Stolen Goods: A Secret Baby Romance

by Lola White

  “Apparently,” the chief explained, “Milliken got his nose out of joint back when he and his wife got divorced. The court ordered them to sell all the possessions they’d bought together and split the proceeds, except Milliken had a Lepine he was pretty damned attached to.”

  Nolan hefted a brow. “A Lepine?”

  “It’s a painting.”

  “Actually, Stanislas Lepine was an artist, but, please, continue.” Nolan waved the man on.

  “Well, Milliken didn’t want to get rid of an original work of art, so he hired a forger to make a new one to sell.”

  “Netting him the money from the forgery and allowing him to keep the original.” Nolan nodded as the crime started taking shape in his brain.

  “Milliken claims the woman he saw last week was the forger, name of Moon, but that’s all he knows about her. He says she threatened to let it be known that the painting he sold for a hefty, five-digit sum was, in fact, a forgery, and that he knew it was a forgery.”

  “That does make a difference in sentencing, yes. If he specifically commissioned the forgery for the sole purpose of sale, duping the buyer, well, that comes with extra penalties.” Nolan mentally ran through the ramifications. “Okay, so he was blackmailed. He still committed a crime.”

  “And we’re looking into that,” the chief agreed.

  “Uh-huh.” Nolan spun on his heel and gulped his coffee. “You didn’t catch the sperm thief, though.”

  “No. Just Doctor Milliken’s illegal procedure.” Director Trentham grimaced. “In his confession, he confirmed that the woman, Moon, chose your sample for the insemination.”

  Nolan came to a stop in front of Trentham and slammed his paper cup down on her desk. Leaning low, he braced his hands on the edge and purposefully gave her his most intimidating glare. “For the record, I’ve never donated a sample to this clinic. I’ve never signed anything that gave permission to store my little army, or to give it up to my bitch of a lying ex-wife who must have forged my fucking signature so she could hold on to a goddamned pipe dream.”

  “We didn’t know.” Trentham shook her head, remaining calm in the face of his anger. “I didn’t know. All I have to go by are the papers in our files.”

  “That is the sole reason I haven’t ripped you a new one by now.” Nolan straightened. “But you better fucking believe my lawyers will be contacting the board that runs this place.”

  Trentham slowly got to her feet. “Fair enough, Agent Findley. Would you care to see the security footage now?”

  The picture quality was excellent. Nolan sat in his chair doing everything he could to keep his breathing even, in spite of how his lungs had seemed to turn inside out. To help ease his agitation, he whipped out his pad and took notes.

  The woman came through the side entrance typically reserved for deliveries—toilet paper and carpet cleaner, not baby deliveries, which Nolan made certain to differentiate in his report. She didn’t act furtive, she didn’t act suspicious and she didn’t glance around in a manner that could even possibly be construed as mysterious. She was, however, obviously guarded, reserved and distrusting of Doctor Milliken, as evidenced by the way she attempted to avoid even accidental contact with him. She refused to shake his hand and when he bumped into her going around the first corner of the hallway, the woman flinched violently. It appeared she’d given the doctor a dressing down too, but the cameras weren’t equipped for sound, so Nolan only had her flying hands to judge by.

  The woman’s face was pretty in a sweet, wholesome, unremarkable way totally at odds with the peculiar crime she’d committed. Rounded cheeks and chin, though tending toward gaunt, as if she’d missed a few too many meals recently. She had blonde hair verging on light brown, tucked back into a wispy braid that reached her shoulders. Ordinary, nothing exotic or spectacular or eye-catching.

  Her body was harder to catalogue due to the sheer volume of fabric covering it. Nolan would have guessed she possessed an average build, and even made a note of it, but long hours into the surveillance proved him wrong. The angle of one camera was able to catch just a portion of the interior of the room Milliken had led her to, and, once he’d left, she disrobed without self-consciousness.

