“Did I get it right?” he asked January, still looking at the little girl.
January smiled at her and then at Sean. “I think that big grin on her face should answer your question.”
She saw a similar expression totally encompass his face. “You’re right,” he replied.
Just then, there was a knock on the door. Opening it without waiting to be invited in, Detective Eric Martinez walked in, a wrapped sandwich and bag of cookies in one hand, a can of soda in the other.
“I brought you that sandwich, cookies and soda you asked for,” Eric announced. “Is this your hot date, Stafford?” he asked, smiling broadly at the little girl. “Hi, honey,” he said to her.
“Save your breath, Martinez. Your charm is wasted here,” Sean told his partner, taking the items from him. “She can’t hear you.”
“Haven’t you heard?” the other detective asked, making eye contact with the little girl. He smiled broadly at her and she shyly returned the smile. “Charm transcends words.”
“Uh-huh. What do I owe you?” Sean asked as he placed the sandwich, cookies and soda on the table in front of the little girl.
“That’s okay,” Eric answered. “I think I can cover this magnificent spread.”
Meanwhile, the little girl was looking at the food hungrily, but she made no attempt to pick up anything. January tapped her on the shoulder and signed for the little girl to eat.
Beaming, the little girl picked up the cookies. But before she could tear open the plastic bag, January shook her head and indicated that she needed to eat the sandwich first.
The child’s eyes darted toward Sean, who nodded his agreement. The little girl bobbed her head up and down, and then picked up the food. The bright brown eyes looked from January to the detective, as if to make sure they were both in agreement. When they both nodded at her, the little girl happily sank her teeth into the sandwich.
“Looks like you both speak her language,” Martinez observed.
“This part doesn’t take much,” January replied. “The rest of it might be harder, though.”
“And you are…?” Eric asked, raising one brow as he waited to be filled in.
Sean did the honors. “This is January Colton. She’s the social worker that children’s services sent to work with this little girl.”
“She the one you found hiding in the warehouse?” Eric asked.
Sean nodded. “One and the same.”
Martinez had more questions, and he knew who to direct them to. He turned toward the social worker. “You think you can get her to tell you what we need to know?” he asked her.
“All I can do is try—provided she does know something.” January watched as the little girl consumed her food. For a hungry child, she ate rather daintily, January couldn’t help thinking. Someone had definitely taught her manners. “You forget, she might not have seen anything going down. You said she was found hiding behind the crates, which were some distance away from where the bodies were discovered,” she recalled.
Eric nodded. “That’s what I heard.” He turned toward Sean. “Well, keep me posted if you do find out anything,” he said. Eric paused to smile at the little girl as he told Sean, “I’ve got to get going. It’s Alicia’s third birthday and Rachel will absolutely skin me alive if I don’t show up until after she’s tucked in bed and sound asleep.”
Sean nodded, gesturing for his partner to be on his way. “Go,” he urged. “Give my best to Rachel.”
Eric grinned in response. There was nothing innocent in his expression.
“Oh, I fully intend to,” the detective promised with enthusiasm. “But it’ll be my best, not yours.” He gave Sean a wide grin just before he left the room.
“Have you two been partners for very long?” January asked the detective as Eric closed the door behind him.
“Under two years,” he answered. Remembering what had come before was hard for him and he wasn’t about to get into it. Instead, he went on the defensive. “Why would that be important to you?”
“Not important. Just trying to get a handle on the kind of person I’m dealing with,” she told Sean, her eyes meeting his.
“Does it make a difference?”
“Sometimes,” she allowed. She looked at the little girl who was now working her way through the cookies with gusto. January kept her tone steady. “Children are extremely intuitive about things. You want her to be able to trust you.”
“I think I’ve already established a rapport with her,” Sean pointed out, smiling fondly at “Annie.” She returned the smile in kind. “It’s safe to say that she trusts me.”
“It looks that way, but if you don’t mind, I’d like to cover all my bases,” January told him. “This is all very new to her—and that includes you. In the next few hours, something might come up that could make her change her mind.” She knew he couldn’t argue with that.
And he didn’t.
Sean nodded. “Duly noted. You have any way of finding out her name?”
She decided not to answer his question just yet. “Look, before we go any further, I need you to tell me everything that she might have experienced.”
He felt like the social worker was leading him around in circles. “Why should that make any difference, one way or another?”
“So I know what I’m up against,” January said simply. “What she might be up against,” she added. By the expression on his face, she could see that the detective didn’t understand what she was telling him. She put it in the simplest terms she could. “I need to be able to get her to trust me and to relate to me. Now tell me what you know.”
Sean laughed under his breath. “That’s usually my line,” he told her.
The corners of her mouth quirked in a fleeting smile. “Welcome to the other side,” she said. “Now tell me.”
