Cries in the Night

by Debra Webb

  Ryan helped Mel to her feet. She smoothed a hand over her slacks and scanned the room one last time. “Do you think he’s dead?” She asked the question but the voice sounded alien to her own ears, too weary, too frightened. Nothing like the strong woman she usually was.

  Right now she just wanted to go home. She wanted to be near her baby’s things. She’d run into too many brick walls today. Whatever the answer to this crazy scheme they weren’t going to find it here. Unless someone on the other end of one of those telephone numbers in Wilcox’s call log could help them.

  Mel was beginning to doubt everything at this point. She was so tired. Too tired to think straight.

  “I’m going to take you home,” Ryan said, reading her mind with the same adeptness he’d always possessed. Even after two years apart, he knew her like the back of his hand, maybe better.

  She didn’t argue with him. Defeat had finally found her. She needed someone to take care of her right now. Why fight the inevitable? Her daughter was missing, presumed dead. Yes, Melany Jackson could be vulnerable. No matter how much training she had received. No matter how many similar cases she had worked. This time was different. She was losing something far more precious than mere energy as she ferreted out truth and justice.

  She was losing hope.

  * * *

  RYAN STOOD on the stoop next to her as she fumbled for her house key. She’d separated it from her key chain when she’d given him the SUV key. Now it appeared hopelessly lost in the bottom of her bag.

  “Here it is,” she muttered. She shoved it into the slot, gave it a twist and opened the door.

  Ryan braced for her rejection. She hadn’t allowed him into her home. He wasn’t going to force the issue if she sent him on his way now. Additional stress was the last thing she needed. Mel was teetering very close to the edge right now and he wasn’t sure he could do anything about it. But he damn sure wouldn’t make it worse.

  “Would you like to come in?” she asked when he made no move to follow her inside.

  His pulse rate kicking up a notch, he managed an appreciative smile. “I’d like that very much.”

  She closed and locked the door behind them. “I’ll make some coffee.”

  He grunted an acknowledgement, too lost to taking in the details of her place to do more than that.

  Her home wasn’t that large, but it was comfortable-looking and it smelled welcoming. The sofa and chairs were slipcovered in a fashionably chic manner. The walls were cluttered with pictures of her child. Dozens upon dozens of snapshots and professional photographs. A small television set occupied a corner along with row after row of book-lined shelves. On the floor in that same corner was a pile of toys. Stuffed animals mostly. Soft, plush objects befitting a child so young as Katlin. In the opposite corner was a small desk and computer, the screen saver flashed smiley faces.

  A gas fireplace served as the focal point of the room. A handcrafted afghan lay across one end of its hearth. He could imagine Mel sitting before the fire reading bedtime stories to her daughter, both wrapped in the warm afghan. He could see them laughing and cuddling, enjoying their simple life, free of crime-scene photos and urgent, middle-of-the-night calls.

  The only thing he couldn’t imagine was the man that went with the package…the child’s father.

  Another man.

  Not him.

  Shifting his attention to the hallway beyond the room, he drifted into that course. Mel was in the kitchen, in the opposite direction…but he wanted to see where she slept. The place where she felt safe at night while she dreamed.

  The first door he passed opened into the nursery. Bold colors and lots of little girl favorites had been included in the room’s decorating theme. His gaze rested briefly on the empty crib. Something heavy shifted in his chest. He didn’t want it to end this way…he wanted to save Melany from that kind of agony. The kind that followed you to the grave.

  The very kind he’d spent his entire adult life running from.

  Oh, he’d been ready to commit to marriage. But even that had been a last-ditch effort to keep her from leaving. He’d known she was going…he’d felt it in her withdrawal those last few weeks they were together. He would have done most anything to make her stay.

  Anything but this.

  He surveyed the child’s room once more before moving on.

  Mel’s room was like her, simple yet elegant. Understated beauty and sophistication. The wide, king-size bed looked inviting, made him ache to hold her again. Floor-to-ceiling windows lined the far wall and an antique dresser acted as a stage for the collage of toiletries that served more as decoration than anything. Mel didn’t need cosmetics or fancy fragrances. She had a natural beauty and a sweet, womanly scent that had brought him to his knees more times than he cared to admit.

  “I found this place the first time I came to the city,” she said from behind him.

  He turned to face her and she smiled sadly. “When I realized that we weren’t going to work out I started considering job options. The university here had an opening that fit the bill perfectly, criminology professor. I came for an interview while you were off in Oregon on the Wallace case.”

  Ryan felt his knees go weak and he sat down on the edge of the bed before he humiliated himself by dropping like a rock. She’d never told him any of this before…they hadn’t talked at all really. She’d asked him to change his mind, he hadn’t, she’d left.

  “One of the university deans told me about this house and I made an appointment that very day to see it. I made an immediate offer on it.”

  A cold, hard chunk of long-buried hurt settled in the pit of his stomach. “So you’d already made up your mind before I came back and proposed?” He hadn’t believed anything about their past could still cause him pain, but somehow, that did.

  She nodded. “I already knew what your answer about having children was going to be.” She came over to the bed and sat down beside him. His entire body reacted to her nearness in such an intimate setting. “I knew you, Ryan. I didn’t have to wait and see how things turned out. You weren’t going to change your mind and neither was I.”

