Was it the pain straining his voice, his face? No. Taylor’s pulse did a skip. It was…fear. Fear of rejection.
Taylor tucked the baby into her arms and bounced it gently. The little girl continued to cry but not at decibels that made Taylor’s ears bleed. “Hell, yes,” she said over the noise. “I couldn’t have handled this without you.”
The forced grin faded and Taylor knew that wasn’t the right answer. Her gut twinged. God, she sucked at this shit.
Tell him.
Even one-handed, he was skilled, using the balled up sweatshirt to put pressure on Dottie’s wound while his own ran.
Dottie’s taste in furniture revealed her love of doilies and lace window curtains. Jumping up, Taylor carried the baby over to an old wooden dining table covered with a white tablecloth. Using her own single-handed skills, she whipped the tablecloth off, knocking over two silver candlestick holders. The baby picked up her crescendo again and Taylor bounced her on her hip, shushing her.
Which did absolutely no good. Taylor bent down next to Matt. “Let me wrap this around your shoulder. You’re losing too much blood.”
The blood was everywhere, running down his useless arm, soaking his shirtsleeve, dripping on the floor. “I’m all right, Taylor.”
“Look, I get it, you’re a macho man, but macho or not, stop being an idiot.”
Wrapping Matt’s shoulder with one hand wasn’t possible. Using a foot, she snagged her toes around the carrier and drew it close, depositing the infant into her seat, then carefully maneuvering the sheet under Matt’s armpit and around his shoulder. “Clean exit wound. Looks like it went straight through.”
“Taylor…” His tone was impatient.
The baby quieted into hiccups, her eyes round and brimmed with tears as she watched Taylor work on Matt while he kept pressure on Dottie’s chest.
“Shut it,” Taylor said, her hands shaking. Too much blood.
The tablecloth was thin enough, making it easy to tie. She snugged it down with a knot on top of his shoulder and Matt winced.
In the distance, she heard sirens. Her phone buzzed in her back pocket. Probably Grey. “I hear the ambulance. Hang in there. It’s almost here.”
“Good,” Matt ground out, a muscle in his jaw jumping. He teetered slightly on his knees. “I think I’ll take you up on your offer and—”
Boop, over he went, just like that. Lights out, his face smacking the floor next to the carrier.
The baby’s face screwed up and froze for half a second, and then, yep, here we go again.
Shrieking howls split the air.
“Matt!” Taylor pulled his head into her lap and tapped his cheeks, then checked his pulse. Slow and thready, but solid. The loss of blood had probably shocked his body.
Tell him.
But he couldn’t hear her now, even if she did say the words that terrified her as much as seeing this man unconscious.
The baby was swinging her fists, her cries reverberating in Taylor’s ears, and for a moment, Taylor felt like having a good old-fashioned cry as well.
Suck it up. Nobody is dying on my watch today.
Reaching over, she extracted the baby from the carrier and held her close. “It’s going to be okay,” she told the little girl. “I promise, everything is going to be okay.”
The baby didn’t buy it, smacking Taylor with her fists as she cried into Taylor’s shoulder.
Taylor rocked the baby and patted Matt’s face. “Thanks a lot, Mad Dog. Leave me with the screaming kid. I’m going to get you for this.”
His lips parted on a sigh and he spoke so softly, Taylor could barely hear him. “You’ll make a good mom someday, Sinclair.”
“Matt?” She patted his face again, but he didn’t open his eyes. “Stay with me, Matt.”
His face went slack, his head dropping to the side.
Tell him.
Taylor screwed up her courage as she heard the ambulance pulling up outside. “I love you,” she whispered, rocking, patting, and praying. “Whatever you do, Matt, please don’t leave me.”
* * *
Matt opened his eyes to a bright light overhead, an annoying beep-beep-beep and his left shoulder hurting like a mother. What in the holy hell?
“Jesus,” he muttered.
