“No,” was all Jackson could manage to say. He didn’t want his son part of what would no doubt be an emotional encounter unless he had no other choice.
She blinked back tears and finally nodded. “He looks like me.”
“He looks like a four-month-old baby,” Jackson countered. But he couldn’t dismiss that there might be a resemblance. With that added to the fact that someone had indeed stolen Bailey’s son, he knew he had to start accepting that a DNA match was a possibility.
How much money would it take to make her go away?
Just the thought of it sounded ruthless and made him sick to his stomach. Like the old Jackson. But he rationalized that if Bailey could indeed be paid off, then she wasn’t much of a mother anyway. So he would make the offer, and maybe, just maybe, it would be an offer she couldn’t turn down.
He poured her a cup of coffee from the silver carafe on his desk and motioned for her to sit. She took the coffee, the cup rattling because of her shaky hands, but she didn’t sit.
“When will Evan have the test results from the DNA swabs?” she asked.
“Maybe as early as this afternoon.” For those results anyway.
Jackson had arranged for others that he wouldn’t mention to Bailey or Evan. Old habits died hard, and Jackson had wanted some kind of backup for the tests.
She nodded again and took a sip of the coffee. At least she tried, but the shaking sloshed it out of the cup and onto her hand. Jackson took the cup from her and put it back on his desk.
“The sheriff just called,” he told her. Best to use this time to give her an update, rather than go back to the subject of Caden. He also checked her hand to make sure the hot coffee hadn’t burnt her. “No identity yet on the dead intruder.”
Bailey didn’t do a good job of hiding her disappointment. “And the person who killed him?”
“Nothing yet on that, either. But the intruder did call Nurse Shannon Wright.”
She took a deep breath and slowly drew back her hand. “Shannon,” she repeated. “And does she have an explanation why a possible killer would have called her?”
“Not yet. The sheriff will look into it. But don’t get your hopes up that Shannon is guilty of anything. The intruder accused you of hiring him, so he could have also made a call to Shannon to implicate her.”
“Of course. I hadn’t thought of that.” She paused. “Thank you for letting me stay last night. I was a wreck. Still am,” she added in a mumble.
He didn’t doubt that. He wasn’t feeling at ease either. “Who knew you were coming here to the estate?”
Bailey shook her head. “No one should have known. I used an alias when I applied for a temp job with the decorating crew. And I only applied two days ago.”
“Maybe someone had been watching you, following you,” Jackson suggested.
“That’s possible. Maybe the woman who took my son has been keeping an eye on me. Maybe she wants to make sure I can’t ID her.”
“Can you?”
She made a slight sound of frustration and closed her eyes a moment. “I wish. But the only thing I can remember is that it was a woman. She warned me to be quiet or the gunmen would kill me. She also said they might take the baby to get me to cooperate.”
Jackson tried not to let that get to him, but it had to have been terrifying. “Maybe this woman is the one who hired the intruder. She could have sent him here, not for me or Caden, but for you. She could have done that to cover up the fact that she stole your child. Maybe she wants you dead.”
Not a sound of frustration this time, but her eyes widened with surprise. No. Make that shock. “But why kill me? I don’t know who she is.”
“She might not realize that. If she believes you could identify her, then she would want to keep you on the run, away from the police. And if she thought she could no longer do that, then she might hire someone to kill you.”
“Oh, God.” And Bailey kept repeating it. With each repeat, she grew paler and her breath started to race. “I can’t believe I didn’t make the connection. I thought the intruder was here after you or even Caden—maybe a kidnapping for ransom. How could I have been so stupid?”
Jackson was about to point out that the intruder could indeed have been there for a kidnapping attempt. Of course, that still left the question of why the man had implicated Bailey?
“I’ve considered the possibility that the intruder somehow eavesdropped on my conversation with Evan,” Jackson explained. “When I talked to Evan in the foyer, I said your name and asked him to run a background check on you. If the intruder heard that, using some kind of long-range eavesdropping device, he might have latched on to it because he would have known I was already suspicious of you.”
She frantically shook her head. “Or he already knew my name before he arrived.”
That was his number-one theory. “But if this woman who stole your baby wants you dead, why try to have you killed here at the estate? Why not wait until after you left? There’s a long stretch of country road between here and San Antonio, and if the intruder had attacked there, fewer witnesses would have been around.”
Bailey shuddered. “I don’t know why it happened the way it did. But I can’t pretend that man didn’t come here looking for me. That means I brought the danger here with me. I’m sorry for that. I was so desperate to find out the truth about Caden that I failed to remember it might not be safe for me to come here.”
Jackson couldn’t argue with any of that. Except he, too, had been threatened by those mysterious letters. Now, the question was, were the threats connected? He couldn’t immediately see how, but then he didn’t like the timing of the latest letter and Bailey’s arrival at his estate.
“I’m sorry,” she repeated. She turned quickly and headed for the door.
Jackson hurried after her. “Wait. Where are you going?” He caught up with her just outside his office and stepped in front of her.
“Far away from here. I’ll call you about the test results.” She swallowed hard. “I swear, I didn’t mean to put Caden or you in danger.”
