Since he figured Yancy would just continue to deny any wrongdoing, Austin went with a different approach. “If you’re innocent, why come here to the hospital?” he asked Yancy. “And how the heck did you even know you’d find your former employee here?”
Another shrug from Yancy. “I had my people watching Sonny. A precaution since he’d threatened to get even with me. They followed him to the place that he’s calling a baby farm. My men had no idea what it was, of course—”
“You’re lying,” Sonny snapped. “You knew exactly what it was because the address was in one of those emails I found.”
“Ah, the emails that don’t exist.” Yancy made things a thousand times worse by adding a smile.
Sonny would have gone after him, too, if Austin hadn’t stopped him. Thankfully, Gage moved in to protect Rosalie so that Austin could concentrate on diffusing this dangerous situation. He took full advantage of Sonny’s pain and shaky hand to knock the gun away from him. Sonny tried to go after it again, but Austin pinned him against the wall.
“You know the deputy here has to arrest you,” Austin reminded Sonny. “So, don’t do anything else stupid to make it worse.”
That last part seemed to do the trick because Sonny stilled. Well, his body did, anyway, but he glared first at Yancy and then at Austin. “You’re arresting the wrong man. You should be putting that snake behind bars.” And he tipped his head to Yancy.
“I’ll gladly arrest him, too, if you have any proof that he’s connected to the baby farms.”
“No proof,” Yancy insisted. “And there won’t be because I haven’t done anything wrong. Well, not recently, anyway. And nothing that I’d confess to doing.”
Yancy smirked again.
Mercy, maybe Austin should have let Sonny hang on to that gun. That wasn’t exactly a legal brand of justice, but justice might be served in the end if somebody wiped that smirk off Yancy’s face.
“If your men followed Sonny as you said,” Rosalie continued, talking to Yancy, “then they likely know who killed the woman who escaped.”
For the first time since this whole conversation had started, Yancy looked a little bewildered. Of course, that could be faked.
“They didn’t see anyone get killed,” Yancy insisted. “If they had, they would have reported it to me, and I would have called the cops like any responsible citizen.”
“Right,” Austin mumbled, slinging some of that attitude right back at Yancy.
“Right,” the man repeated. “Make me out to be the bad guy here if you want, but you’ll want to press Sonny for more info about the lie he just told about those emails. I’m sure you’ve already considered he said that to cover his own butt, that he’s the one who’s involved with the baby farm. It would explain why he was really out there tonight.”
Sonny made a sound of outrage. “I was out there looking for proof of your connection,” he repeated.
“And you found nothing.” Yancy gave him a flat look before turning his attention back to Austin. “I’ve been doing some digging of my own because I figured Sonny would try to frame me.”
“What’d you find?” Austin demanded when Yancy didn’t continue.
“You’ll want to check on a past acquaintance of Sonny’s. A woman named Vickie Cravens.”
Sonny cursed. “Don’t you dare drag her into this.”
Now Yancy lost some of that cool composure. His eyes narrowed, and his teeth came together for a moment. “You started this game by dragging me into it. If you play with fire, then don’t expect to stay alive for very long.”
“Who’s Vickie Cravens?” Rosalie asked.
“Sonny’s former lover,” Yancy supplied. He put back on the coat that he’d been holding. “She’s worked as a nanny from time to time, and I suspect she’s working for the baby farms. Maybe even helping him run them.”
“She wouldn’t have done anything like this,” Sonny insisted.
While buttoning his coat, Yancy started out of the room. “Do your job,” he said to Austin. “And you’ll find Vickie isn’t as innocent as Sonny would like her to be.” His mouth bent into another of those nails-on-a-chalkboard smiles before he strolled away.
“Vickie’s innocent,” Sonny muttered. He no longer looked like the man who’d just challenged Yancy with a gun. He sank down onto the edge of the examining table. “It’s Yancy who’s behind this.”
Austin got right in Sonny’s face. “And if he is, I’ll be the one to find the evidence. No more grabbing guns from guards—”
“I thought he came here to kill me. I needed that gun to defend myself.”
Sonny sounded convincing enough, but Austin’s mood was well past the stage of just being bad, so he didn’t give him any benefit of the doubt.
“Just stay away from this investigation,” he warned Sonny. Austin glanced at Rosalie. “You, too. You’re not going to try to question Vickie Cravens.”
She stared at him, and he could see not just the weariness in her eyes but also the frustration. Vickie could have info about Rosalie’s missing baby, but if so, it was info Austin would get without her.
“You can finish up here?” Austin asked Gage.
Gage nodded. “I gotta arrest him for wielding that gun, but if I don’t have anything else to charge him with, then I figure he’ll be out by morning after he makes bail.”
It was a reminder that if Sonny was indeed guilty of the baby kidnappings, then Austin had to find something fast to keep him behind bars. Of course, fast couldn’t start to happen until he got Rosalie to a safe house.
Austin thanked Gage and got Rosalie moving toward the exit. Even if this incident hadn’t just happened, he would have still made sure it was safe to step outside, but he took a second and third look since Yancy might still be out there. Or the person who’d tried to follow them.
