Matt had found his way to her breast, pulling aside her bra and licking her nipple. “Good…job. I’ll be…in the office…” She had to bite her lip as Matt sucked her breast into his mouth, twirling his tongue around her areola. “Holy shit—I mean…uh, shortly. I’ll be in the office…shortly.”
“Are you okay, Taylor? You sound—”
She didn’t listen further, disconnecting the call and tossing the phone over the seat. “I hate you”
“No, you don’t. Now, shut up and let me have my way with you, Mrs. Dillinger.”
Taylor didn’t argue.
* * *
At exactly 7:00 p.m. Dottie strolled into the common area of the birthing center where four other couples had congregated with Matt and Taylor. Or, as they were currently known, Randy and Adela Dillinger.
Taylor, as promised, had done her thing and paid a little visit to the Dillingers, explaining the situation and the FBI’s need to temporarily use their names for an investigation and voila, Matt and Taylor were suddenly six weeks pregnant and searching for options outside of a hospital birth.
Jeez, this was nuts. As a single man who’d had precisely two relationships he’d even considered possible long-term material, he didn’t have a clue what kind of questions an expectant father would ask. And, Taylor? God love her, but she hardly seemed the type to be skilled in this area. Give her a Glock and a ripe murder and she was an ace. Motherhood?
He glanced at her, studied the curve of her cheek, the way she nibbled her bottom lip as she read one of the birthing center brochures. Yes. Definitely motherhood material. All that assertiveness and intensity, the need to right wrongs, she’d be fierce as a mom, but good. Protective.
She leaned over, slid a hand across the back of his shoulder and got close to his ear. “Relax, Mr. Dillinger. Before I kill you.”
Shit. Apparently his apprehension about this whole thing was showing. He always hated undercover work. Too many things could go wrong at too many times. For some, it got their juices flowing, him? Nah. He enjoyed the puzzle of working a case, asking questions, figuring the angles.
Dottie breezed into the room. She wore a navy dress and had pulled her reddish hair back into a severe bun. Matt figured her for mid-fifties, but she could have been older. These days, with all the Botox and other treatments women put themselves through, who knew?
“Hello, everyone,” Dottie said, her gaze moving to each couple as she offered up a cheery smile. “Thank you so much for being here.” She looked over at Matt and Taylor. “Welcome back! Lovely to see you.”
“Thank you,” Taylor gushed. “We’re so excited!”
Matt looked over at her, marveling at her ability to be a tough-talking FBI agent one minute and a gushing expectant mother the next.
A blonde woman across from them reached for her husband’s hand and squeezed it. The two of them exchanged a look and the man nodded. Clearly they’d just experienced a non-verbal message, similar to what Matt and Taylor had done yesterday at the hospital. But that had been business. This? This was personal. What would it feel like to be here and not pretending? To experience the nerves and excitement of planning the birth of your child.
He tried to conjure an image of it. Of him coming home, to Taylor, her belly full and round with his baby. Would he rub his hands over her, maybe talk to his child? If it was a boy, he’d probably roll a football or baseball over that belly just to get things rolling in that direction. Couldn’t hurt, right? A girl? Well, she’d get kisses. And maybe a softball. Daddy’s girl.
“Okay,” Dottie said, “let’s head on back and we’ll get started.”
She led them to the back of the center to a sitting room large enough to seat ten. The muted paint and thick carpeting gave the place a homey feel and Matt immediately understood why they used this room for open houses. Everything about the place screamed upscale, comfort, and luxury.
Right up Felicity’s alley.
Dottie waved them all to the cluster of sofas and chairs near the fireplace she stood in front of. Matt moved to the one closest to Dottie, spotting the dark blue binder with the birthing center’s logo on the front—fancy-shmancy raised lettering—sitting on his chair.
