Ashley was so intent on saving the infant, so utterly charged with adrenaline, she hadn’t even realized the knife had slashed through her flesh until several minutes had passed.
Rolling the semiconscious kidnapper/killer over onto her stomach, Shane dropped to his knees to get the handcuffs on the woman while she was still groggy and couldn’t offer much resistance.
Only after her wrists were secured did he say anything at all.
“We work well together,” he told Ashley. And then, as he rose to his feet, he saw the blood. Her sleeve was wet with it. “Oh, damn.”
“I don’t think those two sentences are supposed to go together,” Ashley quipped, her attention still utterly focused on the whimpering infant in her arms. “This has got to be the kidnapped baby. She’s so tiny. I think we found her just in time.” There was no doubt in her mind that even another day might have proved to be fatal for the baby.
As she tucked the baby more securely against her good shoulder, Ashley finally became aware of her surroundings. It took everything she had to keep her jaw from dropping. “Oh my God, Shane, look in the cribs.”
Given her tone, it sounded as if they had stumbled onto a black market baby ring. Shane looked around the nursery. And saw that the other three cribs were indeed occupied. Taking a step closer, he reached out his hand to the occupant of the crib closest to him. The skin was amazingly soft to the touch.
His eyes widened. “Are those—?”
“Dolls,” Ashley confirmed. “Those are called Almost Real Babies that some mail-order house has been coming out with for a few years now. I’ve seen ads for them on the internet,” she told him.
Tessie struggled to get to her knees. “Don’t touch them!” she shrieked. “Don’t touch my babies! You can’t touch my babies!”
“Okay,” Ashley said, turning to look at Shane. She kept one hand protectively around the infant they’d just saved while holding the baby against her with the other. “I’m now officially creeped out.”
“You’re also officially bleeding,” Shane told her.
The woman in front of him was still struggling to get up on her feet. The shock of what she could have done, stabbing Ashley as she fought her off, had his temper flaring. It took his last ounce of restraint to keep from dragging the woman to her feet. As it was, he yanked her up a little less than gently.
Meanwhile, Ashley was looking down at her arm. For the first time, she became conscious of the growing pain radiating along her arm.
“I guess I am,” she answered, a little dazed. And then she looked at the baby she was holding. “But the important thing is that we got you back, isn’t it, sweetheart?”
“Give me back my baby!” Tessie demanded, trying to break free.
Shane’s hold on her tightened as he restrained the woman. “That’s not your baby,” he told her gruffly, then ordered, “Now shut up.” Holding her in place, he pulled out his cell phone and called for an ambulance for both the baby and his partner. He wasn’t about to put up with any trouble getting through and being heard.
As if sensing that the police detective had been pushed as far as he would go, the older woman became subdued. Within a moment she appeared to have retreated from reality altogether, rocking where she stood and mumbling to herself.
* * *
Ashley rode in with the infant in the ambulance. Her main concern was to get the baby checked out, but her arm was beginning to severely ache and she decided that getting bandaged up herself wouldn’t hurt, either.
Shane had gone on to the precinct with their prisoner. The sooner the woman was behind bars, the sooner she would breathe easy, Ashley thought.
The trip from Tessie’s house to the hospital was extremely short. Nevertheless, by the time the ambulance arrived at the E.R. entrance, Ashley found that she had bonded with the baby.
Even though she was bleeding, she insisted on being there with the infant while the doctors took care of her. The attending physician in the E.R. was far from pleased, but her response to him was that she wasn’t interested in winning a popularity contest; she just wanted to be sure that the baby was going to be all right.
“Isn’t there anyone in the police department who isn’t so damn stubborn?” the E.R. physician demanded. It was obvious that he was familiar with the Cavanaughs, who were less than patient when they needed to be treated at the hospital. He beckoned over one of the nurses.
“Possibly, but they’re on desk duty,” Ashley answered.
“See what you can do about getting that wound of hers cleaned up. Last thing we want is Brian Cavanaugh getting on our case about letting one of his people bleed to death.”
“Don’t worry, I’m not one of his people,” Ashley told the doctor as she was being ushered over to the side of the exam room.
“You’re with the police department, aren’t you?” he retorted, never bothering to look up from the infant he was treating.
Ashley made no answer as she continued watching the doctor work over the infant she and Shane had rescued. But she smiled to herself. The feeling of being part of something and being taken care of was very new to her, and she liked it.
* * *
Ashley was checked out, sewn up and told to go home and rest by the resident who wound up taking care of her.
“And the baby?” she asked as she watched the infant being wheeled out in a glass bassinette. For lack of a name, they had written in hers on the base of the container.
Seeing it took her back.
The resident paused to write something on the chart that detailed what he’d done to her. “We’re going to keep her here for a few days, run a couple more tests to make sure she’s all right. Don’t forget, she didn’t exactly have a typical birth process. According to Dr. Riley’s estimate,” he said, referring to the E.R. physician, “the baby was a little shy of full term when she was taken from the womb.”
