Lisa Jackson's the Abandoned Box Set

by Lisa Jackson

  One of the deputies, the shorter one with a flat face and salt-and-pepper hair, was staring straight at her. He didn’t bother with a smile. “Chandra Hill?”

  “Yes?”

  He stiff-armed the elevator, holding the doors open, as if to ensure that she wouldn’t escape. “I’m Deputy Bodine, and this is Deputy White.” He motioned with his head toward the other man in uniform. “If you don’t mind, we’d like to ask you a few questions about the child you found on your property.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  “SO I FOLLOWED the ambulance here,” Chandra said, finishing her story as the two officers listened, alternately exchanging glances and sipping their coffee as she explained how she discovered the abandoned child.

  Deputy Stan Bodine, the man who was asking the questions, slid his cafeteria chair closer to the table. “And you have no idea who the mother might be?”

  “Not a clue,” Chandra replied, tired of repeatedly answering the same questions. “I know it’s strange, but that’s what happened. Someone just left the baby in my barn.” What was it about everyone in the hospital? Why were they so damned disbelieving? Aware of the curious glances cast her way by a few members of the staff who had come down to the cafeteria for their breaks, Chandra leaned across the table and met the deputy’s direct gaze. “Why would I lie?”

  “We didn’t say—”

  “I know, but I can tell you don’t believe me.”

  Deputy White, the younger of the two, stopped writing in his notepad. With thin blond hair, narrow features and a slight build, he wasn’t the least bit intimidating. In fact, he seemed almost friendly. Here, at least, was one man who seemed to trust that she was telling the truth.

  Deputy Bodine was another story. As bulky as the younger man was slim, Bodine carried with him a cynical attitude honed by years with the Sheriff’s Department. His expression was cautiously neutral, but suspicion radiated from him in invisible waves. As he swilled the bitter coffee and chewed on a day-old Danish he’d purchased at the counter, Chandra squirmed in her chair.

  “No one said we didn’t believe you,” Bodine answered patiently. “But it’s kind of an outrageous story, don’t you think?”

  “It’s the truth.”

  “And we’ve seen lots of cases where someone has… changed the facts a little to protect someone.”

  “I’m not protecting anyone!” Chandra’s patience hung by a fragile thread. She’d brought the baby to the hospital to get the poor child medical attention, and this cynic from the Sheriff’s Department, as well as the good Dr. O’Rourke, were acting as if she were some kind of criminal. Only Deputy White seemed to trust her. “Look, if you don’t believe me, you’re welcome to check out all my acquaintances and relatives. I just found the baby. That’s all. Someone apparently left him in the barn. I don’t know why. There was no trace of the mother—or anyone else for that matter.” To keep her hands busy, she rolled her cup in her fingers, and a thought struck her. “The only clue as to who the child might be could come from his swaddling. He was wrapped in a blanket—not the one I brought him here in—and an old army jacket.”

  Bodine perked up a bit. “Where’s the jacket?”

  “Back at my cabin.”

  “We’ll pick it up in the morning. And don’t disturb anything in that stall where you found the kid…or the rest of the barn for that matter.” He took another bite of his Danish and washed it down with a swallow of coffee. Several crumbs fell onto the white table. He crumpled his cup. Without getting up from his chair, he tossed the wadded cup high into the air and watched as it bounced off the rim of a trash container.

  The younger man clucked his tongue and tucked his notepad into his pocket. “I don’t think the Nuggets will be drafting you this season,” he joked. He shoved out his chair and picked up the discarded cup to arc it perfectly into the trash can.

  “Lucky shot,” Bodine grumbled.

  Chandra was just grateful they were leaving. As Bodine scraped his chair back, Dr. O’Rourke strode into the room. He was as rumpled as before, though obviously his shift was over. His lab coat was missing, and he was wearing worn jeans, an off-white flannel shirt and a sheepskin jacket.

  “Just the man we wanted to see,” Bodine said, settling back in his chair. Chandra’s hopes died. She wanted this interrogation over with.

