The Baby Shift- Georgia

by Becca Fanning

  “He…he’s Sofia’s father. He just up and left before I found out I was pregnant.”

  “Holy crap,” Amy breathed, “You had the child of an enforcer?”

  Well, she’d had Matt’s child, so if he was an enforcer, then yes. But…

  “Amy, what’s an enforcer?”

  “They’re like shifter police,” Amy replied, slightly awed, “I mean, he’s hot, but he’s kind of scary.”

  “It’s more than that, Es,” Dr. Jenkins chimed in, “They’re like police and executioner, all in one. They’re the ones that step in when shifters are out of control. And he’s here because he thinks this illness going around might be poison. You probably should tell him that Sofia’s been exposed.”

  “I…yes, I probably should.”

  She didn’t mention to Amy that she’d have to tell him Sofia existed first. Dr. Jenkins, with everything he had done for her, already knew that Sophia’s father didn’t know about her. She went and picked Sofia up, then managed to get her to eat a little bit of baby cereal and take a bottle. She moved the crib to her bedroom so that she would be right there if her daughter needed her during the night. Once Sofia had fallen into a restless slumber, she worked up the nerve to make the call she should have made when she’d first found out she was pregnant.

  The call went to voicemail, so in a voice that shook with nerves and emotion, she asked if there was any way that Matt could meet her for a cup of coffee because she had something to tell him. When he hadn’t answered an hour later, she followed up with a text, explaining that she had something important to discuss.

  That went unanswered as well. She probably deserved it after the way she’d blown him off earlier, but she needed his help. Sofia needed his help.

  Chapter 5

  Matt figured that the best way to find information would be to see if Ezra Anderson had any ties to the town. He’d asked around and learned that Ezra had a sister who lived here. Although people knew that he’d been here to visit her—the town was small enough that visitors were always noticed—no one seemed to know much more about him.

  His sister, Amber, was part of a small religious group that apparently didn’t socialize much with those outside their church. They lived to themselves outside of town and came in only for supplies. He’d been about to ask directions to the compound when the shifter he was questioning pointed out Amber coming out of the supermarket. He’d thanked the man for his help, then followed at a discreet distance on foot. He’d silenced his phone the first time it went off, even though it took everything he had not to answer when he saw Es’s name come up on the screen.

  He wanted, needed, to hear from her. But first, he had to follow this lead.

  Amber had made her way back to a walled compound, complete with barbed wire at the top of the walls. If this place, with its secure walls and guards at the gated entry, had been built to worship God, he would eat his boots. No, something else was going on here.

  Matt’s gut said that this was where the poison that had caused so much heartache was being manufactured. It also told him that, if he tried to scale the wall in broad daylight, he would be caught, and the evidence destroyed just like it had been every other time he’d gotten close. This time he would make sure not to alert them to his presence.

  That meant he had to act quickly—before inevitable small-town gossip alerted the group to his presence—but not so quickly that he went off halfcocked. Tonight would have to be soon enough for him to return. He would go back to town and gather what intel he could before going in under cover of darkness.

  What he’d found so far confirmed his suspicions. He’d learned a lot, but this particular interview wasn’t presenting anything more than empty speculation and gossip.

  “Oh, they’re strange, alright. That’s more than a religious group. I’d say it’s safe to call it a cult.”

  Matt nodded, agreeing absentmindedly with Mrs. Walsh, the owner of the town’s small supermarket and apparently the town’s biggest gossip. He saw Es driving past and couldn’t have torn his eyes from the sight of her if he’d tried.

  “So, you’ve met our Esmeralda then?” Mrs. Walsh asked, a calculating gleam in her eyes.

  “Yes, we’re…old friends. I didn’t realize she’d moved here, though. Seeing her was a surprise.”

  “Ah, but a good one I’d venture. It is a shame about her little girl falling ill, though.”

  Shock ran through him. She had a child? Had she moved on, then? Built a life with someone else? Was it a shifter? Even as heartbreak nearly brought him to his knees, he couldn’t wish on her that her child had been exposed to the silver laced arsenic.

  “Yes, it is…how old is her daughter now, anyway?”

  “That little darling will be six months old next Tuesday. Es was just in here earlier, picking out some things for the celebration. I do hope little Sofia is feeling better by then.”

  Six months…it couldn’t be. The timing was right, but why wouldn’t she have told him? Was she not sure it was his? Did she hate him so much after the way he left that she’d deny him the right to know he had a child?

  Maybe…maybe she’d found out about him, learned who he really was…learned that he’d killed until some days he wasn’t sure how different he was from the criminals he hunted. Maybe, he thought as he pictured all the blood he had on his hands, she hadn’t done the wrong thing after all.

  Somehow the thought didn’t calm him. If anything, it made him feel worse—bitter and unworthy. Of course, he’d always been unworthy of her love. She just hadn’t realized it. He’d never told her about the sins blackening his past.

  Still, she could have told him, even if she asked him in the next breath never to contact her again. A man had a right to know that he’d fathered a child, a right to help provide for the life he’d created. She should have told him.

