The Baby Pursuit

by Laurie Paige

  Dev, she thought in relief.

  Someone slammed the front door. Running footsteps toward the kitchen. “What’s up?” she heard a man ask.

  The person she’d heard come into the house first, she thought. He must have been outside while she’d been sneaking around the house. Her heart sank. Where was Dev?

  The other man cursed viciously. “It was a setup,” he said. “There was a cop at the motel, pretending to check in, when I drove up. I recognized him. He used to work the rodeos around here in his spare time. Son of a—”

  His words faded as he stomped into the kitchen. Vanessa strained to hear, but the words were muffled. Her heart sank when she heard them both come up the hallway.

  She clutched the baby to her with her left hand and used her right to slip the gun from its hiding place. She wasn’t going to give up her nephew if she had to shoot both of them. But she hoped it wouldn’t come to that.

  The bedroom door flew open and hit the wall.

  “That’s far enough, gentlemen,” she said. Her voice was cool, her hand steady. “The party’s over.”

  “A woman,” one of the men said in surprise.

  “The Fortune brat,” the other snarled.

  She recognized him as the cowboy who had worked on the ranch a few months that spring and summer. His eyes blazed with fury. She was in a tight spot.

  How was she going to tie up two men with a baby in one hand and a gun in the other?

  “Face the wall, hands on the wall above your heads,” she ordered, motioning with the gun.

  The cowboy started to turn, then threw his car keys at her face. She flinched, but she also squeezed the trigger.

  A red stain blossomed on the cowboy’s arm. It didn’t stop him, though. While his partner hung back, he lunged forward and knocked the gun upward. The second bullet went through the ceiling.

  She fell to the floor, the baby still clutched to her side. Vaguely, she heard the child’s cries of terror. The cowboy fell half on top of her. She thrust him aside and brought the gun around once more. But his hand was on her wrist, forcing the muzzle toward the wall. Then he hit her with his fist.

  Light exploded in her eyes, washed over her, then blinked out. She fell into total darkness, holding on to the gun and the baby for dear life. She would die before she let him take either from her.

  “Hold it,” a commanding voice said from the doorway.

  She struggled back from the abyss. Her sight cleared. Dev stood in the room, a gun in his hand. To her horror, the cowboy grabbed her hand. She felt the hard press of a finger over hers on the gun’s trigger and heard the explosion.

  “Oh, no, please no,” she pleaded. In the pause that followed, she brought her right hand up with all her might and hit the kidnapper in the face.

  He nearly broke her fingers, but she held the gun fast.

  “Back off. Into the corner,” Dev said.

  She lost her hat, and her hair cascaded over her face. She pushed it aside, her eyes wide. “Dev,” she whispered and tried to rise, to go to him. “Shh, shh,” she murmured to the crying baby.

  She couldn’t see any blood. He’d told her he was wearing a vest. Relief poured through her.

  It was short-lived. The partner appeared in the doorway behind Dev. He pointed a shotgun at her. “Drop it, or the girl gets it.”

  Dev neatly stepped aside and pivoted. He pointed his gun at the newcomer. “Standoff,” he said, his smile mocking.

  It seemed a lifetime, but it couldn’t have been more than a second before the cowboy, standing and holding his arm, spoke up. “Shoot, man. You can get them both in one shot.” He picked up the set of keys.

  The other man considered. “Nobody said nuthin’ about killing when I came in on this deal. I ain’t shootin’ no cop, or no woman and baby, either.”

  The cowboy cursed. He looked at her, then Dev. He grinned suddenly, a macabre snarl of his lips. “He won’t shoot. He’s afraid the woman and kid will get killed. Then Fortune will strip his hide and lay him out for the buzzards to fight over. Let’s get out of here.” Blood ran between his fingers. Sweat stood out on his forehead.

  “Yeah,” his partner agreed. He pointed the shotgun at Dev. “Stay put. I don’t want to have to kill you and the woman, but I will. Understand?”

  Dev nodded. He kept his gun on the man.

  “Just don’t move for five minutes. We’ll be gone by then. I’ll shoot you on sight if you come out.”

  The two men backed out and closed the door.

