I puffed out my chest and told myself that it was lucky I was a Seal and tough enough to stomach more than the average man. I was questioning that with only a few more steps as the smell grew stronger. I gagged slightly as I approached the room Matt told me was the nursery. That’s where the smell originated from…I was sure. How could they keep a baby in there? They could use whatever this was for chemical warfare. I cautiously looked inside the room and saw Alicia. Her back was to me, and she had the baby lying on her back on top of the changing table. Alicia was cooing softly at the little thing, and the look on the baby’s face was pure adoration.
I almost forgot the smell and smiled at the picture until my eyes moved downward and I saw the green goo. I knew immediately that had to be the source of the offending odor. I wondered what they fed this poor child and if her insides were damaged because of it. Before I even realized I was speaking out loud I heard myself ask, "Is it supposed to be that color, or is there something wrong with her?” Alicia jumped at the sound of my deep voice. She turned around to look at me but kept one hand on the baby as she did. She seemed to have such good instincts where the baby was concerned, almost like she was her mother instead of Julia.
God, she’s so beautiful. As soon as I had that thought, I realized that I hadn’t really known what beautiful was until that exact moment. She smiled at me, and her pretty face dimpled on one side while her full lips framed a set of teeth that weren’t exactly perfect. That gave her an even sexier appeal in my opinion. It made her real. I’m not one of those guys who likes plastic Barbie doll girls.
“There’s nothing wrong with her,” she said in that thick, sexy accent. “It’s supposed to be that color. She’s formula fed still.” I had no idea what that meant, but I’d take her word for it. I carefully advanced into the room, trying to keep my eyes anywhere except on the disgusting contents of the diaper that Alicia still hadn’t tossed away. It wasn’t hard at least to find something else to concentrate on. What was going to be hard was keeping my eyes off of the angel in front of me.
“Oh, it’s…” I opened my mouth but wasn’t even sure what I was trying to say. First the baby had caused chaos in my head with her screams and now with her smell. As a man trained in combat, I had to wonder which one of my senses the little devil would assault next. She was a sneaky little thing that would need to be watched. I was finally forced to bring my hand up and cover my nose with it. In a strangled voice I asked, “I’m sorry, but how do you do that all day?”
Alicia laughed, and it sounded like music to my ears. Maybe it’s just been too long since I’d been with a woman, but everything about this one appealed to me. I suppose, when you think about it, two weeks isn’t really a long time either. Maybe the nanny was executing a sneak attack of her own. I’d have to watch her too…gladly. “There are a lot of benefits to outweigh the few times I have to deal with the green goop,” she was saying.
I watched in awe as she deftly finished wiping the baby down and then rolled the goo up in the diaper and tossed it into a pail at her feet. She gave the baby one more wipe before fastening a clean diaper on her, wiping her own hands with one of the wipes and then scooping her up.
I couldn’t help the lurch in my chest as I watched her once again cuddle the little girl and place a soft kiss to her forehead. It was sad that the baby’s mother seemed frightened by her, but at least she had this gorgeous creature to somewhat make up for that. I didn’t feel like I was in a place to judge her mother anyways since I was already quite suspicious of the little pink package.
I fought for focus once again and said, “I was wondering if we could talk about the attempted kidnapping.” Alicia tensed slightly, and the smile fell from her face. I didn’t find that too odd since the poor woman was probably still traumatized by the memories of it.
“Sure,” she said. “But Miss Celia decided to have her poop just as I was putting her in the bath, so if you don’t mind talking while I bathe her? I don’t want the water to cool.”
It didn’t appeal to me, but I understood she had a job to do. I’d much rather talk to her over a drink…in front of a roaring fire…Focus Ryder! “That’s fine,” I managed to spit out. She smiled again and that made up for not being alone with her, at least for now. She picked up a little white towel, and I followed her and the baby through the finely furnished nursery and into a bathroom that had to be measure at least five hundred square feet from end to end. The large white marble tub had jets in the sides of it, and at one end of it, it had a small tub built into it. The small tub was perfectly sized for the now wiggly baby that Alicia had in her arms. There was a pink baby-shaped sponge in the tub, and I looked away as the nanny stripped the baby down and laid her back onto it.
