by Mallory Kane
“I’ll call him on the way. We need to get going. Captain Sparks has obtained authorization for you to visit Bess Raymond in the hospital, and I need to go to the police station. They found several cigarette butts in a wooded area near her house. They think someone was watching, possibly even while the police were there.”
“Do you know who?”
He shook his head and put his hands on her shoulders. “I’m going to leave you at the hospital. I’ll be gone a few hours. We may go out to the crime scene. Bess has a police officer guarding her. As soon as she can talk, the officer will notify a detective to take her statement. You’ll be able to see her then. Don’t leave the hospital for any reason. If you stay put, you’ll be perfectly safe.”
132 hours missing
SUNNY PACED the short length of the intensive care waiting room. There were several other people in the room. They all had worry etched on their faces. All but the toddler who sported his mother’s red hair. He sat on her lap, gaily bouncing up and down. Sunny couldn’t help but smile at his innocent happiness. She’d already formed images of Emily as a toddler, already signed her up for a day care center, already started looking at the pretty ruffled dresses in the department stores.
Her empty heart’s hollow beating echoed through her.
The toddler’s mother met Sunny’s gaze. She acknowledged her smile with a sad little smile of her own. The crumpled tissue she clutched and her red-rimmed eyes told Sunny that, so far, whoever she was there to see was not doing well.
An older woman was sitting with a couple who had probably brought her to the hospital this morning, because they all appeared freshly showered and their clothes were fresh and unwrinkled, unlike their faces.
She looked at the clock that hung over the door. She’d been waiting for almost two hours. The brief, coveted ten o’clock visiting time had come and gone, and no one had called her. The grizzled volunteer sitting at the information desk had given her a message when she arrived. Bess Raymond had regained consciousness and was being taken off the ventilator.
Sunny stopped in front of the desk.
“Can you check with the nurses’ station again? If she’s awake, I don’t understand what the delay is.”
The man stopped checking the list of names before him and looked up. The shapeless blue jacket that identified hospital volunteers contrasted sharply with his weathered skin. “They’d have called me.”
“Are you sure? Maybe they got busy and forgot.”
“The nurses know you’re here. You should have a cup of coffee and sit down. Things go slow sometimes. I’ll let you know.” His kind expression softened his words.
Sunny tried to smile at him. “Thank you.” She didn’t want any coffee. She wanted to talk to Bess. Bess knew where Emily was.
She sat down in one of the chairs and tried to watch the TV that was set to a local morning show, but all she could see before her eyes was Bess lying so still in the ambulance, with blood staining her clothes, and the concerned faces of the emergency medical team.
She didn’t remember much after that. She’d succumbed to the sedative and slept the rest of the way to the emergency room.
A second volunteer stepped into the room. Everyone stopped talking and turned toward her. Did she have a message for someone?
The woman stood for a few seconds, her hands in the big patch pockets of her blue jacket, then leaned over and said something to the man at the desk, who nodded in Sunny’s direction.
Sunny’s heart leaped as the woman started toward her. The murmur of conversation rose again as the others realized she wasn’t looking for them.
Sunny stood.
“Are you Ms. Loveless?”
“Yes.” Sunny’s pulse raced. “Am I going to get to see Bess now?”
The woman nodded. “That would be Bess Raymond, right? She’s been moved to a private room. I’ll show you the way.”
“Really? Already?” Sunny was surprised. “She must be doing very well.” She glanced at the male volunteer, but he was still busily checking his list. Why hadn’t he told her Bess was going to be moved?
“She is.” The woman shouldered the door open so Sunny could exit. “Go left, down to the end of the hall and turn left again.”
The volunteer waited until Sunny passed her. There were no patient rooms on the hall. Its doors were marked STORAGE, HOUSEKEEPING CLOSET, LINENS.
“The elevators are about halfway down.”
Sunny peered down the hall. “I thought the elevators were on the front side of the hospital.”
