She dropped her head into her hands.
“Help me now and I can make sure she’s safe next week. We want the same thing, you and I.”
Viktoria Arsov, who had unflinchingly handed over hundreds of illegally adopted babies to unsuspecting couples, sobbed with her head buried in her arms.
Ethan looked at the corner of the room, where he knew one of the cameras was hidden. He turned his hands up as if to say, What else can I say? He pushed away from the table. Maybe if he went to get the baby. If she was looking at the baby, maybe it would be enough to get her to do the right thing.
He knew she was scared. The men she’d worked for had probably worked diligently to make sure that terror was carved into her mind. He sighed and reached for the doorknob.
“I only know a couple of the names he uses.”
He spun on his heel to face her. “You won’t regret this.” At the table, he pushed a pad and pencil toward her, then stopped himself. “Vika, I promise you, I will make sure that you are protected. Will you please write the names down?”
She nodded, and even now he could see that she knew more than she was saying. He wouldn’t push her now. The names were a start.
He grabbed the slip of paper she wrote on and walked out the door. And met Janie and Kelsey in the hall. “Why don’t you take the baby in for a visit? She could use some encouragement. She’s given us names of aliases, but it’s clear that she’s terrified of repercussions.”
Kelsey nodded. “Do you want me to talk to her?”
“Just about the baby. Maybe the surgery and the expected outcome. Nolan will be monitoring over the security feed. I’ll get him to run these names, too. Maybe we can come up with something on Cantori.” He looked down at the paper in his hand, and his face went kind of gray.
“What’s the matter?” When he didn’t say anything, Kelsey touched his arm. “Ethan. What’s wrong?”
“This name. It’s the name of one of the CIs—confidential informants—my partner was running during the operation. The guy supposedly got killed.”
“Did you know him?”
“No. I never met him. I had information from another source. Bridges found this guy.” His eyes narrowed in thought, but he was still reeling—she could tell.
“Okay, why don’t you go ahead and have Nolan run the name? See if anything comes up after the date the operation ended. Maybe you can find outside confirmation of what Bridges said happened—newspaper articles, obituaries or something.” Kelsey stooped to pick up the sippy cup that Janie dropped on the floor. “I’ll go in here and talk to Viktoria, see if I can find out anything else.”
He nodded, but she could see the shock still in his eyes. It had been bad enough to think that someone on his team might’ve been dirty, but his partner … It would be like losing a part of himself.
She pushed open the door of the library. Viktoria was sitting in the corner of the room with her back against the wall, her face in her hands.
Viktoria looked up. Tears streaked her face, but her eyes lit up when she saw the baby. Kelsey sat down on the floor beside her with Janie on her lap sideways. “I’m Kelsey. I know we talked yesterday, but we didn’t really meet officially.”
“Are you her foster mother?”
“No, I’m a social worker. Ethan called my office after he found Janie. She’s been in my custody because of her medical issues.” Kelsey held Janie’s finger as she pulled to her feet and took a couple of steps toward the woman. “Viktoria, I don’t understand how—”
“How I could do what I did?” Vika held Janie’s hands and let her bounce. “I ask myself the same thing. But I care about the babies and I take care of them. I think if they kill me, then they might get someone who doesn’t care as much as I do.”
In a twisted way, Kelsey could almost understand. “And then you met Janie?”
“She’s been with me from the day she was born. I knew something was wrong. I tried to place her, but the family wouldn’t take her.” Viktoria’s teeth bit into her bottom lip. “She’s such a good baby. I looked for a doctor, but I couldn’t pay for that kind of surgery.”
“Why did you leave her on the boat for Ethan to find?” That was the one thing that Kelsey hadn’t understood—why Viktoria would leave the baby on a boat in the middle of the ocean.
“I heard them talk. I knew what happened to him because of the baby boy.” She looked down. “When I ran away, I looked for him. I just knew, if I could make sure he found out about his boy, that he wouldn’t stop looking for the truth.”
“And Janie?”
The little girl threw herself at Vika, with every expectation that she would be caught. Of course, she was. Vika pressed her lips together. “I knew—hoped—that he was a good man. That if he found her that he would make sure she was cared for.”
“Did you think you would get away?”
Viktoria pressed her lips together. “I had hope.” Then she shrugged. “These people, they are powerful. Unless Ethan finds them all, they will kill me to keep me from telling what I know. Or they will kill me for running away. I don’t think they need excuses.”
A knock on the door interrupted their conversation. One of the police officers stuck his head in the door. “Mr. Clark says to escort Ms. Arsov back to her room. He said he would like to see you, Ms. Rogers, if it’s not too much trouble.”
“Thanks.” Kelsey sat on her knees, letting Viktoria have one more minute to hold Janie. “If there’s any way possible, I’ll make sure that you receive updates on her progress.”
For just a second, Viktoria’s chin trembled and then she nodded and handed Kelsey the baby. She stood and walked away, leaving the room with her head held high.
Kelsey nuzzled Janie’s cheek and winced as Janie pulled her braid again. She said to the baby, “I’m very tempted to make a run for the bed at the pool house, to pull the covers over my head for the rest of the day.”
Janie laughed.
