Safeguarding the Surrogate

by Delores Fossen

  Kara definitely didn’t ask him to clarify what thing. She knew. And she just happened to agree with him. Unfortunately, she wasn’t sure their feelings for each other were in their control. It was hard to turn off the heat when you didn’t know how or when your body kept urging you to do something about it. Still, she made a sound of agreement and hoped that being under the same roof with Daniel wouldn’t break down the defenses she was trying to build to contain this heat.

  As if relieved over the interruption, Daniel immediately took out his phone when it rang. “It’s the fertility clinic,” he relayed to her, and he hit the speaker function as he answered, “Deputy Logan from Mercy Ridge.”

  “Hello,” the woman said, and that one-word greeting seemed very shaky. Of course, with a murder inside the clinic, Kara suspected that tensions and fear were running high. “I’m Betty Hyde. I was Loretta’s assistant, and I’ll be taking over her duties until they can hire someone else.”

  The woman’s voice not only cracked but Kara could hear her breath break into a sob.

  “You were close to Loretta?” Daniel asked.

  “No. Not really. But... God, she’s dead. Someone killed her.”

  “I know. I’m sorry.” In contrast, Daniel kept his voice level and calm. “I know this is a hard time for you and everyone else there, but I’m hoping you can help.”

  “Yes,” Betty muttered. “The other cops told me that you needed copies of any threatening letters and emails we’ve received in the last year. I’ve got those for you. Well, I have the letters, including the one from the person who claimed to have killed Brenda McGill, but someone hacked into our computer files about two months ago and deleted a lot of stuff. Including the email threats.”

  Daniel and she exchanged a knowing glance. Kara seriously doubted that was a coincidence. One of those deleted threats would have likely pointed to the killer.

  “There are two letters in particular that caught my attention,” Betty went on a moment later. “The first is the one that mentioned Brenda. There’s no name, no signature and the crime lab wasn’t able to find any DNA on it. The police still have the original, but there’s a copy here in our files.”

  Kara hadn’t known the letter had been tested, but she was glad the San Antonio cops were taking those kinds of measures. Too bad the person who’d written it hadn’t left behind any kind of trace evidence.

  “And the other letter that caught your attention?” Daniel prompted.

  “There’s no signature or return address on it, either,” Betty explained. “I can send you a copy of it.”

  “Do that,” Daniel insisted, giving the woman his email address. “In the meantime, give me the gist of the letter.”

  “The person threatened the clinic,” Betty said without hesitation. “Other clinics in the city were threatened as well, and the same language was used in each one. Using a lot of profanity, he said he was going to make everyone pay, that we’d all be sorry for turning innocent young girls into surrogates.”

  “He?” Daniel questioned. “You’re sure the person who wrote it was a man?”

  “Yes. Well, I’m sure if he’s telling the truth. He claims to have had a daughter who was talked into becoming a surrogate, and she died.”

  Kara immediately got a flash of a memory. When Maryanne and she had been researching the clinic, Kara had read something about a surrogate dying shortly after giving birth.

  “Do you know the name of the surrogate who died?” Kara asked. Then she remembered that she hadn’t introduced herself so Betty wouldn’t have any idea who she was. “I’m Kara Holland. I was a surrogate at Willingham, and last night someone tried to kill me.”

  Kara heard the woman’s sharp intake of breath. “So, you think this is connected to what happened to Loretta?”

  “I do. Do you keep records on the surrogates after they deliver?” Kara pressed.

  “No, I’m sorry. The surrogates or the biological parents choose the facility and hospital where they want to receive medical care.”

  That had been true in Kara’s case. She’d chosen to give birth in Mercy Ridge, and she’d had no follow-up with Willingham Clinic after Sadie’s birth. Still, she pushed.

  “I remember hearing about a surrogate who died,” Kara said. “This would have been well over two years ago. I seem to recall she died from a blood clot a few days after she delivered.”

