Her Stolen Son

by Rita Herron

  Geoff stared into his coffee for so long that Serena thought he wasn’t going to answer. Finally he cleared his throat. “Yeah, we were partners, but my life was complicated back then…and Parker. He didn’t like to talk about his undercover work.”

  “Geoff, please think,” Serena pleaded. “We think Lyle Rice was connected to Parker’s death, and that Rice or his partner framed me and kidnapped Petey.”

  “I don’t know anything about Rice,” Geoff said. “Parker was working a narcotics ring, but said he stumbled on something else that he suspected might be big. But he never confided the details. In fact, he became real secretive toward the end. I pushed him to tell me what was wrong, but he wouldn’t talk to me.” He took a sip of his coffee. “Then again, he was undercover and Parker was good at playing a role.”

  “Just like Rice,” Colt muttered.

  Serena felt a stab of pain in her chest. She wanted to defend Parker, but he had been a skilled liar. He’d had to be or he never could have worked undercover.

  Colt cleared his throat. “Did he mention any suspects’ names?”

  Geoff shook his head. “Just said that he was using the cash from one of his busts to front another deal. One for a shipment of some cargo that he wanted to stop.”

  “Cargo?” Colt asked. “What could be bigger than drugs?”

  “Diamonds was my guess,” Geoff said. “Maybe from Africa.”

  Blood diamonds, Serena thought. “Then why didn’t he bring you into the investigation?”

  Geoff shrugged. “He said he needed more before he could make an arrest. He didn’t just want the little guy. He wanted the master behind the plan, and he was close to getting him.”

  “But he was killed before he made the arrest,” Colt said.

  Geoff nodded and pushed his coffee away, his expression tormented. Serena wondered if he blamed himself for Parker’s death. Maybe that was the reason he hadn’t kept in touch.

  She drew Parker’s date book from her purse. “Geoff, I found this in Parker’s things. The initials D.M. keep popping up. This woman named Dasha phoned a few times, as well. She always hung up when I answered.” She paused, her heart thumping off beat. Did she really want to know if Dasha was her husband’s lover?

  Yes, she had to know the truth. It might lead her to her son.

  “Was Dasha the D.M. Parker kept meeting at these bars and hotels?”

  Geoff glanced at the date book, anxiety tightening his craggy features. “Yes.”

  Serena sucked in a sharp, pain-filled breath. “Were she and Parker having an affair?”

  Geoff jerked his head up. Then slowly he shook his head. “No, Serena, it wasn’t like that. Dasha wasn’t Parker’s lover. She was his confidential informant.”

  COLT SAW THE RELIEF on Serena’s face, and realized she still loved her husband.

  Another reminder that he could not fill the man’s shoes. Nor did he want to try. When Serena had Petey back, she wouldn’t need him anymore.

  And he’d suffered enough loss in his life. He wouldn’t fall for a woman who couldn’t return his feelings.

  “Do you know Dasha’s last name or how we can find her?” Colt asked.

  Geoff shook his head. “You might check some of those places in his date book. They always met up in a bar or hotel late at night outside of Raleigh. Part of her cover and his.”

  “You mean she dresses like a street girl?” Serena asked.

  Geoff’s eyebrows rose. “If that’s what you call a prostitute, yeah.”

  “Thanks,” Colt said. “You’ve been a big help.”

  Geoff stood and tugged at his pants, then glanced at his son with an odd look on his face. “I wish I could have done more. Saved Parker.”

  Serena circled the table and gave him a hug. “Don’t blame yourself, Geoff. Parker died doing his job. He knew you had his back.”

  Colt thought he saw a frisson of guilt enter Geoff’s eyes, but being partners was like being brothers, and he understood that kind of guilt.

  Serena released him and walked toward the door. “Come on, Colt. Let’s see if Dasha knows what my husband was up to and why he was killed.”

  Colt didn’t want to take Serena to those seedy places. “Listen, Serena, let me drive you home. I’ll hit those bars and hotels alone.”

