He lifted his shoulders. “I suppose when drugs and alcohol are involved, that changes the situation. Do you want any more to eat? We have leftovers.”
“I’m good.” She pushed away her plate of half-eaten pasta. “I’ll wrap this up and have it for lunch tomorrow...if I’m still coming.”
“I haven’t heard from Wyatt’s mother yet, so I hope so.”
“You can’t call her?”
“She doesn’t answer, or her phone is turned off.”
“You’d think she’d want to hear how Wyatt’s doing.”
“She trusts me.” If only he could trust Jaycee.
Emily jumped up from the table. “I’ll help you clear the dinner dishes and get Wyatt comfy. He’ll need another bottle before he goes to bed. Maybe that’ll make him sleepy.”
“I hope so. He’s been waking up in the middle of the night, and it takes me a while to get him back to sleep.” Nash stood up next to Emily and took the plate from her hand. “You go do nanny business and I’ll take care of the kitchen.”
She plucked Wyatt from his high chair and carried him off to the other room.
Nash put away the leftovers and rinsed the dishes to stack in the dishwasher. He’d feel a lot better if Emily and Wyatt moved into the guesthouse, but he felt selfish for asking. She’d been with the baby all day. Of course, he could offer her more money to stay the night.
If Jaycee spent another full day away, he’d propose the plan to Emily. She was getting suspicious about Jaycee, and he didn’t blame her. What kind of mother dropped her baby off with a friend and disappeared, refusing to answer her phone?
And he hadn’t even told Emily how Jaycee dropped off Wyatt—on his porch like a foundling. Emily would be horrified and might even threaten to call DCS. She’d already been attacking the court system that seemed to favor mothers over fathers, regardless of the circumstances.
Her vehemence surprised him. Had her father the cop told her stories? She didn’t seem eager to talk about him, even though she clearly had an interest in law enforcement. Maybe they’d had a falling-out. He knew enough cops to know they could be hell to get along with on the home front.
Border Patrol agents were no picnic, either.
Every woman he’d ever dated had seemed more interested in his family’s business than his own. It had made him suspicious, standoffish. His friend April called him superficial.
As Nash swept up the last of the crumbs from the kitchen table, Emily returned, bouncing Wyatt in her arms.
“He’s a little frisky, so he might need some playtime before his bottle and bed.” She pointed to a blanket folded on top of the coffee table. “I don’t know if you saw on your super-duper camera, but I had him out on the blanket on the floor with some toys around him. He practices rolling and getting up on his hands and knees. He can’t actually crawl yet, but he rocks back and forth, which is a precursor to crawling.”
“We’ll give it a try, right, buddy?” Nash poked Wyatt in his belly, which got a laugh out of him.
“I hope his mother doesn’t miss any of his firsts in her absence.” Emily sucked in her bottom lip. “You’d think she wouldn’t want to miss a thing.”
“If he starts crawling, I’ll capture it on my phone.” Nash patted the pocket of his shorts.
Emily seemed determined to attack Jaycee—not that she didn’t deserve it.
“I’ll leave my toy bag here for tomorrow, and I’ll even bring a swimsuit.” She winked as she turned Wyatt over to him.
He and Wyatt stood at the front door and waved Emily into her car.
Setting Wyatt in the middle of the blanket on the floor worked wonders. The little guy got up to all kinds of new tricks on his own, so Nash reached for his laptop and pulled it onto his thighs as he stretched his legs out next to Wyatt’s play area.
He entered his password and launched the web browser. He hovered the mouse over the history tab and then said, “Hell, you saw her in her bra and panties. Snooping into her internet searches is nothing.”
And it was nothing. She’d watched some music videos and a short documentary on Mount Everest. She’d even checked out a few baby sites. Must want to keep up on all the latest trends in childrearing.
He closed out of her browsing history. The woman deserved a little privacy. Had he been expecting her to read how-to articles on kidnapping or something?
He launched his email. He squinted at the new messages loading and then leaned back against the couch and crossed his arms. The new emails scrolled in from about three o’clock this afternoon even though he hadn’t launched his email program since last night.
He sat up. Emily had gotten into his email.
* * *
EMILY SWUNG BY a liquor store on her way back to the motel. She pulled into a space in front of the plate glass window and threw the car into Park. She slumped down in the seat, gripping her phone.
Marcus still hadn’t responded to her message about the thugs sniffing around Wyatt. She eked out a little sigh of relief. She didn’t know what to say to Marcus right now.
Why did a Border Patrol agent have Marcus’s name in connection to the cartels? Of course, finances could mean anything. She’d done her research on Marcus Lanier before taking the job, and it hadn’t been difficult. Everyone in Phoenix knew about Marcus.
He had his fingers in many pies around the city, and he seemed to have the Midas touch. He made money and he made other people money. And he spent money.
Whatever passed for a social scene in Phoenix, Marcus Lanier took center stage in that scene—he and his perfect wife. Did that perfect wife know he fooled around on the side? Probably. Did she know he’d fathered a baby with his side piece, Jaycee Lemoin? Probably.
