Her Soldier's Baby

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  “I was just there this morning,” Ryan said. “After you’d already left to come here.”

  So he hadn’t been so far off—and he and Ryan had both been right in their assessment that the tire had been slashed on-site at the studio.

  “Don’t you wonder why it was just the one tire?” Ryan asked then.

  What was taking Ms. Newcomb so long?

  “I’m guessing whoever did it got spooked. Or they wanted Eliza to be out on the road before she noticed anything. They didn’t want her stranded at the studio.”

  “If they got spooked, we might be able to figure out why. I’ll see if there were any deliveries to the studio that afternoon. Any reason someone might have been in the parking lot that we don’t already know about. I can check footage from the traffic camera at the corner...”

  If they didn’t want her stranded at the studio, that likely meant they wanted her stranded somewhere else.

  As a warning?

  Or because they’d hoped for harm to befall her?

  Each time he had the thought, Pierce’s blood ran cold. He could imagine living his life without Eliza, if that’s what she wanted, but he couldn’t imagine a world without her in it.

  Ms. Newcomb came in and took her seat.

  Ryan ran her through the questions. Pierce listened but didn’t expect to get anything from the woman. She was too self-centered to have noticed anything that didn’t directly affect her.

  And she exuded no defensiveness at all. No sense of feeling invaded by an interrogation.

  Only one person that day had put out that sense to him.

  “Can you think of any reason someone would vandalize Mrs. Westin’s rental car?”

  “Maybe to scare her off?”

  “Do you know anyone who would want to do that?”

  “To scare her off? No. If you’re asking if I’ve heard anyone talk bad about her, then, no again.” She smiled at both of them.

  Ryan nodded at her. “Have you heard anyone talk about the things that have been happening to her? The vinegar in the water bottle, for instance?”

  “Sure. Everyone’s talking about it. It’s kind of blowing some of the fun of being on the show, you know? This is a once-in-a-lifetime experience for some of us, and we’ve gotten to be friends. It’s wrong what’s being done to her. Eliza’s sweet. She wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

  Pierce was ready to wrap this up. To grab Eliza and get out of there. Wondered if they could get on an earlier flight and make it home that night. If she’d even want to do that. She’d just won the competition for the third time. She might want to celebrate with her new friends, as Kaylee Newcomb had just described them all. She deserved to celebrate with them.

  “So you don’t think one of your fellow contestants could be behind this?”

  Ryan was liking someone close to Grace. The missing mushrooms could potentially have hurt her chances, too, but the key was that they hadn’t. They could just as easily have been a ploy to distract eyes away from Grace being involved.

  “Not unless they hoped the pranks might get them some more on camera time, you know, like, sabotage adding suspense to the show.”

  Pierce focused. Had she just given them a motive?

  “You think Ms. Stevens should have let the home viewers know what was going on behind the scenes?” he asked.

  Kaylee shrugged. “It’s a reality TV show. This is reality, right?”

  Ryan looked at him. He answered the silent probe with an affirmative.

  Pierce knew Kaylee’s history, her purpose for auditioning for Family Secrets in the first place—to try to get noticed. He knew because Eliza had told him. Ryan would have no way of knowing that.

  “So you’d like it if, say, during next week’s final round, Natasha talked about the odds that Eliza has been up against?” Officer Ernie Ryan asked the question. Pierce couldn’t have done it better.

  “It’s too late now, don’t you think?” Kaylee said. “I was just saying someone might have thought it would add some, you know, drama. At least it might have made people curious and draw in more of an audience. Give them a reason to follow along, to tune in each week find out what happened.”

  She had it well-thought-out.

  And next week would indeed be too late, if the plan was hers. Because she wouldn’t be there the following week. Ms. Newcomb was headed home for the last time—a loser.

  * * *

  ELIZA DIDN’T WAIT for them to finish with the twins from New Orleans. With Tamera trailing behind her, watching her back, she headed down to the green room to collect her things and wait for Pierce.

  Of all the contestants, she knew the twins the best, having shared cocktails with them in the hotel lobby a couple of times. She most often sat next to them in the shuttle, too. There was no way she’d believe they had it in for her.

  Unless... They were the ones she’d talked to the most that first night—the only ones she’d really gotten to know at all—before the mushrooms had gone missing.

  No. Maria and Micha were lovable, funny chefs who had no reason to wipe out the competition. They were each other’s competition!

  After Kaylee’s testimony, Eliza had just wanted to be done. It wasn’t up to her to find out who wanted to hurt her chances at winning. Or hurt her. She just couldn’t think about it anymore.

  It got to a person, constantly feeling like you had to watch your back, like you couldn’t trust anyone you liked, or even your own instincts as to whether or not you should like them.

  Maybe this was what being out in the world was like. Maybe she was happier than she’d thought on Shelby Island—protected from vandals, and...

  The house next door to hers—an acre over—had been vandalized the previous summer. And a woman had been killed on the island a couple of years before. The police had thought the woman’s ex-husband did it but had never arrested anyone for the crime.