  Serena threw him a look of dogged determination as she strode out the door. When he caught up with her, she stopped on the porch stoop and planted her hands on her hips. “Colt, I realize you want to protect me, but you’re wrong about me. I grew up on the streets. Believe me, I know how to survive there.” A haunted look darkened her eyes. “Besides, it will take too long for you to drive back to Sanctuary and then here.”

  She hurried to his Range Rover then, leaving him to wonder what she meant. Her comments about her juvenile record and growing up in foster care echoed in his head.

  Serena was complicated, loving but tough—a lethal seduction.

  His phone buzzed, and he yanked it from his belt and checked the number. Gage.

  He quickly punched the connect button. “Yeah?”

  “Colt, Caleb Walker just called. He may have some information.”

  “Caleb? I thought he was on his honeymoon.”

  “He just arrived home. Anyway, his wife’s twins have some kind of psychic gifts that connect them.”

  “Yeah, I remember. But what does that have to do with this case?”

  “Cissy, one of the little girls who was missing, saw the news report about Petey and Lyle Rice.” Gage sighed. “She said she recognized Rice, that she saw him talking with Ray Pedderson.”

  “Wait a minute. Pedderson was the one who kidnapped her, right?”

  “Right. She also claimed that Pedderson put her in a truck to haul her around, that in the truck she sensed other kids had been tied there before.”

  “You mean Rice might have been connected to the illegal adoption ring Dr. Emery started?”

  “I don’t know.” Gage muttered a sound of frustration. “It may mean nothing, but that’s one more question I’ll ask Mansfield, the sleaze-bag lawyer. We still think he knows more about Emery’s operation than he let on.”

  Colt rubbed his chin. “Keep me posted.”

  He hung up, his own mind racing with questions. Pedderson and Rice and Mansfield might have been working together.

  Another piece of the puzzle to figure out. Had they gone from small abductions for local adoptions to an international kidnapping ring?

  SERENA CHECKED her phone for the hundredth time as Colt drove them toward the bars.

  It would be the second night Petey had spent away from her. The second night since he’d been torn from her arms.

  Her chest tightened. Her little boy could be miles and miles away by now, in another state even. And if Rice was alive and had a passport and new alias, he might even take him out of the country.

  No…she couldn’t let her mind go there.

  Hopefully Dasha knew something that could lead them to her son.

  Research Triangle Park was a mecca for technology, business and college life and between Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill, boasted shopping centers, fine restaurants and dozens of bars.

  “So where is the red-light district here?” Serena asked.

  Colt gestured toward his left and turned down an alley. Serena spotted several empty warehouses that had fallen into disrepair and a couple of seedy bars.

  “You’ve been here before?” Serena asked Colt.

  He gave a clipped nod. “When I worked undercover, I ran down some gun deals here.”

  Serena nodded, his comment a reminder that his job was too much like Parker’s.

  She forced her mind on to the task. It was early evening, but already a fake-boobed, dyed blonde with thigh high boots, fishnet stockings, and a tank top that dipped down to her navel stood on the corner scoping for johns.

  Colt slid into a dusty parking lot, and Serena glanced up at the neon signs for the bar, old memories of her life before taunting her.
She hadn’t always been proud of what she’d done. She’d stolen money for food when she’d been desperate, had scrounged for day-old bread from bakeries who prided themselves on daily fresh baked goods, and had slept in abandoned houses and buildings just to survive. But she’d never sold herself for sex, and she felt sorry for the girls who resorted to that low.

  But Colt didn’t need to know any of that, so she adopted her game face. Tonight was not about her. It was about finding Petey and bringing him home safe.

  She reached for the door handle. “I’m thirsty. How about you?”

  He quirked a brow. “Sure. Let’s go.”

  She opened her door, ignoring the rancid odor of garbage and urine as they wove along the alley. The moon fought to push its way through the dark clouds but lost, casting the night with the gray bleakness of despair and doom.

  She passed a homeless man curled on top of a piece of cardboard, dug in her purse and dropped five dollars into his hand. “For food,” she said, knowing he might use it for booze. But it was his choice. Whatever fed his weary soul.

  He reached up and patted her hand, his eyes full of emotion and the haze of too long having been shunned. “God bless you, girl.”