“These are the service elevators. They’re quicker. We’re going to the first floor.”
Sunny frowned as she stepped into the elevator. “First? There aren’t any patient rooms down there, are there?”
The woman stepped inside and stood beside her, sending her a bland smile. “This is a shortcut. Ms. Raymond was moved to the new wing. To get there, we have to go to the lobby and take a different set of elevators.”
Sunny pressed the button marked 1.
“I’m so glad my—friend is doing better. I’ve been worried.”
“We all have.”
Sunny frowned at the woman. That was an odd thing to say. Her scalp tingled. “Do you know Bess Raymond?”
The woman smiled. “Of course. She raised me.”
The little sign in Bess’s front yard and the children’s toys and playground. “You were in her day care center. She’s good with children?”
“The best.” The woman coughed.
“Here we are,” she said as the elevator doors opened. “I just need to check in with my supervisor for a moment.”
Anxious and impatient, Sunny waited while the woman stepped over to the front desk and asked to use the phone. She made a quick call, then hung up.
She glanced around the lobby, then returned to Sunny’s side.
“Which way is the new wing?” Sunny asked.
“Listen to me.” The woman stepped up close behind Sunny and thrust something hard into the middle of her back.
A gun. Sunny gasped and froze. “What—”
“Shut up. Go straight down this hall and out the end door. A taxi will be here to pick us up in a couple of minutes.
The gun dug into the sensitive flesh between Sunny’s ribs. She could barely breathe, her chest was so tight with fear. “What are you doing? Do you have Emily—?”
“I said shut up.” The woman coughed. “You make the slightest move to get away or alert anyone and I will shoot you in the back.”
Sunny swallowed the scream that pushed at her throat. There was a note of confidence in the woman’s voice. She meant what she said.
“Do you believe me?”
Sunny nodded. “Y-yes. You shot Bess, didn’t you?”
“Keep moving.”
Sunny glanced at a young man in green scrubs who passed them going in the opposite direction. He didn’t even look at them.
“Who are you?” she whispered.
The gun jabbed into her ribs. “What did Bess tell you?”
“I haven’t talked to her. I was waiting. I thought you—”
“You’re lying. I called over an hour ago, told them I was her cousin. They said she was awake. Now open the door.”
Sunny’s knees shook. Her head spun. Terror cramped her muscles. This was the woman who had shot Bess.
She pushed on the exit door. It opened into an employee parking lot. There were a lot of cars and no people. Even if Sunny had found the courage to alert someone, there was no one around.
“Walk to your right, up to the main driveway. And stop looking so damn scared.”
She did as she was told.
Just as they reached the driveway, her cell phone rang.
The woman cursed, then stuck out her left hand. “Give me your damn purse.”
Sunny looked down. Shock turned her heart to ice. The woman’s hand was missing two fingers—the ring finger and the pinkie.
She tried to speak, but her throat wouldn’t work. A sob shoo
k her.
Finally she found her voice. “It was you. You took my baby,” she choked out. She couldn’t even cry. Her chest felt crushed in a vise. “Where is she? Please tell me.”
The phone rang again, and again.
The woman jerked Sunny’s purse out of her numb hands, and dug out the cell phone. “Shut up!”
After glancing around to be sure no one was watching, she dropped the phone onto the concrete pavement and stomped on it.
The metallic crunch screeched through Sunny’s brain, accompanied by the crunch of tires on gravel as the taxi stopped.
“Get in! And keep your mouth shut.” The woman pushed Sunny into the car and climbed in beside her.
Sunny clasped her hands in her lap and stared at the back of the taxi driver’s head.
The woman gave him an address that sounded familiar. Was it Bess’s street?
Think. What could she do? Should she try to fight? To run?
The cold metal of the gun barrel dug into her side. The taxi driver turned up his radio. A country station was playing something about loving and leaving.
“We’re going to Bess’s house?”
“Don’t talk.”