  Es had parked outside the doctor’s office. He took a calming breath, willing himself to rein in his temper, and started that way, never even realizing he’d walked away from Mrs. Walsh in the middle of a conversation.

  Chapter 6

  Es paced and paced, checking her phone again and again. Matt still hadn’t returned her call. Even though she knew it wouldn’t help him figure out what was going on faster—even if she hadn’t known what his job was, she knew him well enough to know that he gave it his all—she couldn’t help feeling that he needed to know what the stakes were if he failed.

  Besides, now that she had decided to tell him about Sofia, the need to get it done before dread ate her alive from the inside out was undeniable. Finally, Es called Stephanie, who agreed to come to her to watch Sofia this time, since Es wasn’t sure when she’d be back. Then she headed into town to track Matt down. She figured she’d stop back by Dr. Jenkins’s office first, and then go from there.

  She parked in front of his office for the third time that day and drew a calming breath. She could do this. She had to. And if the only man she’d ever loved hated her for not telling him about his child sooner, well…it was no more than she deserved.

  Working up her courage, she finally exited her car and started toward the door to see if Matt had returned to ask Dr. Jenkins more questions.

  “Es,” Matt’s voice rasped out behind her, full of pain and anger. So, he knew.

  She turned to face him, the man she’d once loved but had never truly known. “So, you found out. I was going to tell you, I—”

  “When? When were you going to tell me, Es?”

  “I…I tried to call. I left messages—”

  “Why didn’t you call sooner? As soon as you knew? Did you really think I would let you go through this alone, with no support?”

  “I didn’t know what to think, Matt.” She wanted to look away from him, to run away, anything to avoid the vulnerable heartache she knew he would read in her eyes. She forced herself to meet his gaze. “I didn’t think you would just leave the way you did, no warning…I thought what we had was…forever.”

  The last wo
rd came out on a whisper. How humiliating, to have given herself to him—heart and soul—while he’d just been having a fling between jobs.

  “Es, I…”

  She couldn’t blame him for not declaring his undying love, especially not after what she had done. “We may not have lasted, but we do have a child. And she’s sick. Please, just…do your best to save her, okay?”

  She rushed past him, trying to pretend that tears weren’t streaming down her cheeks.

  Chapter 7

  “Well, son, you’re a damn fool.”

  Matt’s head jerked up to see that Dr. Jenkins had watched their conversation play out from the front step of his clinic. He didn’t respond, but the older shifter kept talking like he hadn’t expected a response.

  “That girl showed up here so full of heartbreak; I thought she might just burst at the seams. But she didn’t. She pulled herself together, one day at a time until she seemed somewhat content. There’s only two times I’ve seen her happy, though. When she looks at her little girl…and when she looked at you earlier this afternoon.”

  “I didn’t realize…”

  “That she had a baby? No, I’ll give you that you didn’t know that. You knew she was out there, though, and you had to know she was hurting when you left her. But her…she came here convinced you didn’t want to be tied down, that you wouldn’t want to know anything about a child. It might not make sense, but you’ll never get anywhere expecting good sense to come from a person with a broken heart.”

  With his piece apparently said, Dr. Jenkins walked back into his clinic and left Matt standing, filled with an aching certainty that he’d broken the best thing he’d ever had. Once again, he’d proven that destruction was what he did best.

  He might not be able to love Es like she deserved, or to be the steady, constant companion she deserved, but he could save her child…their child. He pushed down the hope that struggled to blossom in his chest. That emotion had never brought him anything but heartache.

  He was about to go to prepare to break into the compound later that evening when Dr. Jenkins motioned him back over to the clinic.

  “We have several more patients coming in. These are more severe symptoms from the sound of it.”

  Matt nodded grimly. He wasn’t surprised.

  “That makes sense. The victims I have seen in other locations had much more severe symptoms. I think the ones who are sick so far might just be more sensitive and might be getting sick from being in close proximity to where the poison is being manufactured. If these people are all at once and more severe like this, it sounds like we’ve got a targeted attack. I’m going to go get ready to try to stop this. Please keep me updated.”

  A call from the doctor two hours later confirmed that all the victims had eaten at a local restaurant…the same one he’d seen Amber Anderson leaving earlier that afternoon. The attacks didn’t change anything. They just reinforced his earlier decision. He would have to attack that night, strike fast and hard before there were any more victims.

  So much for being ahead of the body count, he thought angrily. He needed to gather his things, call Es to ensure her that the new patients didn’t mean Sofia would get worse, and then head out to that compound. He made his calls, then drove as far out as he could without drawing attention to himself. He walked the rest of the distance on foot and then settled in to wait for the cover of darkness.

  Chapter 8

  Es let the tears flow as she drove home. Not that crying would help. There were times in her life that tears had been cathartic, the release she had needed to cleanse hurt from her heart and pull herself back together. That had never been the case with tears over Matt. The grief seemed just as profound and endless as her love for him.