“No, I guess you’re right. It wouldn’t be very mature.” She picked the sippy cup off the floor again, throw-down-pick-up being Janie’s favorite game at the moment.
She let herself out the back door and looked toward the water, where she saw him standing by his boat. He looked lonely.
She shivered. If those men were as powerful as Viktoria said they were, it was going to take every bit of their intelligence and determination to keep Janie safe and save other women from suffering like Viktoria did.
They might be facing a determined enemy, but they were even more determined.
They had to get out of this alive.
TEN
Ethan was sitting at the end of the dock, letting the sun warm him because inside he felt so cold. He’d been going around and around it in his mind. Could his old partner Bridges have been involved in this?
The only possible answer was yes. Also possible was that someone else was involved, and Bridges got caught in the cat-and-mouse game. Either way, he was going to have to talk to his former partner, and he had a feeling it wasn’t going to be a pleasant conversation.
He felt the boards buckle and bounce as someone stepped onto the dock at the other end. He turned his head and saw Kelsey in her cute turned-up jeans and flip-flops. “No baby?”
“She’s bonded with Nolan. Picture Nolan throwing things at Tyler, Tyler acting like a monster, Nolan acting scared and Janie going into gales of laughter. Over and over again.” She shook her head, slid out of her flip-flops and dropped down on the dock beside him, dangling her feet off the edge.
He laid back and let the sun warm him.
Kelsey didn’t say anything, but as a boat chugged by pushing a loaded barge, she turned to him. “So what’s up? You said you wanted to see me.”
“I think my partner is involved in this. I want you to talk me out of it.”
She sighed, her eyebrows drawing together. “Why me?”
“You’re the most giving and understanding person I know. If there’s a reason not to suspect Bridges, yo
u’ll help me find it.”
“What do you remember about the day your wife died?”
He didn’t have to think about it. All he had was the crime scene photographs. “Nothing.”
“Think back. Where were you staying?”
“I had a place in Destin because that’s where the sting was taking place.”
“You had a crash pad?”
His amusement was faint and fleeting. “Yes, you could call it that. I stayed there except for a few weekends at home in Mobile with Amy and Charlie, when I had planned ‘business trips.’ Bridges and I worked out of the field office in Mobile.”
“So that day, you were planning the big sting, but it started like any other day, right? You got up, you made coffee. Then what?”
“I ate breakfast at a café down the street. They knew me there as my cover.” He pushed to a sitting position, shoulder to shoulder with Kelsey now. “It was routine.”
“Did you do anything out of the ordinary?”
He swallowed hard, the day sharpening in focus in his mind. “I picked up the money from my team in a hotel room—we went over the protocol for the night, how things were going to go down.” His voice trailed off as he remembered what happened next.
“And?”
He turned to look at her. “I called Amy. From the car. It was a security breach, but I had a throwaway phone that I’d never used. I wanted to tell her it was almost over, but I didn’t. I just told her I loved her.”
“What did she say?” The sun was warming Kelsey’s back. She registered it, but didn’t really notice, too caught up in Ethan’s story.
“Nothing out of the ordinary. She loved me, too.” His glance was a little apologetic.
“Think back, Ethan. Think of the hundreds of conversations that you had with Amy, even the dozens that you had after Charlie came along. What were the sounds in the apartment like?”
“Amy liked noise. The radio, the TV.” His voice was distant, thinking.
“What about after Charlie was born?”
His smile this time was instantaneous, infectious. “He was always making little noises, cooing, babbling, crying. And a DVD with classical music would be on. He loved those.”
“Close your eyes and replay the conversation from that day in your mind.” She gave him a minute to think and herself a minute to recover. He had lost so much—his whole life—the night that Amy died and Charlie was taken. It wasn’t right and it certainly wasn’t fair. He loved that little boy so much. “So, what were you feeling as you talked to Amy?”
Kelsey let the lapping of the waves against the pier soothe the disquiet in her, the ache in her throat that she knew he had to feel too.
“I was … excited. We had worked so hard to reach this point. And tonight it was going to pay off. We were going to shut down a trafficking pipeline, rescue the group of girls from going into prostitution and I would get to go home. I thought surely she would hear it in my voice.” He rubbed his hands down his jeans. She could tell he was getting frustrated with this little exercise.
“What did she sound like?”
“Quiet. Stressed. But I didn’t give it much thought. Maybe she hadn’t slept much or Charlie had a cold.” He paused. “It would be okay, I thought, because in a day or two I would be home and she wouldn’t have to handle it on her own.”
He opened his eyes. “Why didn’t I ask?”
“Because you knew there was nothing you could do.” She was quick to cut that off. Ethan blaming himself would be counterproductive. It wasn’t his fault. “Hearing your voice was the only gift you could give her at that moment. Let the emotion go, Ethan. Close your eyes and think back. Did you hear any voices in the apartment?”
“This is stupid.” He shot to his feet. “I can’t do this.”
Maybe he was right, maybe it was stupid. But she felt like there had to be something. If Charlie had been kidnapped that day, there had to be something they were missing. Some small piece. “Just try one more time, Ethan. Please.”