Had Griff said Sparks was going to take him out to the house? Sunny couldn’t remember, but a glimmer of hope fluttered in her chest. “Why there?”
“Bess has something I need. And this way, I can dispose of two problems at the same time.” She pressed the gun deeper into Sunny’s side. “Now tell me what Bess told you.”
“I haven’t been able to see her yet.”
“Not today. Before, when she called you.”
Sunny tried to think like a detective. The woman had to be Jane Gross. The landlord’s description fit her perfectly. There was nothing distinctive about her. She had dull brown hair, a pale face with small, unremarkable features. She was her own perfect disguise. Her description would fit a million women.
The only photos Sunny had seen of Jane were newspaper clippings of political events. It was impossible to say whether this woman was the same person that stood by Ed Gross in those blurry pictures.
But Griff’s photo, and the empty fingers on the glove told the whole story. Certainty gripped Sunny. This woman had stolen Emily. And fifteen years ago, she’d stolen Griff’s sister.
She had to stifle a gasp. She was in the presence of a monster.
She turned and looked directly into Jane Gross’s eyes. “If my baby is dead,” she whispered, “then I don’t care what you do to me.” Griff’s face rose in her mind, right beside her daughter’s, and a suffocating grief swathed her. Tears spilled down her cheeks and she choked back a short, pained sob. But she didn’t look away.
Jane ground her teeth and glanced toward the taxi driver. “Your precious kid is not dead—yet.”
Sunny’s hand flew to her mouth. She sucked air into her burning lungs. Her gaze searched Jane’s dull eyes.
“Don’t lie to me, please.” Hope flared painfully inside her.
Jane rolled her eyes and bared her small teeth. “Stop sniveling or I will shoot you.”
“Who—” Sunny swallowed her tears. She had to concentrate, had to find out everything she could, in case she was able to get away. “Who are you? You’re Jane Gross, aren’t you?”
“I’ll tell you who I am, you stupid busybody. I’m someone you should have left alone. We Specialize in Happy Endings.” Her voice was mocking. “What the hell did you think you were doing? One person’s happy ending can ruin another’s life.”
Sunny nodded numbly. She’d been so naive, so arrogant, thinking she could dispense happiness like Valentine candy. Maybe Griff was right. Maybe there were no happy endings. “But what did I do to you?”
“You meddled in our lives. Brought up things that should have been buried forever.”
“It’s true. Jennifer Curry is your daughter.”
“Shut up! This is all your fault. You deserve to die.”
“That’s what you’re going to do? Kill me?”
“Probably.”
The offhand answer didn’t even frighten Sunny. Only one thing stabbed deep into the empty place where her heart used to be. She’d never see Emily again. A sadness too deep for tears engulfed her.
She thought about Griff, and the way he’d looked at the photographs of his sister. How had he done it? How had he maintained hope through all these years?
Griff. He’d taught her so much in the few days she’d known him. She saw his violet eyes in her mind, electrified by passion, darkened by sadness, soft and warm as he looked at her.
A sense of calm swept through her. If Jane killed her, at least she’d had a taste of her own happy ending. She’d had Emily.
And for one moment out of time, she’d had love. Remembering the compassion and understanding in Griff’s eyes, she knew in her heart that he would make sure Emily was all right.
Suddenly, determination flowed through her. She lifted her chin. She was not ready to give up. Never. As long as she was alive.
“I need to see my baby.”
“Why?” Jane’s voice grated through clenched teeth. “It’s not even your kid. You got it from some little whore who didn’t want it.”
She stared at the other woman, shocked. “Of course she’s mine. I’m her mother. It’s not based on biology. It’s based on love.”
Jane’s brow furrowed for an instant. Sunny watched her. Had something she’d said gotten to her?
“You sentimental little pansy. You sound like Bess. It’s based on nothing. Kids aren’t good for anything. They’re whiny and helpless and always in the way.”