“So Alicia, can you tell me about that morning?”
She had her back to me again, and I wished that I could see her face for no other reason than I’d already decided that I really liked looking at it.
“You want to hear from the beginning of the morning?”
“Yes, please.”
“Celia woke up around six thirty. I fed her and gave her a bath, and then I took her down to see her parents before they had to leave. It was about seven thirty when I called Charles and asked him to bring the car around to take us to the park.”
I was doing the math. That meant Celia’s parents spent less than an hour with the baby before they both left for the day. I wondered if that was the norm. I’m not sure it matters, but I like to get the feel for the dynamics when I’m involved in protecting a family. “It was close to eight when I had our things ready to go and we went out front. The car was waiting. Charles is usually standing next to it with the door open. He wasn’t, so I just pulled the door open myself. As soon as I did, the man grabbed us and pulled us in. Before the door was closed, Charles took off, but when we got to the front gates, they were already expecting us, and they had it locked and barred.”
She washed the baby as she talked. The baby was making soft, happy noises the whole time. I decided that she was a really smart kid. If Alicia was bathing me, I would be making soft, happy noises, too.
“Is the gate normally open during the day?”
She nodded. “They open at seven in the morning and close at seven in the evening—unless the Bransons are expecting company. Security is always in the guardhouse around the clock.”
“There are no other entrances or exits to or from the property?” I knew the answer to that already. I’d studied the layout before coming out today. The property was walled all the way around by a seven-foot barrier made out of decorative rocks. I wanted to find out if there was something any of these people knew that I didn’t.
Alicia was picking up the wet and now clean baby. She placed her in the white towel she’d spread out on the changing table next to the bath and began drying her off.
“No, none that I’m aware of,” she said. She dried off the baby, slathered her with lotion, and dressed her in a tiny little dress with matching ruffled panties. She picked her up and turned back around to face me. My breath caught in my throat. What the heck kind of spell has this woman put on me?
I swallowed that thought once again and asked her, “Alicia did you recognize the man who tried to abduct you? Have you ever seen him before?”
“No,” she said, simply. The baby began to fuss in her arms, and my stomach clenched at the thought of her turning back on the siren. “I need to feed Celia her lunch now and put her down for her nap. Is that all?”
“Not really,” I said. “I’d like to get a description of him from you and find out if there was anything about him that stood out to you…anything out of the ordinary.”
She looked uncomfortable with the question, and I wondered what that was about. “Come with me,” she said. I followed her back into the nursery and realized that I liked following her. She was as hot from behind as she was in front. She picked up a baby bottle that I didn’t remember being next to the door on a cart when we’d been here earlier, lots of staf
f running around. I suddenly wondered how well the Bransons check out their backgrounds before hiring them. I made a mental note to talk to Blake about it. I knew that he was already investigating the ones on the property the day of the foiled kidnapping.
Popping off the cover on the bottle, she sat down with the baby in a plush rocking chair. She gestured at the overstuffed, plum-colored chair behind me and said, “Please, have a seat.”
I sat down and watched as she put the bottle in the baby’s mouth and began to gently rock the chair. It was a sight I was sure that I shouldn’t find desirable, but something about it sent another thrill racing down my spine.
Alicia focused those giant hazel eyes back on my face and said, “He was wearing a mask. All I really saw was that he was completely bald. I don’t know if it was shaved, or if he was old, the police asked me that. He wasn’t a big man. He was only a few inches taller than me and maybe fifty pounds heavier.”
“Not a big man” was an understatement in that case I thought. Alicia was only about five foot three and couldn’t weigh over one twenty-five. That would only put the man at maybe five six and one seventy or so.
