by Jaycee Clark
Tied down. Trying to get away . . .
Quinlan blew out a breath.
“You okay?” Aiden asked.
“No, but I’m not about to crumble into a heap on the floor and into a fetal position,” Quin muttered.
Aiden scoffed. “I should hope not. I’d deny you as my brother if you did anything that weak. Kinncaids don’t fold. We stand. We fight.”
“And we damn well protect our own,” Brody added.
“If given the chance, you’re damned right we do,” Quin said. “How are Mom and Pops?” he asked Aiden.
“Well, neither are in the hospital. Gavin’s keeping an eye on them. Mom’s pissed and still ranting, he said. And Dad hasn’t said much.” Aiden grinned and licked his lips. “You were always so perfect and quiet.” He chuckled. “You just shot that all to hell. Mom just might not ever forgive you. And you did good with that federal asshole.”
Quinlan turned and leaned back against the wall, closing his eyes for just a moment.
“Come on. I’ll get us something to eat and drink. You didn’t have any lunch.” Brody motioned toward the elevators. “Doc’s right. Running yourself straight into the ground isn’t going to help anything. Nor will ending up in jail, just for the record.”
“I’m not hungry. Though I could use something to drink.” What, he didn’t know. He doubted there would be an energy smoothie here, and though coffee would help, if he drank another cup he just might get sick. His stomach could only handle so much. “Got any antacids?” he asked.
Aiden dug some out of his pocket and passed them over. “As Brody said, food.”
Quinlan looked back at the door and shook his head. “I shouldn’t leave her alone.”
Aiden jerked his head down the hallway a bit. There sat another man, vaguely familiar but Quin couldn’t place him.
“One of Ian’s men. Sent him over a bit ago to guard her room. If we’re not here, then he is. We’ve already cleared him with the admin and with the feds, state, and local boys, so come on. Sleeping Beauty will still be here when you get back.” Aiden slung his arm over Quin’s shoulders and pulled him along.
They passed the nurse’s station and the nursery. Another father stood there looking in, a tired smile on his face; even in profile his face held awe. He looked up and met their gazes. “Never gets old. This is our third, but it never gets old.”
Quin wouldn’t know and was past his patience limit. His leg was hurting, fate had his guts twisted and his air supply cut off, and someone had reached in and stopped his heart, or that’s what it felt like. He didn’t talk as they rode the elevator down and traversed the labyrinth of the older hospital corridors to the cafeteria.
“Why do they all smell the same?” Quin asked. “School lunches, college cafeterias, hospitals. It’s like . . . sour food and something. I don’t know what. But it’s hardly appetizing.”
“You want real food, too bad. However, it’s not that bad here, so order something,” Brody said.
He didn’t care what they ordered. “Just get me something. I don’t care what.” With that, he thumped his way over to a table and eased into a chair, rubbing his thigh. In a couple of minutes his brother and cousin joined him. Aiden set a bowl of soup and half of some sort of wrap in front of him, along with a cup with a bendy straw.
He picked up the wrap and bit into it. Whole-grain flatbread with crunchy veggies inside, and some sort of cheese. Worked for him. Without realizing it he downed it.
“Did you even chew?” Aiden asked him.
He nodded and opened the soup container, blowing on the steam.
“So,” Aiden said, biting into his own wrap.
“So,” Brody added.
“What?” Quin asked.
“So, Brody let it slip on the way over—”
“—confessed under duress is a more accurate description—”
“—that he’d known you were married, but your assets were protected as much as he could protect them.” Aiden took another bite. “We always knew you were quiet, but damn, Quin. You married her and just, what? Left her?”
