Reining in Justice

by Delores Fossen

  “I made the decision to have Emily,” she said. “That doesn’t mean I expect you to be her father. In fact, I’d rather you not be.”

  Okay, that didn’t come out right, and it created a whole new fire in Reed’s eyes. This time, she didn’t think the physical attraction between them had anything to do with it.

  No, she’d riled him to the core.

  “When you filed for the divorce,” she tried again, “I knew I had to forget about you. I made plans for a life without you. A life as a single parent.”

  They hadn’t been easy plans, but she’d made them all right. Addison didn’t want to open up herself to that again. She’d barely survived the breakup with Reed the last time, and she wasn’t sure she could survive another heart stomping. Even if that stomping had been justified.

  “So you’re saying, you’ll cut me out of Emily’s life?” Reed tossed out there.

  “You’re saying you want to be part of her life?” But Addison waved him off before he could answer. His answer might not be something she could take right now. Not with her already frazzled nerves. “I don’t expect you to understand.”

  “Then go ahead, spell it out for me,” he insisted.

  This was ancient history. With some god-awful painful parts. “You know I’ve always wanted a child. A family,” she corrected. “A shrink would probably say it’s because of the guilt that I feel over losing my baby sister when I was ten years old.”

  It was, in part. She didn’t need a shrink to confirm it, either.

  Addison was supposed to have been watching her six-year-old sister, Hannah. Something that she’d griped about doing because she had wanted to watch a show on TV. Addison hadn’t been paying close enough attention when the little girl had ridden her bike out onto the road and was hit by a car.

  You couldn’t make up for that kind of loss, Addison had soon learned. Her parents had never forgiven her.

  Well, they had with words.

  But she’d always seen the grief and lack of forgiveness in their eyes, and they’d been killed six years later when their truck skidded off an icy bridge. Because of their deaths, there’d be no chance of redemption for her.

  No family.

  The loss had been bone-deep and had stayed with her all these years later. It would for the rest of her life.

  “I always wanted to have a family,” she reminded him, “to make up for the one I lost, and you don’t want a family you never had.”

  “I had a family,” he corrected, his voice edged with anger. “Not a good one, but Roy was more than enough of a father to me to make up for that.”

  Oh, so they were back to that. “And now you think I’m hurting Roy by testifying for Jewell?”

  “Aren’t you?”

  Yes, they were definitely back to that. “I’m only telling the truth. I don’t think Jewell’s capable of murder. Over the past ten years or so, Jewell and I have had plenty of conversations and visits. She’s told me very personal things about her life, and not once has she ever mentioned killing a man. However, what she also hasn’t done is rule out Roy as Whitt Braddock’s killer. Roy had just as much motive as Jewell did to want Whitt dead.”

  That got Reed’s jaw muscles working against each other.

  “Then we’ll agree to disagree.” Reed’s attention landed on Emily again. “But that doesn’t apply to her. She’s my daughter, and I will be in her life.”

  Addison flinched. That sounded like a threat. However, before she could ask Reed exactly what he meant by that, his phone buzzed. Even though it wasn’t loud, it was enough to wake up Emily, and the baby immediately started to fuss. Addison went to her while Reed took out his phone.

  “It’s Colt,” he let her know.

  Reed didn’t put the call on speaker, so Addison could only wait and watch to see what was going on. Judging from the way his forehead bunched up, this was yet another dose of bad news. Unfortunately, she couldn’t tell what kind of bad news. Reed was only listening and not asking any questions.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked the moment he finished the call.

  “Colt’s still out at your aunt’s place.” He pulled in a long breath. “They got an I.D. on the body.”

  Chapter Seven

  Cissy Blanco.

  Reed sat at the small kitchen table of the guest cottage and studied the surrogate’s file that Cooper had emailed him earlier. Cissy was young, barely twenty-two. Blond hair, brown eyes. She’d had a run-in with the law when she was a juvenile but nothing since.

  And now she was dead.

  Her body partially burned in the fire that’d destroyed Addison’s house.

  However, the fire hadn’t been the cause of Cissy’s death. A bullet to the head had seen to that, and then her body had apparently been dumped in the house. Along with her I.D. in her pocket. There was only one reason Reed could think of for her killer to do that.

  Because the killer wanted the law, and Addison, to know the dead woman’s identity.

  This had been a sick warning directed at Addison that she could be next if she didn’t cooperate with Cissy’s killers.

  “Addison knows what we want. The names of everyone she told,” the kidnapper had said when he called using that fake voice.

  The kidnapper/killer probably thought Addison had included Cissy in that list of names. But told the surrogate what exactly? According to Addison, there was nothing to tell.

  The killer clearly thought otherwise.

  Addison had thought so, too. Well, she’d mentioned it in between her sobs about Cissy. Too bad she didn’t know what bits of information she shouldn’t have spilled. But even without knowing what if anything she’d said or done wrong, Addison blamed herself for Cissy’s death. However, Reed put the blame right back on the killer.

  Whoever that was.