  “I’m sorry,” Betty repeated. “I don’t know anything...” Then she paused. “Wait. I do recall something like that.” Kara heard the click of keys on a computer keyboard. “I wasn’t working here then, but I heard someone mention it.”

  Obviously, Betty was searching for a name. Something that Kara was also doing. She remembered coming across the woman’s name during her research. It had been an awful tragedy, but Kara hadn’t put the blame for her death on the clinic.

  “Clarice Stroud,” Betty blurted out. “She was a surrogate here, but she died at a hospital in Austin.”

  Bingo. That was the same name Kara had seen, and she looked up at Daniel to see if he thought it might be an important connection. He did.

  “I’ll want a copy of that second letter,” Daniel reminded the woman, “and I’ll contact SAPD to have them pick up the original. I want them to have another look at it and send it to the lab.”

  “Of course,” Betty agreed. “I’ll get that copy to you right away.”

  “One more thing,” Daniel said. “Could you give me the next-of-kin contact for Clarice Stroud? It’s important,” he added when she made a sound to indicate that might be a problem. “This could end up saving another woman’s life.”

  “Oh, God,” Betty muttered, and after a few seconds, Kara heard more clicks on the keyboard. “Clarice only had one next of kin listed. Her father, Eldon Stroud. He lives on a ranch about thirty miles from where you are. Mercy Ridge.”

  Daniel jotted down the address Betty gave him, and the moment he ended the call, he made another one. To Barrett.

  “We’ve got a possible person of interest in the murders,” Daniel immediately told his brother. “I need you to get Eldon Stroud in ASAP for questioning.”

  Chapter Six

  Daniel read through the copy of the letter that Betty had just emailed him. The woman had been right about the profanity and the threats. The venom was practically coming off the words in dangerous, heated waves, but Daniel zoomed right in on one particular sentence.

  Somebody will pay for what happened to my girl.

  Daniel didn’t know the background of why Clarice Stroud had become a surrogate, not yet anyway, but if this letter was truly her father’s rantings, then he obviously believed his daughter had been pressured into going through with a pregnancy. A pregnancy that had perhaps contributed to her death.

  That caused Daniel to stop, and he cursed while he pressed in Barrett’s number again.

  “What’s wrong?” Kara asked. She was shoulder to shoulder with him as they sat at the kitchen table reading the letter on his laptop.

  “Whoever hired Clarice could be in danger,” he managed to explain right before Barrett answered. He ignored Kara’s gasp and told his brother what was going on. “Eldon’s daughter, Clarice, was a surrogate who died shortly after giving birth. We need a court order to find out whose baby she carried.”

  “I’ll get on that,” Barrett assured him. “I’m still trying to get in touch with Eldon. He’s not answering his phone so I’m going to send a deputy out to his place.”

  Good. Daniel wished he could be the one to go out and face down this man, but he couldn’t leave just yet. Not until he had Noreen, Sadie and Kara moved into the inn where they’d hopefully be safer than they were here at his ranch.

  “Go ahead and send Leo out here with a cruiser,” Daniel added to his brother.

  He didn’t want to drive them to the inn in his SUV in case of another attack. The cru
iser was bullet resistant, something that he prayed they wouldn’t need. Still, he wanted to take the precaution.

  When he got Barrett’s assurance that he’d take care of sending the cruiser, Daniel stood to check on Noreen and see if she was about ready to go, but the sound of an approaching vehicle stopped him. It was barely eight in the morning, and he wasn’t expecting any visitors.

  “Stay back,” he warned Kara.

  With the attack from the night before still way too fresh in his mind, he drew his gun and went to the front of the house to look out the window. The person he saw caused him to mutter some profanity.

  “Who is it?” Kara asked. He could hear the real question in her fear-laced voice. Is it the killer?

  “It’s Neal Rizzo,” he spat out.

  There was no need for him to explain to her who that was. Mercy Ridge was a small town where everybody knew everyone else’s business. That meant there wasn’t anybody over the age of five who hadn’t heard about Daniel’s run-ins with Neal Rizzo, his neighbor who liked to stir up trouble. If there was a beef to find, Rizzo would locate it and try to make it worse.