“The danger was here before you arrived,” he conceded. Part of him wanted to step aside and let her leave, but he wasn’t stupid. This particular Pandora’s Box had already been opened, and whether Bailey left or not, he didn’t think the danger would go with her.
When she tried to dart around him, Jackson put her against the wall again. Hell. He’d been manhandling Bailey a lot lately, but he wasn’t going to let her leave until she saw the whole picture.
Even if it was a picture he wasn’t sure he wanted her to see.
“This is a theory,” he started, “with a lot of if’s. But it’s a theory that kept me up most of the night. If this mystery woman did indeed hire the intruder to kill you, and if she also arranged Caden’s adoption, then she might want to cover that up as well. That might be the reason she sent the hired gun here to the estate.”
Bailey uttered another, “Oh, God.”
Yeah. Oh, God summed it up.
She grabbed on to handfuls of his shirt. “You have to beef up security—”
“I already have. And my house manager is in the process of getting even more guards out here. Trust me, Caden will be safe.”
The breath swooshed out of her, and she dropped her head onto his shoulder. Even though he couldn’t see her face, he had no doubt that she was crying. Jackson could feel her knotted muscles, and he heard the sob she was trying to hold back in her throat. He hadn’t needed anything else to convince him that Bailey was on the up-and-up, that she truly was just trying to find her missing baby, but her reaction was definitely more proof that she was the victim here.
She lifted her head, met his gaze. “Why aren’t you throwing me out?”
Jackson was asking himself the same thing. He was good at coming up with the angles, and one angle was that he should keep her close, just in case that payoff would become necessary. But his usual heart of stone didn’t feel so stone-cold all of a sudden.
Jackson cursed, and that caused her forehead to bunch up. No doubt she was wondering what he was cursing about. But this profanity was for her—for those needs she stirred deep inside him.
She stood there, her breath hitting against his mouth. Her incredible blue eyes wide with concern.
And with her body pressed against his.
Jackson especially noticed that body-to-body part.
He was responsible for it. After all, it had been his manhandling that had resulted in her being against the wall again.
There was a moment, just a split second, when his body started to think below the belt again. A moment where he wondered what it be like to kiss her.
How did she taste?
And were those lips as soft as they looked?
Jackson felt himself moving in closer. His body revved up, everything inside him preparing for something that damn sure shouldn’t happen.
He breathed in her scent, some kind of floral shampoo maybe. But beneath the bottled stuff was something that was all woman. Something warm and silky. Something that triggered his asinine male brain into thinking that kissing her was a good idea after all.
Her eyelids fluttered down. A velvety feminine sound left her mouth. Her body moved slightly closer, brushing against his.
Everything about her was soft. Her skin. Her scent. Even that clingy cotton dress that was now pressed against his jeans and shirt.
“This shouldn’t happen,” she whispered.
Even though her voice was soft as well, it was the hard mental slap that Jackson needed. He jerked back and tried to rein in that stupid urge to haul her to him and kiss her until neither one of them had any breath left.
“Sorry,” he mumbled.
He was ready to fumble with an explanation about the danger creating the heat between them, but thankfully the house phone on his desk rang. He felt thankful for a moment before he remembered this was the line his staff would use if there were any other problems with security.
Jackson hurried into his office to grab the phone.
“It’s me,” Steven Perez said. With just those two words, Jackson could hear the concern in his house manager’s voice.
“A problem?” Jackson asked.
“Could be. Ryan Cassaine is at the front gate.”
The adoption attorney. “Why is he here?”
“He won’t say. He claims it’s important, but I checked your calendar, and you don’t have any appointments.”
No. But he did want to see Ryan so he could clarify that everything had been aboveboard with the adoption. “Let him in,” Jackson instructed.
“He’s not alone,” Steven interjected. “He has a woman with him. Shannon Wright.”
Jackson thought he might have misheard. “Shannon Wright?”
“Yes, sir. She’s one of the two women you asked me to investigate.”
He had indeed. Jackson had asked Evan and the sheriff to do the same. After all, Shannon Wright was a suspect in the disappearance of Bailey’s son. The hired gun had also used his cell to call her. “What does she want? And better yet, why is she here with my adoption attorney?”
“Neither one of them is volunteering much to me, but Shannon is insisting that she talk to you. She says she has to tell you something important about your son.”
Chapter Six
Everything seemed to be happening so fast that Bailey had trouble catching her breath. In the past twenty-four hours, she’d encountered an armed intruder, saw the precious child that might be her own and had flirted with danger by nearly kissing Jackson.
And now a suspect she’d been trying to question for four months had shown up on Jackson’s doorstep.
What the heck was going on?
That was something she didn’t get a chance to ask Jackson, because the moment he gave his house manager permission to escort Shannon Wright and Ryan Cassaine onto the estate, Jackson began a flurry of calls.
Some of those calls involved background requests on Shannon, but most were about security and moving Caden to the panic room. However, he also phoned Evan, his business manager, to see if he knew anything about this visit. Judging from what she could hear, Evan didn’t have a clue, but he was on his way back out to the estate as well.