If Marcus had hired her to keep tabs on Wyatt and gather evidence against Jaycee to take her to court for custody, Ming Lanier would have to know about her husband’s infraction.
But the public didn’t necessarily know what the Border Patrol knew. Were all of Marcus’s enterprising ventures covers for his real business, drugs?
“Damn.” Emily shoved her phone into the side pocket of her purse and flung open the car door. She may be using dirty money.
She stalked into the liquor store and made a beeline for the wine section. Might as well stay with the same poison. After the day she’d had, she needed more than that half glass of wine with dinner. But Nash had been right. Her father had drilled into her the evils of drinking and driving.
She grabbed a bottle of merlot by the neck and charged up to the register. Dad never said anything about drinking and watching TV, though.
She paid for the wine and slid back into her car. She drove to her motel and parked as close to her room as she could get. Paradiso had a limited number of lodging choices, but it was hardly a hot spot for tourism. Bisbee and, of course, Tombstone drew the lion’s share of visitors to this area. Paradiso wasn’t even near a well-traveled border crossing—at least not a legal one. She’d read that the border here was porous with tunnels used for the trafficking of drugs and even people.
She dug her key card from her purse and then hung her bag over her shoulder. She grabbed the wine and exited her vehicle.
The streets of Paradiso rolled up early. Most of the restaurants and bars still open lined the main drag through town, and this little gem of a motel was definitely off the beaten track.
Pinching her key card between her fingers, she walked toward her room. As she passed the stairs that led to the second floor, a shadow moved across the wall.
Instinctively, she reached for the side pocket of her purse where her gun nestled, but it was too late.
An arm shot out and ripped the purse from her shoulder. She started to wield the bottle of wine like a club. Her attacker grabbed it and dropped it to the patch of grass under the stairs. Then he dragged her toward an open door she hadn’t noticed before now and
shoved her into a utility room.
A low voice growled in her ear, “Make one noise, and you’re dead.”
In case she hadn’t gotten the message, her assailant jabbed the barrel of a gun beneath her ribs.
Chapter Six
Emily gulped in breaths of air as the man held her from behind, curling one arm around her neck.
“Who is that baby to you?”
“What baby?”
He tightened his hold and she choked. “The baby at the Border Patrol agent’s house. Who is the baby to you and who is he to that cop?”
Should she tell him? Should she just blurt out the truth that Marcus Lanier was the baby’s father? Wouldn’t they leave Wyatt alone once they knew Brett wasn’t the father?
She gulped. She had no authority to reveal that information. That was the one thing she’d promised Marcus—she’d never tell a soul Wyatt was his child, not until he was ready to do so. Even to save Wyatt’s life?
Marcus should’ve taken her warnings seriously about the men who’d threatened Jaycee. Did he not believe her?
For now, Wyatt was safe with Nash. That was why this guy had gone after her. They knew Nash Dillon was Border Patrol and they knew better than to mess with the law. That bought her a little time.
He drilled the gun into her side. “Answer me. What do you know?”
She clawed at his arm and he relented a fraction of an inch. She coughed.
“I don’t know anything about the baby. The Border Patrol agent is my friend and the baby belongs to his friend who had an emergency. I don’t know the mother. I don’t know anything.”
He released her, giving her a push forward. That didn’t fool her for a minute, as she still felt the weapon up close and personal. She eyed her purse on the ground outside the utility room.
The man didn’t know she had a gun in there, but she didn’t plan to use it unless her life was in imminent jeopardy. If she dove for her purse, yanked out her .22 and shot him between the eyes, she’d have a lot of explaining to do—to everyone.
“I’ll tell you what, pelirroja. You’re gonna help us.”
“Me?” Her voice squeaked as much from surprise as the pressure that had recently been applied to her windpipe. That was not what she’d expected from him.
“How am I going to help you? I told you. I don’t know anything. If you’re the baby’s father, I suggest you go through the proper channels to—”
“Shut up.” He slugged her in the back and her knees buckled.
“Are you going back there tomorrow?”
“No. I’m leaving Paradiso tomorrow.” She gritted her teeth against the throbbing pain right above her kidney.
“You lie, pelirroja.” His hot breath stirred the hair at the back of her neck, and she shivered. “You’re gonna go back there tomorrow, and when the cop goes back to work after lunch, you’re gonna take the kid for a walk—away from the cameras at his house. Then you’re gonna turn that kid over to us. You got it?”
She nodded. What else could she do at this point? If she refused, he’d inflict more pain on her. She had a feeling he liked administering pain.
“Wh-why do you want him? Are you going to hurt him?”
He shoved her away from him and she stumbled against the wall. “Don’t worry about it. And if you get any bright ideas? We will kill that kid. Kill you. Kill the cop. And even kill that mutt. Got it?”
“Yes.”
“Stay there against the wall until you hear a car drive by. And if you call the police? Let’s just say that goes under the category of bright idea and it’ll have the same ending. It might take longer, but we always get our man...and baby, if it comes to it.”
Her muscles rigid, Emily froze in place until she heard the sound of an engine roll by. She spun around and flew out of the utility room. Dropping to her knees, she scrabbled for her purse on the ground and pulled out her gun.