“Would it be all right if I came and visited her?” Ashley asked. There were a great many more safeguards on the maternity floor these days, and she wanted to make sure she could gain access without causing a disruption in the routine.
The neonatal specialist who had been called in to consult on Monica’s infant heard the last part of her interaction with the resident. His gray eyes crinkled as he smiled at her. “I think that might be very good for her. Babies are never too young to make connections, and they respond to being touched and handled far more than was once believed.”
He regarded the sling she had newly acquired. There was concern when he raised his eyes to hers. “I’m told that Aurora has the most invincible police personnel, but is there anyone to take you home?”
“I’m taking her home.”
Startled, Ashley turned around to see Shane walking toward her. He must have just arrived, she realized. The last she’d seen of him, he was taking the deranged former nurse to the precinct to be booked.
“Then I leave her in your capable hands, Detective,” the specialist said, withdrawing. He said one last thing to Ashley before going to attend to his next patient in the pediatric ward. “Remember, rest.”
Ashley’s response was a spasmodic smile before turning toward Shane. “Why aren’t you in booking?”
“I got my sister, Kari, to finish processing Miss Loony-Bin.” He didn’t add that his concern for her had him rushing back. But his eyes said as much as they swept over her. “So you’re okay?”
“Just a scratch,” she replied with a dismissive shrug.
“That ‘scratch’ was bleeding like a sieve back at the crazy woman’s house,” he pointed out in a no-nonsense voice. “You do realize that you’re not immortal.”
She tossed her head. “Yes, I realize that and I’m fine now.” Ashley didn’t want to waste time talking about herself or how she felt. She was more curious about what he had learned about t
he woman who had kidnapped Monica’s baby after killing Monica. “Did you find out anything about that awful woman?”
Very slowly, he began to guide Ashley toward the rear doors. He’d left his sedan in the E.R. parking lot. “There were all sorts of signs that she was crazier than a March Hare. It turns out that Tessie Wakefield was a nurse who was fired from the hospital where she worked because she tried to keep a baby from its mother.”
“What did she do?” Ashley asked.
“She claimed that the woman was unworthy of being a mother. The woman started screaming. Luckily, another nurse rushed in to find out what was going on. She managed to placate the patient. The upshot of the whole incident was that no charges were pressed, but Tessie was fired.”
Shane paused at the E.R. reception desk to sign her out, then slipped his hand to the small of her back and gently ushered her out the door.
“A nurse,” Ashley repeated, shaking her head. “That would explain the attempt at a C-section,” she said. It had been far from perfect, but it did indicate that whoever had done it knew their way around anatomy.
Shane paused. “You want to wait here while I get the car?”
“I’m not an invalid,” she protested with feeling. “I can walk.”
“Nobody said you couldn’t,” he countered. But just to play it safe, he tucked her hand through the crook of his arm. Only then did he begin to walk to where he had parked his vehicle. “What’d the doctor say about the baby?” he asked.
“We can walk faster than an arthritic snail,” she prompted.
“Yes, we can,” he agreed. But even so, he didn’t pick up his pace.
Ashley gave up and turned her attention to his question. “The E.R. doctor said she appeared surprisingly well considering the enormous trauma she’d been through. They’re going to keep her here a couple of days to make sure they haven’t overlooked anything.” She hesitated for a moment, then told him, “Instead of writing Baby Phillips on the outside of the bassinette, the nurse put my name on it.”
“That’s nice,” he said without actually paying that much attention to what she’d said. He was, however, distracted by the expression on her face. Ashley was pressing her lips together.
“Something’s on your mind.” It wasn’t a guess. Shane was beginning to pick up on all her signs. “What?” Reaching his sedan, he unlocked her side first and held the door open for her.
Feeling suddenly drained, Ashley sank down in the seat and was secretly grateful when he pulled out the seatbelt for her and buckled her up. She suddenly had the energy of a flea.
“I don’t want her to go through what I did,” she told him. Because she knew she was throwing a disjointed fragment of a thought out of left field at Shane, she backtracked. “That baby has no one who wants her. It was clear her father doesn’t, and her grandfather would sooner have her burned at the stake as the spawn of Satan than take her in.”
Ashley had already made up her mind about what she was going to do, but since Shane was part of the baby’s rescue, she felt he deserved to hear this from her. “I want to adopt her.”
Shane was well aware that his temporary partner didn’t march to the same drummer the rest of them did, but what she was proposing to do was surprising even for her.
“Whoa, that’s a big step.” He slid in behind the sedan’s steering wheel. “Why don’t you sleep on it?” he suggested. “See how you feel in the morning.”
“The time of day isn’t going to make a difference, or change my mind,” Ashley insisted. “I was that little girl twenty-one years ago. I know what she’s in for, and I can keep it from happening.” She was determined to see this through, and she wanted him to understand why she felt so compelled to do this. “Single women adopt babies all the time.”
