Undercover Baby

by Gina Wilkins

  “This is going to be the toughest assignment I’ve ever had,” she complained, shifting awkwardly in the straight-backed leather chair that matched the one Sam occupied. How did pregnant women sit comfortably with all this bulk in their laps?

  “Don’t think you can handle it, Sanders?” Sam asked with a mockingly lifted eyebrow.

  “I didn’t say I couldn’t handle it,” she retorted. “I only said it would be tough.”

  “Neither of you would have been given this assignment if I didn’t think you could handle it,” Brashear said firmly. “Dallas, it will be up to you to befriend this Polly Jones. She’s the one our source named as being the next target for the baby brokers. We need you to get close to her.”

  Dallas nodded. She had never liked the lies she had to tell when she was undercover, but she was thoroughly committed to her job—whatever reasonable steps she had to take to see her assignments through. If lying would protect an innocent baby from being sold like an unwanted piece of property, then she would lie like a trooper.

  Ten minutes later, Brashear seemed satisfied that they had their instructions down. “Good luck,” he said by way of dismissal.

  Dallas started to stand, was overbalanced by the heavy bulge in her middle, and fell back into the chair. Sam grinned, stuck out a hand and hauled her to her feet. “I can tell right now that this assignment is going to be fun,” he predicted.

  Dallas had to bite her tongue against a reply that would have strained Lieutenant Brashear’s patience a bit more than she was willing to risk.

  * * *

  SAM WASN’T AT ALL SURE the rattletrap of a car they’d been issued would get them to the run-down building in which an apartment had been discreetly scouted out for them. The ripped back seat of the ugly, rusted vehicle was filled with pasteboard boxes and ragged bags. It was supposed to represent everything they owned.

  They hadn’t said much on the way over. It would have been hard to be heard over the rattling, squeaking and clattering of the car frame, not to mention the wind whistling through the drafty doors and the roar of the unmuffled engine. It was with some relief that Sam turned the key to silence the monster.

  Dallas was looking at the dilapidated four-story building with apprehension. Sam wondered for a moment if she was finding the accommodations distasteful. He couldn’t blame her, exactly. The building was a slum. Paint grungy and peeling, bricks cracked and crumbling, steps filthy and rickety, bums hanging out on the corners. Still, he’d stayed in worse places during the course of his job, and he knew Dallas had, too. “What’s the problem?”

  She glanced at him then. “What are we going to do if they don’t rent us the apartment? Brashear didn’t even mention the possibility.”

  Sam shrugged. “He didn’t think it was a possibility. The landlady’s not known to be real picky about who she rents to, as long as there’s a month’s rent in advance. We’re supposed to look desperate, remember? In need of a place to live immediately.”

  Dallas looked from Sam to the building, then back again. She took a deep breath, and nodded. “All right. I’m ready.”

  Sam thought it was extremely funny that Dallas couldn’t get out of the car without assistance.

  Dallas didn’t laugh.

  * * *

  THE BUILDING’S MANAGER turned out to be a woman in her fifties, artificially red-haired, twenty pounds overweight. There were no smile lines around her discontented mouth. Dallas couldn’t help wondering if that was because she had never found anything to smile about. They told her their names were Sam and Dallas Pulaski and that they had lost their lease on another apartment the day before, leaving them homeless. Sam explained that he had enough cash to pay one month’s rent in advance, but didn’t want to sign a lease.

  The landlady, who gave them only the surname Blivens, bought their story quickly enough—particularly when Sam dug into his pocket and pulled out a crumpled wad of bills for the first month’s rent. That seemed to suit her just fine in lieu of a lease or rent agreement. Dallas reflected that there weren’t exactly prospective tenants lined up at her door. Blivens had already admitted that there were three empty apartments in the fifteen-apartment building, all on the same floor. The third floor, she added, glancing at Dallas’s bulging stomach. And there were no elevators.

  Dallas swallowed a sigh and earnestly assured the woman that the third floor would be just fine.

  The landlady didn’t object when they requested to move in immediately. She only shrugged, tucked the rent money into a battered tin box, and tossed Sam a key. “Second apartment on the right,” she said. “Don’t mess anything up.”

