Operation Bassinet

by Joyce Sullivan

  Her softness seduced him, robbed him of coherent thought. He was barely cognizant of his hands pushing up under her sweater—exposing a ripe golden breast in a delicate wrapping of pale blue lace. The tip luscious and swollen pink.

  He took it into his mouth, lace and all, his body thickening and hardening with a desire so strong he felt empowered rather than shaken by it. Stef’s skin was silken to his touch. She moved beneath his seeking fingers like a cat begging to be stroked. He thrust a hand under her skirt and encountered her thigh and more lace.

  She whimpered impatiently, grinding her body against his. He felt a soul-deep need to touch her. To be joined with this amazing woman. To feel her strength and spirit coursing through him. And to be buoyed by her joyful enthusiasm for life.

  Her panties were damp. For him.

  Mitch nearly came unglued. She wanted him, too. She felt what he was feeling.

  The wonder of it burned through him and settled firmly in his heart like a keystone. He laved her other breast through its protective layer of lace and slid a finger into her damp cleft. Into her core.

  She gripped his shoulders and shuddered around his finger. Instantly. She was so tight.

  “That’s it, baby, that’s it. Let it go,” he whispered hoarsely, stroking her, encouraging her.

  She bucked against him, and Mitch played her, suckling her breast until she cried out his name, then pulling away and plunging his tongue into her mouth the way he wanted to plunge into her and be healed. The fierceness of it frightened him. She frightened him, because she felt so dammed perfect and unattainable.

  It should be wrong.

  He knew it, but he couldn’t bring himself to stop. Holding her, touching her, was like breathing. He couldn’t hold his breath long enough to stop.

  Her fingers tugged impatiently at the clasp of his belt, then gripped him through the fabric of his trousers. His blood thundered through his veins as he pulsed against her palm. This was crazy, this was madness. He couldn’t wait to be inside her.

  Her fingers fumbled with his zipper. “I need you, Mitch. Promise me you’ll find my baby.”

  Mitch’s body turned ice cold, his fingers froze in their desperate race to tear a condom from the depths of his wallet. A deep rumbling of protest rose from his soul.

  She was desperate. She was afraid and vulnerable. There was so much he could give her. So much he wanted to give her, but that was the one thing he couldn’t promise. Not now. Not ever. He couldn’t make love to her with a promise like that on his conscience.

  The detachment he’d struggled to find earlier dropped back into place like a glass shield, separating him from her.

  With an effort, he forgot about the condom and caught Stef’s hands in his, her wrists as fragile as thin ice. “I can’t promise you that. I wish I could, but I can’t lie to you about something as important as that.”

  Her beautiful eyes widened with understanding and she slumped against him like a rag doll. Her tears dampened his shirt as he cradled her against his chest and let her cry. His body still throbbing painfully, Mitch stroked her hair and pressed kisses against her temple and imagined what his grandfather would think to see him now. His pants were undone and he was comforting a victim’s mother. The captain would have his badge if he were still a detective.

  The Guardian would have his ass.

  He was jeopardizing the investigation. Possibly the safe return of Stef’s real daughter.

  Yet he still couldn’t let her go. Instinct and pigheaded stubbornness kept his arms locked securely around her. He needed Stef’s cooperation to save her daughter. Needed her complete trust. The tape they’d just found was suspicious. If they kept digging they might discover who was holding her biological child hostage and why the two little girls had been switched.

  “I know you’re scared,” he whispered. “But you’re not alone, okay? I’m here with you for the whole nine yards. You’re going to get tired of looking at my ugly mug. You’ll have my whole wardrobe memorized.” Mitch hoped that wouldn’t be because she was removing his wardrobe one piece at a time from his person.

  He really didn’t. His body still throbbed. She smelled like flowers and vanilla and cookies from the oven—and sex.

  Focus. His legs still trembling with the need coursing through his body, his mind replayed the tape they’d just heard. What the hell had Brad Shelton been up to? Mitch needed to check the tape for other conversations. He had to finish searching the briefcase.

