“Helluva bedside manner,” Dillon muttered, walking toward her. He looked as if he’d gotten to the hospital in a huge hurry. He wore faded jeans with holes in the knees, an old Memphis State T-shirt untucked and his bare feet were thrust into boat shoes.
As he moved to stand beside her bed, his gaze lit on the cast. An emotion Taylor couldn’t quite define flashed through his eyes.
“I can’t leave you alone for a minute, can I?” His voice was oddly tender. For some reason, it made Taylor want to burst into tears.
“I fell down some stairs,” she tried to say lightly, but the false euphoria created by the medication had already begun to ebb. A tear slid down her cheek. Impatiently she wiped it away with her good hand, but another followed in its wake. She finally gave up and looked up at Dillon. “He was going to kill me,” she whispered.
Suddenly Taylor was in his arms, being held against the solid warmth of his chest. He pressed his hand to her hair, soothing her. “Hush, now,” he said softly. “It’s all over. You’re safe.”
“I…know…but…”
“Shush. I’m here. I won’t let anything else happen to you.”
Taylor believed him. She had never felt so safe. So protected. She wanted to stay in the circle of his arms forever, but after a few moments she lifted her tear-streaked face to look at him. “How did you know where to find me?”
“Neal was still at the station when the call came through. He tracked me down and told me what happened. The basics, anyway.”
He handed her a tissue from the box on the stand beside the bed. Taylor wiped away the last of the tears, then blew her nose.
“Can you tell me what happened?” he asked gently.
“I believe that’s my line,” said a gruff voice from the doorway. Sergeant Jackson strode into the room and glared at them both. “What the hell are you doing here, Reeves?”
“Mrs. Robinson is a friend of mine,” Dillon said coolly. “You have a problem with that?”
“I don’t. But I’ll bet the lieutenant would sure find it interesting. Especially with the fuss you’ve been kicking up over Mr. Robinson’s death.”
Taylor lay back against the pillows and closed her eyes. She didn’t need this. Not tonight. The pain medication was wearing off fast, and other parts of her body besides her wrist were starting to throb.
“I’m sorry to bother you, Mrs. Robinson, but I have to ask you a few questions.” Sergeant Jackson pulled out a worn notebook and a stubby yellow pencil from his rumpled brown suit coat. Tiny beads of sweat glistened on his forehead. “Let’s start at the beginning, shall we? What were you doing at Claymore Academy at nine-thirty at night?”
The way he phrased the question made it sound as if he suspected Taylor of something. She glanced at Dillon to find him scowling across her bed at Sergeant Jackson. Obviously he didn’t like the question, either.
Taylor sighed. “It’s the end of the term,” she explained wearily. “There’s always a lot to do during the last week of school.”
“You weren’t frightened to be alone in that big building at night?”
“I wasn’t alone. Mr. Thorndike, the headmaster, was still in his office, and I assumed Stanley Barlow, the custodian, was around somewhere.”
Sergeant Jackson took out his handkerchief and mopped his forehead. He was sweating profusely even though the room seemed quite chilly to Taylor. “There’d been a recent attempt on your life. Allegedly. A car almost ran you down a few nights ago, isn’t that what you claim?”
“What are you getting at?” Dillon interrupted sharply.
Sergeant Jackson shrugged. “I just want to make sure I get a clear picture of everything that’s happened. When you got ready to leave tonight, did you tell anyone you were going?”
Taylor shook her head. “No. Mr. Thorndike doesn’t like to be interrupted and I didn’t see Stanley.”
“So you just left.”
“I started to leave. But I saw that the door to the boiler room was open. It’s always kept locked. I was afraid one of the children might have somehow gotten in and was lying down there hurt.”
“So you decided to check it out yourself?”
“Not at first. I thought about going to get Mr. Thorndike, but then…I heard something.” Taylor shoved back her hair with her good hand. “Look, I’ve already told all of this to the officers at the scene. Do we have to go over it again?”
Jackson swept her with his penetrating gaze. “I’m afraid we do. What did you hear?”