“You okay?” he asked Rosalie when she pulled in a long breath.
“No.” Since she didn’t look steady on her feet, Austin looped his arm around her waist. Her gaze fired to his as if she might object over the close contact, but she only gave a weary sigh.
“Yeah,” he mumbled. He knew exactly what that meant. The danger had created a strange partnership that neither of them had seen coming.
Austin was about to hurry them to his truck when his phone rang, and he saw Sawyer’s name on the screen. Maybe, just maybe, his partner had found out something so Austin could make an arrest.
“Please tell me you have good news,” Austin greeted Sawyer, and he eased Rosalie away from the doors and back into the waiting room.
“Nowhere near it,” Sawyer answered.
Austin groaned. “What went wrong now?”
“You did. Just heard something that you’re not gonna like. Trevor Yancy sent a boatload of proof about your unauthorized investigation to the deputy director.”
Oh, hell. “I’ll be there ASAP to clear things up.”
“I think it’ll take more than talking to do that,” Sawyer added. “Because the boss wants your badge now.”
Chapter Seven
Rosalie stared at the sterile white ceiling of the safe house. Again. She’d been doing a lot of that since Austin and she had arrived about eight hours earlier. Hard to sleep in a strange bed with so many things unsettled both in her mind and with her botched investigation.
Now she had to deal with the danger.
And the fear that she wasn’t any closer to finding Sadie than she had been nearly a year ago when someone had kidnapped her.
It was morning now, the sun creating slivers of light through the blinds, but she didn’t get up. She didn’t have enough energy to force herself to move. Plus, she didn’t hear Austin stirring, something that she would have been able to do in the small two-bedroom house.
The place was literally in the middle of a
pasture, miles from town. No traffic, no other sounds, so that earlier she’d had no trouble hearing Austin make multiple calls and pace over the bare hardwood floors.
He was just as troubled as she was.
Maybe more, if that were possible. Because from what she’d heard, he hadn’t managed to keep his badge. Still, he’d brought her to the safe house and had kept her in his unofficial protective custody.
For now, anyway.
He was probably eager to give that particular duty to someone else so he could continue with the investigation and soothe things over with his boss. Losing his badge would cut him to the core.
That got her moving from the bed. She had to make arrangements for her own security and work out how to continue the investigation while still staying safe. She’d gotten so close before those monsters had destroyed the evidence and killed Janice, and she needed to find another way to get close again.
Maybe Vickie Cravens was the key.
Austin had already made a call about the woman. One of many calls he’d made on the drive to the safe house, and since he was no longer officially an FBI agent, he hadn’t been able to request an FBI background check on her.
Still, Sawyer had run one, and he’d gotten Vickie’s phone number and address for Austin, but she hadn’t answered when Austin had tried to contact her. Austin had left her a message to call him, that he could help her. Rosalie had memorized the number and would try to call Vickie herself as soon as she was someplace safe.
If a safe place existed, that is.
Since she didn’t want to go to her family’s ranch and bring the danger there, she had to bite the bullet and call her brother Seth. Yes, he’d likely chew her out again for her undercover attempt, but it was better than the alternative of begging Austin to let her tag along with him.
Not that Austin would let her, anyway.
In his eyes, she was the worst kind of trouble and could interfere with his own investigation.
Heck, he probably even blamed her for losing his badge. After all, if she hadn’t gone to that baby farm and essentially blown his cover, he might have been able to find the evidence to stop this operation in its tracks. She seriously doubted his boss would have fired him if he’d managed to unravel one of the highest-profile cases in the state.
Rosalie used the small adjoining bathroom to wash up, and she changed into jeans and a gray sweater that she found in the closet. Obviously, things left by the FBI since there were a variety of sizes and clothing items, and it made her wonder how many other women had stayed here while trying to outrun danger.
She, on the other hand, wouldn’t try to outrun it if it meant finding Sadie.
Rosalie kept her footsteps light so that she wouldn’t wake up Austin but then really wasn’t surprised to find him already at the kitchen table, sipping coffee and reading something on his laptop.
He looked about as rested as Rosalie felt—which wasn’t very rested at all. His hair was mussed and too long to be regulation length. There probably hadn’t been many opportunities for a haircut while he’d been undercover. Like her, he’d changed his clothes and was wearing jeans and a black T-shirt that hugged his chest in all the right places.
She mentally groaned.
No way should she have noticed something like that. And that was yet another good reason to put some distance between them.
“What’s wrong?” Austin asked.
Obviously, he’d seen something alarming in her expression. Rosalie was glad he wasn’t a mind reader because there was no way she wanted him to know that momentary lapse she’d just had about him.
“Any news?” she asked, helping herself to some coffee while also avoiding his question.
He nodded. “All bad. Want to hear it, anyway?”
Now Rosalie groaned for real, and since she figured she might need to sit for this, she sank down at the table across from him.
“Sonny’s already out of jail,” he started. “And Yancy doesn’t want charges pressed against Sonny. Of course, Gage can still charge him with reckless endangerment, but since Sonny doesn’t have a record, I doubt he’ll get any jail time.”
