Deadly Silence

by Mary Stone

  But…twins. Two babies. Two beautiful babies. As scared as that made her, she was also…excited. So excited, she almost shouted out the news to Linc.

  Even as she opened her mouth to do just that, Vader jumped up on the side of the fence, his big tongue licking up her face.

  Yuck. Was that her sign to keep her mouth shut for now, she wondered as she wiped her face with her sleeve. When she looked at her husband again, he was laughing.

  “You were gone a long time,” he called. “Everything okay?”

  She nodded. “Yeah. Want me to start dinner?”

  He lifted his hat up off his head, wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand, and screwed it on tight. “Don’t you have work to do?”

  She scowled. Yes, she did, but she was trying to procrastinate on the dull Impact Insurance shit. Besides, she couldn’t cook worth a damn. But the thought of doing those reports now, with all these other things on her mind…

  Just the thought of the tedious work made her want to burst into tears.

  Hormones were hell.

  She straightened her shoulders, mentally pulled up her granny panties, and smiled. “Yes. I need to finish the Impact reports.”

  There.

  It was the adult thing to do. The right thing to do. The keep-us-out-of-the-poorhouse thing to do.

  He laughed again, probably at her expression. He knew how much she hated the tedious work. “Get ‘er done. Have fun.”

  Instead of shooting him a middle finger, she blew him a kiss and headed to the house and her computer. Then…stared at the screen. She sat there, trying to churn out work, feeling the rush of a thousand warring emotions. He was right, she needed to…get this done.

  But…twins!

  Instinctively, her hands went to her belly, hovering over Bean One and Bean Two. What kind of madhouse would they be born into? One where dogs roamed free, and they were still trying to run a business?

  Excitement flooded in. Twins! She wanted to shout it from the rooftops. She never could keep quiet about secrets, and this one was the biggest one of her life.

  Linc came in a few minutes later, so she hunched forward, burying her face in her computer and pretended to be hard at work. She actually managed to get some work done while he banged around in the kitchen.

  He poked his head around the doorframe. “Leftovers?”

  She realized she still had her hands on her belly and dropped them to her sides. “Sounds good.”

  “Well, it won’t be a repeat performance for you. You fell asleep before you could eat the short ribs I made last night.”

  That got her attention. Or, more like her stomach’s attention. The two beans were obviously not vegetarians. “You made short ribs?”

  He gave her a bemused look, tinged with worry. “Don’t you remember?”

  She scoured her memory. She didn’t. “Oh, yeah. Thanks.”

  At least the fib wiped the worry from his expression. “And I opened that new red from the winery down the street. Not bad. Want a glass?”

  She did. Desperately. She loved that funky little winery.

  When they were first married, they’d go there for tastings almost every weekend, and always come back with a few bottles. But now she had to think about the beans. “No, thanks. Not tonight. I have a little headache.”

  That wasn’t a lie. She’d had a perpetual headache for a couple weeks. Her back still hurt too. And all the things she could think of to numb the pain probably wouldn’t be good for the tiny lives growing inside her.

  The worry was back, but he played it off with a flippant, “Okay. Sparkling water it is.” He went back to the kitchen, then reappeared a second later. “You fell asleep before I could tell you. Jacob came by last night. Says he and Faith are getting married.”

  She smiled, genuinely happy for the big, burly detective. “Really? That’s great. It’s about time he grew up, and Faith is a nice person.”

  Nice, other than the fact that she’d once upon a time slept with her husband. Of course, it was before Linc and Kylie had gotten together, but she sometimes wondered if he thought of Faith at all.

  He leaned against the doorjamb. “Yeah. I’m happy for them too. He asked me to be his best man, and Faith wants you to be a bridesmaid. I told him that I was sure you’d say yes since you live for that sort of stuff.”

  Her spirits plummeted. “Um…”

  He frowned. “You like Faith, right?”

  “Of course I do, but…” she scrolled through her mental calendar, “when’s the wedding?”