Taylor hesitated. Her gaze went uncertainly to Dillon. “I heard something that sound like someone crying.”
“You mean a woman? A child? What?”
Taylor paused again, her gaze still on Dillon. “A baby. I heard a baby crying.”
Something flashed in Dillon’s eyes, and for a fleeting moment, Taylor wondered if it was disbelief. Her heart plummeted. If Dillon didn’t believe her, what chance did she have of convincing Sergeant Jackson?
“You heard…a baby crying in the boiler room?” Jackson’s tone was clearly skeptical.
“That’s what I said.”
Jackson exchanged a glance with Dillon. “All right. What happened next?”
Taylor recounted everything she could remember about the attack. When she finished, Sergeant Jackson closed his notebook and carefully put away his pencil. He glanced across her bed at Dillon again. “Could I see you outside for a minute, Reeves?”
“I’ll be right back,” Dillon assured her. Taylor nodded. She closed her eyes again, willing away the fresh horror the retelling of the story had brought her. At that moment, she didn’t care if they believed her or not. She knew what had happened that night. She knew someone had lured her down in that basement and tried to kill her. If it hadn’t been for David frightening the assailant away, Taylor wouldn’t be here now.
She owed her life to that child, and when she got out of here, she’d somehow find a way to repay him.
OUTSIDE TAYLOR’S ROOM, Jackson folded his arms and leaned against the wall. “You buying any of that?”
“What do you mean?”
Jackson snorted. “A baby crying in the boiler room? Come on.”
“No, you come on,” Dillon blazed. “I didn’t like your tone in there. You were treating her as if she were a suspect. Someone’s trying to kill her, Jackson. What the hell will it take to convince you? Her body on a slab?”
“If you’d think with your head for a minute instead of your—” The crudity, loudly spoken, elicited disapproving stares from two nurses walking down the hallway. Jackson acknowledged them with a cocky grin, but when he continued, he at least lowered his voice. “The head honcho she was talking about, that Thorndike guy. He was working late tonight just as she said. He heard Mrs. Robinson leave her office and walk down the hall, but he didn’t hear anything else. No baby crying, no nothing.”
“And?”
“Same with the janitor. He was lurking around there somewhere and he didn’t hear anything, either. If his deaf grandson hadn’t seen her go down into the basement, no one would have known she was anywhere around. None of them heard a baby crying except for Mrs. Robinson, who just happens to be obsessed with her own dead baby. Now what does that sound like to you, Reeves?”
“Damn you,” Dillon said. “Don’t you turn this around on her. If you want to look at the facts take a look at her wrist in that cast. Or is that just a figment of her imagination, too?”
Jackson shrugged. “Oh, she broke her wrist, all right. I spoke with her doctor. But she freely admits that she fell down those stairs. She wasn’t pushed.”
“Someone attacked her after she fell down the stairs. You know that’s what she said.”
“And somehow that someone got away without the janitor and his grandson, who were both standing at the top of the stairs, seeing him.”
“There’s got to be an outside exit to the boiler room.”
Jackson smiled. “Oh, there is, but it’s always kept locked. It was locked when I g
ot there tonight. No one could have gotten out that way.”
The look of triumph on Jackson’s face infuriated Dillon. He wanted to slam his fist into that slimy smile, but he restrained himself. Losing his temper, getting himself suspended for assaulting a fellow officer, certainly wouldn’t help Taylor’s cause.
He scrubbed his face with his hands. “She’s not lying, Jackson.”
“How can you be so sure? Did you hear the phone call she allegedly received from the woman who told her that her child is still alive and that her husband was murdered? Did you personally hear that conversation?”
Jackson’s eyes narrowed on Dillon. “Have you heard any of the hang-up calls she’s claimed to have received? Or seen her mother-in-law following her? Doesn’t it strike you as just a little questionable that someone who’s receiving a lot of hang-up calls doesn’t do something about it? You’d think she would have reported them, or at the very least gotten caller-ID or call-trace from the phone company. But Mrs. Robinson didn’t do anything. Why?”