Rosalie shook her head. “Why wouldn’t Yancy want charges pressed against Sonny? Sonny pulled a gun on him.”
“Who knows? Maybe because he wants Sonny out of there. That way, if something else goes wrong, Yancy can say that Sonny did it.” Austin paused. “And maybe it’d be the truth. Just because he was shot, it doesn’t mean I trust Sonny. In fact, that wound could have been self-inflicted so we would trust him. He could have done it so he could figure out how much we learned about the baby farms.”
Hearing that aloud sent a chill through her, but she’d had the same reaction to Yancy. It sickened her to think a monster like that might have been the one to take Sadie.
“Still no answer from Vickie Cravens,” Austin went on, obviously continuing with that bad news. “Sawyer had a local cop go to her place to do a welfare check, but she wasn’t home. There’s also no sign of the person who tried to follow us last night or the guards who escaped from the second baby farm.”
Maybe because they were all long gone. Both a relief and a scary thought. If they had fled, then they wouldn’t be around to try to kill Austin and her. But if they were gone, so was any info they could have given her about who was behind the operation.
“I guess the CSI didn’t find anything at the two baby farm sites?” she asked.
“Nothing. They’ll keep looking, of course.”
Yes, but she was betting the guards had destroyed anything that could prove helpful. “This isn’t just a cottage industry,” she said, thinking out loud. “The person doing this has money and is well-organized.”
“Maybe well-hidden, too.” Austin cursed, shoved his hand through his hair and stood. Pacing, again. “I figure this is a pyramid operation. One top dog with lots of sites. Each site operates independently of the others, so if one goes down, it doesn’t take the others down with it.”
Rosalie swallowed hard. “Then it might be impossible to find the person who took the babies.”
“Hard, yes. Impossible, no. I’m not giving up on finding my nephew.”
“Even though it cost you your badge?” she asked.
A muscle flickered in his jaw. “I won’t stop, no matter what the cost.” He sat in the chair next to her and stared straight into her eyes. “But you’ll have to. You can’t put yourself in the line of fire like this.”
Rosalie considered just lying. Telling him what he wanted to hear, that she’d go home and wait for someone else to find her baby. But she was tired of waiting. She’d been the good girl too long, listening to various lawmen who had told her to let them do their jobs.
Well, they hadn’t done their jobs.
They hadn’t found Sadie.
“I can’t stop,” she told him. “But it’s not your problem.”
“To hell it’s not. I can’t let you go out there and get yourself killed.”
“It’s not your responsibly to keep me safe.”
The flat look he gave her said differently.
Oh, no. They weren’t about to go there with this conversation.
“You don’t owe me because of Eli,” she insisted.
“That wasn’t what you said at the baby farm,” he reminded her.
“I was desperate, and I blackmailed you, but now I’m letting you off the hook. Besides, you’ve got enough on your plate.” She paused. “How much work will it take you just to get your badge back?”
Austin turned, ready to bolt out of the chair, and she saw the pain this was causing him.
“For what it’s worth, I’m sorry,” she added. “Eli always said you were married to the badge.”
“Yeah.” And a moment later, Austin repeated it. “The only thing I’ve ever wanted to
be was an FBI agent. But my sister is blood. So is her son. I have to get Nathan back home before Christmas.”
Rosalie nodded, swallowed the lump in her throat because that was her wish, too, for her own baby. “When was Nathan kidnapped?”
“Right after he was born nearly four months ago. My sister had a C-section, and she had some problems with blood loss right afterward. She nearly died, so no one got around to taking pictures of the baby. He was stolen just a few hours later. Someone had tampered with the security cameras and jammed the tracking chip used in the hospital bracelets.”
Oh, God. His story brought her own painful memories to the surface. Not that they were ever far from her mind.
At least she had a photo of Sadie, but her sweet baby had been taken much the same way. A very precise, organized crime since the tracking chip in Sadie’s bracelet had been jammed, as well, by placing several Wi-Fi scramblers throughout the hospital. If that hadn’t been done, the chip in the bracelet would have triggered the security alarm when the kidnapper stepped outside the hospital with her. As it was, it’d taken the kidnapper less than five minutes to get in and out.
It sickened her to think of how many times that same crime had been committed since the start of these baby farms.
“If you don’t know what your nephew looks like, then how will you know if you find him?” Rosalie asked.
Austin seemed to be in such deep thought that it took him a moment to answer her. “According to the nurse who assisted with the delivery, Nathan has a large strawberry-shaped birthmark on his left leg.”
That would help, but only if they got a close look at the baby.
“I’m guessing your sister already put this info out there, in case someone adopted a baby with a birthmark like that?” Rosalie pressed.
“Of course.” He stared at her. “And no one came forward. I think that probably means that the person who adopted him or bought him knew they were doing something illegal.”
Yes. She’d come to the same conclusion. “We don’t even know how many babies are missing. From everything I’ve learned about this operation, they kidnap illegals and homeless girls and force them into surrogacy. They kidnap pregnant women, too, and they steal babies.”
Kidnapping in Kendall County Page 6