  She looked at Dev. “Shouldn’t we—”

  “No.” He sat on the floor, his back propped against the wall. “We wait.” He gestured toward Bryan with the gun. “See if you can quiet him.”

  She remembered seeing a pacifier on the blanket. She retrieved it and, crooning to her nephew, held him against her and rocked back and forth from the waist until his sobs died away. He stared at her with big solemn eyes and sucked hard on the fake nipple.

  From outside they heard the kidnappers’ vehicle start up, then take off down the gravel drive. In less than a moment, the sound faded. Silence enclosed them.

  “We can leave,” she said. A smile broke over her face. “We have the baby. We’re safe. We can leave.”

  His smile was sardonic. “You go on, Beauty. Take the baby to the ranch. Don’t stop for anyone or any thing. I’ll put in a call for Wyatt.”

  She noticed then that his left hand was pressed against his chest. Pain riddled his eyes.

  “You’re hurt,” she said, puzzled. “Were you hit?”

  “I think your bullet smashed a rib,” he said, a laconic smile on his face. “It’s nothing.” He paused and grimaced with pain. “Call Wyatt…my cell phone.”

  She stared in shocked horror as he slumped to the floor. After laying the baby in his makeshift pen, she knelt beside Dev. She examined him with her eyes and gently with her hands. She saw no blood and felt no broken bones.

  As carefully as she could, she straightened him. His breath caught in a gasp, stopped, then resumed in a raspy groan. She opened the black shirt. Finding the tabs, she opened the bulletproof vest. There was no blood on the white T-shirt, either.

  Carefully, she eased it from his jeans. Then she saw the bruise…fist-size, furiously red, already turning a sickening purple.

  Hands shaking, she searched his jacket pockets and found the phone. She turned it on, waited for it to find its signal, then called Wyatt.

  “Wyatt, I need help,” she said as soon as he answered. “Dev is…he’s been shot. His vest saved him, but he could have internal injuries.”

  “Tell me where you are,” Wyatt broke in.

  “Road 1023, the old house at the end on the right, east of the Leather Bucket exit on the interstate.”

  “Roger that. Do you need an ambulance?”

  “Yes. He’s…he’s passed out.”

  “All right. Stay calm. Is anyone with you?”

  “The baby. Just me and the baby. The kidnappers left. In a black truck.”

  “We’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

  “Hurry,” she said, her voice trembling. “Hurry.”

  She turned the phone off. She brushed the hair off Dev’s forehead. He was so still. Her heart clenched in fear. He couldn’t die. He couldn’t.

  “I forbid it,” she whispered to him. “You have to stay. For us. For our children. For the future. It can’t happen without you. You’re the one I need to make my dreams come true. Oh, love, love, don’t die…”

  His breathing was shallow, raspy. Each breath was taken with obvious pain. Each time he stopped, her heart withered. Each time he resumed with a painful gasp, she gasped, too. She was sure his ribs were broken. Nothing could stop the guilty knowledge that she had put him in danger, that it was her gun, with her holding it, that had fired the bullet.

  If he died, she knew who to blame. The fault would be hers, hers alone. Her and her impatient, know-it-all ways.

  If he died…if he died…

 
The words echoed over and over inside her. Tears ached behind her eyes. She wouldn’t let them fall. She didn’t deserve the easy release of tears.

  It was an eon before she heard the sirens on the country road.

  Thirteen

  Vanessa paced the waiting room, the baby sleeping against her chest. Dev was in emergency surgery. Wyatt and his men had set up roadblocks around the county. Her father and Matthew and Claudia were on their way to town.

  Hearing their voices at the elevator, she went to the door. “In here,” she called softly.

  Claudia gave a sob and rushed forward, nearly falling in her eagerness to get to her son. Matthew caught her arm and steadied his wife. They crossed the hall, her father on their heels.

  “Oh, my God,” Claudia whispered. She held out her arms.

  Vanessa laid the sleeping child against his mother’s breast. Joy, too painful to be shared without tears, filled her eyes. Matthew crowded close to his wife and son.

  Claudia’s tears fell on the blanket as she rocked back and forth with her child at last in her arms again.