“Her car was vandalized at the school a few days ago,” Dillon informed him coldly. “She didn’t make that up. The custodian and his grandson both saw it.”
“Yeah, well, good ole Stanley’s probably got a few screws loose himself, and as for that kid, it’s obvious he’s got a thing for Mrs. Robinson. I could see that right off the bat when I tried to talk to him earlier. He’d say—or sign—anything he thought she wanted him to.”
Dillon clenched his hands into tight fists at his sides. “You’re forgetting one thing. I was there when she was almost hit by that car the other night. Are you saying I lied for her?”
“I don’t know,” Jackson said. “Did you? The woman’s wacko, Reeves. Delusional. Psychotic. Maybe even psychopathic, for all we know. Her husband committed suicide, and she’s obviously cracked under the guilt.”
“You are way off base, you son of a bitch.”
“No, you are,” Jackson said, jabbing a finger toward Dillon’s chest. “And if you know what’s good for you, you’ll stay the hell away from Taylor Robinson. The woman is trouble, Reeves. Bad trouble. Now, you know that. You just don’t want to admit it.”
TAYLOR WAS RELEASED a little while later and Dillon drove her home. He helped her out of the car, up the porch steps, then took her key and let them in the front door.
Flipping on the lights, he said, “Wait here.” Then he systematically searched the house. When he came back, he handed Taylor her key. “All clear.”
“No monsters in the closet? That’s a relief,” she tried to joke.
“You don’t have to pretend it didn’t happen, you know.”
Taylor looked up and found his eyes, darkly intense, watching her. Her heart skipped a beat. “That would be a little difficult, considering,” she said, lifting her cast.
Dillon scowled. “You avoided talking about what happened all the way home. Now you’re trying to make light of it.”
Taylor sat down on the couch, suddenly bone tired. She didn’t know if she even had the strength to go bed, no matter how appealing pulling the covers up over her head seemed right now.
“I’m all talked out,” she said with a deep sigh. “First the officers on the scene questioned me before the ambulance arrived, and then Sergeant Jackson in the E.R. I don’t want to go over it again, Dillon. You were there. You heard.” Saying it again wouldn’t make it sound any more believable. But Taylor knew what she’d heard. She knew what had happened. She wasn’t lying and she wasn’t crazy, no matter what the police thought.
Dillon rubbed the back of his neck as he began to pace her living room. “I’ve been wondering about that cry you heard.”
“A baby’s cry,” Taylor said softly.
“Exactly. Someone knew just how to lure you down into that boiler room. Someone knew you wouldn’t be able to ignore a cry like that. You’d have to check it out.”
“Then…you believe me?”
Dillon stopped pacing and stared at her across the room. “All I had to do was take one look at your face when I walked into that hospital room. I believe you, Taylor. I believe…everything.”
“You believe me about our child?”
Their gazes met. Slowly Dillon nodded.
Taylor drew the back of her hand over her eyes. “Thank God,” she said, her voice trembling. She wanted him to take her in his arms and hold her close as he’d done in the hospital earlier, but he didn’t. He remained steadfastly where he was.
But acknowledging his belief that their child was still alive created a powerful bond between them. Taylor felt it, and she knew Dillon did, too. Maybe that was why he kept his distance. Maybe it was a bond he didn’t necessarily want.
She glanced away. “I know Sergeant Jackson didn’t believe me about what happened tonight. I could tell. He thinks I’m either lying or I’m crazy.”
“Jackson is an as—jerk,” Dillon said in disgust. “What’s worse, he’s a lousy investigator. He doesn’t want to make more work for himself. He doesn’t want to hear anything that might poke a few holes in his original investigation.”
“But where did the cry come from if I didn’t imagine it? That’s what I keep asking myself. The police didn’t find anything in the basement.”
“I’ve been thinking about that. You said that once you started down the stairs, the cry sounded strange. There was something about it that wasn’t quite right. I’m thinking what you heard was a tape recording of a baby crying. The suspect planted it in the basement when he heard you leaving your office, then retrieved it when he was scared off by the janitor’s grandson.”
