“No. But I can blame a woman for having a perfect little girl and walking away like it didn’t matter.” She shook her head, tears glistening in her eyes. “I had a perfect little girl, and I would never have turned my back on her no matter how hard motherhood might have been.”
“Mom—”
“If I had a second chance, I would hold on to every second like it was the most precious thing in the world.”
“I know, Mom.” He took her hand lightly between both of his. “But Ree Ann isn’t you. And Addie isn’t Andi.”
Her eyes came slowly up to his. “She never had a chance to have babies, Calder. Never had a chance to know love’s first kiss, to find the man of her dreams, to walk down the aisle on her father’s arms. She never had any of the things everyone takes for granted. But Ree Ann—”
“I know.”
He patted her hand, aware that arguing with her would do nothing to change her mind. He’d heard this argument many times over the past three years, starting the moment he showed up on her doorstep with two-month-old Addie in his arms, screaming because her mother wasn’t there to nurse her, with the note Ree Ann had left behind crumpled in his hand. A brilliant prosecutor, a generous, kind, gentle woman, Ree Ann had seemed like everything Calder wanted but he was never brave enough to believe he would ever have her. And his fears proved to be realistic when he came home to find the baby alone in her crib, the note on her dressing table.
She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t be the mother Addison—Addie—needed. She’d be in touch, but the baby was his. She’d send papers to that effect as soon as she could.
He had the papers. He had a half-dozen tearful phone calls. And he had his daughter.
“I’m sorry,” his mother muttered. “You don’t like it when I talk like that.”
“It frustrates you, I know.”
“After Andi . . . I just can’t understand parents who take their children for granted, you know?”
“I know.”
She rubbed her hand over the top of his. “You’re a good boy, Calder. If it weren’t for you, after Andi—”
“I have to get back to work, Mom.”
Calder stood and kissed the top of his mother’s head, not interested in this particular walk down memory lane. Who wants to be reminded of the day their sister failed to return home from school, the days afterward when everyone was so tense, convinced the next time the phone rang, the next knock on the door, would be the news everyone dreaded receiving. And then that knock on the door did come, and there was the void in their lives that descended after the funeral after all the customs were seen to and completed. When everyone else went back to their lives, but his parents were stuck in the mire of grief. And then came the trial, the long days of sitting silently and listening to how that sick man stole his sister off the street in front of her school, how he held her captive in a spare bedroom of his mother’s house, how he tortured her in ways he wouldn’t be capable of understanding until he was in the Army, learning things he could never share with his mother.
And then . . . and then the governor.
His mother would never forgive him if he told her he was working to prove Quinn Naylor hadn’t killed her former fiancé. Lucky for him that it appeared she was guilty.
Or did luck have anything to do with it?
Chapter 5
Downtown Springfield, Illinois
Quinn felt out of place, walking down a public sidewalk at one o’clock in the afternoon. She should be in an operating room somewhere, repairing a child’s heart or working to remove some sort of cancer. She shouldn’t be walking down a street among joggers and lawyers and harried housewives.
Quinn walked into her lawyer’s office. “Dr. Naylor?” The tall secretary barely looked up. “He’s expecting you.”
Quinn was used to women like that, women who were too busy to be bothered with things like niceties, politeness, or a simple smile. Especially when the person on the other end of the exchange was another woman.
She pushed her way through the heavy oak door to her lawyer’s office, not surprised to find him on the phone. That was another thing she was used to: professional men who constantly had a phone glued to the sides of their heads.
Her lawyer, the ass, had not just one phone stuck to his head, but two: the landline and his cell phone.
“I’m not talking to you, Liz,” he mumbled, pressing the cell phone to the front of his chest. He gestured to Quinn to take a seat, rolling his eyes as though including her in some cosmic joke. “I’ll be with you in a sec.”
He turned away, facing the massive windows that overlooked downtown Springfield, including the state capital building just a few blocks to the west. Quinn turned sideways in her seat so that she couldn’t see the domed building. She wasn’t interested in that building, or the mansion across the town where she spent some of her darkest days as a child.
She reached up and brushed her hair away from her face, wondering if she should grow it out since she wouldn’t have to worry about wearing a surgical cap for a while. And then she reminded herself that her suspension wasn’t forever.
“What can I do for you, Quinn?” the lawyer, Todd Benson, asked as he finally set both phones down.
“They suspended my privileges last night.”
He adopted a false look of sympathy, everything but the pouty lower lip. The urge to smack him was so intense that she slipped her hands under her thighs to hold them still.
“We knew that was a possibility.”
“But they said they’d wait and see how things planned out not a week ago. Isn’t that some sort of breach of contract or something?”
He shook his head. “It’s their right to terminate your privileges any time they want to. It’s in your contract.”
“But this is ridiculous!” Quinn stood, unable to sit still. “If I don’t have privileges at the hospital, I can’t treat my patients. Then what?”
“We talked about this. You’ll send them to another surgeon until such a time that your privileges are reinstated.”