  He still didn’t move. His legs trembled.

  Stef inhaled a long, ragged breath and tilted her face up to his, her body subtly inching away from him. He felt the sharp pang of physical loss as he loosened his hold on her. He could still smell her hair. Still smell her musky vanilla scent on his fingers.

  He told himself she didn’t really want him. She was angry at her husband. Hurt. Destroyed. She’d needed a release, a way to vent her fears. Someone like her wouldn’t normally undress someone like him. He’d bet Brad was probably her first or second lover.

  “I’m sorry, Mitch. I shouldn’t have done that or—” she paused, her tear-streaked face turning scarlet. “Or ripped your clothes off.” She retreated another step and ran her fingers through her hair. “I’m going crazy. I don’t know what I’m doing.”

  Mitch felt the heat of his own embarrassment flash through him. He eased his zipper over his still-engorged member. “I know. That’s why I’m trying really hard to convince myself that I wasn’t going to let us have sex.”

  Through the spiraling anger and disappointment that the tape they’d just found might implicate Brad in Riana Collingwood’s abduction, Stef’s womb registered the impact of Mitch’s words. She shoved the thought away, not able to deal with the guilt of how much she’d wanted him. Wanted his strength, wanted his confidence. Wanted so much to put her blind faith in him—even though he was ripping her precious little girl from her life. Somehow she believed he could guide her through this nightmare. That nothing he said or did would be a lie.

  She could count on Mitch to be brutally honest with her. She tugged on the hem of her sweater, trying to ignore that she could still feel the damp heated imprint of his mouth on her bra. “What do you think the tape means? Do you think Brad was blackmailing Sable or Ross Collingwood?”

  “It’s hard to say. The tape ends abruptly. Let’s see if there’s anything else on it.”

  He used a gold pen from Brad’s briefcase to press the play button. “We’ll have it dusted for fingerprints,” he told her when she asked why he was using the pen. “It’s a long shot, but we might find someone else’s fingerprints on it—like Sable’s. We’ve got her fingerprints on file.” Silence spun on the tape. Mitch played with the fast forward button, but there was nothing else.

  Disappointment, like bile, rose in her throat as they looked through the file folders in the briefcase. One of them held copies of Brad’s résumé and his list of references. She felt a hysterical urge to tear them into pieces. “You know, I’m beginning to wonder if he ever actually used them. He never mentioned the name of the companies the job interviews were with. He told me an employment agency was setting up the interviews for him.”

  She sighed and scraped her hair back from her face. “I’m not sure if I mentioned this, but the reason Brad didn’t stay with us in the hospital that night was because he supposedly had a job interview the next morning.” Her shoulders stiffened with rage. “He told me he didn’t get the job because he was late. He overslept. I’m not sure he even had a job interview now.”

  Mitch’s gaze centered on her, dark and intense. The gold pen was balanced perfectly on the tip of his tanned index finger like a scale of justice weighing in a verdict. “No, you didn’t mention that. What time did he show up at the hospital?”

  “He didn’t. My parents brought me and Keely home. Brad arrived home around one o’clock and he had beer on his breath. I was too tired to say anything and my parents were staying with us.”

  Mitch toyed
with the pen as if he were trying to take it apart. “Did he have a favorite watering hole?”

  Stef frowned. “Sure. He’d meet a few friends from time to time at this place called Herman’s in Queens.”

  “Which friends?”

  Stef came up with a half dozen names. “He played basketball with them.” Goose bumps prickled over her arms as she remembered a name Brad had mentioned a couple of times in the last few months before his death. “And there was someone named Tony. I don’t know his last name, but he played basketball, too.”

  “Did you ever meet this Tony?”

  Stef shook her head.

  “Did he come to Brad’s funeral?”

  “I’m not sure. There were a lot of people I didn’t know. I have the guest book from the funeral service upstairs. He may have signed it.”

  Mitch’s mouth tugged up in an approving grin and her breath hitched involuntarily. Her body tingled with remembered awareness of where he’d touched her. How he’d kissed her. How close she’d come to forgetting who he was.