  “They haven’t settled on a date, but soon. They don’t want to wait,” he said, eyeing her cautiously. “Is that a problem?”

  “No. It’s fine,” she said, thinking of what Dr. Ling had told her. Her due date was mid-April, but according to the doctor, multiples often came early. But not that early.

  So…it was great that the wedding would be soon. If it was scheduled for sometime next spring, she’d be forced to show up at the wedding of her husband’s gorgeous and sexy ex looking like a massive, ugly whale. That’d show her.

  “And yeah. Engagement party. We’ll probably get an invitation for it soon.”

  Well, that was nice. Maybe the attendees would get to know her before she became the Giant Whale that Ate Asheville.

  A minute later, she could tell Linc was still studying her. Did she look different? Was I’m pregnant stamped on her forehead? With twins?

  She gave him the best smile she could manage and nodded at the screen. “I better get back to work. Got to get the money rolling in.”

  He stood up. “Right. Oh. Speaking of that…” he leaned over his desk and pulled out a pile of papers, “this is for you. Jacob supplied it.”

  She studied it. It was a list of names of children from around the area. From the National Center of Missing and Exploited Children. “What is this?”

  “It’s a list of missing infants from around the surrounding states. I thought it could help you. You know, to see if anything fits the child laundering theory. To me, it looks like they’re all over the place, but—”

  “Why did you do this?”

  He visibly stiffened. “What do you mean?”

  “Well…” she lightened her voice, smiling at him again, “you don’t want me working on this case, and then you go and give me more work to do. I don’t get it.”

  “It’s not that I don’t want you working on it.” He held up his hands. “Okay, okay. I didn’t. But I know how much you want to, and that you’d probably do it with or without my blessing, so I thought I’d help you along. I know how busy you are.”

  She sucked in a breath, trying to control her emotions. She forced a smile and set the papers aside. “Thank you. Really.” Tears clawed their way to her eyes, but she blinked them back. “I’ll look into it after I get through all this.”

  She focused back on the computer screen, ready to answer an email, but when she looked up, she realized he was still looking at her, hands in his pockets, as if he was fishing for something else to say.

  “Did you have a good time today?” he asked.

  She very nearly burst into tears. He knew nothing about the stirrups or ultrasound or getting poked and prodded. He knew nothing about her sense of aloneness about being the only solo person in the waiting room of the doctor’s office.

  He was asking about her fake lunch with her mom. Her lie.

  She just needed to tell him. Carrying this news on her shoulders was just too much. Lying to hide the truth just made everything that much worse.

  Before she could say it, though, he said, “You were gone a long time.”

  “Well…” she cleared her throat, ready to come clean, “time flies when you’re having fun. I told you I was going with Mom, but—”

  “I spoke to Rhonda today. She told me she hasn’t seen you in two weeks.”

  Kylie froze. The way he was looking at her made her insides go cold.

  It only took a second for fear to morph into anger.
Had he been checking up on her?

  “Did you call her?”

  “No, she called me. She wanted to let me know there’s a sale at Macy’s downtown, if you want to go shopping this weekend. I thought it was very odd, her calling me about that, considering you two were supposed to be together?”

  Kylie closed her eyes. The last thing she wanted to do was go shopping. All her clothes already made her feel like a sausage bursting out of its casing, and she hadn’t even begun to show yet.

  The innocently curious expression was gone from his face. Now, he looked…wounded. “Why did you lie to me, Kylie?”

  It wasn’t a demand. He sounded hurt.

  She opened her mouth, but nothing came out. She wanted to cry. Or punch something. Or pull out her hair. No, she wanted to do all of that at once.

  “Kylie, is there somebody else?”

  Oh, for god’s sake. She almost burst out laughing for how ridiculous that idea was. Did he see her running around like a headless chicken? Not to mention the whole looking-like-a-sausage thing. Like she would have time for or interest in a rendezvous with another man?