  “So I heard.” O’Rourke paid for a cup of coffee and joined the group. “Nurse Pratt said you needed some information on Baby Doe. I’ve left a copy of the admittance forms at the E.R. desk, and I’ll send you a complete physical description of the child, as well as that of his condition, as soon as it’s transcribed, probably by the afternoon. I can mail it or—”

  “We’ll pick it up,” Bodine cut in, kicking back his chair a little so that he could view both Chandra and O’Rourke in one glance. “Save us all some time. Anything specific we should know right now?”

  “Just that the baby is jaundiced, with a swelling on the right side of his head, probably from a difficult birth. Other than that, he looks pretty healthy. We’re keeping him isolated, and we’re still running tests, but he’s eating and giving all the nurses a bad time.”

  Chandra swallowed a smile. So O’Rourke did have a sense of humor after all.

  The doctor continued. “A pediatrician will examine him as soon as he gets here, and we’ll give you a full report.”

  “Anything else?” White asked, scribbling quickly in his notepad again. He was standing now, but writing as quickly as before.

  “Just one thing,” O’Rourke replied, his gaze sliding to Chandra before returning to the two deputies. “The umbilical cord wasn’t severed neatly or clamped properly.”

  Bodine dusted his hands. “Meaning?”

  “Meaning that the baby probably wasn’t born in a hospital. I’d guess that the child was delivered without any medical expertise at all. The mother probably just went into labor about three days ago, experienced some difficulty, and when the baby finally arrived, used a pair of scissors or a dull knife to cut the cord.”

  Chandra sucked in her breath and O’Rourke’s gaze swung to her. She cringed at the thought of the baby being born in anything less than sterile surroundings, though, of course, she knew it happened often enough.

  “What do you think?” O’Rourke asked, blue eyes drilling into hers.

  “I don’t know. I didn’t really look at the cord, only to see that it wasn’t bleeding.” Why would he ask her opinion?

  “You examined the infant, didn’t you?”

  Chandra’s response died on her tongue. Dr. O’Rourke didn’t know anything about her, she assumed, especially her past, and she intended to keep it that way. She’d come to this part of the country for the express purpose of burying her past, and she wasn’t about to unearth it now. She fiddled with her coffee cup. “Yes, I examined him.”

  “And you were right on with your diagnosis.”

  No reason to explain. Not here. The Sheriff’s Department and Dr. O’Rourke—and the rest of the world, for that matter—might find out all about her eventually, but not tonight. “I’ve had medical training,” she replied, the wheels turning in her mind. “I work as a white-water and camping guide. We’re required to know basic first aid, and I figure the more I know, the better I can handle any situation. So, yes, I’ve taken every medical course I could.”

  O’Rourke seemed satisfied; his gaze seemed less suspicious and his eyes turned a warmer shade of blue.

  Bodine stood and hiked up his pants. “Well, even if you don’t think the baby was delivered in a hospital, it won’t hurt to check and find out if anyone’s missing a boy.”

  “Missing from a hospital?” Chandra asked.

  O’Rourke lifted a dark eyebrow. “What better place to steal a newborn?”

  “Steal?” she repeated.

  Squaring his hat on his head, Deputy Bodine said, “The black-market baby business is booming these days.”

  “You think someone stole this baby then left him in my barn? That�
�s crazy—”

  Bodine smiled his first genuine smile of the night. “Sounds a little farfetched, I admit, but we have to consider every angle. Could be that whoever took Baby Doe could have holed up in your barn for the night and something went wrong. Or they left him there while they went searching for food or more permanent shelter.”

  “Or you could’ve scared ’em off,” Deputy White added.

  Chandra shook her head. “There was no one in the barn. And I live nearly ten miles from the nearest store.”

  “We’ll check out all the possibilities in the morning,” Bodine assured her. Turning his gaze to O’Rourke, he said, “Thanks, Doctor. Ms. Hill.”

  The deputies left, and Chandra, not even realizing how tense she’d become, felt her shoulders slowly relax.