  She was thin and pale and drab, yet Nolan became riveted. Just the simple act of her pulling her shirt over her head had him stilling in his seat and holding his breath, until he got a good look at what was underneath. Skin marked by a few visible scars made him wonder what sort of trauma she’d known and the shadows along her ribcage made him estimate how many times a week she skipped eating. She was too skinny, making her hipbones more prominent than necessary.

  Nolan shifted in his chair as he watched the process. Guilt and awkwardness stormed through him, making him more fidgety than he dared to show. With Trentham at his side giving him a running monologue of every piece of equipment visible in the room and its function, he couldn’t show her how affected he was by the sight of one thin woman…who was about to impregnate herself with his sperm.

  Jesus, he had a raging hard-on.

  Nolan didn’t know what was wrong with him. The woman was nothing special—should have been nothing special. Ordinary and commonplace, no discernible features to make her stand apart from the crowd beyond the scars she’d kept hidden under her clothes. The heated wave of awareness that insisted on traveling up and down his spine was surely nothing more than anger, betrayal and confusion over why someone would go to such lengths to conceive his child.

  The idea that his ex-wife had put the woman up to it as a surrogate was firmly lodged in Nolan’s mind. He didn’t know the truth of it, but it wouldn’t surprise him. After all, why his sample? It was enough to make him want to leave immediately and demand answers from his ex.

  But Nolan was glued to his chair. “Will her weight affect the chances of conception?” he asked.

  “Yes.” Trentham made a soft noise Nolan interpreted as pity. “There are many factors at play, Agent Findley. I believe I can set your mind at ease about her chances of conception. They have dwindled with each new thing I’ve learned about our little criminal, and now I hardly think it’s even possible for her to have had a successful implantation.”

  Nolan cleared his throat, unsure of how he felt about that statement. “Why mine?”

  “Milliken only said she picked. I don’t think he was privy to the inner workings of her reasoning.”

  “Huh.” Nolan did his best to find a comfortable way to sit in the chair that suddenly felt too confining and watch the rest of the film.

  Hours passed as the footage rolled on. There were times Nolan became so uncomfortable he could hardly breathe, but he sat like stone and waited it out. His belly flipped like a circus act, but he watched the whole process and ignored the demanding ache in his balls. And the squeezing around his heart.

  “It seems like that should take longer,” he whispered, only half-aware he spoke out loud.

  “It’s outpatient surgery,” Trentham explained. “I will admit we usually do this with a bit more finesse and a qualified anesthesiologist, but this was an illegal procedure, so that should be taken into account.”

  “She wasn’t comfortable being alone with him, half-naked.”

  Trentham nodded. “I noticed.”

  “It makes me curious about her.”

  “Agent Findley, I’m sure there are many things that make you curious about the woman. Do you think you’ll find her?”

  Nolan took a deep breath and felt determination fill his lungs in equal measure with oxygen. His heart pounded and his blood heated, his answer was grim. “I won’t stop until I do.”

  3

  It took two days to get his first lead.

  Nolan only flinched a little when the file folder landed on his desk with a flat thwack that indicated there wasn’t much inside. He glanced up to see one of the newer agents standing in front of him.

  “Weslyn Marie Moon,” his coworker said cheerfully. “You got lucky. The San Diego office had a grainy photo.
They believe she’s responsible for an art forgery connected to a murder they were looking into a couple years back.”

  “A murder?” Nolan snapped up the folder. “They think she’s involved?”

  “Not anymore.” The other agent shook his head. “Guy commissioned a painting from her. A few days after she dropped it off, he turned up dead. He had a cheap security camera watching his premises and San Diego PD picked up the surveillance footage.”

  Nolan lifted a brow in his comrade’s direction. “Did they bring her in?”

  “Didn’t find her and they’re not wasting time looking.” The other man shook his head again. “I talked to the agent in charge of the case. Lot of money involved, but it’s low priority. Nobody can even say for sure if she’s the artist, but her name came up.”

  “Low priority?” Nolan scanned the first few sheets inside the folder he held. “It says here she was wanted for questioning concerning a forgery of a Hobbema masterpiece.”