“And if they aren’t?”
Benson sat heavily in his office chair, leaning his chin on his interlaced fingers. He studied her face, his eyes round and kind, at least, that’s what he wanted her to think. But she also saw him glance briefly at the time in the lower corner of his computer screen.
“We talked about all of this, Quinn. You are accused of a very serious crime. You have to understand that this isn’t going to be an overnight thing. It takes time for charges like this to be investigated, for it to come to trial, if that’s even what we choose to do.” He picked up a file folder sitting on the corner of his desk. “They sent over a plea deal this morning. Five years, parole after two.”
Quinn thought he was joking at first. But the way he looked at her . . .
“You’re joking, right?”
“No.”
“I’d lose my medical license. I’d go to jail!”
“It’s a good deal. If we went to trial, you’d be facing three times that. Four times that.”
Quinn stood. “You’re fucking fired.”
She stormed out of the office, fuming so hard that her hands were shaking, and she wasn’t sure her knees would hold up long enough to get her to the elevator. Once inside, she slammed her fist against the back wall and kicked out, bruising her toe. She didn’t care. She kicked and punched several more times, screaming at the top of her lungs as tears filled her eyes. It took all she had to get herself under control by the time the doors opened on the main floor.
She walked passed the lot where she’d left her car, walking blindly through the downtown area. She walked until she found herself in a familiar place, the only place in Springfield she’d ever really loved as a child: Abraham Lincoln’s National Historic Site. She slowed down as she crossed the brick street, walking slowly over land that Lincoln himself once walked. As a child, she’d often tried to imagine what it must have been like living in those days, raising his boys in this tiny, box-like h
ome. What it was like to know the great man. She often wondered if those around him understood what an impact on the budding country he would have.
She joined the tail end of a tour going through the house, so versed in the guide’s spiel that she probably could have given it herself. She didn’t really listen. She just stared at the wallpaper that somehow still clung to the walls after all these years, the replica furniture that was still placed where Lincoln and his wife would have placed it, the stairs that were the same he’d walked up and down every night he lived there.
She could almost feel his spirit in this house.
Lincoln had his own adversities during his lifetime. His father’s beliefs that slavery was wrong, his own commitment to the law, even laws that openly discriminated against hardworking, former slaves. The cases he took that historians now looked back and pointed to as indications of his true opinions as to the issue of slavery, both positive and negative. And then, of course, his decision to emancipate all the slaves to end the war and reunite the country. The decision that would ultimately lead to his death.
Quinn wondered if he had known that he would be shot in that theater that night if he would change any of the things he’d done. Would he have signed the Emancipation Proclamation? Would he have done it sooner or later? Would he have hugged his kids more, kissed his wife more? Would he have gone to the theater that night?
It would forever fascinate her how one simple choice could sometimes lead to the most dramatic moments in a person’s life.
Like her decision to go to that stupid party the night Kaden died.
If she hadn’t gone to the party, she wouldn’t be in this mess. She wouldn’t have hired that fake ass of a lawyer, wouldn’t have had to hire Mastiff Security. She would be at the hospital right now, performing surgery on some child who desperately needed her help.
She could be saving lives instead of fighting for her own.
She should have known that coming back to Springfield was a mistake. She should have accepted that internship in Massachusetts.
Another choice she never should have made.
Quinn stepped outside with the tour, distracted by her thoughts, only drawn out when a middle-aged woman in front of her turned and frowned.
“You okay?”
“What? Why?”
The woman touched her own cheek. “You’re bleeding.”
Quinn reached up and touched her cheek, her fingers coming away with bright red blood smeared against the tips. She frowned, crossing the narrow yard to the public toilet set up in a building across the street. She stared at herself in the mirror, wondering how the hell splinters of wood had ended up in her face. She carefully picked them out with her short nails, more confused than anything else.
And then the bathroom door burst into splinters that rained down around her.
What the hell?
Chapter 6
Springfield, Illinois
District Attorney’s Office
Calder watched the woman’s lips move, bored beyond words. She’d already said the same thing two different ways before this, but she was still talking, still explaining what little bit of a case they had against Quinn Naylor. They had the video, which he’d already seen. They had the damage to her car, which he had inspected this morning before he saw the video. They had her medical records from the emergency room where she was treated after her arrest the morning after the accident, which he had already seen as well.
“You don’t have an eyewitness?”
The woman stopped mid sentence. “Well, no, we don’t. But we don’t need one with the video.”
“The video doesn’t show the actual accident, does it?”
“No. But it shows enough.”
“The victim was still alive when he arrived at the hospital, correct?”
“He was.”
“Did he say anything?”
She tilted her head to one side. “No, he didn’t. He had severe head injuries, which is what took his life.”
Calder stood, sliding his phone into his back pocket as he did. “Thank you, Ms. Tanglewood.”