The detective sighed. Just his luck, they had sent a stubborn social worker. But there was no point in wasting any more time going back and forth about this. Besides, it wasn’t as if he was revealing any secrets. The story had probably made the news by now.
“There’s not much more to tell you than I already have,” Sean said. “There were three men found dead in that warehouse where she was hiding behind some crates. One of the dead men was an informant of mine. I was working with him to bring down a well-connected drug lord.”
“What’s his name?” she asked. “The guy you were trying to bring down.”
Sean debated telling this social worker that she had no “need to know,” as the popular phrase went, but then he decided that there was no point in withholding the information from her. “His name is Elias ‘Kid’ Mercer. Anyway, my informant and two other gang members were found shot dead at the scene.”
“And you think this little girl you found there, she saw who killed these men?” January questioned him, looking at the child uncertainly.
Sean ran his hand over the little girl’s soft brown hair. He smiled at her as they made eye contact. “I have no way of knowing. That’s where you come in.”
She frowned as she thought over what he had just said. “You do realize that if word gets out that she witnessed this execution, her life could very well be in danger.”
Sean’s face clouded over. “You think that hasn’t crossed my mind? Look, I don’t know the kind of people you’re used to dealing with, but I’m not in the habit of endangering children.”
The detective had gone from neutral to red-hot in seconds, right before her eyes. It didn’t take a degree in psychology to know that she had obviously touched a nerve.
“I didn’t mean to imply that that you were,” January told him.
In her estimation, he didn’t exactly look placated, although the color of his face did return to a normal shade. “Just so you know that I’ll do whatever it takes to keep this kid safe.”
“Understood,” January
replied. She made a mental note to ask Stafford’s partner about this whole incident if she saw him again. She had a feeling that Stafford wasn’t being completely honest with her about what might have happened, and it had something to do with why he was so touchy when she questioned him.
As if realizing how he must have come across, Sean apologized. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to snap at you like that. It’s been a really long day and I did just lose an informant.” He hoped that would satisfy her.
What he didn’t say was that finding the informant dead brought back some very bad memories. His former partner, Harry Cartwright, a man he had worked with since he started on the force, lost his wife and daughter while he and Sean were working on a case. The wife and daughter had been collateral damage, a completely unfeeling term for a very personal loss.
The wife and daughter he, Sean, was supposed to have been able to protect but couldn’t.
To this day, Sean hadn’t been able to shake the guilt that haunted him. He should have been able to save them—should have, but somehow wasn’t able to.
After it was all over, Harry didn’t leave the force, the way some people had expected him to, but he did leave the department. Left Homicide and transferred over to the Narcotics Division.
The move had hit Sean really hard. Harry had been like a brother to him and not a day went by that he didn’t miss working with the man. Sean especially missed the camaraderie that they had shared.
Eric Martinez was a good man, Sean thought, but it just wasn’t the same. Because of that, and everything that had gone into what had happened, Sean found himself unable to open up. Afraid to open up. Worried that if he did, the same thing might happen again. He knew he couldn’t bear that.
“Apology accepted,” January was saying to him.
Sean forced himself back to the present.
“Is there anything else I should know?” she asked.
“Nope.”
He had answered her a little too quickly, in her opinion. January couldn’t shake the feeling that something else was going on here, something she couldn’t quite put her finger on.
She had no idea what it might be.
And then again, maybe she was being too suspicious, she thought.
“Okay,” January said, nodding and looking back at the little girl. “Let’s see if I can find out her name.”
“The crime scene investigative unit said they didn’t find anything that looked as if it belonged to her, so there was no personal information we could tie to her,” Sean said, offering her another nonproductive piece of the puzzle.
“I love a challenge,” January murmured with absolutely no enthusiasm. “Let’s see what she can tell us.”
Coming up to the child, January gently put her hand on the little girl’s shoulder to get her attention. The girl looked up at her.
At least there was no fear there, January thought, counting that as a small victory.
With very careful, deliberate movements, January held her breath and began to sign, asking the little girl if she would tell them her name.
CHAPTER 5
As Sean watched, January’s hands almost seemed to fly, forming a number of different positions, which he assumed was the way she asked the little girl for her name. What it did manage to accomplish was to convince the detective that he didn’t even know how to begin to actually communicate with the little girl whom he had rescued.
When January rested her hands in her lap, he assumed that she had finished the exchange, even though he couldn’t make head or tail of it.
“So,” Sean asked, “is she willing to tell us her name?”
“She already did,” January told him, smiling at the child. “Her name is Maya.”
“Maya,” he repeated. It had a nice ring to it. “What was the sign for that?” Sean asked.
“There was no isolated sign,” she told him. “Maya spelled her name out.” Then, for the detective’s benefit, she showed him each letter slowly, saying them as she formed them. “M-A-Y-A. Maya.”
Sean appeared confounded as he shook his head. “There is no way in the world that I’m going to get the hang of that.”