  But he was holding her gaze, accusing her. He really thought that little of her? After all she was doing, trying to hold it together and be a perfect wife and have the life of their dreams, that was seriously what he thought she was up to?

  She didn’t just feel angry. She felt insulted.

  “Yes, that’s right. There’s someone else,” she snapped defiantly, slamming the top of her laptop closed.

  It wasn’t a lie. In fact, there were two someones, each one barely the size of a sweet pea, and they were driving her insane from the inside out.

  She pushed him aside and stomped up the staircase, slamming the door as forcefully as she could behind her.

  And no, she didn’t eat dinner with Linc again, for the second night in a row. Truthfully? At that moment, she wouldn’t have minded never eating dinner with him again.

  13

  Sometimes, it was just a matter of spinning the rolodex and seeing where it landed.

  Yes, I knew that the rolodex was a dinosaur of the office era, but I found mine to be quite useful.

  For one, it kept all of my contacts so neatly, and it didn’t call attention to itself. Two, the police never bothered with physical address books anymore—when they looked for evidence, they confiscated cell phones. One of my contacts had told me that, even if my trusty office companion was outdated, it was actually very smart. It could easily be destroyed, all evidence wiped away. Not so for your ordinary cell phone, which was why I very rarely communicated via it.

  This time, I spun, and landed on Katy Valdez, a nurse in Athens, Georgia.

  Hadn’t dealt with her for a while, maybe five years ago, but from what I remembered, our last interaction had been smooth as churned butter. I liked that.

  Without giving myself a chance to rethink it, I called her up and made the pitch. This time, we were looking for a girl with blue eyes and dark hair. Darker skin would be a plus, as well.

  It was rare to get a second request from K like this, especially so soon after the last one. Usually, I did no more than three of these in a year, but K had told me the baby-business was booming. People wanted what I could offer them. Who was I to turn away good business? Who was I not to spare a child from poverty and place them in a home with all the love they could ever need?

  I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself had I told him no.

  Katy was as professional as ever and told me that she would keep an eye out. As I hung up, I thought about calling another contact, but that could be dangerous. I’d just wait. That area of Georgia was an armpit. She’d find some good candidate soon. I was sure of it.

  Sitting back in my chair, I decided that perhaps it would be fun to go on two cruises this year. I didn’t like to get too flashy, or else it would call attention to myself, but two trips in one year wouldn’t be too much. After all, if I pulled this off, I could definitely say I earned it.

  Especially with a certain nosy parker poking around.

  As I was forming a response to K that I’d put feelers out and would let him know the outcome by the end of the week, I got a call from Stephen.

  That was interesting.

  Stephen, my old buddy.

  I’d had to get a new law enforcement official to work with after my last one had gotten arrested for domestic abuse, the moron. This one was good. He was ruthless and did the job, no-nonsense, no complaints. I asked, he delivered. He’d once been a cop in downtown Asheville until he’d been brought under investigation for harassing some of the female officers. Word on the street was that he was a real dick.

  But he worked well for my purposes. And that was all that mattered.

  “What’s going on?” I asked him when I picked up the phone.

  “Nice talking to you too, sweetheart,” he said with a smarmy lilt in his voice. God, he was just like Mark Lamb, but nowhere near as attractive. “You’re not one for small talk, are you?”

  I sighed and rubbed my temple. I didn’t have time for this. “Not when I think I might have a problem. Do I have a problem, Stephen?”

  “Well, that’s the big question. At this point, I can’t tell.”

  “You have been following her? Closely? Like I said?”

  I’d sent a picture of the subject to him yesterday and asked him to tail her, just to see what she was up to. People like her—those young, go-getting types—always made me nervous. And she seemed like she wasn’t going to let a couple of little roadblocks stand in her way. I hated to feel this anxious.

  “Yeah, since this morning. Bright and early.”

  “And?” It was difficult to eliminate the irritation from my voice, but I managed.