He sat back down and closed his eyes. “The inside of the car was warm, midday by that point. I had the money in a leather bag on the passenger seat beside me. I’d picked up the throwaway phone from the glove compartment and dialed home, happy, so happy to hear her voice.”
He tilted his head to listen. “No, no voices in the apartment. All I heard was the clicking of a pen.”
The pen. “Kelsey, I gave her that pen for Christmas. She was always forgetting things—it was a pen, but it was also a micro-recorder. Do you think—”
“Wouldn’t you have found it after?”
“I thought they both died in the explosion. The forensics team went through the house looking for an explanation of how Amy knew to be at that restaurant at that time, but all they found were a couple of unexplained phone calls. One of them was mine.”
He paused, jamming his fingers into his hair and rubbing his head, where there was a stabbing ache. “Once the house was cleared, I didn’t—couldn’t—go back there. My mother directed the movers. She’s the one who packed the memento box for me. Everything else has been in a storage shed since then.”
Kelsey rubbed his back with the hand nearest him. “It’s a stab in the dark, Ethan. There’s no guarantee that Amy recorded anything.”
“We won’t know until we look.” The glimmer of the sun on the water reflected as a glimmer of hope in his mind. “Come on.”
He grasped her hand and hustled down the length of the wooden dock toward the house. “I just need to tell Tyler where we’re going.”
Kelsey slowed to a stop. “Ethan, I can’t go. I want to, but I have to stay here, with Janie.”
He’d been so pumped at the thought that there might be evidence out there that he hadn’t even thought about their responsibility to Janie. “I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking. I’m not sure I can wait.”
“I don’t want you to go alone. You could ask your brother.”
He leaned forward, placing a kiss at the corner of her mouth. “It’s been two years. I can handle it.” It might be better if he didn’t have to, but he could chin up and deal with it. “Tell Tyler I’m taking the truck.”
As he started to walk away, she turned him toward her, took her time studying his face. “I’ll be here when you get back.”
“I know.” He took a breath, feeling the air enter his lungs and knowing, really knowing, that he had something to come back to, for the first time in a long time.
He dug in his pocket and pulled out the keys to his brother’s truck. He’d only be driving twenty minutes to the storage units. It felt like he was driving back in time.
He prayed he could find the evidence they needed before it was too late—for Janie and for Charlie.
Kelsey opened the kitchen door to see Gracie at the table entertaining Janie with a ball of dough. At the wide farm sink, Tyler was cleaning vegetables and singing along to the country music playing from hidden speakers. She watched for a minute as Janie slapped the table and flour went everywhere.
Flour from head to toe, she was a sight. But the pink in her cheeks and the laughter in her eyes was worth the bath battle to come.
Gracie looked up from her position beside Tyler. “Come on in. The police team checked out around lunchtime, so we’re going with simple and easy tonight. We’re making individual pizzas.”
“Looks to me like you’re making a mess.” Kelsey dropped a kiss on Janie’s head.
Tyler lifted hands toward the ceiling. “Thank you.”
His wife grabbed him around the waist and gave him a floury kiss. “You love the mess.”
He chuckled. “I love you, which means I put up with the mess.”
Kelsey picked a piece of bell pepper off one of the piles on the table and nibbled. “Ethan said to tell you he borrowed the truck. He went to the storage shed to go through the boxes from his apartment in Virginia.”
Gracie and Tyler both went still, Gracie’s eyes searching out her husband’s. Tyler dried his hands on the
dish towel tied at his waist. “You said he went to the storage facility? Alone?”
“Yes, he thought there might be something there.”
Tyler picked up the phone and dialed it. “Matt. Meet me at Mom and Dad’s storage unit.” He paused. “I don’t care what you’re doing. Ethan’s going through his stuff.”
The concerned look on Gracie’s face didn’t fade as Tyler untied his cook’s apron and kissed her. “I don’t know how long I’ll be gone. You can handle dinner?”
“Yes, I’ve got this. Go.”
His gaze tracked to Kelsey as he stepped across the threshold to the outdoors. “Arsov is locked in her room and it’s been quiet the last couple of days around here, so I think you’ll be fine. But don’t take any chances. If you get worried, call.”
She nodded. “Of course.”
As the door closed, Gracie picked up the cutting board and sat at the table across from Kelsey to chop the peppers. “Tyler worries about Ethan. We all do.”
“Ethan isn’t as fragile as his brother thinks he is.” A glop of dough landed in front of Kelsey and she slid it back to Janie.
Gracie laid the knife down. “You’re probably right. In fact, I know you’re right, but Ethan has been very closed off the last couple of years. Tyler and Matt have done everything they can to get through to him. I think Tyler’s afraid. That maybe he’ll lose his brother for good if this goes badly.”
Kelsey took a deep breath. “When you lose someone like Ethan did, it’s like the world drops out from under you. You’re standing on a tiny piece of ground and all around you is empty space.”
She stared at the window, but she didn’t see it. “You can tell other people are there, like family or friends, but even if you want to reach out to them, you can’t figure out how to get to them.”
“It sounds like you know how Ethan must’ve felt.” Gracie’s hand was warm on hers, her voice soft, inviting confidences.
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