Maybe with the DNA results.
As critical as those results were, however, Bailey had to put the thought of them aside so she could focus on this meeting. Was it possible Shannon had come to confess that she had indeed taken Caden? If so, that could be as critical as the DNA results.
“Come with me,” Jackson told Bailey when he ended the call. “I don’t want this meeting to take place in the house while Caden is here.”
Bailey agreed. She had no idea what the attorney’s role in any of this was, but Shannon was a suspect in a newborn’s kidnapping. Plus, the intruder had called Shannon. Her number was on his cell phone, and Bailey wanted an explanation for that, along with the rest.
“Shannon could be armed,” Bailey pointed out as she followed Jackson down the stairs.
“Steven, the estate manager, will search them both.”
Good. But Bailey wouldn’t breathe easier until Shannon said what she had apparently come to say and then was off the estate and far away from Caden. Or arrested. If the woman confessed to kidnapping the baby, then Bailey would make sure Shannon was hauled off to jail.
Jackson led Bailey through the house and to the sunroom. It faced an elaborate garden that still had spots of green despite the winter weather.
Bailey looked out the glass at the approaching car and the three people who exited when it came to a stop. She recognized Steven immediately, but it took her a moment to realize the stocky woman in the billowy gray dress was indeed Shannon Wright. In the picture Bailey had, and the last time she’d spotted her, the woman had been a brunette, but now Shannon was sporting auburn hair that was cut short and choppy.
The tall, dark-haired man walking next to Shannon was no doubt the adoption attorney. He spared Bailey a glance.
Shannon didn’t spare anything. When she caught sight of Bailey, her mouth dropped open, and she came to a dead stop. Either Bailey’s presence was a genuine surprise, or Shannon was faking it so she would appear innocent of having any dealings with the intruder.
“Strange bedfellows,” Jackson mumbled. He glanced at her. “You okay?”
“Yes,” Bailey lied.
Jackson must have known that, because he gave her arm a gentle squeeze. It seemed so…intimate. But Bailey accepted it as a gesture of comfort. Too bad Jackson was the last person from whom she should be seeking anything except information, but she kept finding herself drawn to him.
Steven ushered the visitors inside the sunroom, but he didn’t come in. He stayed on the other side of the glass as if standing guard. Good. Because Bailey had no idea what could happen during this so-called meeting. It could simply be an attempt to set her up for another attack.
“Ryan,” Jackson greeted. He shook hands with the attorney. “This is Bailey Hodges.”
Everything about the man seemed uncomfortable. His shoulders were pulled back. His facial muscles, tight. His mud-brown eyes were narrowed and filled with suspicion.
“First thing this morning, I got a call from Evan, several calls in fact,” Ryan said, without bothering to introduce Shannon. “He said you have some questions about the adoption. Not a good time for this, Jackson, considering the adoption will be final two days after Christmas. If you had questions, you should have called me directly when we started this process.”
“I didn’t have questions then.” In contrast, Jackson kept his voice calm. He looked laid-back and casual in his jeans and white shirt with rolled up sleeves. However, Bailey sensed the storm brewing beneath the cool facade. “Obviously, I have them now. Questions for you, too,” he said, turning that lethal gaze on Shannon.
With that, Jackson sat on the wicker sofa and waited. Be
cause Bailey’s legs weren’t feeling very steady, she sat as well. Eventually, so did Shannon. Ryan continued to stand and hover over them.
“I know who you are,” Shannon volunteered, staring at Bailey. “You followed me. Hounded me,” she amended. “And all for no reason. I didn’t take your baby.”
Bailey listened to each word, replaying them in her head. Even though she had wanted to meet and talk with Shannon for months, this was Bailey’s first chance to hear the woman speak. Shannon had obviously been avoiding her, just as Bailey had been avoiding the cops.
Was this the same woman’s voice she’d heard in the hospital?
“I’m innocent,” Shannon persisted. “Though I’m guessing you don’t believe that, because I got a call that SAPD was looking for me again.”
Bailey wasn’t sure she bought the woman’s denial, and judging from the rumbling sound that Jackson made deep within his chest, he was skeptical as well.
“You could have told us this with a phone call,” Jackson pointed out. “Instead you opted for a face-to-face meeting, with my adoption attorney no less. How do you two know each other?”
“She called me out of the blue last night,” Ryan jumped to explain.
“I’d read he was your attorney,” Shannon continued when Ryan didn’t add anything else, “and when I realized that SAPD still considered me a suspect, I called Ryan.” She huffed and looked at Bailey. “SAPD has questioned me more than a dozen times. The same questions over and over again. And I still have the same answers. I didn’t take your baby. I didn’t even see you during the hostage standoff. The first chance I could, I got out of there and haven’t been back since.”
Bailey lifted her shoulder. “Then if you’re innocent, why call Ryan?”
“Because I learned from a cop friend that SAPD was questioning Ryan, too. At first I thought that was good, that I was no longer a suspect. But then I realized they were trying to connect me to Ryan and some moron who tried to break into your estate yesterday.”
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