  That was especially true after their last run-in.

  A couple of months ago, Daniel had gotten an anonymous tip that Rizzo was a member of a militia group that might be stockpiling weapons, and Daniel had gone over to Rizzo’s ranch to have a chat with him. He hadn’t arrested Rizzo. Hadn’t gotten in his face. Too much. But he had made it clear to Rizzo that if he was involved in any illegal activity, he’d uncover it and arrest him.

  Rizzo hadn’t taken that well.

  Judging from the tight muscles in his face when he stepped from his truck, the man still wasn’t taking it well.

  “Stay back,” Daniel repeated to Kara.

  He disengaged the security system so he could open the door. Daniel stepped onto the porch, and as expected, that stopped Rizzo from coming closer. He doubted that Rizzo would do something stupid like open fire—especially considering that two of Daniel’s ranch hands were watching—but after the attack from the night before, he wasn’t taking any chances. He didn’t want Rizzo any closer to his house than he already was.

  Rizzo had brought his own ranch hands, and while they stayed in the truck, Daniel thought they looked more like hired thugs than cowboys. Maybe they were part of the militia group. If so, it was stupid for Rizzo to bring them here and try to rub it in Daniel’s face.

  “Some of your livestock broke fence and got onto my property,” Rizzo snarled.

  Daniel looked at his ranch hand Tanner Parnell to see if he knew anything about it. Tanner nodded. “It happened about an hour ago, and I was coming to tell you.” Tanner shot Rizzo a narrow-eyed glance. “But it doesn’t look as if the livestock tore down the fence. My guess is that someone did it.”

  Tanner gave Rizzo another of those glances, probably to emphasize that he believed Rizzo or one of his men were responsible. Daniel wouldn’t put it past Rizzo to give an order like that.

  “I’ll send you a bill because your livestock tore up some of my pasture,” Rizzo went on. “The next time it happens, something bad could happen to them. Maybe my men will mistake them for deer and shoot them.”

  “Then your men are dumber than dirt if they can’t tell the difference between an Angus and a deer. But just in case they are that stupid, you should probably know that the laws have tightened up on that sort of thing. The legal thing to do is inform me that my livestock are on your property and give me a chance to remove them.”

  That sure didn’t help the tight muscles in Rizzo’s jaw. Every inch of him vibrated with insult and anger.

  “And FYI, if you did shoot my cattle,” Daniel went on, “I’d have to examine the fence that you say they broke. Outside authorities would be called in to help with the investigation. It’d be interesting to find out if there’s any trace evidence or DNA that would ID the person responsible. That could result in all sorts of charges like destruction of property and cattle rustling.”

  Daniel hadn’t known for sure that Rizzo or his men had indeed cut that fence, but he knew it now. Rizzo confirmed it with the stone-cold glower he aimed at Daniel. The man certainly didn’t jump to deny that he’d done such a thing or that he’d ordered it to be done.

  “This isn’t over,” Rizzo spat out. “You’re not just going to stick your nose in my business and get away with it.”

  Daniel tapped his badge. “Your business is mine when you’re suspected of doing something illegal. The investigation into your involvement in the militia is open and ongoing. Cutting my fence isn’t going to make me step back on that.”

  That kicked the man’s anger up even higher. “You deserve to go down,” Rizzo threatened. “You deserve to burn in hell.”

  With that, Rizzo turned and stalked back to his truck. With his hand on the butt of his weapon, Daniel stood there and watched as he sped away. Even though Rizzo was gone, his rage still hung in the air like a dark and dangerous cloud.

  “You think we should set up cameras out in the pastures?” Tanner asked.

  It was something Daniel had already considered. Not because of Rizzo. But in case the threats from the killer continued. After all, he couldn’t stay at the inn indefinitely, and he’d have to beef up security in order to be able to live here with Sadie.