“No! No, I did not just leave her. We might have started off married in a stupid, impulsive moment, but so what? She was the first woman I wanted to be with after . . . after. She’s funny and bright and though I don’t remember every detail, I’d do it again. She left me. I did not kick her out, I did not leave her in Vegas, well, technically I did. Left her a note and enough cash to get her back home if she ever went back to the hotel. Why do you think I was so damned late. She disappeared. Left me with the expensive ring and a lovely note the morning after. A damned note letting me know that I could get an annulment or divorce or whatever I wanted or needed to.” Just the thought of that note. “I went back. I fucking went back after I dropped you guys off at D.C. I went and changed clothes, talked to Brody and flew the hell back out to Vegas looking for her. I didn’t find her. Went back to New Orleans to make sure she made it home, though I didn’t talk to her. Took me two weeks to get the courage up to go back.
“We hit it off. I saw her every damned weekend for almost six weeks. Sometimes I just flew down midweek just because I . . . I don’t know. I had to. We talked on the phone every day. I thought . . . I thought . . . Then I thought I had her, that we’d worked it all out, that I would talk her into coming to meet the family and we were going to tell them.” He shrugged. “I waited too long. She’d applied for the job before we met, took the job when it was offered and put the house up for sale, which I . . . Never mind.”
“And you never said a word to anyone?” Aiden asked, shocked.
“Technically, I told you all.”
“When?” Aiden narrowed his eyes. “That crap on the way back from New Orleans when you finally showed up?”
Quinlan shrugged. “Not my fault you didn’t believe me. I never once said I didn’t get married.”
Aiden looked from him to Brody. “You’ve been hanging out with the lawyer too long. Splitting hairs, Quin, and again I say you never told anyone.”
“He told me,” Brody said.
“Because he was covering his ass.” Aiden shook his head.
Quinlan nodded. “Yeah, I guess. I don’t know. If I’d told the family, I might have had a chance of keeping her. But I hadn’t, you see, and she thought . . .”
“You didn’t want to tell us?” Aiden said. “Can’t imagine what she might have thought about that.”
He leveled a look at his brother. “I fucked up. I know. She thought she wasn’t good enough or that the family would think that and I must have agreed or I’d have told everyone already. I hurt her by keeping quiet. So she moved to New Mexico, where she’d be in charge of her own studio eventually. Wanted enough space to think and see . . .” He shrugged. “I had flown down to New Orleans, she basically told me thanks, but no thanks. We had a huge fight, she was already packed up and really wanted to try the job. Never made sense to me—her moving. Being hurt I didn’t tell anyone or introduce her to the family, I get that. I left pissed, though I told her if she needed anything she knew how to get ahold of me. I asked her to please contact me when she got to New Mexico so I’d know she made it. She did. I was still pissed. I went back a few weeks later and . . .” The house didn’t matter. “When I hadn’t heard from her in a week and then two I figured she was as angry at me. I figured, fine. Let her go, if she didn’t want me, why the hell was I trying so fucking hard to keep someone who clearly didn’t want to be married to me. I tried her old number, but it was disconnected. I let go,” he admitted, and shook his head.
Finally, he met his brother’s eyes. “I let go when everything in me said to find her. But I didn’t. Pride. Ya know.” The plastic spoon snapped in his hand and he tossed the pieces on the table.
Neither Brody nor Aiden said a word.
“I’ve been selfish in the last couple of years. All I saw after the hospital was me. Me and what I’d lost, or thought I’d lost, what I couldn’t do as well anymore. Poor me. Then one day in
New Orleans, I bumped into this amazing, quirky, beautiful woman with blue hair and I didn’t care about me. Not really. Not like I did. I only cared how she saw me. After a day with her, my ideas of things were changing. After a night, I only wanted her. She felt so . . .” He shook his head and looked at the tabletop. “Right. She felt so damned right. Beside me, holding my hand. Laughing. We laughed so much.” He remembered that the most. The laughter. The simple joy in anything. “I was shocked as hell to wake up in Vegas with a ring on my finger, but I’m not going to lie and say I wished it were different. The only thing I wished was different was that she didn’t have some stupid idea in her head that I or my family wouldn’t approve. And I wish I had introduced her as my wife right away, to everyone.” Anger swirled along his spine and had him shifting again.
Aiden sighed and leaned his elbows on the table, just listening.
