The Baby Wore a Badge

by Marie Ferrarella

  “Don’t underestimate that,” Calista told him. “Some guys never bother learning.”

  She hoped he didn’t think she was talking from direct experience. She was fortunate because her family was close-knit and her parents had been great, but she had friends who’d been raised by single parents, usually their mother, and they hardly saw their father when they were growing up.

  Or worse, they had both parents in residence, but one or both were far too self-absorbed to do much beyond provide for the basic physical essentials that went into raising offspring, neglecting them emotionally and thus robbing them of a very important component while they were growing up.

  That, she could see, was never going to happen to Marlie. Marlie was going to be one of the lucky ones, she thought, then roused herself. She was getting too distracted again. But then, Jake Castro was a very distracting man.

  Secretly, she blessed Erin for calling her in.

  Her thoughts shifted to Erin.

  “When Erin gets back from her errand,” Calista told him, lingering a moment longer in the doorway, “tell her I said goodbye.”

  Calista glanced at her watch again, willing the minute hand to slow down. Her lunch was all but over and she knew that if she was a minute late, Jasper Fowler would have some cryptic comment to shoot her way about not paying her to dawdle and be tardy.

  Hell, he’d probably have something biting to say even if she made it back on time.

  Waving at Jake, Calista hurried over to the vehicle she’d parked in the spacious driveway and quickly got in. The next moment, the engine hummed to life.

  Jake remained where he was, in the doorway. Marlie appeared fascinated with her surroundings and was taking it all in, giving him a moment to watch Calista as she got into her car and then drove away.

  He turned what she’d said about the man she worked for over in his mind, wondering if sheer boredom was goading him on, or if there actually was anything to Fowler’s behavior.

  Calista could have been exaggerating, but somehow, he doubted it. He might be wrong, but she didn’t strike him as someone who had a wild imagination she let run away with her.

  It did seem rather odd that the shop was surviving while there were, according to Calista, next to no customers frequenting it. Of course, the man could be independently wealthy and running the antique store simply because it was a lark for him.

  Jake brightened considerably at the thought of investigating something, however insignificant it might be. He loved Marlie more than he thought possible, but at the same time, being here, away from his job was making him feel as if his police skills were becoming rather rusty.

  If he brightened up at the thought of seeing Calista also, well, that was only incidental.

  Or so he told himself.

  Chapter Seven

  The tall, thin man cleaved to the shadows, moving about like a ghost of his former self.

  He’d thought—fervently hoped, actually—that this cavernous emptiness that felt as if it was eating him alive would start to recede by now. That at least a tiny bit of the old enthusiasm that had been such an integral part of him would have begun to return.

  But it hadn’t.

  He was empty. A shell. Any ability to feel was still exiled somewhere in limbo, completely out of his reach.

  If he felt anything at all, it was guilt. Soul-shredding, gut-wrenching guilt. At times, especially at night, it would descend over him so oppressively that he thought he could scarcely breathe.

  Those were the times that he prayed for oblivion, but it didn’t come.

  Those were also the times when he was tempted to seek his absolution in a bottle, but he knew there were no solutions there, no answers. Using alcohol to blot out his mind only created more problems.

  Besides, that was no way to pay Dillon Traub back for his kindness. When his whole world had literally blown up on him and he hadn’t known which way to turn, it was Dillon who’d called him, offering him a place to stay, where he could retreat to for as long as he wanted, no demands, no questions.

  A place where he could disappear.

  He’d taken the lifeline gratefully, and had been living in that mountaintop cabin for more than a month now, venturing out only when he absolutely had to for food and supplies. When he did come out, he said nothing to no one. As far as the people who saw him knew, he was a mute.

  A mute who was waiting for the abyss that hovered within him to receded.

  Wondering now if it ever would.

  The people he moved past in town probably thought he was some deranged hermit. God, would they be surprised to find out who he really was, he thought.

  Or more accurately, who he’d been.

  After the incident, he didn’t know if he would ever be able to go back to his life.

  Or even want to.

  Carefully depositing the supplies he’d picked up at the supermarket into the back of the Jeep Dillon had lent him, he felt something hit the back of his calf.

  Looking down, he saw that the wind had caught up a flyer from somewhere and sent it traveling. Removing the colorful paper from his calf, he was about to let the flyer continue on its wind-fueled journey when the words Frontier Days Festival caught his eye.

  Rather than just drop the paper or ball it up to throw away, he paused to scan it. The flyer invited one and all to attend the town’s annual celebration. It promised wonderful homemade food, fun rides, friendly competitions for all ages and music by “the best musicians west of Nashville.”

  For just a split second, the words struck a chord. He stared at them like a man who was completely hypnotized. And then the next moment, he did what he’d initially thought to do. He balled up the flyer, tossing it into the back of the Jeep to be thrown away once he got back to the cabin.

  There was no point in thinking about attending the event, not even from the sidelines. If, for some reason, he ventured out to the festival, someone was bound to recognize him there. He had no doubts that in no time at all, the crowd would be in an uproar. Nobody would want him there or anywhere near them.