  “You, too.” Serena smiled at him, remembering the kind old lady who’d taken her in after the juvenile center. Miss Birdie. She’d told Serena her own sad story about the street life, then claimed that one day she’d found Jesus and it had changed her life. She’d kicked the booze habit and decided to help others instead of wallowing in her own grief.

  Serena had cried her heart out the day the poor woman had died. But she had been grateful for those years for they had inspired her to turn her own life around. Miss Birdie had made her believe in family and that she deserved to be loved, to have a family of her own.

  She glanced down at her clothes. Her jeans and conservative shirt were great for mothering but not for attracting attention at a bar. She removed her ponytail holder and fluffed her long hair, giving it a tousled look, then knotted her T-shirt below her breasts, exposing her stomach. A quick swipe of lipstick added to the party girl look.

  Colt arched a thick brow, but didn’t comment as the blonde approached him and stroked his arm seductively. “Hey, handsome, what can I do for you?”

  Colt offered her a smile. “We’re looking for Dasha. You know her?”

  The blonde pinched her collagen-enhanced lips together. “Damn that girl, she gets all the cute ones. I ain’t seen her tonight.” She stroked his jaw with her bloodred fingernail. “You sure I can’t help you, honey? I ain’t had no complaints yet.”

  “Thanks, sugar, but I really need Dasha.” Colt folded a twenty-dollar bill into her cleavage. “When she shows, tell her to find me inside.”

  Serena maneuvered past them and inside the bar. Cheap beer and booze flowed, laughter, jokes and loud music blaring. Two tattooed men with beer guts by the jukebox whistled at her while a younger skinhead looked up from the pool table and gave her a once-over. Obviously deciding she wasn’t worth his time, he returned to the game.

  Serena claimed a barstool and ordered a draft beer. Colt did the same, his gaze scanning the room. A biker in a leather vest and jeans with shoulder-length hair straddled the stool on the opposite side of her.

  “Can I buy you a drink?”

  Serena opened her mouth to speak but Colt cut in. “She’s with me.”

  The man lifted a questioning brow at her. “Really?”

  She tamped down her irritation at Colt. “Yeah. We’re looking for Dasha.”

  “What? You into threesomes?”

  Serena shrugged. “Something like that.”

  “Do you know her?” Colt asked.

  The man shrugged. “I’ve seen her around.”

  The bartender pushed their beers toward them, and Serena took a sip, her gaze spanning the dark room. A big-haired redhead sidled in from a back entrance, her miniskirt showcasing killer legs, her lips painted to match her hair.

  The blonde they’d met outside stood behind her, then gestured toward Colt.

  “Dasha’s here.” Serena wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and sashayed across the room past the pool table and two husky men wearing painters’ clothes parked in a booth wolfing down burgers.

  The blonde scooted out the door, and Dasha sashayed to the corner near the restroom, pulled out a cigarette and lit up. Serena ignored the curious looks of the inebriated men as she ducked past the dart game and met the redhead.

  Colt propped himself against the wall casually. “You’re Dasha?”

  The redhead tilted her head back and blew a string of smoke into the air. “Who wants to know?”

  “My name is Serena Stover,” Serena said, and Dasha instantly stiffened.

  “You’re Parker’s wife,” Dasha said more in acknowledgment than a question. She glanced away, tapped the ashes from the cigarette onto the scarred wooden floor, then sighed. “Some sad crap, him gettin’ blown away like that. He was a decent man.”

  Serena’s stomach clenched. She’d had so many mixed feelings about Parker the past two years, that it surprised her to hear this woman’s thoughts. Then again, even if Parker hadn’t slept with Dasha, the woman could have been in love with him.

  What did it matter now?

  “Dasha, I need your help,” Serena said, hoping to relate as one woman to another. Maybe two women who had loved the same man.

  Dasha studied Serena, then cut her gaze toward Colt. “And you? What do you want out of this?”

  “Just answers,” Colt said, then removed two fifties from his wallet and pushed them into Dasha’s hand. “I guess you haven’t seen the news?”