  “And…she left her house around ten-thirty, kind of in a rush. At eleven, she went to the Asheville Women’s Health Center, left there around twelve. From about twelve-thirty to two-thirty, she walked around to a couple of downtown shops, and then she went home, where she is right now, as far as I know.”

  I tapped a finger on my lips, thinking. I’d sourced a woman out of Asheville Women’s Health once, but that was decades ago, and the nurse who’d helped me had long since retired. I was clean as far as that was concerned. “You think she was snooping?”

  He snorted. “No. I think she had a legit appointment there, lady. For herself.”

  “What makes you so sure?”

  “Hang on. I’ll send you the pic and then you can draw your own conclusions.”

  I waited for a moment, and when my phone buzzed, I opened the text to view a photo of the same pretty, dark-haired Kylie Coulter walking out of the brick building. Her brow was wrinkled in concern, and she was holding on to a couple of tiny, white squares of paper in one hand and a “So you’re going to be a mother?” bag in the other.

  It could’ve been anything in her hands, but from the look on her face, I was pretty certain what it was. In fact, I knew exactly what it was.

  She was holding ultrasound photographs and a bag filled with samples of things like prenatal vitamins. “She’s pregnant?” I murmured.

  “I think so. I don’t know for certain, of course, but I’ll keep on her.”

  “Good. Do that. And if she starts making any trouble, let me know right away. I can’t let her get much closer than she’s already gotten. She’s making me nervous, and I don’t like being nervous. Do you understand?”

  “Yeah, I got it.”

  “If she starts doing anything weird, we’ll have to nip it in the bud. Quickly.”

  “Understood.”

  I hung up, then pulled my keyboard closer and typed in Kylie Coulter again. I’d only looked into her enough to get Stephen the information he needed to tail her. But now, I started digging a little more.

  I found that Coulter Confidential was a new business, but that she’d gotten experience working for Starr Investigations before it closed earlier this year. I found that Kylie Coulter, nee Hatfield, had attended UNC f
or six years, majoring in a variety of different subjects, but had never received a degree. And I also learned that Kylie had recently gotten married earlier this year to a tall, strong, drop-dead gorgeous drink of water named Lincoln Coulter, some search and rescue guy who lived outside of town.

  I stared at the picture of the dark-haired man with the chocolate brown eyes. A photo from his army days, he was wearing a uniform and holding the leash of a German Shepherd. Hmm. He was quite the catch. If I were her, I’d be jumping into bed with that often.

  So, she very well could be expecting.

  That was interesting.

  But it wasn’t my concern.

  I was my concern. If she was snooping where she didn’t belong, she would need to be eliminated. Just as I’d eliminated the cop in Virginia who’d gotten too close a few years ago.

  I simply couldn’t let her continue.

  14

  Linc slept in the spare bedroom for the fifth night in a row.

  It wasn’t nearly as comfortable as his big master bed. Now, he had bags under his eyes, aches all over, and because the dogs kept making noise on the floor beside him, he’d gotten a total of five hours of sleep the entire week.

  Not to mention that he couldn’t stop thinking about what Kylie had told him.

  She’d admitted there was someone else.

  And then, to make it worse, she’d stormed out of the room, went upstairs, and closed the door. Locked it, too, so there could be no discussion. No figuring out what he could do to make things better.

  Had she been lying in a fit of anger? Or had she been telling the truth?

  The not knowing ate at his insides.

  He figured that eventually, she’d cave. Talkative Kylie couldn’t keep quiet for longer than a few minutes.

  But he was wrong.

  He’d gotten nothing from her but deadly silence.

  He’d tried extending an olive branch half a dozen times since then. He’d made her coffee. Stayed out of her way, though she’d mostly spent her time at her desk. He hadn’t bugged her on the few times that she’d gone out. When one of the dogs had learned a new trick, he invited her out to see it. He’d have had better response from a wall.