  There were crimes on the beach every summer. Thefts. A stolen car or two. Robberies. Usually small stuff.

  But bigger than missing mushrooms and slashed tires.

  Kaylee was just heading out the door as Eliza pushed into the empty green room. The younger woman congratulated her again. Told her she’d be in the audience watching the next week. Said goodbye, and left.

  Eliza proceeded to her locker. She used the combination she’d been given and pulled it open.

  She reached her hand in before she’d had a chance to look and stopped as she noticed the white index card bent and jammed under her purse.

  As though someone had crammed it through a ventilation slat on the bottom of her locker. There was black writing on the card in stick-on letters. She couldn’t read what they said but didn’t want to touch the card.

  “What’s wrong?” Tamera was beside her in seconds, though Eliza hadn’t made a peep.

  Eliza pointed.

  “Oh—” The expletive the woman uttered was not one Eliza had heard often. “Back away,” she said next, putting an arm gently between Eliza and the locker, guiding her beyond the tile and onto the carpeted side of the room while with her other hand she pulled the radio off her hip and called for help.

  * * *

  PIERCE WAS OUT of the interrogation room, a few doors down the hall from the green room, before Ryan could excuse them to Micah Donaldson. He still wasn’t the first person to answer Tamera’s call. Another security guard, one employed full-time by Natasha Stevens, was there first.

  Natasha, Pierce knew, was in her office in another part of the studio, waiting for a report from Ryan and to hear any instructions he had for her, her team or the studio. Not because he’d told her she had to stay, but because she’d insisted on doing so.

  The guard was using a paper towel to reach for the card. He handed the towel to Pierce instead.

  T
he card was bent up pretty good. But Pierce could still read it before he’d even fully dislodged it from the locker.

  You’ve been warned. Don’t come back.

  “Has Kaylee been through here?” Pierce barked to the room at large. He’d taken in Eliza, standing at the other end of the room with Tamera when he’d first entered.

  “She just left,” Tamera said.

  He was out the door, leaving the card hanging out of the locker for Ryan to bag.

  * * *

  “I CAN’T BELIEVE they didn’t hold her.” With a rare glass of wine in her hand, Eliza looked at Pierce, sitting across from her on the private balcony off her room. Up on the fourteenth floor, they had a great view.

  One she hadn’t bothered to enjoy until that night. Something about being out on a balcony all alone hadn’t appealed to her the previous weeks she’d been a guest at the hotel.

  “They have nothing to hold her on,” he told her now, speaking of Kaylee Newcomb.

  Eliza was sure now that she was the culprit. “She’s from LA, Pierce. That’s only an hour and a half away, depending on traffic. She could easily have had any friend of hers slip onto the back lot and slash my tire. The rest of it, we already know any of the contestants could have done. She’s desperate enough to be a star that she auditions for a cooking show when she doesn’t even like to cook. Plus, she practically told you she’d done it. She told you why, to get buzz going for the show...and she called everything that’s happened ‘pranks.’ Natasha Stevens doesn’t think they’re pranks. If whoever did this had been successful, they could have hurt the show.”

  She didn’t want to talk about Family Secrets anymore. About mushrooms and vinegar, phone calls, shuttles and tires.

  She was tired of it all.

  She wanted to enjoy her wine with the man she loved.

  She wanted that man back.

  “Unless her fingerprints turn up on that card, or anything else points to her, the most she can be is a person of interest in a case where no one has even been hurt.” Pierce reminded her.

  “Tamera said that card was a direct threat. That means whoever is behind this is crossing into felony territory.”

  “She’s right. And believe me, Ryan is going to be checking every step Newcomb has taken since the show began. He’s got other leads he’s following up on, too. That’s all he can do until he gets some concrete proof.”

  She’d already spoken with Natasha. The woman had asked her what she wanted to do about the final round the next week. If she wanted to continue.

  Technically, with the releases Eliza had signed, the show wasn’t responsible for any losses incurred if Eliza backed out. But Natasha had offered to reschedule the taping for an off week later in the spring if Grace would also agree to the change.

  Eliza had told Natasha she was fine to be there the following week. If they postponed the finale, it would be a hardship for Grace to get back. There was no telling whether the woman would even agree, and part of Eliza didn’t want to find out if she wouldn’t.

  She also didn’t see much point in putting off the inevitable. If someone was trying to get Grace a win, that person could just as easily do so a couple of months from then.

  Pierce had disagreed with her decision. He’d wanted Ryan to have more time to figure out who was behind the threat and other mysterious happenings.

  Eliza couldn’t bear the thought of living on the precipice upon which she’d been balancing these past weeks for much longer. She needed this whole thing done.

  She also needed to finish it. That was the one thing about all of it that she and Pierce had agreed on.

  Not just because it was wrong to let the bully win. Not even because, with all of the added security—it would be more than doubled for the final round, including electronic screening of audience members—there would be little chance of physical harm to Eliza. But because she had to live like the professional chef she was. Most particularly with three wins under her belt. Most everyone thought that her win the next week was inevitable.