  He looked long and hard into those shimmering green eyes before he worked up the guts to ask, “You wanted a child that badly? Bad enough to forget all that we’d shared?”

  “I wanted this child more than you can ever imagine. But nothing could ever make me forget.”

  A flicker of anger unfurled inside him. “Not even he could make you forget?” He glared at her then, wanting to hurt her the way she’d hurt him. Wanting her to see the depth of the pain she’d caused him. It was childish he knew, but he just couldn’t help it.

  Rather than snarl back at him as he’d fully expected, she reached up and tenderly caressed his jaw. “I’m sorry I hurt you, Ryan. But I had to do this….”

  She’d left him…found someone else…had a child. They were working on a case together. This wasn’t supposed to be about the past…or them. But it was. It was all tangled together and there was no getting around it.

  He did what he’d longed to do from the moment he’d laid eyes on her in that interrogation room when he first arrived in Memphis.

  He kissed her.

  Not the hard and fast, lust-driven kind of kiss. The slow, savoring kind that was fueled by regret…and the kind of desperation known only between old lovers.

  She tasted just like he remembered, warm and soft. He slid his arms around her and pulled her close, burrowing his face in the curve of her neck when he could bear the touch of her lips no longer. Her sweet scent took his breath, made him want to hang on forever.

  How could he have let her go?

  She pushed against his shoulder, a signal that the moment had passed. “The coffee’s ready,” she murmured before rising from his embrace and leaving the room. The same way she’d left him two years ago…without looking back.

  He’d foolishly let her go.

  It was far too late to take it back now.

  CHAP
TER ELEVEN

  Melany stretched her neck side to side and stared at the computer screen. She recalled a couple years back some sort of scandal about autopsies or organ removal involving children. She remembered being appalled that it could go on for so long without anyone knowing.

  She shuddered at the whole concept and glanced toward the sofa and Ryan. Her breath stalled in her lungs when her brain and heart assimilated what her eyes saw, he was asleep. He’d finally given up. She wondered if he’d had any sleep at all since he’d arrived in Memphis. Maybe a couple winks here and there. That was his style when burrowed deeply into a case.

  The clock above the mantel chimed once for the hour. She should be asleep, as well. But she hadn’t found what she was looking for just yet. For a time she was content to study Ryan…the side rarely seen by human eyes. The vulnerable side. His jaw was shadowed by a day’s beard growth. His muscles completely relaxed with those long legs stretched out in front of him. He’d peeled off his jacket and tossed it to one end of the sofa and released a couple of buttons on his shirt. The V of dark hair revealed there made her heart skip a beat. The rolled up shirtsleeves bared muscled forearms, making her shiver with the memory of those arms around her. The reports and statements he’d been reviewing were scattered around him like the discarded squares of a tattered quilt.

  She closed her eyes then and relived that moment when his lips had touched hers. Subconsciously she’d wanted him to kiss her, though she hadn’t admitted as much until he did just that. He’d tasted of coffee and Ryan, mysterious, complicated Ryan. That simple kiss had made her want more…had made her regret the mistake she had made. She’d only realized in these past few days what a mistake it had been.

  Not telling Ryan the truth had been wrong…a terrible, terrible mistake. He thought she’d run immediately into someone else’s arms and that hurt him more than she would have imagined it possible. But worst of all, she had deprived him of the first two years of his daughter’s life…perhaps the only two. Tears welled instantly and she pushed the idea away. She would not believe that.

  If she had told him the truth two years ago, had given him the option, at least the decision would have been his. But she’d taken that away from him and that was going to hurt him even more. She shook her head in defeat. Yes, she’d thought she was protecting herself and him from a life of obligatory misery. But he had deserved better than that. She knew it now, but it was too late.

  She turned her attention back to the computer screen. There was nothing she could do to change the past, but she could help in the search for her daughter. She had to focus on that. The other would simply have to take care of itself.

  Typing furiously, she went to another search engine and started again. If she could only remember the name of the hospital or the city.

  A long line of possible sites filled the screen.

  Organs Illegally Stored at British Hospital.

  A chill raced up her spine. This could be it.

  She scanned the article, her heart pumping harder and harder with each word she read. Organs stolen from more than eight hundred fetuses and infants. Alder Hey, a British Hospital in Liverpool, admitted to taking organs from aborted fetuses as well as living children undergoing heart surgery. According to the article, the thymus glands, the primary organ taken, plays a vital role in the immune system by producing healthy cells to attack foreign substances around the body. These organs were given to a pharmaceutical firm in exchange for financial donations.

  Reading faster and faster, her morbid fascination mounting, she came upon the next related article. Children’s organs found in warehouse operated by British pathologist. This pathologist was also linked to Alder Hey in the scandal involving the removal of organs and tissue from dead children and aborted fetuses. More than eight hundred cases.

  All those children…all those parents.

  She quickly printed off the most relevant articles. Ryan had to see this. She was halfway across the room with the documents in hand when she realized she didn’t have the heart to wake him. He needed the rest.