“If you would,” Dottie said, “open your binders to page one. This will tell you a bit about our process. There are forms to be filled out and given back to us so we may reserve your spot in one of our amazing birthing rooms. From there, you’ll be assigned a caseworker who will help you put together your birthing team.”
While Matt opened the binder and skimmed the first page, Taylor raised her hand. “Can I ask a question?”
Such a polite little girl. Matt nearly rolled his eyes.
“The caseworker,” Taylor said. “Is she a medical service provider?”
“She is actually a social worker with a master’s in social work. She’s working on her PHD so she is more than qualified.”
“Excellent,” Taylor said.
The blonde woman once again shot Taylor a look, clearly irritated over the interruption to Dottie’s spiel. Well, sister, get used to it.
An older woman wearing giant diamond stud earrings stuck her head in and Dottie stepped away to speak with her. A minute later, the woman left as quietly as she’d entered and Dottie resumed her pitch, highlighting items contained on the first page, top doctors, nurses with a minimum of ten years experience in labor and delivery, Lamaze coordinators, all of it handled via the caseworker.
Ever the curious one, Matt skipped ahead and flipped the page. Page two listed ten anesthesiologists. Ten. Looking into all of them would probably take more time than Taylor had. Although, depending on how long they’d been working with the center, one of them could have been Felicity’s choice. They’d have to look into that.
Taylor raised her hand again.
If Dottie was irritated with the interruptions, she hid it under a gentle smile. “Yes, Mrs. Dillinger?”
“The anesthesiologists, are we able to pick anyone from the list?”
“Of course. On the next pages, you will find full bios on each doctor. Our caseworker is happy to facilitate a meeting, if you would like.”
A meeting? With the drug guy? What did it matter if you liked him or not as long as he got that epidural rolling before the woman nearly broke in two?
“Excellent,” Taylor chirped again.
Sweet, cheerleader Taylor was almost too much and Matt couldn’t contain his smile.
“What?” she said. “You know how I am. I want who I want.”
“I hear you, girl!” the dark haired woman on the other side of Taylor said.
“Right? I mean, we’re the ones doing the work, we should get to choose.”
Matt and the husband exchanged a glance and both shook their heads.
“Unless,” the blonde snipped, “you’re doing a natural birth. Then it’s not an issue.”
“Wow,” the dark-haired woman said, “you’re brave. I want the drugs. Load me up.”
Taylor high-fived the woman.
Good God, he needed to get her out of here before she exchanged numbers with the dark haired chick. Or got clocked by the blonde.
“All that can be decided later,” Dottie said. “For now, I’ll give you a few minutes to peruse the books. We have two caseworkers and our Lamaze coordinator here tonight to answer questions. To save time, we’ll split up and have two couples meeting with caseworkers, one touring the facility and the other with our Lamaze coordinator. We’ll rotate everyone through.”
“Excellent!” Matt said, mimicking Taylor.
She smacked his arm, but grinned and, shoot, she was damned cute like this. Something in his chest hitched. All this baby talk and pretending to be a couple was making him soft. Still, he leaned over and kissed her. Barely a peck compared to the make-out sessions they tended to have, but Taylor squeezed his arm and let the kiss linger for a few seconds.
Yep, that was them. Just a happy couple in love.
“Oh, you two,” Dottie said.
“I knew you were special the minute you walked in here.”
Ninety minutes later, Matt escorted Taylor from the birthing center, blue binder in hand. Right now, that item might be their biggest lead.
In the darkness of the parking lot, he opened the passenger door for his bride, swatted her very fine ass and waited for her to slide in before walking around to the driver’s side.
“You’re pretty good at this husband thing,” Taylor said as he fired up the Mustang.
“Ha. Good one.”
“No. Really. Just the right amount of attentiveness balanced with teasing. You’re a natural.”
“You’re not so bad yourself with all the excited new-mother questions.”
“I thought that blonde was about to throttle me. She had a monster stick up her ass.”
Bye-bye cheerleader Taylor.
