her daughter and how hard it had been to leave her this morning. She’d never known she could fall in love so completely and with such little effort. But she had. And if not for Thorndyke, Joy wouldn’t have existed. And all that love C.J. felt within her at this moment wouldn’t have even materialized. “I guess I got the best part of him anyway.”

  He’d been out in the field for the last week and hadn’t had time to drop by to visit C.J. “Speaking of which, how’s my future goddaughter doing?”

  C.J. thought of the way she felt walking to her car after dropping the infant off. Empty, as if a part of her was suddenly missing.

  “A lot better than me. I left her the center of attention at my mother’s house.” She’d never realized just how much her mother had wanted to be a grandmother. “My parents have more baby furniture and toys for Joy than I do.” This despite the impromptu shower the Mom Squad had thrown her when she’d come home from the hospital.

  He saw nothing surprising about that. “Why not? They had five kids—and an attic.” He crossed his arms before his chest. “So I take it she didn’t have any—what do they call it?—separation anxiety?”

  C.J. laughed shortly. “She didn’t. I did.” Even now she couldn’t help wondering what her baby was doing. Did she realize C.J. wasn’t around? Or was Mommy just another face to look up at? God, but she was getting mushy. How long before hormones adjusted themselves back into place? And then she looked at Warrick in wonder. “How do you know about separation anxiety, anyway?”

  He was the methodical one. “I thought that since I’m supposed to be her godfather, I should bone up on these things.” He looked at his partner pointedly. “I should also insist that she have a middle name to go with the first name. You can’t just call her Joy Jones.”

  She saw nothing wrong with that. “Why not?”

  “Do you want people to call her ‘J.J.’?

  “I don’t just want her to have any old middle name. I want the whole name to be special. To fit her.”