“Well, it’s nice of you to want to try,” January told him, surprised that the detective said that. “But there’s no point for you to attempt to do that if we’re going to find her parents.”
Sean had his doubts about that. “Provided at least one of them is alive and around,” he pointed out. He looked down at Maya’s small, heart-shaped face. All sorts of emotions went through him, making him feel outraged and angry that Maya had wound up at the scene of the crime the way she had. “If you ask me, parents who can just lose track of their little girl like that are either dead—or don’t deserve to have her in their lives in the first place.”
“Hey, don’t jump to conclusions yet,” January warned him. “In my experience, there are as many reasons for things happening when it involves children as there are children in the system.”
He wasn’t clear where she was going with this, but he did know how he felt. “Yeah, well, if she were my kid, I wouldn’t take my eyes off her. I certainly wouldn’t let her run off and play in some abandoned warehouse,” Sean said, his emotions bubbling just beneath the surface.
Maya pulled on the edge of his jacket. When Sean looked at her, Maya let go of his jacket so she could talk to him. Keeping her hand open, the little girl tapped her thumb on the side of her forehead. Then, when he didn’t respond, she did it again.
Lost, Sean looked over his shoulder at January. “What’s she saying?”
“She’s asking for her daddy,” January told him.
That was when something occurred to the detective. Something unpleasant. Sean exchanged looks with January. “You don’t think he was one of the two unknown men who were found dead in the warehouse with my CI, do you?” he asked.
January had another take on the situation. “Could Maya’s father have been your contact?”
He thought for a second but realized that he didn’t honestly know the answer to that. “I don’t think the guy had any kids, but I can’t say that for sure. But even if she was his kid, would he have brought her with him, knowing how dangerous it might be?”
January shrugged. “Hey, he’s your informant. You would know the answer to that better than I would.” And then she pulled back her shoulders, as if she was anticipating something she didn’t consider pleasant.
“What are you doing?” Sean asked. In his estimation nothing had changed from a moment ago.
“I’m bracing myself to ask Maya a very jarring, unpleasant question,” she told the detective.
Then, before he could say anything one way or the other, January began to sign her question to Maya. This time, for Sean’s benefit, January also slowly verbalized it as she signed for Maya.
“Was your dad there in the warehouse today?” she asked the little girl.
Rather than sign something back, looking surprised, Maya moved her head from side to side.
“He wasn’t one of the dead men?” Sean asked, a little uncertainly. That was good news in his estimation, but at the same time, it seemed rather unusual to him that the little girl had just wandered into the warehouse by herself.
“Apparently not,” January replied.
Maya looked from one adult to the other and then directed a question to January. Because Maya was agitated, her fingers flew even more quickly.
Sean stared, mystified. “What’s she saying?”
“Just that she wants her daddy. My guess is that the man is obviously alive somewhere,” January said to the detective.
As he watched, she signed something else to Maya and the little girl apparently answered.
“Now what did you ask?” he asked.
“If she saw her dad recently,” January answered.
“And?” he prodded.
&
nbsp; “She did,” the social worker said. Then, as Sean watched, January took the little girl into her arms in an attempt to comfort and soothe her. “Shh, it’s going to be all right,” January promised her.
He looked at the social worker, puzzled. She had lost him. “I thought you said that Maya can’t hear.”
“As far as I know, she can’t. But a hug is universal. And Maya responded to it. The words just came out automatically,” she added.
“I can see that,” Sean said, watching as Maya curled up against January.
Who are you, little girl? How did you get inside that warehouse? Were you lost, or did someone lose you there on purpose? Sean wondered. He really wanted to get to the bottom of this, but it wasn’t going to happen tonight.
January glanced in the detective’s direction and saw the considering expression on his face. “What are you thinking?”
He wasn’t comfortable admitting to having any personal thoughts when it came to his job. He snapped back into work mode.
“That right now, I need to figure out what to do with her for the night.” His eyes met January’s. “I guess you’d better call your boss, have him send someone to pick her up.” And then he smiled down at Maya. Something told him that, in a way, she did understand him even if he couldn’t talk to her. “We certainly can’t leave her here for the night.”
He sounded like he was talking to Maya, January thought, except she knew that he knew he couldn’t communicate with her in a straightforward manner. Still, January had to admit that she found the whole thing rather touching.
“No, we can’t,” January agreed. She looked at Maya thoughtfully. “The trouble is, I don’t think that there’s anyone in our present system who can just take her in. They wouldn’t be able to communicate with her. We’re shorthanded right now.” Although, she thought, that really wasn’t anything new.
“Okay,” he said, stretching out the word. “So what does that mean, ultimately?” Sean was not quite sure what the social worker was telling him. Where was Maya going to wind up staying tonight? Whether he wanted to or not, Sean found himself being protective of the little girl.
Harlequin Romantic Suspense January 2021 Page 5