  “So how’s he doing?” she asked, surprised at her own anxiety, as if she and that tiny baby were somehow connected, though they weren’t, of course. The child belonged to someone else. And probably, within the next few hours, Bodine and White would discover the true identity of Baby Doe and to whom he belonged. Chandra only hoped that the parents had one hell of an explanation for abandoning their child.

  “The boy’ll be fine,” O’Rourke predicted, stretching his long legs in front of him. He sipped from his cup, scowled at the bitter taste and set the cup on the table, content to let the steam rise to his face in a dissipating cloud. Chandra noticed the lines of strain around the edges of his mouth, the droop at the corners of his eyelids.

  “Can I see him?” she asked.

  “In the morning.”

  “It is the morning.”

  His gaze locked with hers and the warmth she’d noticed earlier suddenly fled. “Look, Ms. Hill, I think you and the kid both need some rest. I know I do.” As if to drive home his point, he rubbed a kink from his shoulders. “You can see him around ten.”

  “But he is eating.” She’d heard him say so before, of course, but she couldn’t stem the question or the concern she felt for the child.

  A whisper of a smile crossed the doctor’s thin lips. “Nurse Pratt can barely keep up with him.” O’Rourke took another swallow of his coffee, his unsettling eyes regarding Chandra over the rim of his cup. She felt nervous and flustered, though she forced herself to remain outwardly calm. “So who do you think left him in your barn?” he asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “No pregnant friends who needed help?”

  Her lips twisted wryly. “I already told the deputies, if I had friends who needed help, I wouldn’t suggest they use one of my stalls as a birthing room. They could’ve come into the house or I would’ve driven them to the hospital. I think, somehow, we would’ve found ‘room at the inn,’ so to speak.”

  O’Rourke arched a thick eyebrow, and his lips twitched, as if he were suppressing a smile. “Look, there’s no reason to get defensive. I’m just looking for some answers.”

  “I gave all of mine to the deputies,” she replied, tired of the unspoken innuendoes. She leaned forward, and her hair fell in front of her shoulders. “Now you look, Doctor O’Rourke, if I knew anything about that baby—anything at all—I’d pass that information along.”

  He didn’t speak, but his relentless stare continued to bother her. The man was so damn intimidating, used to getting his way—a handsome, arrogant son of a gun who was used to calling the shots. She could see he was tired, irritated, but a little amused at her quick temper. “You know,” she said, “I expected the third degree from the police, but not from you.”

  He lifted a shoulder. “The more I know about the child, the better able I am to take care of him. I just don’t want to make any mistakes.”

  She was about to retort, but the words didn’t pass her lips. Chandra knew far too well about making mistakes as a physician. Her throat closed at the sudden burst of memories, and it was all she could do to keep her hands from shaking. She took a quick drink of coffee, then licked her lips. When she looked up at O’Rourke again, she found him staring at her so intently that she was certain he could see past the web of lies she’d so carefully woven around her life here in Ranger, Colorado. Did he know? Could he guess that she, too, had once been a physician?

  But no one knew about her past, and that’s the way she intended to keep it.

  The silence stretched between them, and she shuffled her feet as if to rise. It was late, and she wanted to get some sleep before she returned later in the morning, and yet there was something mesmerizing about Dr. O’Rourke that kept her glued to her chair. He was good-looking in a sensual way that unnerved her, but she’d been around lots of good-looking men, none of whom had gotten under her skin the way O’Rourke had. Maybe it was because he was a doctor, or maybe it was because she was anxious about the baby, or maybe he was just so damned irresistible that even she, a woman who’d sworn off men, and most specifically men with medical degrees, was fascinated. She nearly choked on her coffee.

  As if sensing she was about to flee, he finished his coffee and cleared his throat. “You know,” he said, tenting his hands under his chin, “you’d better get used to answering questions, because the minute the press gets wind of this story, you’re going to be asked to explain a helluva lot more than you have tonight.”

  The press. Her heart dropped like a stone and memories rushed over her—painful memories of dealing with reporters, photographers, cameramen. Oh, God, she couldn’t face them again. She wasn’t ready for the press. What if some hotshot reporter saw fit to dig into her background, through her personal life? Her hands grew suddenly damp. She slid her arms through the sleeves of the jacket she’d tossed over the back of her chair. “I think I can handle a few reporters,” she lied, hoping she sounded far more confident than she felt.

