Dylan nodded and explained about Paul and the pills. “She made him a promise not to involve the police in the whole incident with the stolen prescription pads and forged prescriptions. She’s been trying to stick to it, even though Paul has broken his part of their agreement.”
Justin muttered a curse. “If his supply’s running out, he could be increasingly unstable.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of, too,” Dylan agreed.
That said, he went on into the living room where a number of Adams wives had gathered to lend moral support. Most of their husbands were either involved in the search or were doing double duty at various ranches to cover for those who were out looking for Bobby.
Kelsey’s gaze immediately shot to Dylan. “You heard?”
Lizzy moved aside to make room for Dylan next to Kelsey on the sofa. He sat in the spot she’d vacated. “Justin filled me in. I’m going to head for Dallas again in a little while.”
“Then you agree he’s close to the airport?”
Dylan nodded.
“So he can leave in a hurry,” she whispered, a catch in her voice as she searched for his expression for confirmation.
“Maybe just because it’s a busy place with lots of strangers,” he soothed. “No one would notice him and Bobby there.”
“Bobby loves airplanes,” she told him. “He’s only flown a couple of times, but he stops whatever he’s doing when one flies overhead and points to it. He’d be crazy about being at an airport or getting on a plane. He wouldn’t think twice about it.”
“Darlin’, hold on a second. There’s no reason to think he’s gotten on a plane. Justin’s been keeping a close eye on all the flight rosters. If Paul is near the airport now, it’s happened very recently.”
She stared at him, clearly surprised. “What makes you say that?”
“You’ve been listening for background noise whenever you talked to them, right? You didn’t hear any planes when you talked to Bobby the other day, did you? Or any other time?”
“No,” she said. Her expression slowly brightened as understanding dawned. “And if he’d been near the airport, I wouldn’t have been able to miss the noise, would I?”
“I don’t think so. Not as busy as DFW is.” He studied her face, saw the deepening shadows under her eyes, the unmistakable exhaustion. “Why don’t you try to catch a few hours of sleep?”
“We’ve all been telling her the same thing,” Lizzy said. “She won’t budge.”
Dylan gave her a speculative look. “Is that so? I think I have a solution.” He stood and scooped her up before she had a chance to react, then headed for the stairs. Their progress was greeted by amused looks from all the women.
“Dylan, put me down right this second,” she demanded in a hushed tone. “You have no right. I am perfectly capable of deciding when I need to go to sleep.”
“Then do it,” he said tersely, climbing the steps. He met her furious, indignant gaze. “Say it, Kelsey. You’re the doctor. Admit you’re beat and that you need some rest.”
“I will not.”
“Stubborn woman.”
“Arrogant man.”
He chuckled. “Now that we’ve established that, how about pointing out which room is yours?”
She frowned. “Why should I help you?”
He shrugged, shifted her more tightly against him, and poked his head in the room where he’d seen her the other night just to be sure it was Bobby’s. “Must be the one down the hall,” he concluded. He nudged open the door with his knee and stepped inside.
The room was the antithesis of what he’d expected. Kelsey was a coolly competent physician. Her home was neat as a pin, the furniture more practical than stylish. But the bedroom…oh, brother. There was no mistaking it was the room of a woman, a very sensuous woman. Dylan felt as out of place as he would have amid the lacy lingerie at Victoria’s Secret. He also started getting a whole lot of ideas that had nothing to do with sleep.
The bed was king-sized and inviting. It was covered with a thick, floral-printed comforter in shades of rose and green, and piled high with pillows, some in satin cases, others trimmed with lace and velvet. A vase of white and pink roses in full bloom sat beside the bed, filling the air with their sweet scent. A slinky nightgown, made of some incredibly silky fabric that promised to reveal all sorts of fascinating secrets about the wearer, had been tossed on the bed.
On the dresser, there were at least a dozen fancy antique perfume bottles. Lipstick and other feminine secret weapons were scattered among them.
And on a table beside the bed, a radio had been left on and forgotten. It was tuned to a station that played ballads and love songs all day long.
Dylan was so taken with everything, so intrigued by what it revealed of the woman in his arms that he didn’t move for fully a minute. For just as long he completely forgot about Bobby, the people downstairs and everything else.
“Dylan?” Kelsey finally whispered, a catch in her voice.
“Uh-huh?” He snapped back to reality, then moved to the bed and lowered Kelsey onto it. His gaze locked with hers.
“You know I want to stay right here with you,” he said, his voice thick with longing. His body ached with arousal.
Eyes wide, she nodded. “I wish you could,” she admitted, then covered her face. “Oh, God, what kind of woman does that make me? How can I even think such a thing while my son is missing?”
“You’re just human, darlin’. So am I.” He touched her cheek. “Rain check?”
“Yes,” she said so softly he almost didn’t hear her.
He shook off the feeling of being caught up in something that didn’t make sense, something that was pulling at him and clouding his brain.
“Darlin’, you sure do know how to motivate a man.” He winked at her. “If there’s a God in heaven, I’ll have Bobby back here before morning.”
“As desperately as I want that,” she said. “It’s enough just to know that you’re trying. I know you’ll find him for me, Dylan, however long it takes.”