  This had to be linked to the surrogate herself and maybe even the Dearborn Agency. There was just one problem with that—neither Reed nor Colt had been able to find anything that would put a black mark on the agency. Yes, Cissy’s surrogate file from Dearborn had been stolen or destroyed, but someone could have broken into Dearborn and taken it and any other files possibly connected to the baby farms. It didn’t mean the agency itself was the culprit.

  Reed read through the latest email that Cooper had sent him. Definitely not good info there, but what did it mean exactly?

  And why the devil did Quarles’s name keep coming up in this investigation?

  Reed didn’t have time to speculate about that any longer. He heard the sound in the bedroom, and he hurried there to make sure everything was okay. He’d left the door open. Left Addison and Emily sleeping, too. Since none of them had gotten much sleep during the night, he’d figured they would stay in bed until midmorning. But Emily was wide-awake, fussing, and Addison was fumbling to get out of bed.

  “I’ll get her bottle,” she mumbled.

  He knew for a fact Addison wasn’t a morning person so Reed was a little surprised that she could move so fast. She picked up the basket with Emily still inside and made her way toward the kitchen. However, she did stumble, knocking her shoulder against the doorjamb.

  For a sleep-starved, half-awake woman who’d been crying half the night, Addison still caught his attention in a bad way. Maybe it was the bulky T-shirt that managed to swallow her and hug her curves all at the same time. Or maybe it was the way her hair tumbled onto her shoulders. All mussed, as if she’d just had a long night of lovemaking instead of baby tending.

  Of course, Addison always had a way of causing him to notice her, and he’d spent most of the night in the sleeping bag next to her trying not to notice that he was noticing.

  That was just one of the reasons for his lack of sleep. The other had been the investigation weighing on his mind. Another had been the baby who was at the mom
ent making him fully aware of her presence.

  Emily’s whimpers soon turned to a full-fledged cry when Addison set the basket on the table next to the laptop where Reed had been working.

  “Need some help?” he asked Addison when she nearly dropped the bottle she’d picked up off the counter.

  She shook her head, yawned and winced as if she had a headache. And maybe she did after the beating she’d taken the day before. “Don’t worry. Emily will hush crying when she has her bottle.”

  No doubt, but in the meantime, she kept on crying. For something smaller than a sack of potatoes, Emily could sure make some noise.

  “Sorry,” Addison added. “I’m hurrying.”

  “No worries. The crying doesn’t bother me.”

  Addison gave him another of those funny looks. She probably thought he was lying. But it honestly didn’t bother him.

  The sound of crying usually didn’t.

  Maybe because he’d heard his mother sob regularly and for long stints when he was kid. The cancer and the treatments had been pretty brutal, and there’d been a lot of tears.

  Ironic, though, that he hadn’t learned to hate the tears as much as he had the dangerous treatments she’d suffered to extend her life. Treatments that had ultimately failed, and her dying breath had been filled with yet more painful sobs.

  Addison cursed when she spilled some of the formula she was pouring into the bottle. He considered offering to help her, but since he didn’t have a clue about bottle making, Reed went to the basket instead. He was out of his element with the baby, too, but he jiggled the basket, hoping it would soothe her.

  It didn’t.

  The kid likely had a good career ahead as a heavy metal singer judging from the way she was belting out those high notes.

  Because the crying was obviously fraying Addison’s nerves, Reed reached into the basket and picked up Emily. Of course, it wasn’t the first time he’d held her. The kidnapper had handed off Emily to him when they were out on the road. But he’d thought he was holding Addison’s adopted baby then.

  Now he was holding his daughter.

  The air and the room were suddenly so still that it felt as if everything had stopped and was waiting for his reaction. That didn’t take long. Reed felt his heart thud against his chest. Felt the air race from his lungs.

  Oh, man.

  He’d expected a punch, but he hadn’t expected this. The flood of emotions. That urgent need to protect this screaming little bundle.

  “You don’t have to do that,” Addison said, suddenly sounding very wide-awake. She hurried to him and took Emily from his arms.

  Emily chose that moment to stop crying, and the little girl volleyed looks at both of them, maybe trying to figure out why the tension in the room had just gone up a significant notch.

  “Her bottle’s ready,” Addison added, almost like an apology. She sank down into one of the chairs and started feeding her. The baby was definitely hungry because the cries stopped, and she gobbled up the formula.

  “Remember that conversation we had yesterday?” Reed asked Addison, but he didn’t wait for her to remember something he was darn sure she hadn’t forgotten. “I said I don’t want you to try to shut her out of my life.”

  “I’m not trying to shut you out,” Addison snapped. She huffed, shoved her hair away from her face. “Okay, maybe I am, but for the past year I’ve had to figure out how to get on without you. And I managed it. Now here we are again, together under the same roof and at each other’s throats.”

  She probably hadn’t meant that as some kind of sexual reference, but that was the direction Reed’s mind went. It was yet another mental nudge he needed because the last place his mind should be going was there.

  “Don’t worry,” he said to Addison. “I’ll give you some time to get used to me being around again.”

  Heck, that sounded sexual, too, and Reed figured it was a good time to just shut up and get back to work. It wasn’t as if he didn’t have plenty to do.

  Huffing, Reed sat back down and started going through the emails that’d been coming in all night.