  “We’re not going to be here that long,” Sam assured her, his chin cocked at a swaggering angle. “Soon as I get back on my feet money-wise, we’re out of here.”

  “Honey, that’s what they all say,” Ms. Blivens said in a bored, skeptical tone.

  Remembering her own role, Dallas spoke up defensively: “My Sam will get us out of here. Things are kinda tough right now, but as soon as he finds him a new job, us and the baby are going to get a better place. Maybe even a nice trailer park.”

  Sam threw her a repressive glare. “Shut up, Dallas. This woman don’t care about our problems.”

  Ms. Blivens didn’t correct him. Dallas subsided into suitably meek silence, though she couldn’t help giving Sam one quick, resentful look. She’d play her part, all right, but there were no rules that said she had to like it!

  * * *

  DALLAS COMPLAINED under her breath each step up the two flights of stairs. By the time she reached the top, she was breathless, sweating and more than ready to shed the bulky harness that added nearly twenty pounds to her weight.

  The apartment was every bit as bad as she had expected. A tiny rathole of an eat-in kitchen, so dirty she shuddered to think of eating anything that came out of it. A slightly larger living room that held a ratty couch and two broken-down armchairs along with a coffee table that would probably collapse under the weight of a tea cup. The bedroom was barely large enough to hold the lumpy-looking double bed shoved against one fly-spotted, faded-papered wall, broken-down chest of drawers, and TV tray that served as a nightstand. Dallas couldn’t look too closely at the ominous stains on the ripped mattress. The bathroom was as appalling as the kitchen.

  Sam made sure the toilet flushed and the shower worked, though he muttered that the water didn’t get nearly hot enough to suit him. There was no closet.

  They stood in the bedroom, looking around in grim resignation. Dallas eyed the small bed, wondering what the odds were that Sam would volunteer to sleep on the ragged sofa in the other room. She looked at him from beneath her lashes.

  He glanced her way at the same time and their gazes held for a moment. Then Sam sighed deeply, ran a hand through his shaggy, sandy hair and managed a rather forced smile. “Hi, honey,” he said. “I’m home.”

  Dallas couldn’t hold back a rueful smile.

  2

  DALLAS’S FIRST PRIORITY after bringing in their possessions was cleaning the apartment. There was no way, she told Sam, that she was living in this dump, even temporarily, without getting rid of some of the filth.

  Sam shrugged and told her to “knock herself out.” Then he settled as comfortably as possible on the broken-down couch and opened the newspaper he’d brought with him.

  The neighbors heard the “Pulaskis’” first noisy quarrel during the next half hour or so. It wasn’t staged.

  Finally Sam helped with the cleaning, to Dallas’s intense satisfaction. It didn’t even bother her that he muttered promises of dire retribution the entire time.

  “The bathroom’s clean,” he announced a couple of hours later as he entered the kitchen where she had just finished scouring the formerly grease-caked stove. “Is there anything else you would like me to do? Scrub the walls with a toothbrush, maybe? Repaint? Lay new carpet?”

  She ignored his heavy sarcasm. “No, I think that’s everything. For now.”

  He
growled.

  She straightened and pressed a hand to her aching back. She’d removed the pregnancy harness when they’d started cleaning, but a morning of wearing it combined with two hours of heavy work had left her tired and sore. “I don’t know about you, but I’m getting hungry.”

  “I’m not cooking,” Sam said, daring her to challenge him. “Not after scrubbing that disgusting toilet.”

  She shrugged. “So we’ll eat sandwiches. I brought bread and lunch meat.”

  He nodded. “Okay. That will do.”

  “We’ll split the cooking and housekeeping chores from now on. Fair enough?”

  He sighed loudly. “We’re working a sting, Sanders, not setting up house.”

  “We still have to eat and sleep here for at least a few weeks. There’s no reason we have to live like pigs just because we’re working.”

  Sam crossed his arms and eyed her mockingly. “I never knew you were so domestic. So how come some lucky man hasn’t trapped you in the kitchen with a litter of little darlings around your feet, hmm?”