  The other agent nodded. “The guy gave a fake Hobbema landscape to his dope supplier, but the supplier obviously wasn’t satisfied. Local police caught the guy’s thugs responsible for the murder and nobody seems to know who the girl is. She’s only on the hook for forging art.”

  “Doctor Milliken commissioned a fake Lepine from the lady. Guess she’s got a thing for nature.”

  “If that’s what you call it. I mean, where are the ‘happy little trees’ huh? The pictures in that folder look like the drab things my grandma used to hang over the back of her couch.”

  “Have a little more respect for great art.” Nolan’s exhale ruffled the edge of the paper he held. “Why would a drug dealer want a phony landscape with a lesser-known Dutch Master’s signature on it?”

  “He was a very high end dealer. He had twelve forged paintings and drawings in his house, but only the Hobbema was from Moon.” The other man winced. “San Diego PD put it down as coincidence. She wasn’t involved in anything else.”

  “Nothing but forging art and stealing jizz.” Nolan flipped through the meager contents of the folder to find the woman’s photo.

  He stared at the picture, but it didn’t have the answers he sought. It was hard to see anything noteworthy in the photo at all, considering the quality of the print. Only the side of the woman’s face was visible and the background was nearly too dark to make out what she was wearing. Still, the curve of her jaw seemed like a match, and the angle of her chin could possibly be the same.

  Maybe…maybe…but the black and white image in his hand didn’t come close to capturing the quiet caution of the woman on camera at the Barre Birth and Reproductive Center. It didn’t sizzle with the hidden vitality of the woman herself.

  Nolan threw the photo down in frustration. “How in the hell do they think anyone could make a positive ID from this?”

  “Ah, Findley, don’t underestimate the technology we have today. Computers have come so far.” The other agent leaned forward to tap the photo in about the spot the woman’s ear would be. “Side profiles are nearly as good as fingerprints, you know.”

  “I need more.” Nolan ran his gaze over the photo again. “This is a good start, though.”

  A week later, Nolan found Weslyn Moon’s birth certificate. Another week after that, he found documents giving the state of Pennsylvania custody over her. He was surprised to learn that her mother had tried to remand her three children to the state when Weslyn was only two years old.

  Nolan looked into the paperwork, which took another month to track down. He used all the persuasive charm in his repertoire to get the clerks to let him have a peek, but the effort paid off—for his own curiosity, if not for the unofficial case he was working.

  Just days after a hospital stay in which Welsyn’s mother had been treated for broken ribs, she’d visited Child Protective Services. Over the course of a decade, Weslyn’s mother had also suffered broken wrists, legs, a fractured jaw and a handful of concussions. She was a clumsy woman. She had a terrible, fatal accident just days after the state came for her children. Her husband asked to take his children to their mother’s funeral, and the whole family disappeared for several years.

  Slipped through the cracks.

  When they resurfaced, ten years later and a thousand miles from where they’d started, they were a member down. Weslyn Moon’s sister was found in a ditch—bloody, broken and sexually assaulted before death. Weslyn had a broken leg. The state dug through the little that was known about the family and sent for the old case files from their previous home. Weslyn and her brother were taken from her remaining parent, but father and son were reunited in jail, which, in Nolan’s opinion, was exactly where the two abusive bastards belonged.

  Throughout the next month, Nolan gathered evidence of Weslyn’s time in foster care. Only one of her four homes was deplorable, the rest truly tried to reign in the lost and bitter little girl Weslyn had been. She had a juvenile record as a runaway—and opening those files had taken a lot of string-pulling on Nolan’s behalf. Whatever rebellion she’d possessed in her soul, however, came out in an unusually quiet resistance to authority. She was stubborn and reserved, and tended to stay away from home for days in a row, though she almost always came back.