  “Anything yet on Cissy’s death?” Addison asked, drawing his attention back to her.

  Not that his attention had strayed far.

  When his mind wasn’t on Addison and that blasted body-hugging T-shirt, it was on Emily. The baby girl looked so innocent and precious sucking her bottle, but she kept glancing at him from the corner of her eye. Maybe trying to figure out who he was exactly.

  Heck, Reed was trying to figure that out, too.

  Was he an idiot to think he should be in a little baby’s life?

  Nothing about him was father material, nothing, and he’d never felt the desire to pass on his less than stellar DNA to an innocent child. Still, there was this mountain-high pile of feelings he couldn’t ignore. It didn’t seem to matter that he didn’t want to be a father.

  The only thing that mattered now was that he was one.

  “I’m going to suck at this,” he said in a whisper.

  Addison’s gaze darted to his. “At finding Cissy’s killer?”

  He gave her a flat look, his own gaze going to Emily.

  “Oh,” Addison said, looking more uncomfortable about that than she would have had it been about the investigation.

  That was something Addison and he would have to work on later. For now, Reed had to deal with the subject that might indeed bring Addison back to tears.

  Cissy’s murder.

  “Cissy’s sister, Mellie, reported her missing two days ago,” Reed informed her. “Did you know?”

  Addison shook her head, and yeah, the tears came again. While Emily’s crying for a bottle hadn’t bothered him too much, Addison’s sure did.

  “Cooper’s heading out to talk to Mellie this morning, but he said that she’s afraid. Rightfully so, after what happened to her sister.”

  He added some profanity when Addison’s tears continued to fall, and Reed stood to get her a paper towel.

  “Thanks,” she said. “Did Mellie have any idea who murdered Cissy?”

  “No.” Reed sat down again so he could face Addison for the rest of this. “But Mellie was a surrogate, too, at Dearborn, and she said that she’s pretty sure someone’s been following her.”

  “Oh, God.” The color drained from Addison’s face. “You have to protect her—”

  “We will. Cooper’s sending someone from the San Antonio Police Department out to the address Dearborn had on file for her.” He paused to give Addison a moment to gather her breath. Heck, he needed a moment to catch his, too. “Did anything go on at Dearborn that you haven’t told me?”

  “No.” Another quick denial. “It wasn’t like the baby farms. Cissy was a willing surrogate, and I paid her. She wasn’t being held against her will. If she had been, she would have had plenty of chances to tell me.”

  That didn’t mean Cissy hadn’t kept secrets. Secrets that had in turn gotten her killed. After all, they didn’t know the full extent of the baby farms and what had gone on at any of them. Dearborn itself could have been part of the operation.

  “You said there was only one of our embryos left,” Reed started. “I remember the doctors trying to implant two or more when you had in vitro done. Only one wouldn’t have a high chance of success.”

  “No,” she agreed, studying him. “What are you asking?”

  He was about to ask a question that was going to bring up a lot of bad blood between them. “Did you have any experimental treatments done to help you produce more eggs you didn’t tell me about?”

  “You mean treatments like the one that nearly killed me? No,” she grumbled, not waiting for him to answer. “I didn’t.”

  Yeah, definitely bad blood. Enough that it had caused their separation. After Addison ha
d healed, that is. The experimental treatments had jacked up her blood pressure to the point she’d nearly had a stroke.

  She’d nearly killed herself.

  Just as his mother had, going from one treatment to another. Reed had long made peace with his mother’s choice because she was dying anyway. But Addison, well, there’d been no peace with that yet. She’d been a reasonably healthy woman who had chosen to do some very unhealthy things to her body to up her chances of getting pregnant. Chances that her own doctors had told her weren’t likely to work anyway.

  “I got lucky with just the one embryo,” Addison added a moment later. “Luck, that’s all.” She paused, made a hoarse sob. “Of course, it wasn’t so lucky for Cissy.”

  And the tears started again.

  Reed got her another paper towel. If this kept up, he’d need to lend a shoulder as well, but that wouldn’t be wise for either of them. Or for Emily, who was still wolfing down the bottle.

  “So, if there was nothing...experimental going on at Dearborn,” Reed continued, choosing his words, “then maybe there was some other kind of illegal activity. Something that somebody now wants to hide. That brings me back to Cissy and you. Even though Cissy never said so, she might have been coerced into being a surrogate.”

  That sure didn’t help the color in Addison’s cheeks. “Coerced? How?”

  “I’m still trying to work that out, but there are two possible red flags that are flying pretty high. Your attorney did the surrogacy agreements for both Cissy and her sister, Mellie. Now, on the surface that doesn’t seem like such a big thing, but Cissy and Mellie have already been surrogates twice, and they’re only in their early twenties.”

  Addison repeated that “Oh, God.” Then, “I didn’t know.”

  “And I’m sure they didn’t volunteer the info to you, either. Even if they’re professional surrogates, the fifty grand you paid Cissy isn’t in her bank account. Neither are Mellie’s payments. Yeah, they could have spent most of the two hundred thousand that they got in three years, but the problem is that the money’s just not showing up anywhere.”

  “They could have received cash and not deposited any of it in a bank,” she suggested.