“I know she’s scared, I know she’s confused and has been through a lot. I get she was helping that damned fed and the letters, but I also know she denied me my child. My child. I know now she didn’t exactly intend to deny me, but damn it. I didn’t get to find out I was going to be a father. I didn’t get to go to the first doctor’s visit, or hear the heartbeat or see the sonogram. Pick out stupid furniture.” He leaned up. “I can’t understand why she just didn’t pick up the fucking phone! Screw the investigation and the fed or whatever.”
Silence settled between them, grew red and thick to him. He rubbed his thigh again.
“I just don’t understand . . . I don’t . . . I know in the scheme of things . . . Why?” he asked his brother.
Brody shrugged. “Maybe she couldn’t.”
“Bullshit,” Aiden said, taking a drink. “I was beyond pissed, and worried and terrified when Jesslyn finally told me, close to two months after the damned fact. Alone in Texas, worrying and scared alone until she finally picked up the damned phone.”
“Yes, but she picked up the damned phone.”
Aiden tilted his head. “My point is that I get that mass of confusion and rage and . . . and that’s all but boiling under your skin. Add in the feds screwing with her, these people, the missing baby . . . Look, I get part of that chaos, knowing you can’t snap at the person part of you really wants to. That would make you a real bastard and we’d all beat the shit out of you if you did.”
“I’m not going to hurt her, for God’s sake!”
“No, but you can cut quick with words, almost better than any of the rest of us, other than Ian maybe. My point is that I get where you are with the not knowing, but . . . But you have to be there for her now. You guys can work through this later. Marriage counseling or whatever. You still love her.”
Yes, he still loved her.
“You could always divorce her and file to keep the baby,” Brody added. “I’ve had the papers ready to draw up since you told me.”
Aiden punched Brody’s shoulder. “Not helping.”
Quinlan jerked and looked at his cousin. “I never told you to draw up any divorce papers.”
“No, you didn’t. But if you did, then they were ready.”
“Screw you. Ella’s mine. I’m not about to let her walk out of my life again. If I have to put a fucking tracking device on her ass, I’ll do it.”
“I’m sure that will endear you to her,” Aiden said. “Perhaps something less . . . drastic. Though I’d feel the same.”
Quinlan simply stared at Aiden for a moment. “I haven’t been able to find that joy in almost a year, and then for just a moment when I heard her voice, it all came flooding back. All the fun, all the laughter, all the . . . everything. You know? I told her I’d call her back, had to call Roger to fuel up the jet. Never got her again. Just for a moment the world seemed full of possibilities again before everything went so fucking wrong.”
He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, wished he hadn’t as the hodgepodge of cafeteria scents filled his nose. Then he remembered something else she said. “She asked why I never wrote her back. She wrote me letters at some point, but the feds wanted them before he’d mail them to make certain she didn’t compromise the investigation, or the wonderful Jareaux convinced her of that. Surprisingly, the letters never made it to me. And the journal. So maybe we’ll finally find out something when we get the flash drive from the Richardsons.” He pulled his phone out to see if the Richardsons had returned his call yet. Nothing.
“They wanted her alone. All of them,” Aiden said.
He nodded. “That was my take on it as well. If she’d been able to contact me, or had contacted me sooner, then I could have gotten to her, we would have . . .” Who knew? “She wouldn’t have been alone then. I’d have talked her out of the investigation, or tried like hell to.”
“Which is why Jareaux didn’t send you the letters,” Brody pointed out. “Because if you did that, then the Nursery wouldn’t have had a shot because then she wouldn’t have been so easy to isolate,” Brody added. “If she’s right, and the feds seem to give her credit as they are all but chomping at the bit to ask her more questions, then what is the Nursery exactly, other than a high-end adoption agency? If there are others, then how many and what happened to those babies and mothers?”
Chapter 25
The elevators finally opened on her floor and Quinlan stepped out. Something was wrong.
Hurrying down the corridor, he rounded the corner and saw a group of people outside her room. Scrubs, cops, the feds. His phone rang. He ignored it and hurried to the group, cursing his leg.