He pulled out of the lot while Taylor used the light on her phone to read through the binder. He shot a look at the page she stopped on—the anesthesiologist list. “We need to crosscheck all these doctors and see if any of them are Felicity’s. It might be a lead.”
“It says two of the caseworkers have been there since ’05 and ’07, respectively.”
“That’s good. We’ll look into them too. And the Lamaze meetings. I saw somewhere in the case notes that Walt and Felicity had attended a class the night before she disappeared. That might be something.”
“Did you notice the woman talking with Dottie?”
“The tall one with the diamonds?”
“That’s her. Who the hell was that?”
Taylor pursed her lips. “I wondered that too. She didn’t stay long, but I assume she works at the center. All in all, Mad Dog, I’d say this little excursion netted us a few possible leads.”
“Yep.” He held his hand up to high-five her. “Good work, Special Agent Sinclair.”
“You too, Mad Dog. We make a good team.”
He waggled his eyebrows. “In more ways than one.”
Chapter Nine
“Why Walt and Felicity?” Matt said, nuzzling Taylor’s ear as she stuck her key in the lock of her condo. “What was special about Baby Jarvis?”
It was a question they’d already hashed over at dinner. After the meeting, they’d both been starving and hopped up on adrenaline from their little undercover sting. Matt had driven her by her place to change clothes and then he’d taken her for a bite to eat at a hole-in-the-wall diner where they’d both consumed copious amounts of breakfast foods, of which the place specialized in serving any time of day.
“Comparatively speaking, nothing,” Taylor said, letting them in and entering the code in her security system. “When you look at the type of people that attended the open house tonight, none of them stood out in respect to the others. There were two politicians with their spouses, the weather guy from Channel 6 and his wife—she was the blonde. Next was the lead actress from that new hit Fox TV show with her equally famous actor boyfriend, and a guard from the Wizards basketball team with his wife. If the group Walt and Felicity attended these meetings with was anything like tonight’s rich and famous crowd, I don’t know why the Jarvises, or their kid, would stand out to a kidnapper.”
She tossed her keys on the side table and kicked off her shoes. Matt, ever the gentleman, helped her off with her jacket. She unstrapped her gun holster and placed the weapon next to her keys.
It felt good to have someone take care of her. To feed her, to chauffeur her around. To talk cases and brainstorm ideas about her unsub with. She sighed as he tugged her shirt out of her waistband and ran his hands under it, skimming over her stomach.
“There was no ransom note, no phone call.” He kissed her neck and brushed his thumbs across the undersides of her breasts. “Cementing the idea our perp was going after the baby, but why take it before it was born? Why not wait until Felicity gave birth and then kidnap the child?”
Taylor had already given that some thought. “Too much security around the baby once it’s born. It was their first child, they’d be watching it every moment, and would probably have a nanny with her eyes on the kid as well. Felicity, however, didn’t even have a bodyguard. Snatching her out of a parking lot was a cinch compared to nabbing that baby once it entered the world.”
Matt undid the button of her jeans, grazed her hipbones with this thumbs. “Messy, though, having to dispose of the mother once the baby arrives.”
Maybe it was sick that they could talk about dead mothers and missing children while undressing each other, but Matt had taught her in the past few days that using sex as a way of dealing with the barbarity of her job was better than alcohol. “Messy, but not that difficult, as evidenced by what happened.”
Matt backed her up against the side table, planted his hands on either side of her hips and hit her with his pretty blue-eyed gaze. “You think Dottie is in on it?”
For the first time in her career, she could talk shop with a lover, not only because he was working the same case, but also because he wasn’t turned off by the gruesome details that were part of her everyday life. “Whoever targeted the Senator and Felicity had a golden opportunity to gain all the information they needed through the birthing center’s setup. Those binders, complete with pictures of the parents, as well as their medical histories and personal information, are goldmines.”
“So what’s our next step?”