  She glared at him. “I haven’t found a man worth putting up with on a permanent basis, that’s why. And no one’s trapping me in a kitchen!”

  “More likely you—”

  A knock on the apartment door made them both go still.

  Sam glanced down at Dallas’s slender figure beneath the voluminous maternity top. “Hide in the bedroom,” he ordered, and snatched a beer out of the refrigerator. “I’ll get the door.”

  His sandy hair was mussed, his T-shirt grubby and his jeans ripped at the knees. He hadn’t shaved in a couple of days. With the beer in his hand, he looked exactly right for the role he was playing. Dallas sprinted for the bedroom, intending to strap herself into the harness as rapidly as possible in case she needed to make an appearance for whoever was at the door. She didn’t like being caught unprepared this way. From now on, maybe she’d better wear the unpleasant contraption all the time.

  * * *

  SAM WAITED UNTIL DALLAS was out of sight before answering the increasingly impatient summons from the hallway. Letting his brows settle into a frown, he jerked open the door. “What is it?” he growled.

  His first impressions of the woman in the hallway were of teased black hair, heavily made-up dark eyes, a faint, two-inch-long scar on her right cheek, and the heavy scent of an inexpensive perfume. Only then did he note that she was in the latter stages of pregnancy, a condition emphasized by a too-tight red knit top and black stretch pants.

  She tossed her lacquered hair back over one shoulder. “You the guy who owns that heap of brown crap parked in my spot?” she demanded, her Bronx accent sounding strange to his Southern ears.

  He lifted an eyebrow. “I didn’t know the parking spaces were assigned.”

  “Everyone knows the spot closest to the trash bin is mine,” she said belligerently. “You park in it again and you might just find a few flat tires when you go back to your car.”

  “Lady, I think you ought to know that I don’t like threats.”

  “And I think you ought to know that I ain’t no lady,” the woman retorted, unintimidated by his tough-guy drawl. “And I got friends around here. Big friends, if you get my meaning.”

  “Sam?” Dallas’s tentative interruption made Sam glance around. She was standing in the doorway to the bedroom, her brown hair wispy around her pale, smudged face, her heavy harness back in place beneath the frilly top she wore with maternity jeans. She looked very young and vulnerable and deceptively fragile—and wearily pregnant.

  Dallas Sanders was damned good at her job. Even Sam had never even implied otherwise, no matter how she might irritate him in other ways.

  “What’s going on?” Dallas asked, looking warily from Sam to the woman in the doorway. “What’s wrong?”

  Sam rolled his eyes. “It’s another crazy pregnant woman,” he muttered in answer to her question. “Looks like I’m surrounded by them.”

  Dallas flushed—making Sam wonder how the hell she did that on command—and appeared hurt by his comment, which he knew she wasn’t. She looked at their irate caller. “I’m sorry,” she said. “He didn’t really mean that. He’s just tired from moving in. Is there something I can do for you?”

  She fell into her part so easily—making excuses for him, looking at him with anxious, adoring eyes. Sam couldn’t help but be rather impressed, especially knowing the way she really felt about him.

  “I was just telling jerko here that I don’t want him parking that rusted heap he calls a car in my parking space again. Maybe you can help him remember,” the other woman said, chin lifted in cocky bravado, her fists on her hips, enlarged stomach thrust forward. “That is, unless you want my friends to have a little, uh, talk with him,” she added.

  Dallas’s blue eyes widened. “You have friends who would hurt him over this?”

  “I got friends who would make him disappear like that.” The woman snapped her crimson-nailed fingers. “If I asked them to, of course.”

  Dallas wrung her hands nervously. “We won’t park in your place again, will we, honey? We didn’t know.”

  Sam ignored her. He carried his beer to the couch, plopped down on it and picked up the newspaper, which he’d turned to the sports section. He didn’t look up from it again.

  Appeased by Dallas’s intimidated behavior, the other woman relaxed a bit. “Well, now you know.”