He shoved past the people there. Ian was standing in the door and met his eyes. “She’s fine.”
Quin pushed past his brother and saw the doctor and nurse checking her vitals and hanging a new IV bag. Ella was still out to the world.
“What the hell happened?” he asked.
Dr. Forrester looked from Quin to the crowd behind him to Ella. Then he jerked his head to the door.
Ian said, “I’ll stay in here.” He put his hand on Quin’s shoulder. “She’s fine. No harm done.”
Quinlan wasn’t buying that. He walked over to the bed and touched her. He just had to make sure. Her chest rose on a deep inhale. He leaned over and kissed her forehead.
“Quin, I’ll be here. You need to talk to the cops.”
“Why?” he asked his brother. “I’d rather hear it from you.”
His daughter. Oh God, they’d found his daughter. Ian’s face was set, his eyes bright and hard.
“The baby?” he asked quietly.
“No. No, we still don’t know. It seems someone tried to administer something to your wife,” Ian said.
“Administer?”
Agent Sabino stood in the corner with a baggy. Inside was a syringe. “A scuffle, the guard chased after him.” She jerked her chin toward Ian. “His man. Guy who tried to give your wife whatever is in this?” She shook the baggy. “Took a swipe with a rather sharp blade to the guard.”
Quinlan shook his head. “What?”
“We’ve switched out the IV port and line, and are running her tox screens again,” Dr. Forrester said.
Quinlan looked from one to the other, then back at his sleeping wife. He walked to the door and waited while the others, sans Ian, joined him in the hallway.
“Explain, please.”
Agent Sabino leveled a look at him. “Apparently, a man in scrubs was seen going into her room.”
“Where was the guard?”
“Just down the hall, helping the older couple who had just come to visit her. The woman was really upset. He was helping them down the hallway when he looked back and saw someone go into the room. He went back.” She shrugged. “Good thing too. The man’s name didn’t match the nurses or CNAs written on the whiteboard in her room. Then the guard noticed the syringe. He knocked it out of the man’s hand. There was a scuffle, the assailant ran out and both went down the stairwell.”
“Where is he?”
“Who?”
“Whoever the hell just tried to give my wife whateve
r is in that bag.”
Sabino took a deep breath. “We’re working on it.”
He didn’t say anything for a minute, just reminded himself that she was fine. His wife was fine. He speared the doc with a look. “When will her tox screens be back and when will we know what he tried to give her?”
“Not long,” the doc said. “For her tox screens. I have nothing to do with what’s in the syringe, but I’d appreciate a speedy update to compare to her blood work just in case he managed to get some of it in her.”
Agent Sabino nodded. “You’ll be the first I notify. I’m off to the lab now.” She touched his arm. “Your wife is one lucky woman, Mr. Kinncaid.”
He watched her walk down the hallway. To the doctor he asked, “You’re sure she’s fine?”
The doctor sighed. “For now, yes. As I said, I’m waiting on blood work and it shouldn’t be long. We put a rush on it.”
He nodded. “Thank you. How often, how easy is it for someone to do this?”
The doctor shifted. “Well, can’t say I ever remember something like this happening in the years I’ve been here.”
Quinlan let him walk away and ran a hand over his face. He knew he shouldn’t have left her.
Aiden whistled down the hallway and jerked his head for Quin. He walked to his brother. “What?”
“Older couple, came to see Ella. They’re really upset. I take it they’re the Richardsons.” He cut his eyes to the waiting room.
Quinlan sighed and walked to the elderly couple.
“Is she okay? What happened? No one will tell us anything,” Mrs. Richardson said.
“She’s fine. She’s resting. They’re running some blood tests to make sure, but they believe she’s fine.”
“What was all the excitement and cops and everything?”
He took a deep breath. He wasn’t about to tell them someone had possibly just tried to kill his wife. Instead he said, “I don’t know all the details, they’re working on it. I was in the cafeteria.”
Mrs. Richardson started to cry. “This is just all wrong. All wrong. We told her and told her to call you and tell you the truth. She was so worried and—”