“True, but that’s not the only thing social services and the judge look at. They look for a stable lifestyle, and you’re in a dangerous profession,” he pointed out.
She laughed shortly, recalling what he’d said to her the first time they’d met. “I’m a glorified dog catcher, remember?”
He pulled out of the lot and drove onto the main street leading away from the hospital. “You’re never going to let me forget that, are you?”
“It was true,” she told him. “And there’s nothing dangerous about picking up roadkill.”
He spared her a look as he stopped at the first intersection. “What about your dream of moving up in the department?”
A child’s life was far more important than a career, Ashley couldn’t help thinking. “There’s been a slight change of plans,” she told him glibly.
He hadn’t wanted to point this out, but she gave him no choice. “There’s also the fact that you don’t have a family—there’s no backup support system to help you in case you get sick or something else comes up.”
The light turned green, and he put his foot back on the gas. He wanted to get her home as soon as possible. He wanted to discuss this major life event with her without being distracted by traffic or anything else.
But this wasn’t going to wait another fifteen minutes. He needed to tell her now.
“You know, they’d be more inclined to let you adopt a baby if you were married—or at least engaged to be married,” he said matter-of-factly.
Ashley laughed shortly. There was no sense in going there. She had to deal with reality, with the hand she was dealt, not with some wistful pipe dreams. “I can’t exactly advertise for a fiancé now, can I?”
“No, I wouldn’t advise it,” Shane agreed. “But that wasn’t what I was saying.”
What were you saying? Ashley couldn’t help wondering. “What? You’re telling me that you know where I can find a fiancé lying around somewhere?”
He squeaked through a light a second before it turned from a forgiving yellow to a forbidding red. “As a matter of fact, I do.”
Why was he doing this to her? Did he think she’d find it funny? She was serious about adopting that little human being and, in an ideal world, he would be the man at her side.
But nothing had ever been ideal for her, and there was no reason for her to believe that it would start now. The man had utterly rocked her world the other night, but she was a big girl and she knew that people like her didn’t get lucky like that very often.
“Yeah, right,” she said mockingly. “Who?”
“Me,” he told her simply.
Now that was downright cruel, she thought. Did he suspect how she felt about him? Was this his way of driving her away, by poking fun at her? “Very funny,” she answered coolly.
“I wasn’t trying to be funny.” His voice was so serious, she stared at him, waiting for that shoe to fall, the laughter to begin. How far was he going to carry this joke?
What if it’s not a joke? a little voice whispered in her head. What if he’s serious?
The next moment, he said as much.
“I was trying to be serious. I am serious. You’re the kind of woman I’ve been looking for, Ashley,” he said. Then, because a man couldn’t bare his soul to the woman he loved while driving, Shane pulled over to the first empty parking area he saw, turned off the engine and then turned in his seat to look at her. “A woman who can be a partner,” he continued as if there’d been no pause at all, “who won’t ask me to give up something I feel defines me as a person.”
Her mouth was dry, and she could feel herself trembling inside. “You can’t be serious,” Ashley insisted. “You don’t know me. You don’t know anything about me.”
“I know enough,” he answered. And as far as he was concerned, he did. There was something about her that spoke to him, that reached him in the furthest recesses of his soul. “But if you feel you want to further enlighten me, go ahead.”
There wasn’t a single drop of moisture in her mouth. The words felt as if they were choking
her as she pushed them out. “I had a baby.”
He’d already gotten that impression by what she’d said to Tessie when she was attempting to calm her, but since she didn’t actually mention one and there were no photographs of a child in her house, he had the feeling that this part of the story didn’t have a happy outcome. He was waiting for her to say something in her own time. He’d never believed in pushing an issue.
“Go on,” he coaxed quietly.
She stared straight ahead. “My baby was stillborn. The father had long since been out of the picture. It took me a while to get my head back together.” She looked at Shane now, waiting for him to comment. When he didn’t, she asked, “Well, aren’t you going to say anything?”
He hadn’t wanted to interrupt her or to say anything until she was finished. “I’m sorry.”
She waited for more. There wasn’t any. “That’s all?” she asked incredulously.
“I wish I had been there for you,” he added.
That wasn’t what she meant. She thought there’d be accusations of secrecy, or that he would use it as an excuse to withdraw the emotional support she felt coming from him.
“You’re not surprised I kept that from you?”
He shook his head. “It’s not exactly something someone can fill in on a résumé,” he answered. “Your past is your business. If you don’t want to talk about it, I’m okay with that. It’s your future that’s my business, not your past. Now, getting back to my proposal,” he said glibly. “I don’t expect an answer from you right away, but the offer is on the table. I love you, and I’d like the chance to make up for the lousy hand that life dealt you prior to this.”
She stared at him, wondering when she’d begun to hallucinate. But he was still there, waiting for her to say something. “You’re serious.”
Mission: Cavanaugh Baby Page 20