  “I’d like to see the guest book. It’ll give us a list of Brad’s friends. Now, answer me a question.” He waved the pen under her nose. “Where did Brad get this?”

  “I don’t know. Why?”

  “Because it’s not a pen. It’s a video camera.” Horror inched over her skin as he indicated a small hole on the side of the pen. “This is the lens. You clip the pen on a shirt pocket and no one knows you’re recording. This might tell us the rest of the story that wasn’t on that tape.”

  Stef gulped and hugged herself. Even though she was still resistant to the idea that Brad had switched their daughter with Riana Collingwood, a ray of hope pierced the bleak despair in her heart. “Or it might show us my real daughter and where she’s being held.”

  IT TOOK ANOTHER two hours to finish searching Brad’s belongings. Stef hoped they would find the special cable Mitch explained was needed to plug the pen into a VCR to view whatever was recorded on it, but she realized she must have thrown it out during the move to Logantown. While Mitch called The Guardian and gave him a rundown of what they’d found, Stef slapped ham and cheese onto slices of wheat bread and grabbed two sodas from the refrigerator. The food was Mitch’s idea.

  She didn’t think she’d be able to swallow a bite, but she knew Mitch would make her eat. Oh, God, what were they going to find on that videotape?

  Mitch came into the kitchen, filling the cheerful yellow room with his bulk. He’d put his blazer back on and the navy wool fabric enhanced the startling deep blue of his eyes. “The Guardian’s tech team is standing by to analyze what we found. They’ll have a cable ready and waiting.”

  Stef sagged against the counter. The other day her biggest problem had been whether or not she could put off buying new tires for her car until after Christmas. “Good.”

  Mitch squeezed her shoulder and Stef felt her body respond to the strength and the support telegraphed in his fingers. “I told the helicopter pilot we were on our way.”

  Stef handed him a sandwich wrapped in a napkin. “Then you’d better eat fast.”

  He took the sandwich. “I know you must be feeling really anxious. But just remember that if we find something that links your husband to Riana’s kidnapping, the decisions your husband made are no reflection on you.”

  Stef’s nerves snapped like a flag whipping in a brisk wind. She knew he expected to find something incriminating on the video camera. “How can you say that? Brad was my husband.” She narrowed her gaze on him. “I’ll bet you’ve never been married, have you?”

  His gaze centered on her in its full intensity as if pushing a door open into her emotions. “No.”

  “Well, have you ever really loved someone who was a part of you?”

  His jaw tightened reflexively and his eyes shuttered like blinds being drawn. “I can’t say that I have,” he said bluntly, biting into the sandwich. His jaw worked and Stef followed the movement of his Adam’s apple as he swallowed. “Not too many women want to share their lives with someone who deals with the stuff I do.”

  Her heart twinged. She had a feeling there was more to the story, some hurt he was burying beneath his tough cop facade. Perhaps the same driving hurt that had motivated him to become a cop, but she didn’t pry.

  It was hard enough trying to forget that she’d wanted him to make love to her. She didn’t want to be detoured by the possibility that Mitch wasn’t just a brash and incredibly handsome detective. But a man who’d lived his own amount of pain, and perhaps had dreams of his own that hadn’t turned out as he’d planned. That maybe he needed comfort and solace, too.

  No, she absolutely did not want to think about that. Not when the physical release Mitch had given her still lingered like a balm in her veins.

  She put the mustard and mayonnaise back in the refrigerator. “Brad and I made a baby together. He was part of me,” she explained, glancing at Mitch. He’d just about finished his sandwich. She should have made him two. “I can’t just disassociate myself from him, no matter what he may or may not have done.”

  Mitch skewered her with a do-you-really-believe-what-you’re-saying? look. “Just remember it’s not your fault. Now eat. I just heard the taxi pull up in your driveway. I’ll get the boxes. You lock up.”