  Instead, she placed the articles on top of a stack of reports next to his briefcase and retrieved the afghan from the hearth. Moving with all the stealth she’d learned from tiptoeing around a sleeping child the past year and a half, she spread the cover over him and smiled when he continued to sleep. He definitely needed this night.

  She turned the lights down low but not completely off just in case he woke up and forgot where he was. When she’d padded quietly to her bedroom, she stripped off her clothes and pulled on her favorite nightshirt. The covers felt heavenly around her as she climbed between the sheets and closed her eyes with a sigh. She was glad this day was over.

  Maybe tomorrow they would find Katlin.

  Before she drifted off to sleep Mel decided there was something she had to do first thing in the morning. Visit all the local funeral homes. She wanted to speak to the morticians who’d prepared the bodies of those autopsied children. She would get the list of names from Bill.

  They were getting close…she could feel it.

  This time when she slept she didn’t dream of Katlin…she dreamed of all those dead children whose organs had been stolen. Only in the dream it wasn’t at some British hospital…it was here in Memphis. And she was the only one who could hear them crying….

  * * *

  THE PHONE in Ryan’s hotel rang as he stepped into a clean pair of trousers. He fastened the closure and zipped the fly as he strode across the room. “Braxton,” he barked when he’d snatched up the receiver.

  “I’ve got that list of names and addresses from Wilcox’s call log,” Bill told him without preamble.

  “Great.” Ryan shouldered into the shirt he’d tossed onto the bed. “Give me two minutes to hook up my fax machine and send ’em over. I want to get started on that right away.”

  “Where’s Mel?”

  Cradling the receiver between his ear and shoulder, Ryan’s fingers slowed in their work of slipping buttons into their closures. Was that suspicion he heard in Bill’s voice? “She’s at home. I’m supposed to pick her up in half an hour.”

  “I called and there was no answer.”

  Ryan knew a moment’s panic. “Maybe she’s still in the shower. I think she was up pretty late and…”

  “Weren’t you there?”

  Blatant accusation now. “What is this, an inquisition?” He didn’t like where he figured his old friend was going with this.

  “I’m just warning you that Mel has enough on her plate right now. She doesn’t need any distractions that will only lead to trouble when this is over.”

  “You think I’d take advantage of her vulnerability?” Ryan wanted to be pissed off, but a part of him knew that if she hadn’t stopped him he would have done that very thing last night. Damn, he was scum. He’d wanted her so much he hadn’t stopped to think about her needs.

  Bill heaved a sigh. “Hell, I think you’ll take advantage of each other if you’re not careful and then you’d both regret it.”

  Spoken like a true friend. One who likely knew them better than they knew themselves.

  “I won’t let that happen.” Ryan meant every word. He’d gotten close last night, but he’d had some sleep and he was thinking a good deal clearer this morning.

  “All right. I’ll try to reach her again.”

  “I’ll be on my way to Mel’s in five.” Ryan dropped the receiver back into its cradle and swiftly rolled on his socks and stepped into his shoes. He didn’t like the idea that she hadn’t answered her phone. He’d left her less than an hour ago…still, bad things could happen in a few seconds. With Helen Peterson and Garland Hanes’s murders and Wilcox’s disappearance, he wasn’t taking anything for granted.

  He grabbed his cell phone from its charger and picked up his briefcase. As he hustled out the door he thought of the articles Mel wanted him to read. Something about some British hospital called Alder Hey that she thought might be relevant to this case. H
e’d intended to take a look at them as soon as he was dressed, but that would have to wait.

  Confirming her safety was priority one.

  * * *

  MEL STOOD at her desk watching the printed page slowly discharge from the fax machine. It couldn’t have been more than ten minutes ago that she’d asked Bill for the list of names. He already had the data organized and quickly faxed it to her.

  She scanned the page, twenty-one names in all over the past two years. God, that seemed like so many. All under the age of three. Plucking at her still damp hair she set the page aside to pull on a light wool suit jacket. The red one, her favorite. She smiled as she smoothed a hand over the soft material. All week she hadn’t cared whether she ate or slept much less how she looked. But renewed hope had given her optimism a boost. Besides, it was chilly out this morning. Her black slacks and the long-sleeved white blouse wouldn’t be enough. She told herself that taking an extra moment to consider her wardrobe this morning had nothing to do with Ryan.

  And it didn’t.

  She needed to look professional. If she pulled off attractive as well, that couldn’t hurt since the funeral home directors she intended to question were all men.

  The knock at her front door told her that Ryan had arrived. She folded the list of names and tucked it into her purse. Now the question was, would she be able to convince Ryan to let her go off on her own this morning?

  She opened the door and just did manage to stifle a gasp. He looked fantastic. Freshly showered and shaved, those blue eyes clear after a good night’s sleep. He had apologized profusely for falling asleep on her couch, but she had assured him it was okay. She was just glad he’d gotten some rest.

  “Good morning,” he said in that deep, husky voice that would put wicked ideas in any woman’s head.

  “Morning.” She mustered up a smile and hoped he couldn’t read her mind as well as it always seemed he could. She resisted the urge to shake her head. She had definitely veered way off course here.