“Did he talk to you, Alicia?”
She hesitated, and I thought that I saw a shift of something uncomfortable once again pass behind her eyes.
“Yes,” was her simple answer.
When she didn’t elaborate I said, “What did he say?”
“Miss Celia was crying, and he told me to shut the kid up. Then he pointed the gun at Charles and told him to drive.”
“So the privacy glass in the car was down?”
“Yes. We were in the Bentley, so the kidnapper was close to Charles’s head with the gun.”
“Did you notice anything unusual about his voice? Did he have an accent like mine?” My accent wasn’t thick Cajun any longer, but I hadn’t lost the Louisiana from it. When I first joined the navy, I had taken more razzing about the way I talked than I did the fact that I was fifty pounds overweight. Within a year of signing up, I’d lost the weight and turned the rest of it into muscle. I worked constantly on enunciating my words, even now.
“No, he didn’t have a southern accent,” she said. Once again, she was answering the question, but without elaboration. I couldn’t help but be a little suspicious about that—especially since she also appeared to be tensing up. Again, maybe it was just PTSD, but it would bear a closer look.
“Did he have an accent, Alicia?”
“Yes.”
“And…?”
“It was like mine,” she finally said. I had read in the report that the chauffeur had told the police that the man was Russian. I was curious, however, why Alicia seemed so reluctant to admit that.
“He was Russian?”
She shrugged and looked down at the baby in her arms. Celia’s little eyes were closed, and her breaths were shallow and even. She looked like she was asleep—except for the occasional motion her mouth would make as she continued to suck on her bottle.
Alicia’s eyes softened when she looked at the little girl. I didn’t know much about it, but a blind man could see that these two had a strong bond.
“He sounded like me,” she said again. “But he only spoke those few words, so it’s hard to say.”
“Okay, so you didn’t recognize a dialect or…?”
“No. Just a Russian accent.” She pulled the bottle from the baby’s mouth and sat it on the little table next to the rocking chair. “I’m going to lie the baby down,” she said.
I nodded and stayed where I was, as she carried the sleeping baby to the crib and tucked her in. I watched her softly brush a lock of white-blonde hair off the baby’s forehead. It was such a tender act that once again my heart was engaged.
When Alicia turned back toward me, she motioned to me with her hand. I got up and followed her, and on the way out of the room, she picked up a baby monitor. She led me down the hallway and into another room that looked like a giant library. She took a seat on the plush leather couch, and indicating the chair across from her, she said, “Have a seat.”
I took the seat she offered me and said, “Alicia, how long have you worked for the Bransons?”
“Since a month before Celia was born. She’ll be six months old next week.”
“So, seven months?” She nodded, and I went on to ask, “How long have you been in New Orleans?”
“It will be a year next month. I came here to take a job with a couple I met in Russia. They were looking for a nanny, and they arranged for me to obtain a visa and come back here with them. That job…didn’t work out. I met the Bransons through another nanny and they hired me to help get things ready before Celia came to live with them.”
I wondered if that statement was just her limited English talking, or if there was something I didn’t know about the baby’s biology. “I’m sorry, ‘before she came to live with them?’ You mean before she was born?”
Alicia once again looked anxious as she said, “Yes, she came to live with them as soon as she was released from the hospital, after she was born.”
“After she was born to Mrs. Branson, correct?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Alicia, I’m here to help. If I don’t have all the facts, I won’t be able to do that. I need you to be completely honest with me here.”
“I am.” She looked down at the floor when she said that.
“Alicia, please look at me.” She brought her pretty eyes back up to my face. She had tears in them. “Is there something you want to tell me?”
“No,” she said with a look of pure fear on her face. “I’m so stupid.”
“Don’t say that about yourself. You don’t seem the least bit stupid to me.”