  Dallas stepped closer to the door. “Yes, now we know. We don’t want any trouble with our new neighbors. Sam—” She lowered her voice and looked quickly toward the sofa. “Sam’s just tired,” she murmured again.

  A look of what might have been pity crossed the other woman’s face. “What’s your name, kid?” she asked.

  Dallas didn’t inform the other woman that she was considerably older than she looked. “It’s Dallas,” she said. “Dallas Pulaski. And that’s my—my husband. Sam.”

  “Husband, huh?” The other woman obviously didn’t believe her—which was exactly what Dallas wanted. “I’m Polly. I live across the hall. You want to know anything else about the way of doing things around here, you ask me. I guess you could come over for coffee or something sometime if you want,” she added, sounding as though she were granting Dallas a great favor.

  Dallas suspected that much of Polly’s attitude was bluff. She’d seen so many others like her—hiding fear and hopelessness behind anger and aggression. “I’d like that,” she said quietly, then looked quickly, timidly over her shoulder toward the sofa. “If it’s okay with Sam, of course,” she added in a whisper.

  Polly rolled her eyes in disgust. “Of course,” she said sarcastically. And then she turned to walk away, moving with a sway of hips that might have been sexy had she not been made so awkward by her pregnancy.

  “Thank you for stopping by,” Dallas said with deliberate inanity, and then closed the door.

  “What are you thanking the bitch for?” Sam roared.

  Aware of possible curious ears, Dallas yelled back, “Well, you could have said something! Do we have to start out making enemies of all our new neighbors?”

  “We ain’t going to be here long enough to make friends with them,” he retorted. “And I don’t want you making friends with the likes of her, anyway.”

  “She seemed nice,” Dallas protested, still standing close to the thin, hollow door.

  “Nice? She was a dragon lady. And did you get a load of that makeup? She looked like a hooker. Probably is.”

  “You don’t know that!”

  “You just stay away from her, you hear?”

  Dallas heard a door closing across the hallway. She wondered how much Polly had overheard. Enough, she hoped, to make Polly a bit sympathetic toward her.

  The first contact had come sooner than they’d even expected. She just hoped the rest of the assignment worked out as well.

  “So what did you think of her?” Sam asked as they sat down to their cold-cut sandwiches a short time later. “Think you’re going to be able
to get tight with her?”

  Dallas was busy trying to figure out how to get close to the table with several pounds of stuffing in her lap. She finally gave up, turned sideways in her chair, and reached for a sandwich. “I think there’s a chance,” she said. “She looked a bit lonely to me—in need of a friend, maybe. That invitation to have coffee with her sometime was a legitimate one, I think.”

  Sam smiled. “But she has friends. Big ones, remember?”

  Dallas chuckled around a mouthful of wheat bread and smoked turkey. She swallowed. “Did you believe her?”

  “Not for a minute.”

  “Me, neither. But she’s got nerve, I’ll give her that. You looked pretty tough when you were staring her down at the door, and she never even flinched.”

  “I looked tough, huh?” Sam seemed to be rather pleased with the description.

  Dallas made a face. “Yeah, Mr. Macho. You looked tough. Probably fooled her good.”

  He lifted both eyebrows, looking a bit offended. “Who was fooling? I am tough, Sanders.”

  “Well, what a coincidence. So am I.”

  He grinned. She smiled back. And they both blinked, startled by the rare moment of shared humor.

  Their visual contact was broken when a raised voice and the sound of shattering glass disturbed them. The noise seemed to be coming from directly over their heads. Both looked automatically upward, as though they could see what was going on above them through the fly-spotted, once-white ceiling.

  “Another domestic dispute,” Sam commented.

  Dallas winced in response to a woman’s infuriated shrieking. “Do you think we sounded like that earlier?”

  “I hope so,” he said with a shrug. “That’s what we’re supposed to sound like.”

  She sighed. “Just once it would be nice to go undercover with class. I wouldn’t mind being assigned to a ritzy apartment, having a delicious hot meal served by a maid, mingling with the Beautiful People.”

  She took another bite of cold turkey sandwich and allowed herself to drift for a moment of pleasant fantasy.