  Ryan put his arm across Vanessa’s shoulders and handed Claudia his handkerchief. He grabbed tissues from a box on the table for himself, Matthew and Vanessa.

  “Sit, darling,” Matthew urged.

  They took seats on the sofa, Vanessa and Ryan on the nearby chairs. Claudia tenderly tucked little Bryan into the crook of her arm and pulled the light blanket open so she could examine her baby herself. She gasped as if in horror, then started shaking her head.

  “No, no,” she moaned. “This isn’t my baby. This isn’t Bryan.”

  “Baby’s grow so fast at this age,” Vanessa said in a soothing voice. “He’s gained some weight and his face is rounder—”

  Claudia thrust the baby toward Matthew, still shaking her head. “I’d know my own child. This isn’t Bryan. It isn’t!” Her voice rose hysterically.

  Matthew took the baby, studied him, then Vanessa, his expression uncertain, questioning.

  “It has to be. This was the baby I found at the house. The kidnappers were there. This is Bryan.” She nodded reassuringly at Claudia. “The pediatrician here at the hospital examined him. He has the double crown birthmark. I saw it myself. He just looks different because he’s older—”

  “No!” Claudia screamed at her. “This is not my child!” She bent over and buried her face in her hands. “Oh, God, my baby…my baby…oh, dear God.”

  Matthew caught her shoulder as she slumped toward the floor. Ryan leaped to his feet. He helped Matthew lay her on the sofa. Vanessa tucked a pillow under her head.

  Ryan and Matthew stared at the baby, who opened his eyes at that moment and studied the two men bending over him. He hesitated, then a big smile widened his mouth. A string of drool rolled over his chubby chin.

  “She’s right,” Matthew said. “I don’t know who this is, but it isn’t…it can’t be Bryan. He favors our baby, this one…but he’s heavier…bigger.”

  “Whose could he be?” Vanessa asked. “This is crazy. It has to be Bryan. He has the birthmark.”

  “We can do a footprint. Here at the hospital,” Matthew said. “I’ll call the pediatrician. He’s a friend.”

  Vanessa reclaimed the baby while Matthew went to call the baby doctor. Her heart stopped when a surgeon came to the room.

  “Kincaid family?” he said.

  “Here.” She cleared her throat. “We’re here for him. I’m his fiancée.”

  “He’s doing fine. He’ll be in recovery for an hour before being moved to a room.”

  “How bad was he hurt?” her father asked.

  “The vest stopped the bullet, but the rib was smashed from the force. A couple of splinters stuck in his heart.” At her gasp, the doctor smiled. “He’s too stubborn to let a little thing like that stop him. He’ll be okay.”

  “How long will he be in the hospital?” she asked.

  “A week. Less if he doesn’t develop a fever.”

  She nodded in relief.

  The surgeon lifted a hand to her lip. “You need a couple of stitches here. Come on down to the station and I’ll take care of it.”

  Startled, she handed the alert baby to her father and went with the surgeon. He cleaned her lower lip, numbed it and put two neat stitches in the split caused by the cowboy’s fist and her teeth.

  “Your FBI friend told me to take care of you,” the surgeon said while he worked. “He wanted me to do it before I checked him out.”

  “He’s like that,” she mumbled, then flinched.

  “Don’t smile very much for a couple of days,” the doctor advised with a grin. “Hold this in place until it quits bleeding again.”

  “When can I see Dev?” She held the gauze swab against her numb lip.

  “The nurse will tell you when he’s taken to a room.”

  “Thanks.” She returned to the waiting room.

  Her father glanced up from the sofa where he played with the baby, who was smiling and cooing. “This is a heck of a mess. Claudia came around. Matthew ordered a sedative and had her put to bed here. He’s going to spend the night, too. The pediatrician who checked the baby is going to compare his footprint with the one on file tomorrow.”

  “You think this isn’t Bryan?”

  Her father shook his head. “I don’t know. He sort of looks like him, but not exactly. I assumed my memory was at fault, that, like you said, he’s grown. But… I don’t know. He isn’t the same. This may not be Bryan.”

  “But the birthmark—”

  “I know. We looked at it—Matthew and the doctor and I. This is my grandson, but he may not be Matthew and Claudia’s child.”