  “Wait!” Stef ripped the sandwich in two and gave him the larger half. “I’ll eat half if you eat the other half.”

  He switched halves so she had the larger piece. “Deal.”

  Stef took a large bite as she followed him out of the kitchen. Somehow, she was going to find her biological child. And she was going to find a way to keep Keely, too.

  THE GUARDIAN and a team of technicians awaited their arrival in a sleek modern conference room equipped with a wall of equipment that made the cockpit of an Airbus 320 look like a child’s toy. Stef’s nails dug into her palms as she was shown to a chair at The Guardian’s right.

  “Did you hear from the kidnapper again?” she asked him.

  “Not yet, Mrs. Shelton. But the ransom is prepared and we’re ready to cooperate. I suspect that the extraordinary delay is designed to increase our anxiety.”

  Stef exhaled unsteadily. “It’s working.” She kept her eyes glued on Mitch and The Guardian as they divvied up the contents of the boxes to the men and women in black suits seated around the huge glossy table.

  A bronzed man with shoulders like a professional wrestler and three dimples that formed a triangle in his right cheek introduced himself as he took the empty seat next to her and asked if he could take her fingerprints. “I’ll use them to eliminate your prints from any of the objects we’ll be dusting,” he explained courteously, laying out a white card, an ink pad and alcohol wipes. “It won’t take long.”

  Stef willingly offered her hands as she eavesdropped on The Guardian. He’d given Brad’s pictures to a hook-nosed balding man named Edwards with instructions to show them to the nurse who’d been assaulted by Riana’s kidnapper.

  One tech with dreadlocks departed with Brad’s laptop, while an ice-blond woman with Nordic features took custody of the tape recorder Stef had thought was a remote control.

  The basketball trophies Brad had won in high school, several disks from his laptop and Brad’s briefcase were given to the fingerprint expert beside her. “Pass the disks to Foster to examine after you check them for prints,” Mitch told him. “There might be something worthwhile on them.”

  “You can count on it, Halloran.” The expert winked at Stef as he started fingerprinting her other hand. “Bossy son of a gun, isn’t he?”

  “I heard that Wendell.”

  Wendell ignored Mitch. “You gotta forgive him. He comes from California. There, they do things sloppy. Just look at the Nicole Simpson case. Here, we do things right.” He gave Stef a star-dimpled smile as he handed her an alcohol wipe to remove the ink smears from her fingers.

  Her gaze centered on Mitch as she cleaned her fingers. His cobalt eyes were dark as a tech with a brush cut and narrow bl
ack eyeglasses hooked the miniature video camera up to a VCR.

  Ants crawled in Stef’s stomach. Would whatever was on that tape prove that her husband hadn’t been involved in the kidnapping? Or would it give them a clue to their baby girl’s fate?

  She said a silent prayer asking for strength as an image filled the huge TV screen. The image shook as if the camera was being jostled and she heard her husband say under his breath, “Here goes nothing.”

  Stef pressed her hand to her mouth to block the conflicting emotions rushing to her throat. It had been so long since she’d heard Brad’s voice. She hated that the good memories she had of their life together were now tainted by a cloud of suspicion. A green door with a Customer Hours sign appeared on the screen. The door was shoved inward and images of a dimly lit room with tables and chairs emerged. A bar.

  Herman’s. Stef was sure of it. She recognized the captain’s chairs drawn up to the tables.

  Brad walked to the booths at the back of the bar.

  Suddenly the blurry form of a person sitting at one of the booths came into focus.

  Stef gasped. It was Sable!

  Sable was wearing casual clothes—a tank top with a thin gold chain around her neck. A beer was on the table in front of her. Stef told herself that there was nothing wrong with her husband meeting his former boss in a bar. Brad had told her about it. But still…why would Brad record the meeting on film?

  Sable’s smile widened as Brad swung into the booth. “How’s the proud father?”

  “Proud. Exhausted. I never knew babies peed so much or slept so little.”

  “I’ve heard that. I hope you brought pictures.”

  “Damn straight. I brought a cigar, too.”