Chapter Ten
Once he hit Dallas, Dylan knew he was racing against the clock. Paul wouldn’t wait forever before making his demands. If this really was about pills and not about Bobby’s custody, then sooner or later his need for the narcotics was going to outweigh whatever satisfaction he was getting from torturing Kelsey.
He took Jeb with him and together they scoured the airport, looking for anyone who might have caught a glimpse of Paul. Even though it was turf Justin’s men had covered, Dylan wanted no stone left unturned.
He finally left Jeb sweet-talking ticket agents into checking their computers for reservations for a father and son, under any name at all. It was peak travel time and the airport was a madhouse, but if anyone could wheedle the information out of an employee, it was Jeb. He had the charm and the patience for it. Dylan was running out of both.
He went back to his car, which was stifling in the summer heat, turned the air-conditioning on full blast, then used his cell phone and called one of his contacts to do another check of Paul’s credit-card records. Surely by now he was running low on cash. Maybe he’d finally slipped up and used plastic for something, anything, that would give them a lead. His using it to book a hotel room or a flight would, no doubt, be asking too much, but maybe he would have seen no harm in using it to pay for a meal or buy some T-shirts for Bobby.
While he waited for a call back, he studied the locator map he’d picked up in the airport. Hotels for the surrounding area were highlighted. He’d checked most of them just days ago, but with Paul’s car turning up in the airport parking garage, maybe he’d taken a room in one of them since then.
“Dammit, where is he?” he muttered. He hated failing under any circumstances, but this was Kelsey’s son they were talking about. Dylan would never forgive himself if the boy slipped through their fingers due to some oversight of his. He was as driven to succeed as he would have been if it had been Shane’s fate at stake.
&
nbsp; When his cell phone finally rang, he grabbed it.
“We’ve got a break,” Frank Lane told him. “He used the credit card this morning.”
“Where?”
“Don’t get too excited. I’m not sure it’ll help.”
“Anything will help at this point.”
“He used it at an airport gift shop.”
“What for?”
“Coloring books and children’s Tylenol.”
Which meant that Bobby still had his fever, Dylan concluded. That wasn’t good news. The toys were probably meant to distract a cranky child.
“Is there any way to tell which shop?”
“It took some doing,” Frank said, “but the woman at the credit-card company was able to track it to the one closest to the Trans-National ticket counter.”
“Thanks, pal. I owe you.” He hung up, then called Jeb inside the terminal and relayed the information.
“Got it,” Jeb said. “I’m on my way.”
If Paul was buying tickets, toys and medicine inside the airport, he had to be staying close by. Dylan set off to recheck each of the hotels he’d visited a few days earlier.
He hit pay dirt at the fifth hotel. The desk clerk recognized Paul and Bobby from the pictures Dylan showed him.
“But you’re out of luck,” he said. “They checked out about an hour ago.”
Dylan bit back a groan. “How’d the boy look? I heard he’s been sick.”
“A little pale and quiet, maybe, but he looked okay to me.”
“The man didn’t say where they were going?”
“No, just that he had a business meeting scheduled not far from here.”
In Los Pin˜os, no doubt, Dylan thought wearily.
Would he head straight there? Probably not. But he might pick a new hotel between here and there.
Working on the assumption that the shortest distance between two points was a straight line, Dylan went back to his car and headed southwest without waiting to hear from Jeb. He doubted his brother would learn anything critical from the gift shop and, if he did, he could reach him on his cell phone. It was more important that he start hitting every single hotel or motel along the highway. He figured he had twenty-four hours, maybe less, before this whole case was going to blow wide-open.
It was midmorning when Kelsey’s cell phone rang. She was so startled by the sound coming from her purse that it took her a minute to make sense of it.
Suddenly the knot in her stomach tightened. Her gut told her it was Paul and that this time he intended to make all of his demands. He was using the cell phone for the first time because he’d assumed that by now her regular line would be tapped. She hadn’t even thought to tell the police about this phone. Paul knew she kept it primarily for emergency use on the road or when the hospital needed to reach her. How could he be thinking so rationally, so diabolically, when she was all but incoherent from the stress?
Maybe it was for the best that she was alone for the first time in days, except for the sheriff’s deputy outside. Maybe she could walk a verbal tightrope and reach an agreement with Paul knowing that there were no eavesdroppers to challenge her decision. She took a deep breath and answered the phone.
“Hiya, sweetheart,” Paul greeted her, sounding as if they’d just parted days ago on friendly terms, as if they hadn’t argued two endless days ago about Bobby’s spiking fever.
“Paul, where the hell are you?” she asked, even though she knew better than to expect an answer. “How is Bobby? How’s his fever?”
“Bobby’s just fine. I told you he would be. He and I are having a blast, aren’t we, little buddy?” he said with forced joviality.
Kelsey couldn’t hear Bobby’s response. “Let me talk to him,” she demanded.
“I don’t think so. Not this time.”
“Now, Paul,” she insisted. A terrible sensation of panic washed over her. What if Bobby couldn’t talk? What if he was terribly ill and Paul was keeping it from her? “I want to hear for myself that his cold or whatever it was is better.”