“Mr. Obre, I thought you—”
He walked away, not bothering to wait and see what it was she thought. It was a damn waste of time, anyway. She wasn’t going to give away any more than she absolutely had to because she didn’t want the other side to know what she was up to until she had to reveal her hand. It was classic, and it was damn annoying.
Calder drove back to Mastiff’s headquarters, amused to notice once again that Durango had no one sitting at his assistant’s desk. Everyone knew how much trouble he had keeping an assistant around. It was a running joke around the office, everyone taking bets on how long each one would last. They’d been fleeing so fast these last few weeks that most of the gamers couldn’t get their bets in before the assistant fled.
Axel was standing just behind Durango’s desk, watching as Durango pointed out something on the computer. They both looked up as Calder walked in unannounced, Axel quickly stepped back with a look of shame on his face. It was like he’d been caught doing something he hadn’t wanted to get caught doing.
It took everything Calder had to keep his tongue in his head.
“Calder,” Durango said with a little caution in his tone.
“I was just coming by to give you a report on my case,” he said as politely as he could, his eyes cutting to Axel. He’d been here just six months longer than Calder, just long enough to be considered the senior operative. Six months. But Calder had more experience in law enforcement, more experience in the field. If anyone should have been promoted, it should have been Calder. He didn’t understand Durango’s choice.
“Is this the Naylor case?” Axel asked.
Calder’s jaw tightened. Of course, he knew about the case. He was the head of operations now, wasn’t he?
But still, it bothered Calder sharing this information with anyone other than Durango or Kyle . . .
It was difficult for him to remember that Kyle was no longer with them.
Durango stood and walked around his desk, folding his hands behind his back as he leaned against the desk and crossed his ankles. He studied Calder for a long second, assessing his mood.
“Axel has been briefed on the case.”
Calder inclined his head. “I assumed so.” He cleared his throat, pressing his own hands into the back pockets of his jeans. “I’ve spoken with the assistant district attorney running the case, Ms. Tanglewood. I’ve also reviewed the bulk of the evidence they have against our client.” He waited a beat, then sighed. “It doesn’t look good. Unless she can prove there was someone else in the car with her that night, they have her dead to rights.”
Durango’s head dropped, his eyes moving over the floor.
“You’ve seen the video?” Axel asked.
“I have. You can’t see the actual accident on the tape, but it’s clear that Quinn Naylor is driving the car, and it appears that she’s alone. And you can see the victim passing just out of the frame seconds before she drives the car onto the sidewalk.”
Axel nodded. “And the medical evidence?”
“Proves nothing. The emergency room doctor wouldn’t say definitively that the injuries she sustained were from a car accident, but he didn’t rule it out, either. And there was nothing on the blood tests they conducted at the time of her admittance that can show she was under the influence of any sort of drugs.”
“I believe her own tests were also inconclusive,” Durango said.
Calder shifted, feeling sorry for Quinn despite everything. “What do you want me to do now?”
“You feel like you’ve gone over all the evidence?”
“Yes. There’s really nothing more to do, except to talk to her again. But her memory of that night is so fuzzy that she probably couldn’t add anything to the investigation.”
Durango nodded. “I agree.” He glanced back at Axel. “What do you think?”
Axel shrugged. “I’ll call her in in the m
orning and give her your final report.”
Calder headed for the door, a part of him feeling like he’d given up on her. It didn’t make sense to him because he’d hated every member of the Naylor family since he was seventeen. But there was something about Quinn . . . damn beautiful woman! Was he so lonely that even a Naylor could get under his skin?
Maybe his mother was right. Maybe it was time to move on. Ree Ann had been gone over three years now and Addie was big enough that she didn’t need him home every night. Besides, her bedtime routine revolved around his mother. As long as he was there in the mornings to get her dressed for school. That was his routine with her.
But the idea of diving into the dating pool simply didn’t sit well with him. There was too much ridiculousness to the bar scene. It’d never really been his thing. Not really, anyway. He went to bars with his buddies when he was in the Army, but that was different. They were blowing off steam. When he became a cop, he avoided that scene, saddened by the older guys who lost themselves in a bottle at the end of every day. He didn’t want the crutch of alcohol, didn’t want to need a crutch at all. And then he met Ree Ann. After that, it didn’t seem necessary.
He thought Ree Ann would be it for him. They lived together, she wore his engagement ring. They were planning a wedding when she realized she was pregnant.
“I don’t know how you’re going to feel about this, but we’re going to have to put off the wedding another five or six months. Maybe slightly longer.”
He’d just come home, exhausted after spending a day chasing down the managers of a half-dozen rental car agencies in Chicago. She was sitting on the edge of the couch, looking up at him the way she had when she was afraid to tell him her sister had arrived on their doorstep unexpectedly.
“Are you cheating on me?”
She laughs. “No, Calder. I’d never do that.”
“Then it doesn’t matter. As long as we’re still getting married eventually, I don’t care.”
“We’re definitely going to get married now. But I won’t fit into my dress in June.”
Mastiff Security: The Complete 5 Books Series Page 26