Taylor stared at him in excitement. “Yes! That would explain everything. Oh, thank God,” she breathed. “For a minute, I was beginning to doubt myself.”
“Don’t do that,” Dillon warned. “That’s exactly what he wants you to do.”
“Who?”
“Whoever wants you dead.”
The stark statement hung in the air between them like a bomb waiting to explode. Inside, Taylor felt oddly numb, almost immune to the fear, but she knew once the shock wore off, the terror would begin all over again.
“What are we going to do?” she asked weakly.
Dillon sat down in the chair opposite the couch. “I don’t think even Jackson will be able to ignore this latest attack, no matter what kind of spin he tries to put on it. I’ll talk to the lieutenant again myself. There’ll have to be an investigation into these threats on your life, but as far as the Westcott Clinic goes—”
“What?”
He shrugged. “I can tell you right now, they won’t open that can of worms unless they absolutely have to. Westcott has too much clout in this town.”
“But he’s the most likely suspect!” Taylor said incredulously. “They have to investigate him.”
“Not without probable cause.”
“Then how do we show probable cause?”
“You let me worry about that.”
“But—”
“I’m serious, Taylor. We’ve got to be a lot more careful from now on. You’ll have to leave the investigation up to me, but I promise you, I’ll do everything I can to find out what happened to our child.”
Taylor’s eyes filled with tears. “Our child,” she whispered. “Oh, Dillon—”
“I know. It’s incredible.”
Taylor put her fingertips to her lips to try and control the powerful emotions surging through her. “You haven’t told me how you feel about…our having a child together.”
He reclined his head against the back of the chair, staring at the ceiling. He looked indescribably weary, and Taylor’s heart melted a little as she watched him.
“I haven’t wanted to get my hopes up,” he said.
“Hopes?” Hope was such a positive emotion.
He lifted his head and looked at her. “What did you think I would feel?”
Taylor shrugged, unable to meet his eyes. “I don’t know. I had no reason to think you’d want a child. My child. When yo
u left town—”
“When I left town, I didn’t even know you were pregnant.”
“I know, but you made it clear it was over between us. I had no reason to believe my being pregnant would change your feelings toward me.”
“You knew what we’d had together. You knew me, damn it.” His voice turned cold, bitter. He leaned forward in his chair and glared at her. “After everything we meant to each other, how could you do what you did?”
Taylor’s hand crept to her throat. The intensity in his eyes was frightening. “I wanted to tell you about the baby, but—”
“I’m not talking about the baby. I’m talking about you and Robinson.” His hands clutched the arms of the chair. “You left my bed and went straight to his. You were mine, damn you, and you let him touch you. You betrayed me.”
Taylor gasped, his words like an arrow through her heart. “What are you talking about? I never betrayed you. I never slept with Brad. Not even for a long time after we were married.”
“I saw you.” Dillon scrubbed a hand across his eyes, as if to wipe away the hurtful images in his mind. “I was there, waiting outside his apartment the morning after the Christmas dance. I saw you leave with him. It was obvious you’d spent the night together.”
“But not that way! I was upset because of the fight you and I had. When I saw you at the dance, I knew how wrong I’d been to say those hurtful things to you. All I could think was that I wanted to spend the rest of my life making it up to you. But…you told me it was too late. You said we were never meant to be, and then you left. I thought I’d lost you for good, and Brad…he comforted me. I spent the night crying in his arms.”
“You expect me to believe that?” Dillon asked coldly. “Especially since you married him not two months later.”
“It’s the truth!” Taylor cried, her own anger flaring. Then the arrow pierced more deeply into her heart. Her hand flew to her mouth. “My God,” she whispered. “That’s why you left town, isn’t it? You thought—”
The truth shone like a light in Taylor’s eyes, and the wall around Dillon’s heart began to crumble. All these years, he’d believed Taylor had betrayed him. All this time, he’d let himself think the worst, let the image of her in Brad Robinson’s arms fuel his bitterness and anger because it had somehow made his loss easier. Made it easier for him to accept the inevitable.
Amanda Stevens Bestseller Collection: Stranger In Paradise/A Baby's Cry Page 34