  “My God,” she whispered. “Whose child is he?”

  Ryan’s face hardened. “I’m going to request my sons and nephews be at the ranch tomorrow to discuss that very thing after the footprint is verified. No Fortune ever turned his back on his own flesh.”

  Vanessa felt a touch on her arm. She jerked upright off the sheet. Pain ripped through her head. Her bottom lip felt twice its usual size, and her tongue seemed to be made of some soft, gluey substance.

  The silence closed around her. The hospital was eerily quiet at four in the morning. Dev hadn’t woken yet from his surgery. It worried her, this stillness from a man she’d always known as controlled but forceful and dynamic.

  His arm jerked again. She noted his eyes moving under his lids. He was probably dreaming of them and their close call. She didn’t know if she could forgive herself for holding the gun that shot him, even though she hadn’t actually pulled the trigger.

  The terror of that moment would live in her forever. And the guilt. In spite of the doctor’s assurances, she still wasn’t convinced Dev would be all right. She imagined splinters sticking in his heart. Such a brave, true heart.

  She rose and bent over him. “Don’t you die,” she whispered. “Don’t you dare die.”

  Her heart nearly stopped when he opened his eyes a slit and stared at her. A smile broke through her worry.

  “No more promises,” he said hoarsely.

  She shook her head, giddy with relief. “Not good enough. Give me your word or I’ll hound you to eternity.”

  He gave a snort that ended in a gasp. “You’ll already do that. Not something… I can stop.”

  “How do you feel, really?” She gave him an encouraging smile, her love soft and caring and euphoric within her.

  Dev didn’t smile back. He blinked his eyes wearily. “Okay. You…go home.”

  “No way. As if I’d leave you.”

  “Knew you’d be stubborn. But…don’t want you…here. Go home.” His voice faded to a whisper of effort on the last words.

  She tilted her head slightly, unsure what he was saying. She glanced at the window. “It’s nearly dawn. I’ve slept all night. I feel fine.”

  He grimaced impatiently. His fingers dug into her arm. “Listen,” he ordered tersely. “Go…home.”

  The nurse bustled in. “I thoug
ht you must be awake. The monitor is beeping like crazy. Lie still. You two can’t dance until the fat lady sings. That won’t be for another week at the earliest.”

  She laughed cheerily at her own humor, adjusted the IV drip speed and stuck an electronic thermometer in his ear. She took his pulse, then released his wrist with a frown.

  “Is something bothering you? Are you hurting?”

  “No.” He bobbed his chin toward Vanessa. “Tell her to get out of here.”

  The nurse glanced from him to her and back again. “You want your fiancée to leave?”

  “She’s not—” He gestured with a hand, then clenched his teeth at the agony this produced. “She’s not my fiancée.”

  “You are in pain.” The nurse turned a scolding gaze on Vanessa. “Perhaps you’d better leave. He seems agitated.”

  Vanessa stood, uncertain what to do. A knot formed in her chest and rose to her throat.

  Leaning over her stubborn lover, she murmured, “I’ll be back. You won’t get rid of me so easily as that, Devin Kincaid. I always get what I want, and I want you. Put that in your pipe and smoke it,” she ordered softly.

  “You’re trouble,” he said doggedly, sounding weary beyond belief. “Thought I could keep you separate from the investigation…but you interfered.”

  She stood there, dead-still, her heart tripping over itself in apology. “I know. I shouldn’t have gone… I didn’t mean to interfere. It was just… I thought I could help,” she finished miserably.

  “Nearly got us both killed,” he reminded her grimly. He shook his head slightly and grimaced with pain. “I heard that shot…and forgot twenty years of training. Didn’t call for backup…just ran like hell…because of…because of you.”

  He was breathing hard by the time he got the words out. His eyes bored two holes right through her heart. The nurse stood on the other side of the bed, her eyes wide as she took in the strange confrontation.

  Vanessa blanched. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered around the pain that filled her chest.

  He didn’t acknowledge her words. “When I saw the house… I was pretty sure we had them. The tower was in the field, like you said…should have called Wyatt then…would have trapped the men and found out their partners.”