  “Arrange for the cameras,” Daniel instructed Tanner, and the hand took out his phone, no doubt to get that started.

  But Daniel continued to stand there. Thinking. Remembering that look on Rizzo’s face. The anger in his threat.

  And he had to consider something.

  The timing of this fence incident was maybe not a coincidence. News of the attack had to be all over Mercy Ridge, so maybe Rizzo wanted to add to the troubles. Or worse.

  Maybe Rizzo was the cause of them.

  Even though it was probably a long stretch, Daniel went back to something that Betty had said. The fertility clinic’s records had been hacked into two months ago. That was around the same time that Daniel had confronted Rizzo about his ties to the militia. Rizzo knew full well that Kara, Maryanne and he had used that clinic to have Sadie, so maybe...

  Hell.

  Was that possible?

  Had Rizzo set some kind of sick plan in motion? One with an ultimate goal to stop him from digging further into the militia investigation?

  “What’s wrong?” he heard Kara ask.

  He glanced over his shoulder to see her in the foyer. A new wave of worry was in her eyes.

  “You heard what Rizzo said?” Daniel asked, going back in. He moved her away from the door so he could shut it and reset the security system.

  Kara nodded and studied his face as if trying to figure out what was going on in his head. He doubted she would believe his theory, but he laid it out for her, anyway.

  “Rizzo’s bad news,” he said. “I haven’t been able to prove it, but he’s connected to a militia that’s involved in illegal arms sales.”

  Daniel paused only so he could figure out the best way to word the rest of what he was about to tell her, but Kara spoke before he could say anything else.

  “You believe he’s involved with the surrogate murders and last night’s attack on us?” she asked.

  Believe was a strong word. Right now, it was just something that had started to take root, and it could end up causing him to take a wrong turn with the investigation. “Rizzo’s got motive to want to get back at me, but he’s not stupid. He has to know if something happens to me now that he’d be a prime suspect.”

  Kara nodded. “But if Rizzo used the fertility clinic as a cover, then your death could be pinned on the surrogate killer.”

  He was glad she’d reached the same conclusion he had. Yes, it was possible that Rizzo was behind this.

  Possible.

  But a stronger suspect was Eldon Stroud. Daniel needed to question the man ASAP,
but he’d also do some checking to see if there was anything to connect Rizzo to the murders. Unfortunately, with those militia ties, Rizzo wouldn’t have necessarily had to hire a killer because he could have had one of his fellow militia cohorts do the deed. If that’d happened, there wouldn’t be a money trail. Still, people talked, and it wasn’t easy to keep multiple murders and attempted murders a secret.

  When Kara grew quiet, Daniel looked at her. Yeah, the fear was back, and he doubted it was all for her. The baby she’d carried and loved was caught up in the middle of this. And he might be the reason for the danger.

  Daniel silently cursed.

  “This isn’t your fault,” Kara murmured as if she’d known exactly what he was thinking. She touched his arm, gave it a gentle rub with just two of her fingers. “Even if it’s Rizzo who’s behind all of this, this isn’t your fault,” she emphasized.

  He wasn’t sure he could believe that, and it didn’t matter that he’d been doing his job when he’d questioned Rizzo. None of that mattered if the SOB went after anyone else.

  Once again, he found himself staring into Kara’s eyes. The fear was easing some. Not the worry, though. He figured that was here to stay until they solved this case and got on with their lives. He only hoped that was possible. But it seemed each time he looked at Kara this way, it was sending him further down a very tricky path. One that he knew wasn’t smart to go down. Even after the danger ended, maybe there was no turning back from that. Maybe things had already changed and they’d never be able to go back to the way things were.

  Daniel welcomed the distraction of his phone ringing. Best not to stand around staring into Kara’s eyes. Especially when it was Leo’s name on the screen.

  “I’m nearly at your place,” Leo said when Daniel answered.

  “Tell Noreen we’re ready to go,” Daniel instructed Kara, and he waited for her to leave before he continued with his brother. “By any chance, did you see Rizzo on the road leading here?”