“Not until we get a few things straight,” he countered.
Kelsey fought the longing to scream at him, to rant and rave until he gave in. Because, of course, he wouldn’t give in, no matter how desperately she pleaded or how loudly she shouted. He would only hang up on her. She sensed that he was at the end of his rope. She had to make herself go along with him a little longer.
“Such as?” she asked finally.
“I need a supply of pills.”
Hearing at long last what she had suspected from the beginning made her see red. “Is that what this is about, Paul? Is it really only about your addiction?”
“I’m not addicted. I’m in pain.”
“Then see a doctor.”
“Isn’t that what I’m doing, doll?”
Frustration and fury brought stinging tears to her eyes. “How can you use Bobby this way?” she whispered. “He’s your son. We made an agreement.”
“And I wound up with nothing,” he said bitterly.
“You stayed out of jail,” she reminded him. “That should have been enough.”
“It wasn’t. I want more, Kelsey. I need those pills. It’s not like I’m asking for an illegal substance.”
“You might as well be,” she countered.
“You’re a doctor. You can prescribe them.”
“Dammit, Paul, I can’t do it. What you’re asking, the quantities you want me to give you, it’s illegal. I could lose my license.”
“Not with all those powerful friends of yours. They’ll see that you keep your practice. This is a one-time deal, Kelsey. Get me enough pills now and I’ll never bother you again.”
“Why should I believe that? When we signed our agreement, you said it was over, that you’d go into treatment. Yet here you are. And when this supply runs out, you’ll be back again. Face it, there aren’t enough pills in the world for a man who’s addicted to them. You need help.”
“And I’ll get it. I promise,” he said, a coaxing note in his voice. “Please, Kelsey. One last time.”
She knew she would break eventually, that she had to for Bobby’s sake, but she forced herself to say no once more, steeling herself for another explosion.
“Not even for Bobby?” he asked, his voice suddenly cold. “Do this or you’ll never see him again. I’m a whole lot better at running and hiding than you are. I have the resources. And I have less to lose.”
“You’ll never be able to work for a brokerage firm again,” she reminded him, trying to keep a note of desperation out of her voice.
“With my investments, I won’t have to.”
Dear God, she knew it was true. He’d made a fortune for his clients and, in the process, for himself. He would take her boy just for spite and she would never see him again. She would be dooming her son to a life on the run with a father who cared more for his next fix than for him. She had tried to prepare herself for this moment, tried to accept that he’d left her no choice, but it still made her feel sick.
“What do you want?” she said, resigned.
“Pills, painkillers to be precise, and lots of them.”
“They’re regulated. I can’t just write a prescription for hundreds of them at once.”
“You figure out how to do it, sweetheart. Just have them for me by this time tomorrow or Bobby and I will disappear.”
“Where should I bring them?”
“I’ll be in touch.”
He hung up before she could ask anything more, before she could demand one more time to hear her baby’s voice. Trembling violently, she forced herself to walk outside. She found the deputy on the porch.
“My husband called,” she said in an emotionless voice. “He wants pills and he wants me to have them ready by tomorrow.”
He regarded her sympathetically. “Yes, ma’am. Are you okay?”
“I’ll be fine,” she said, but her knees buckled and she sank into a rocker, still clutching the cell phone.
&n
bsp; “I’ll call Sheriff Adams right away, Dr. James. It won’t take a minute for him to get here.”
She nodded, then realized Justin wasn’t the person she desperately needed right now. She needed Dylan. With shaking fingers she managed to punch in the number she’d memorized, then waited for him to answer his cell phone.
“Delacourt.”
“Dylan…” Her voice trailed off.
“Kelsey, what’s happened?”
“Paul called. He wants me to have a lot of pills ready for him tomorrow. He said he’d call back about a meeting place. I have to do it. I don’t have a choice.”
“Does Justin know?”
“The deputy just went to radio him. He should be here in a few minutes.”
“Good,” he said. “Okay, here’s what I think you should do. Can you come up with placebos that look enough like whatever he wants?”
Her spirits lifted at the obvious solution. “Of course,” she said, suddenly feeling confident that she could handle this without just turning over a satchel full of narcotics to her ex-husband.
“Then that’s what you’ll do. Call Sharon Lynn to see if Dolan’s has what you need. Otherwise, call the Garden City Hospital pharmacy. Justin can go and pick up the supply so we’ll be ready whenever Paul calls back. He can make it all nice and legal so you won’t have problems later.”
“What are you going to do? Will you come back?”
“Not just yet. I’m heading that way, but I want to finish checking the hotels and motels between the Dallas airport and Los Pin˜os. He’s got to be close enough to get to you and then get out of here in a hurry. I’d like to find him before he sets up the meeting, but if not we’ll get him then, Kelsey. Just hang on a little longer and you’ll have your son back.”
She was suddenly struck by a terrible thought. “Dylan, what if…?” She couldn’t even bring herself to voice her greatest fear.
“What if…?” he prodded. “What’s worrying you?”
“That he’ll come without Bobby.”
Dylan and the Baby Doctor Page 12