  “It’ll be more than a few. Think about it. This could be the story of the year. Christmas is only a few months away, and the press just loves this kind of gut-wrenching drama.”

  “You could be wrong.”

  O’Rourke shook his head and stifled a yawn. “Nope. An abandoned baby, a complicated, unexplained birth, perhaps a missing mother, the mystery child swaddled only in an old army jacket—could it be the father’s?—it all makes interesting copy.” Rubbing a hand around his neck, he added, “You’ll have a couple of reporters from the Banner, maybe someone from Denver. Not to mention the local television stations. My guess is that this story will go regional at least.” He lifted his eyebrows speculatively, as if he believed he were far more informed than she. Typical. “And once the story hits the news services, I’ll bet that neither one of us is gonna get a moment’s rest.” He crossed one battered running shoe over the other and rested his heels on the seat of the chair Deputy White had recently vacated.

  “Are you trying to scare me?” Chandra asked.

  “Just preparing you for the inevitable.”

  “I can handle it,” she assured him, while wondering what it was about this man that made her bristle. One minute she wanted to argue with him, the next she wanted to trust him with her very life. Good Lord, she must be more tired than she’d guessed. She’d instinctively come to depend on him because he was a doctor—the one man who could keep her in contact with the baby. After all, he could stop her from seeing the child.

  Deep down, though, she knew her anger wasn’t really directed at Dr. O’Rourke specifically. In fact, her wrath wasn’t really aimed at doctors in general; just at a few doctors she’d known in her past, especially a particularly egotistical plastic surgeon to whom she’d once been married: Douglas Patrick Pendleton, M.D., P.C., and all-around jerk.

  Now she couldn’t afford to have Dr. O’Rourke against her. Not only was he her link to the child, there was a chance he might help her with the press and the Sheriff’s Department—not that she needed any help, she reminded herself. But Dr. O’Rourke did seem fair and was probably sometimes kind, even though he appeared ragged and cynical around the edges.

  “I guess I am tired,” she finally said, as half an apology. Dr. O’Rourke wasn’t
the least bit like Doug. No, this man with his rugged good looks, beat-up running shoes and worn jacket looked more like a mountain climber than an emergency-room physician. She couldn’t imagine him reading medical journals or prescribing blood-pressure medicine or attending medical conferences in Chicago or New York.

  And yet it did seem possible that he could care for an abandoned infant. On that score, Chandra was comfortable. O’Rourke, she sensed, was a good doctor, the kind of man who had dedicated himself to people in need rather than to the almighty dollar. Unless the unshaven jaw, worn clothes and fatigue were all part of an act.

  She didn’t think so. His gaze was too honest. Cutting, yes. Intense, certainly. But honest.

  Scraping back her chair, she stood and thrust her hand across the table. “Thanks for all the help.”

  He clasped her palm with his big hand, and she forced a smile, though Dr. O’Rourke didn’t return the favor. As his fingers surrounded hers, the doctor stared at her with those electric blue eyes that could look straight into her soul, and her face suddenly felt hot.

  Quickly, Chandra yanked back her hand and stuffed it into the pocket of her jeans. Her voice nearly failed her. “I’ll be back later,” she assured him as she turned and marched out of the cafeteria, hoping he didn’t guess that she’d reacted to his touch. She was tired, that was all. Tired and nervous about the infant. God, what a night!

  * * *

  DALLAS WATCHED CHANDRA HILL retreat. A fascinating woman, he thought grudgingly as he swirled the dregs of coffee in his cup. There was something about her that didn’t quite click, an attitude that didn’t fit with the rest of her.

  Still, she intrigued him. The feel of her hand in his had caused his heart to race a second, and she’d reacted, too—he’d seen the startled look in her eyes as she’d drawn back. He laughed inwardly. If she only knew how safe she was with him. He’d sworn off beautiful women long ago, and despite her uncombed hair, hastily donned clothes and face devoid of makeup, Chandra Hill was gorgeous.