Jane’s words came from somewhere outside of herself. They were awful, hateful, damaging words. In a flash of insight, Sunny understood. Jane had heard those words—probably from before she could talk.
“Bess didn’t tell you that.”
“No. Bess is a sucker for kids.”
“So it was your mother.”
Jane’s face went red with anger. “You shut up! Unless you want to die right here, right now, and never see your daughter again.”
Chapter Ten
Griff listened to the canned voice telling him the cellular customer he was trying to reach was unavailable.
“Damn it, Sunny!” He shot up out of the chair and punched Redial. A sick crawling in his gut told him something had happened to her.
Captain Sparks gathered up the photographs of cigarette butts and tire tracks. “So CSU has ID’d the tires as consistent with a late-model Lexus, and Trace is working on lifting DNA from the cigarette butts.”
Only half hearing him, Griff listened to the phone ring and ring. “There’s something wrong.”
“Maybe she’s talking to Bess Raymond. My detective is on her way over to the hospital. She’ll check on her.”
Griff snapped his phone shut and cursed.
“Now, son,” the older man said, “the hospital’s got a rule about using cell phones inside the building.”
“She’d answer.” Griff rubbed his chest, where apprehension burned. “I’ve got to get over there.”
Sparks was already on the phone. He spoke for a moment, then hung up. “The officer guarding Ms. Raymond hasn’t seen her. The detective just got there.”
“Tell the officer to page her. Talk to hospital personnel and families. Find out who saw her last. Tell him to ask if anybody noticed anything unusual.”
Sparks nodded, a wry sympathetic amusement showing in his face. “The officer knows what to ask.”
“Right. Sorry sir. I’ve got to go.”
Griff knew he wasn’t acting like an FBI agent. He didn’t feel like one. He was losing it. He felt as he’d felt at fourteen—terrified, helpless and horribly afraid he had lost the one person he loved most in the world.
Aw hell. The raw burning in his chest spread out through his entire body. His hand shook as he grabbed his jacket. He had to find her. Now.
Lost in tormented thought, Griff followed Sparks out to his car.
&n
bsp; He didn’t want to love Sunny. He didn’t want to love anybody—ever again. He’d learned too young how awful losing a loved one was.
By the time Sparks pulled into the hospital parking lot, Griff had reached a heartbreaking realization. He couldn’t make himself stop loving Sunny. No more than he could forget Marianne.
It was hopeless, a love built on shared pain, shared tragedy. Griff knew that if he couldn’t give Sunny back her child, there would be no happy ending for either of them.
She had needed something that night, something he’d been able to supply, at least for a while. His body stirred at the memory of her beneath him, moaning with passion, clinging to him as she took him deep inside her, as she cried out with fulfillment.
But the need to feel alive, to feel safe and cherished, wasn’t enough to build a life on. Another lesson he’d learned. Using someone else to ease your pain didn’t work for very long. It was why he had made up his mind long ago not to love anyone.
But now he’d even failed in that.
He loved her. He’d just have to deal with it.
Captain Sparks led the way to the intensive care unit and flashed his badge. The nurse nodded and opened the automatic door into the large circular room surrounded by glass-enclosed cubicles.
She pointed toward one of the rooms. Griff could see the detective inside.
“Has Sunny Loveless been in to see Ms. Raymond?” Griff asked.
The nurse shook her head. “The policewoman already asked about her.”
Tense with worry and torn between what he wanted to do and what he needed to do, Griff thanked her and turned to Sparks.
“Captain—”
Sparks nodded. “The officer knows we’re here. He’ll let us know if they find her.”
Fear still engulfed Griff. Sunny wasn’t here. He knew it. Something had happened.
“I know you’re worried about her, son. She can’t have gone far.”
As they stepped inside the monitored room, the young detective stood. Griff nodded at her.
The only light in the room was the blue from the monitors surrounding the bed. Bess Raymond’s gray hair looked dingy against the clean white sheets. She looked small and old, her face wrinkled and pale.