  And he couldn’t blame them. Not after what had happened in April….

  Resigned, he retreated into the emptiness, embracing it as it encompassed him, blotting out everything else. Rounding the front of the vehicle, he got in on the driver’s side and drove back to the empty cabin. To continue repenting the occurrence of something that he hadn’t been able to foresee until it happened.

  Okay, Cali, for heaven’s sake, get a grip!

  This was the third time today that Calista had caught her mind wandering, dwelling on the man she was supposed to be helping out. The man she had absolutely no business thinking about.

  She couldn’t allow herself to go on like this.

  It was all well and good to disengage her brain from the rest of her when she was working at the antique shop—how many brain cells did you really need to dust old furniture properly?—but when she was interning at the mayor’s office, she was supposed to be sharp, not dull like the stubby point of a kindergartener’s wornout crayon. And she couldn’t be sharp if her mind was elsewhere.

  Specifically, if her mind was lingering on every single word uttered by the father of the little girl she’d babysat last night.

  Babysitting for Jake Castro was becoming more of a regular thing. In the last couple of weeks, her services had been recruited five times since she’d initially agreed to the arrangement. It was at the point that when she went home—or actually, even when she was at one of her other jobs—she caught herself listening for both her own cell phone as well as the landline to ring. Waiting to hear Jake Castro say in that deep, sensual baritone voice of his that he “needed her.”

  Actually, he hadn’t used that particular choice of words, nor had he called to say that he “wanted her” which would have been even better. The word he used was “available.” Was she available at such and such a time? But the thought behind the request was there and she had enough of an imagination to fill in
the blanks.

  So far, the five times she’d been over to take care of his daughter, Jake had gone out with Erin’s husband or one of the other Traub men and she’d thought nothing of it.

  What if next time he called it was because Jake needed her to watch Marlie because he was going out on a date? A real date with a woman.

  The thought and her reaction to it startled her. A shaft of jealousy shot through her like a finely pointed arrow.

  Blinking, Calista struggled to pull herself together. At the same time, she realized that one of the mayor’s two administrative assistants, Laura Riley, was talking to her—and had been talking to her for at least a couple of minutes now if the look on the woman’s face was any indication.

  “Are you feeling all right?” Laura asked her pointedly.

  Embarrassed at being caught like this, Calista quickly assured her, “Yes, I’m fine.”

  “Because you look as if you’re a million miles away right now.” The woman appeared none too happy about the assessment.

  No, not a million. More like five miles or so, Calista thought.

  But in either case, she shouldn’t have been. She wasn’t being paid to fantasize about a man, no matter how good-looking he was.

  “Actually, I’ve got a headache.”

  Mentally Calista crossed her fingers, silently apologizing for resorting to a white lie, something she’d never been guilty of before. But it was just that if the woman thought she was daydreaming or zoning out, it would reflect badly on Bo because he’d been the one who had given the thumbs-up to hire her in the first place. From what she’d heard around the office, Thunder Canyon’s new mayor had enough to deal with trying to figure out just what the old mayor had done with the funds that went suddenly missing from the town coffers. There were people who were actually pointing their finger at him rather than the previous mayor, Arthur Swinton, saying that he was somehow responsible for the missing money and that Swinton had been used as a fall guy.

  When the fact that the money was missing had initially come to light and Swinton refused to talk, he’d been arrested. The thinking was to leave the ex-mayor in a cell, cooling his heels until such time as he came clean. However, a fatal heart attack had derailed that plan. So at the moment, the sorely needed funds were still missing and the only one who supposedly could tell anyone where they were was dead.

  Although she was young and optimistic, Calista wasn’t naive. She knew how close-knit towns like Thunder Canyon worked. Rumors sprang up, fueled by wild speculation. Because of the missing funds, Bo Clifton’s base was eroding, not to mention his good name along with it. She couldn’t add to that, no matter how insignificantly, by having people in the office think she was coasting exclusively on her connection to Bo.

  Laura stood looking at her skeptically. Just as Calista thought the administrative assistant was going to call her on her lie, the woman said, “I’ve got some aspirin in my desk. I can give you a couple of tablets to get rid of your headache.”

  Calista smiled her gratitude, taking care to look sincere. An old adage leaped to mind: Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive. She promised herself this was going to be the extent of her fabrication career. Right after this was behind her.

  Out loud she said, “That would be very nice of you,” surprising herself with the ease with which she could voice and give further life to the white lie she’d created.

  This wasn’t for her, it was for Bo, she told herself, trying to assuage her conscience. At the same time, she upbraided herself for thinking about Jake.

  Laura Riley returned to her rather quickly, carrying a small bottle of water in one hand and presumably two aspirin tablets in the other.

  The two small white tablets actually felt warm as Calista accepted them. Then, as Laura continued to watch her carefully, Calista had no choice but to pop the aspirins into her mouth. Taking the bottled water from the older woman, Calista washed down the tablets already decomposing on her tongue.

  “Now, whenever you’re feeling better—and I trust that’ll be soon—I need you to file those reports for me,” the assistant declared, leaving a pile of folders on the desk beside her computer monitor.