She traced the line of his jaw. “My next step is to go back tomorrow morning and question Dottie in an official manner.”
“What, no Lamaze class?” He grinned. “I was looking forward to coaching your heavy breathing.”
“You don’t start Lamaze until you’re farther along. Like six or seven months.”
“No more Mr. and Mrs. Dillinger, then, huh?”
“We still have tonight,” she teased, although she wasn’t sure why she’d said that. Acting like a married couple for the undercover op was fun, sure, but continuing that act now was silly and dangerous. They weren’t in a serious, long-term relationship.
Were they?
She shook off the thought. No way. Mad Dog Stephens didn’t do long-term relationships. Neither did she.
The nature of their long workdays and inability to share details about their jobs were to blame. Burnout was high, the people they worked with knowing more about them than their own families.
Plus, Matt was a player. She’d done enough digging on him to know his reputation with women preceded him.
And Taylor never let anyone get close to her. Not anymore. Not after Isabel.
Matt kissed her, long and slow, pulling her out of her tangled thoughts, and she melted a little. He could be rough and aggressive with her or soft and careful. Like he could read her mind and knew exactly what she needed at any moment.
“I think I could get used to coming home to this every night,” he murmured against her lips.
A little thrill ran through her, and she automatically squashed it.
But that didn’t feel right either. She liked having Matt in her bed, eating meals with him, having someone to talk to. She’d never dreamed they’d still be together after that one-night stand at the conference, much less working on the same case as partners. But here they were, and damn if they weren’t good together. Who knew what other craziness they could share?
“I kinda like it, too,” she admitted, threading her fingers through his hair.
He drew his face back a few inches. “But?”
She started to say, “but we both suck at relationships” and a dozen other pat excuses that formed on her tongue. Instead, she just smiled at him. “No ‘but’. If you want to keep this arrangement going for awhile and see where it leads, I’m game.”
Another grin, complete with smoldering eyes. “Are you talking our working arrangement or our personal one?”
How could she resist those eyes? “Either. Both.”
“I notice a definite lack of scotch since we had our chat the other night.”
“Crack investigator, you are
. I heard what you said. There are other ways to deal with pain than with a bottle. I’m working on it.”
He swept her up in his arms, lifting her off the ground. “You just made my night, Agent Sinclair. My whole week, in fact.”
She let out a surprised whoop and wrapped her legs around his hips as he carried her toward the bedroom. As they passed the living room, an inkling that something wasn’t right hit her. A blade of light cutting across her leather ottoman in the otherwise dark room.
“My laptop is open.”
He stopped, flipping on the hall light. “So?”
“I always shut it down and close the lid before I leave in the morning.”
“Maybe you forgot today.”
She never forgot. “Set me down.”
He did and then proceeded to follow her into the living room to her desk. The lid of her laptop was up, the screen lit with the mountain scene she used as wallpaper. “Even if I didn’t shut this down, the screen saver should have kicked in and put the computer in sleep mode.”
“Maybe it ran an update or something.”
“I have it set up to do that in the early morning hours when I sleep.”
She glanced around at the rest of the room. Nothing else seemed out of place. Plunking down in her office chair, she noticed her file on the Jarvis case was minimized but open. She clicked on the blue folder and the mountain scene morphed into a document with her notes on the case. “And I never leave a file open.”
“You’ve been stressed out and distracted, Taylor.”
But it was her routine. She checked emails while she drank her coffee, scanned the latest news, and jotted down notes on things that had popped into her mind overnight. Then she always—always—closed out all the files and shut down the computer. “They got around the password.”
Matt peered over her shoulder, arms now crossed. “You think someone was here, in your place, looking at files on your computer?”
The tone of his voice suggested she was paranoid. Spinning in the chair, she nearly knocked him over as she took off for her bedroom. First, she snagged her gun from the hall table. “Let’s check the basement.”
Missing Justice (The Justice Team Book 7) Page 12