“The Bransons are going to be furious with me. I can’t afford to lose my job. Please…”
“Alicia, is Celia not the Bransons’ biological child?”
“Please.”
“I only want to help. I promise I won’t say anything to the Bransons that will jeopardize your job, but I need to know the truth.”
“No, she’s not their biological child. They used a surrogate.” A stray tear rolled down her cheek, and I had to fight the compulsion to wipe it away and take her in his arms. I had to focus on what the hell was going on here. At no place in the file did it state that Celia was adopted. I’d seen her birth certificate, and it listed Matt and Julia as her parents. The police had thoroughly investigated them. Blake, who never missed anything, had investigated them as well. Why was there no mention whatsoever of the one person who would have the biggest motivation to snatch this child?
CHAPTER THREE
RYDER
“No way, I checked these people out backwards and forwards. There is no way I missed that they used a surrogate.” Blake was actually offended that I was suggesting he’d missed something.
“I don’t know why Alicia would say that if it wasn’t true.” She definitely acted as if she hadn’t wanted to tell me. If that was an act, she missed her calling.
“If it were true, why would they want to hide it from the people that they’ve hired to help them? The surrogate would have a better motive to snatch that baby than anyone would. Shit. Who’s at the house right now?”
“Leif is there. Matt Branson was supposed to call me when they got back from the gala, but I haven’t heard from him yet.” I saw Blake look at his watch.
“It’s after nine already. I doubt that he’s going to call tonight. Are you leaving Leif there, or are you going back?”
“I told him I’d relieve him at midnight. I have to go check on Granny.”
“She’s not answering her phone again?”
I had bought her a cell phone so that I could call and talk to her. She’s nearly eighty years old, and I hate that she’s way out in the bayou all alone. She refuses to move into town. She calls New Orleans the “Devil’s Den.”
“She won’t even turn it on. She gives me a headache.”
Blake smiled. It’s not something he doe
s often, but he has a soft spot for my Granny. “I can go relieve Leif if you want me to.”
Any other job and I would have taken him up on the offer. Shamelessly, I couldn’t stop thinking about seeing Alicia again. “I think I can make it okay if I leave now,” I told him.
“Okay, give me a call if you can’t. Also call me before you talk to these people about why they’d hire us to do a job and then withhold important information. I’m dying to hear their excuse for that one. I’d also like to know how they managed to cover it up so well that I didn’t even get a hint of it during my investigation.”
“If I had to guess, I’d say money, a lot of money.”
“Well, they might just have to use that money to pay for another bodyguard service, depending on whether or not I like their answer about why they lied to me.”
In Blake’s world, everything was black and white. He didn't believe in gray areas, and to him, even an omission is a lie. Blake gives people one chance. If he catches them in a lie, they get one chance to explain themselves. If the explanation doesn’t include someone dying had they told the truth, he was finished with them. Purely for selfish reasons involving a hot nanny, I hoped the Bransons had a damned good reason for keeping that to themselves.
I pushed my chair back from his desk and stood up. “I’m going to take off and check on Granny. Are you going home?”
“I might be here a while longer…”
“Man, when was the last time you slept all night?”
He gave me a hard look with his dark green eyes. They had dark gray circles underneath them. I’m one of the few people in the world that look doesn’t intimidate, much. “I sleep. Go see your grandmother and get to work.”
“Alright, I’ll call you.” He was already back to doing whatever I’d interrupted when I came in, typing away at the computer keys, probably digging into someone’s deep, dark past. I wondered sometimes if Blake would ever tell me what it was that happened to him that snuffed out the light that used to burn so brightly inside of him. I still see flickers of it every now and then, but sometimes I worry that if he keeps carrying the weight of whatever it was solely on his shoulders it might eventually snuff out what’s left. Tonight was not the night to have that conversation though. Instead, I got in my car and took the thirty-minute drive out to Granny’s house.
RYDER: A Standalone Military Romance (Blake Security Book 1) Page 2