She had nobody to shoot, but she wasn’t going to go to her room without this baby in her hand. She grabbed the bottle on the grass and pressed it to her chest. Thank goodness it hadn’t broken. She needed that wine more than ever right now.
With her knees trembling, she wobbled to her room and slipped inside. She threw the chain and slid to the floor, the bed at her back, pointing her gun at the door.
After several minutes and several deep breaths, she staggered to her feet and placed her weapon on the credenza. She screwed open the bottle and poured the wine all the way to the top of a plastic cup.
She gulped half of it before she sank down at the foot of the bed. Maybe she should kidnap Wyatt tomorrow morning and drive back to Phoenix with him and deposit him with Marcus. She could make a good case to a judge why she felt it was in the baby’s best interest to leave Paradiso and bring him to his biological father. No family court judge in their right mind would blame Marcus for doing that after what she’d just been through.
She bounded up from the bed and fished her phone from her purse. Still no message from Marcus. Did he think she was joking? Overreacting? He wouldn’t think that once she told him what happened tonight.
She didn’t have a plan yet, but she sure as hell wasn’t turning Wyatt over to those maniacs.
* * *
IN THE MORNING, Nash adjusted the angle of the camera in the corner of the living room, but if Emily took his laptop out to the patio again, he wouldn’t catch her in the act of snooping through his email. He couldn’t take the laptop with him today. She’d be suspicious. Maybe that would be a good thing, a subtle hint that he knew she’d been into his email.
How’d she get into it, anyway? He’d password protected it. It probably wouldn’t take a tech genius to bypass an email password, but Emily was a nanny. Wasn’t she?
All her references checked out and she even had an online presence, but if passwords could be hacked, identities could be forged.
Nash ran a hand through his hair. She could just be a nosy nanny.
He grabbed the laptop and stuffed it into his bag. She could think what she wanted. He didn’t have any top secret info on his computer, but he didn’t like the idea of someone spying on him.
Wyatt crowed from his high chair, and Nash ran a thumb across the baby’s soft hair. “I know you like her, buddy, and so do I, but I’ve had enough duplicitous women in my life to last me—starting with your mama.”
The doorbell made him jump, even though he’d been expecting Emily any minute.
Denali got to the door first and barked.
“I know.” Nash patted the husky’s head. “You like her, too.”
He swung open the door, and Emily lifted her hand in a wave. “Reporting for duty, unless Wyatt’s mom decided to return and whisk him away.”
“Not back yet. I’m sure I’ll hear something today.” He widened the door and stepped to the side.
As she crossed the threshold, Denali jumped, landing his paws against her side. Emily winced and staggered backward.
“Whoa, boy.” Nash placed a hand on Emily’s back to steady her. “Are you okay?”
“He just took me by surprise.” She grabbed Denali’s head and touched her nose to his wet, black one. “How are you, Denali?”
“I fed him already, and I gave Wyatt a bottle and put him in his high chair. I didn’t feed him any food, though.” He grabbed his bag and hat. He wanted to get out of here so she wouldn’t notice the missing laptop.
She dropped a backpack on the kitchen table and leaned in to give Wyatt a kiss on his head. “Hello, big guy. Missed you.”
Nash cocked his head as he watched Emily stroke Wyatt’s hair. Her voice sounded almost shaky. She really did care about him. “I have to run, Emily. Do you have everything you need? I’ll stop by for lunch again.”
“We’re fine.” She jabbed her finger at the backpack. “I even brought a swimsuit today. Wyatt liked the water so much, I’ll
make a swimmer out of him.”
But you won’t be surfing the internet and my email after the swim this time.
Nash cleared his throat. “You two have a great morning. If there’s anything you need...anything you want to ask me, you have my number.”
Emily’s head jerked up, her green eyes wide. “L-like what?”
“Like... I don’t know. Whatever.” He chucked Wyatt under the chin and then strode to the front door with Emily right on his heels.
She stood at the door with her purse still strapped across her body, her hand resting on the outside flap as if ready to leave.
When he got to his truck, he turned and waved.
Emily nodded, but she seemed to be looking over his head at the driveway that wound down to the street.
Knots formed in his gut as he drove away from the house. Emily’s smiles and good cheer had seemed forced this morning. Her jumpiness made him second-guess everything. He’d be keeping a close eye on the video feed this morning.
At the office, Nash got ready for an online meeting with a forensic accountant. They were digging into the finances of Las Moscas. They knew there had to be some major money-laundering schemes on this side of the border, and they were investigating several suspects.
Nash brought up the spreadsheet that contained the list and several notes he’d already made on each. While he waited for the meeting to start, he set up his personal laptop next to his work computer. Had Emily noticed it missing yet?
With several taps of the keyboard, he brought up his security system and watched Emily cleaning up Wyatt after breakfast. The kid seemed thrilled with her. That was all that mattered right now. So, she was a snoop. Maybe she wanted to find out more about him. Or was that just wishful thinking on his part?
The two meals they’d shared yesterday felt like dates—except for the presence of Wyatt at dinner. He liked her, liked talking to her, and their attraction was undeniable. Again, wishful thinking?
Chain of Custody Page 5