  Dasha shrugged. “TV don’t work. What’s goin’ on?”

  “I was arrested for killing a man named Lyle Rice,” Serena said.

  “Why’d you kill him?” Dasha stiffened her spine. “He get mean with you?”

  Serena bit her lip. “I barely knew the man. I’d met him for coffee then had dinner, but he hit my son so I told him to get out. That night he was supposedly murdered.” Serena shuddered as the vile memory intruded on her calm. “Anyway, I was framed. But the short story is that social services took my son, but he was kidnapped that night. I’m looking for him now.”

  Dasha inhaled another drag of her cigarette. “What makes you think I know something about your boy?”

  “Listen, Dasha,” Colt said, his voice laced with impatience. “So far we know Parker Stover was working undercover, and that his investigation got him killed. We also know Rice had a vendetta against Stover because he arrested him.”

  “And,” Serena said, her voice brittle, “I talked to Parker’s partner and he admitted you were Parker’s CI.”

  A look of panic streaked Dasha’s green eyes, making her look pale even in the dark. She tapped her cigarette, then raised a finger to her mouth to shush them as the pool player who’d looked at Serena lumbered by and strode into the john.

  “You don’t go sayin’ that out loud,” Dasha muttered. “Next thing you know I be six feet under.”

  Serena caught Dasha’s arm. “Look, Dasha, I don’t care what kind of relationship you had with my husband. I honestly don’t. All I want is to find Petey.” She lowered her voice, tried to appeal to the woman’s maternal instincts, and wondered if she possessed that side at all.

  Tears blurred Dasha’s eyes for a moment, then she tossed the cigarette to the floor and crushed it with her boot. “I’m sorry about your kid, I really am.”

  “Then tell us what you know,” Colt demanded.

  The pool guy exited the bathroom, shot Dasha a dark look, then meandered back to the pool table. A chill skated up Serena’s spine. Had he been listening to their conversation?

  Dasha seemed panicked, swung away and quickly veered into the bathroom. Serena followed her, and caught her just before she disappeared into a stall.

  “You’re gonna get me killed just like Parker,” Dasha bit out.

  Serena ignored the jab of guilt tha
t comment triggered. “I’m sorry, Dasha, but my son is only six, and I’m terrified that he might be hurt. The kidnapper hasn’t phoned for a ransom, and I don’t know where else to turn. Just tell me what Parker was investigating. Was it a drug ring? Something else?”

  Dasha flinched as if Serena’s statement troubled her, then released a heartfelt labored sigh. “It wasn’t drugs,” Dasha murmured, giving her a sympathetic look.

  Serena didn’t want her sympathy. “If not drugs, then what?”

  A pained look stretched across Dasha’s face. “It was a child kidnapping ring.”

  PETEY WOKE TO THE SOUND of crying.

  He was curled on his side, his hands and feet tied, but the rag around his eyes was gone.

  Still, it was so dark he couldn’t see his own fingers or where he was. His body bounced and slammed into a metal wall. The rumbling of an engine, of cars passing by, of the gears grinding echoed in his head.

  A truck. He must be in the back of some kind of truck. It hit a rough patch and he bounced again, then tires screeched as the vehicle veered sideways, throwing him to the opposite wall.

  The sob grew louder.

  “Help me,” a voice whispered into the dark. “Please, is someone there?”

  Petey swallowed against the vile taste of whatever the man had drugged him with. He was so thirsty he could hardly make his voice work.

  But he had to.

  The sound was a little girl. She must be tied up just like him.

  A low wail rent the air, and then the sound of fingernails scratching against the metal wall. “Let me out,” the little girl cried.

  “Me, too.”

  Petey froze. Another little girl was in here, too.

  Petey tried to crawl toward them. He didn’t know why the man had locked them in here or ripped him from bed. He didn’t know where his mommy was, but she’d answered the phone so she must be out of jail.

  The sobbing continued, and he blinked back his own tears and moved toward the sound. The truck bounced again, throwing him sideways, and his shoulder hit the wall. But a second later, he careened to the other side.

  “I know someone’s here,” the little girl cried. “Who are you?”