  As a teenager, she didn’t get into fights, she didn’t steal and she didn’t commit major crimes. Predominantly trespassing, breaking curfew and skipping school, a few slaps on the wrist for being intoxicated in public—until her late teens, when she was picked up, high as hell and carrying a good deal of marijuana. It was enough to have her charged with distribution, but the court sentenced her to rehab instead.

  Thirty days later she got out. A week after that, she was admitted to the hospital with broken ribs. Like her mother, so long before. Her boyfriend was picked up for assault because the quiet little mouse had the brass balls to press charges. Then she fingered him for the weed and testified against him. She moved across country and he got a year in prison.

  The manila folder marked ‘Weslyn Marie Moon’ got thicker. Much thicker. And still Nolan kept looking for more information, more clues as to who the cautious, delicate criminal was. She haunted him day and night, until she was almost a memory, a fascinating companion in his search for the truth.

  He had to know more about her, had to learn everything he could.

  “She’s become an obsession for you.”

  Nolan rocked back on his heels and tried not to scream at his superior. “No, sir. I’m just trying to figure out what happened.”

  “Four months, and half the information you’ve gotten has nothing to do with her crimes at the Reproductive Center, Findley.”

  “I’ve been trying to figure out if my ex put her up to this. You know that”

  “I also know your ex has denied any involvement.”

  “She’s known to lie, sir.”

  The Special Agent in Charge of the Buffalo field office shook his head, but also started to hand Nolan a sheet of paper, before holding it just out of reach. “I shouldn’t give this to you. I should have had someone else take over your investigation a long time ago, Findley. Four months is way too long to be digging around a woman’s past for no reason.”

  “There is a reason,” Nolan snapped. “I told you, she forges art—”

  “Relax.” The other man shook the paper he held. “I’m giving this to you, aren’t I? That’s her address. Had to push a little, but a family planning clinic in Chicago finally admitted to taking her on as a patient.”

  Adrenaline slammed through Nolan’s body. Lightheaded, ears ringing and hands shaking, he accepted the paper and looked it over. A minor revolt took place in his chest. He couldn’t identify what he was experiencing, didn’t even know if there were enough words in the English language to describe it, but he struggled to keep his fingers from clenching the paper, and he locked his knees against their need to buckle.

  Her image flashed through his head. Quiet and reserved, pretty, fragile and delicate. And possibly pregnant with his child. The same im
age he’d seen day after day and night after night, haunting his dreams.

  It took three tries to form words. “Family planning?”

  “The clinic also focuses on general women’s health, too, Findley. Remember what that doctor in Vermont told you. It’s almost guaranteed those eggs never took inside her.”

  Still, still. Nolan breathed deep and held it in for as long as possible. His head swam, his pulse spiked. He didn’t want to think about the surge of hope that prodded at his sanity or what it possibly meant.

  He was about to get his own, personal Public Enemy Number One. That was all.

  “I’m going to need some time off,” he mumbled.

  4

  The knock on the door had Weslyn Moon freezing in place. After all, when a woman lived alone in a motel room on that side of town, visitors didn’t just drop in. She’d paid for the month, so she knew it couldn’t be management and there was no one else with a reason to come calling.

  The knock turned into a bang.

  She crept toward the door, more aware of the flimsiness of the barrier than ever before. For the pittance she paid every week to stay at the motel, however, she couldn’t expect quality construction materials. Moving slow and steady, she carefully put her fingertips against the painted plywood and lifted to her toes to peer out the peep hole. Nothing. She eased back until her heels were on the floor.

  Somebody was out there. She could feel the stranger’s presence like a thunderstorm moving in—her whole body tingled under an electric force that seemed to pressurize the air in front of Weslyn’s face. Her heart pounded but she took deep breaths, determined to make good use of the breathing techniques she’d learned at the free classes she’d been taking. She rejected stress as an unwholesome and unnecessary inconvenience.

  The banging stopped. Weslyn would have relaxed, but for the weighted premonition racing down her spine and pulling her skin into an ugly rash of goose bumps. Without thought, she stepped back and placed her hands over her navel. She held her breath.