  She sipped her wine. Watched while Pierce jiggled his glass of iced lemon water, knocking the cubes against the sides of the glass. She’d suggested he have a beer. He enjoyed one occasionally with guys from work.

  He’d declined the beer, saying he never drank when he was on a job. Implying that he was on the job, then? Thinking of the response, her feelings were hurt all over again.

  “You were awfully rough on Daniel today.”

  “He’s hiding something.”

  What was it with him?

  “He’s just a nice kid looking out for an old lady,” she said now, taking another sip of wine.

  “He’s hiding something. I can feel it.”

  “And these feelings, they aren’t ever wrong?” She softened the question with a smile that would have been personal if he’d been on the receiving end of it weeks ago.

  “Not often.”

  “Maybe this is one of the few times.”

  “It’s not.”

  He was copping that attitude again. And she was tired. Tired of carrying the weight of the world. Of feeling guilty for needing so desperately to meet her son. And feeling guilty for giving him up in the first place. For lying to Pierce about him, and about the fact that the letter from the adoption agency was the reason she’d auditioned for Family Secrets to begin with.

  She was tired of wondering which of her new friends might be sabotaging her.

  Tired of trying not to cry every single time she was in a room with Pierce these days.

  She missed Rose Harbor. Her guests. Margie.

  And her own bed.

  “You were too hard on him, Pierce. Even Officer Ryan saw it. To the point that he cut you off...” She couldn’t pussyfoot around this anymore. “It’s because he’s a kid, right? A boy. And you just can’t be impartial when a young man is involved.”

  He’d nearly gotten himself killed because of his inability to think rationally enough to follow protocol when the other kid had been in trouble two weeks before. Whether he’d saved the boy’s life or not, he’d taken a huge risk that could just as easily have had tragic consequences.

  “I need to know what happened to you, Pierce. I need to understand.”

  She’d promised herself she’d never ask. That if Pierce ever needed to tell her about his time in the Middle East, she’d listen attentively, but that she’d never force him to do so.

  She’d made a lot of promises to herself that she wasn’t keeping.

  His gaze was deep, dark, shadowed, as he looked over at her.

  And nodded.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  “I WAS ON my second tour.” Pierce’s voice cut into Eliza as he started to speak. It lacked the warmth she’d always associated with his deep baritone.

  It didn’t sound like him.

  She wasn’t sure what she’d asked for. Wasn’t sure she was up to it.

  But dropped to the floor at his feet, her arms on his knee, as he looked out beyond the aesthetically lit pool and gardens below to the shadows of the mountains looming in the distant dark.

  “It’s okay, Pierce,” she told him, suddenly realizing what she’d asked. He was in the desert, reliving an experience that had taken place in the desert.

  She should have known, been more aware.

  Any other time she would have been.

  That was the moment when she realized that Pierce had been right to think that she’d been pulling away from him. Leaving him, he’d said. She’d thought he meant literally—as in walking out on him, and maybe he had.

  She had no intention, even now, of divorcing Pierce, or even of separating. But these past weeks, she had been slowly leaving the part of Pierce who’d trusted her always to be there.

  The man who couldn�
��t bear to be a father. Of any kind.

  He looked down at her, and she could tell that it was taking him a second to break out of his mental world and back into the one in the hotel room in Palm Desert.

  “I’d been there a year for my first tour,” he said, looking her in the eye as he spoke. If he felt her touching him, leaning on him, he didn’t let on.

  With gentle fingers, she rubbed the back of his calf. The inside of his knee. “I had a knack for reading situations,” he said. “I’d made a few comments, been overheard, and been right...”

  “You were more aware than any boy—or man—I’d ever known, Pierce. I told you that...”

  He blinked. Touched the top of her head. She wasn’t sure if that was a ghost of a smile touching the corner of his mouth—or a twitch.

  “It wasn’t long before I was called up to take on jobs that relied solely on precision and composure for successful execution.”

  “You didn’t lose it,” she said. She didn’t know why she was interrupting. But felt that she had to. That she needed to keep him with her.

  And was ashamed that she wasn’t sure if she was doing it for him or for herself.

  “I didn’t panic,” Pierce said. And then gave a dry harrumph that might have been meant to be a chuckle. “Funny, when now I can’t even talk about kids without having a nightmare.”

  “You had only one.” This time around.

  “I’ve been taking the sleeping pills the doctor gave me.”

  Her heart dropped. More secrets. More things they should have shared. Something she should have known even if he hadn’t told her. She should have noticed...

  “Every night?”

  He shook his head. “A few times at home. And here, last night.”

  She didn’t even know he had them with him. They shared a toiletry bag. A suitcase...

  “You have one for tonight?”

  He nodded. And she understood why he wasn’t drinking that beer she’d offered him. She didn’t want the wine she’d left on the table by her chair, either.