  She parked about a block from her house when the phone rang. She tried to hide the grief so that he wouldn’t hear it in her voice when she saw his number flash on her phone screen. She listened as he described the patients’ symptoms that were directly exposed to the poison, as he assured her that their cases were more severe than Sofia’s.

  “Matt…do you know who’s doing this?”

  “I am pretty sure, yes. There’s a religious group outside of town…”

  “I know them.” And she did. They’d tried to recruit her when she’d moved here, and they’d heard the story of how a shifter had gotten her with child and left her, never telling her that her daughter would be a shifter too. Apparently it was a shifter hate group…made up entirely of shifters. Some things she would never understand.

  She had never had a problem with shifters, and she was downright thankful to be in a community of them that would help her raise Sofia and guide her through figuring out that part of herself. It was only dumb luck that Dr. Jenkins had stumbled across her and showed her the way to a community where Sofia would get the help she needed.

  “Well, the brother of one of the members was behind mass poisonings in Florida, and I traced the source of his poison back to here. I’m pretty sure that’s where the poison is being manufactured. Just sit tight, Es. I’m going to fix this.”

  She believed he would fix it, but just in case…she wouldn’t be sitting tight. Not when there might be something she could do to help her daughter. She went in, told Stephanie that she had to be out a bit longer, and kissed her daughter before she headed out. She didn’t tell Stephanie what she was planning. Her friend would have protested, would have wanted her to stay safe.

  But if these people had developed a poison, if people in town were getting sick from being in its proximity while they remained healthy enough to manufacture it…that meant they must also have a cure. And she was going to find it, even if she had to join the cult to do so. For Sofia, she would do anything.

  She set out to join them on foot. This particular cult was fond of renouncing worldly possessions, and she wanted to appear sincere. It was a few miles out of town, but she covered the distance quickly enough.

  Es was making her way through the last stretch of woods before their ‘community’—if a place with 10 foot high walls topped with barbed wire could be named something as innocuous as a community—when hands reached out to grab her from behind, one wrapping firmly around her waist and the other covering her mouth to muffle her squeak of surprise.

  Alarm flashed through her, quickly followed by desire. She knew that scent, that touch. She relaxed, then turned to face Matt once he’d realized she wasn’t going to struggle, and he released her. This close, their bodies practically touching and yet painfully far apart…she wet her lips and looked up at him, embarrassed by the arousal she realized he must be able to scent as a shifter.

  “Es, what the hell are you doing out here?” He was so close that she could feel his breath when he spoke. It would be so easy to just get up on her tiptoes, the way she’d done so many times before, and press her lips to his…except his lips didn’t look ready to kiss right now. They were drawn in a tight, angry line.

  Maybe she should have feared him, this assassin trained to kill the most-deadly beings this world had to offer…but she knew this man, knew these hands that had only given her pleasure, never pain.

  “I’m…I’m joining the cult. To find a cure for Sofia.”

  “Es…this isn’t safe. This poison is making shifters sick. If you’re exposed, it could…”

  “Kill me. I know. But if I lost her…Matt, if I lost her, I’m not sure I would want to live. I have to try.”

  “Just…give me a few hours, Es. As soon as it’s full dark I’m going to go in, see what I can find. Can you just stay safe until then? Please? I’ll call you as soon as I’m out.”

  The thought of sitting there, not knowing what would happen to him or to Sofia…it was more than she could bear. “Let me go in with you.”

  She could see the stubborn refusal in his eyes, but she was saved by the opening of the gates to the compound.

  “Fine, just…let’s get you hidden, sweetheart.”

  He took her a little deeper into the trees and
spread out a sleeping bag from the rucksack he had stashed in a small clearing. She settled on it self-consciously. He’d obviously planned to stay on his feet, watching the compound until dark. Did he think her too weak to stay on her feet? She started to stand, but he settled on the sleeping bag beside her.

  “We have hours to go yet, Es. The more we move around, the more likely it is that we tip these people off to our presence. Considering that I’m pretty sure that place has enough poison in it to kill half the shifters in North America, I think that might be a bad thing.” The words sounded sarcastic but were delivered with a gentle smile that took away their sting.

  They sat in silence for a few minutes, but Matt’s presence, his nearness, and her reaction to him made her unable to sit quietly. It was torture, plain and simple. And she’d never been good at maintaining a comfortable silence.

  “Something like this, is that why…is that why you left?”

  His eyes burned with some repressed emotion, something she couldn’t quite decipher.

  “This is why I left, Es. These exact people. I’ve been chasing them all over the Southeastern United States, always a step too slow to stop them. I thought when I left you, I would be gone a few weeks, a few months at worst…”

  “You could have called,” she whispered, her voice rough and broken with old pain that had never healed.

  “I kept telling myself I would come back to you soon, and that I could step back into your life without revealing to you what I was, how much blood was on my hands. I kept lying to myself, day after day, and then…then one day, I realized that I’d waited too long, that by then, you would have moved on and found someone new. I didn’t want to hear that; I didn’t know how I would handle it. Eventually, I decided it was better not to know that the dream of seeing you someday was better than knowing for sure that I’d lost you forever.”