  Again, Calista forced a wide smile to her lips. “The second the aspirin takes effect,” she promised, satisfied that at least this time around she’d bent the words so that she wasn’t technically lying outright, just being very vague.

  Served her right for letting her mind wander like that, she thought, annoyed with herself. The time to think about Jake Castro was when she was somewhere close to his vicinity, not while she was trying to create a good—or at least a decent—impression in the mayor’s main office.

  After all, this wasn’t just about her. She represented not only herself but the rest of her family as well.

  With effort, Calista put her thoughts on hold and instead applied herself to the task at hand.

  “Calista, would you mind calling me back? I need to talk to you.”

  She’d been at her desk all morning. She’d finally stepped away for what seemed like a couple of minutes, but obviously, that was when the blinking message on her desk phone had come in. At first, she hadn’t even looked at her phone—what were the odds, after all, for her to get a call in that particular limited time frame? And yet, that was when the call had come through. The persistent blinking light had registered belatedly, negating her brief belief that her mind was playing tricks on her.

  The second Calista hit the proper button to play back her messages, she heard a woman’s voice. It had taken her less than five seconds to recognize who was calling. Erin. And more than five seconds to tell her accelerating pulse to slow down.

  She was going to get to see Jake, she thought, radiantly happy.

  You can’t be sure of that. Maybe this isn’t a call to ask you to babysit. Maybe Erin wants to talk to you about something else.

  There was no point in speculating and second-guessing. She needed to call Erin back and find out what was going on before she let her imagination take flight again.

  Very carefully, Calista looked around to see if the mayor’s administrative assistant was around anywhere. Personal phone calls weren’t forbidden, but they weren’t exactly encouraged, either. She hadn’t seen the woman for the last half hour, which meant that she had either gone to lunch or was in a conference in one of the offices that formed a semicircle around the central work area. In any case, Laura Riley wasn’t around at the moment.

  Calista took advantage of that and dialed quickly. She didn’t have to pause to look up the number. At this point, she knew it by heart.

  The phone on the other end of the line rang four times before it was picked up. Calista started talking the second she heard the receiver go up.

  “Erin? This is Calista. You called me?”

  “Yes.” The voice on the other end of the line sounded rather tense and harried. Calista’s immediate thoughts gravitated to the baby. Had something happened to Marlie? “Yes, I did. I know this is very short notice, but I was wondering if you were free tonight to come by and watch Marlie?”

  She wasn’t actually free. One of her sisters had suggested that they all get together tonight and eat out. It was going to be an old-fashioned gab fest. But Erin sounded stressed and she wanted to help if she could. Calista knew that she could get a rain check from her sister. It wasn’t as if Colleen would be facing an empty chair if she bowed out. That was the upside of having so many siblings: there was always someone handy to fill the space.

  “I think I can rearrange things.” Pausing, Calista debated asking a question. She didn’t want Erin to think she was invading her privacy, but the other woman did sound pretty upset. Well, there was only one way to find out why.

  “Is something wrong?” Calista asked.

  There was a long pause on the other end of the line. Calista was just beginning to think she’d offended the other woman when she heard Erin hesitantly say, “It’s not my place to say.”

>   Erin remained noble for a moment longer, then mentally threw up her hands and told her, “Jake got a letter from Marlie’s grandparents.”

  That in itself couldn’t be what was upsetting Jake’s sister. Calista pushed a little more. “I take it they weren’t asking after her health.”

  “No, they weren’t.” And now she could hear the anger in Erin’s voice. A sister’s anger for the wrongs done to her brother. “They were all but accusing Jake of kidnapping Marlie. They said that if he didn’t return and bring them their granddaughter, they were going to go to court to sue him for custody.”

  Calista didn’t understand. Unless there was abuse involved, the first people who had custody of a child were the child’s parents. Or parent if there was only one available. “But he’s the baby’s father.”

  “I know, I know, but it’s not that simple.”

  Calista stopped looking around to see if Laura had emerged and was heading her way. Her attention was now entirely focused on what Erin was saying.

  “Oh. Why?”

  “Jake said they found a paper in her things. He initially signed it as a formality when he and Maggie first made their agreement. In it, he waived all of his rights to the baby. Her parents are now trying to hold him to it.”

  That sounded absolutely awful to Calista. She knew that Marlie’s grandparents had suffered a terrible tragedy, losing their daughter like that, but getting involved in a tug-of-war with their granddaughter serving as the rope wasn’t going to help them come to terms with Maggie’s death.

  “Marlie’s not a car or some property to be handed over from one ‘owner’ to another,” she protested indignantly.

  “You don’t have to sell me on that,” Erin told her. “You’re preaching to the choir. Look, Corey has access to this team of corporate lawyers because of the oil company. I thought that maybe Jake could talk to one of them, get a handle on what he can do to somehow make this all go away. One of the lawyers said he could come by and talk to him. I want to make sure that there aren’t any distractions for Jake. So could you come and watch Marlie for him?”