Taylor’s face appeared, her forehead creasing as she studied him. “Hey there. We’re still in the ER. How do you feel?”
“Whupped.”
“It’s the drugs. You woke up in the ambulance and they gave you something for the pain.”
No wonder. “They knock me out. For future reference, I don’t do pain meds.”
“Okay, tough guy, I’ll make a note. The good news is the bullet passed straight through and didn’t wreck anything important on its journey. The doc said you probably won’t need surgery. They might be able to just stitch you up.”
“When can I leave?”
“Relax, fella. We didn’t get that far. They caught a trauma so you got bumped.”
He glanced down, took in his bare chest and the blood-soaked bandage on his left shoulder and wiggled his fingers. Good sign. “Where’s my shirt?”
“They cut it off you in the ambulance. Sorry.”
His parents. He needed to call them. With all Dad’s contacts at the PD, he’d get wind of this.
“I called your father,” she said. “I looked in your phone for the number. I hope that’s okay.”
Was it? Heck yeah. Even if having a woman—or anyone for that matter—handle things for him was…weird, he didn’t mind. Appreciated it even.
He lifted his good hand and she grabbed hold. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
Then she leaned in and kissed him. His impression was the kiss was meant to be quick, but, as always with her, things went to another level and before he knew it his tongue found its way into her mouth. Another thing he could get used to.
At least until her phone rang.
She intensified the kiss, sending the message that whoever it was could wait, but…he knew her. Like him, she operated a certain way and that meant when in the middle of a case, the job came first.
He squeezed her hand and retreated half an inch. “You should take that.”
“I don’t need to.”
“Yeah, you do. We still have a kid to find.”
That got her attention and by the third ring she’d checked the screen. “It’s Meredith, my boss.”
Given the events of the evening, this call would go one of two ways. Either Taylor was getting canned or she was a hero. Time would tell.
She poked the screen, grabbing the call on the fourth ring. “Hi, Mer….Really? When?” She met Matt’s gaze and bit her lip. “I’m not sure I can get there right now.”
“Whatever it is,” he said, “go.”
Shaking him off, she continued to listen, her gaze steady on Matt. “All right,” she said. “But, I’m at the hospital with Matt. Let me call you back.”
After disconnecting, she propped a hip on the bed. “Well, I’m being reinstated.”
“You shouldn’t have been suspended in the first place, so I’m glad they got their heads out of their asses. Morons.”
“Ros isn’t talking, but Glaw is a regular chatterbox. Mer has agents standing by at the crime scene. When the techs are done, they’re going to tear the place apart and see what they can find. She wants me over at Ros’s apartment to help search it. Since I’ve been on the case, she thinks I might recognize something. More or less, this is her way of apologizing.”
“You should go.”
“I’m not leaving you.”
In short, this sucked. For a solid ten seconds he considered walking out of here. Shirtless or not, they still had a kid to find and the investigator in him, the guy who wanted to solve every case, who’d been rejected by the feds, wanted to show those bastards up.
Except, Taylor had his back. They’d worked this case together. Put aside the competition between them, the booze, and that driving
need to one-up each other and formed a partnership. She’d risked everything for this case. Put it all on the line to find Baby Jarvis and her moment, that victory, needed to be hers.
A senator’s missing baby.
Jesus, she’d be a hero.
“I’m all set here,” he said. “They’ll stitch me up, load me full of antibiotics and send me home. Besides, you said my folks are on the way.” He gripped her hand, met her gaze. “You need to go. Find Walt’s kid, Taylor. Finish what we started. That’s what I need from you. Either that or I’ll walk out of here myself and do it.”
“Not while I’m standing here, you won’t.”
“Then do it for me.”
She set her free hand on his cheek. “Are you sure? I don’t want to leave you.”
“Let me get this straight, Special Agent Sinclair. There is a little boy out there somewhere. He probably has no idea his biological mother was murdered and that he was ripped away from a father who never got to meet him. That kid is most likely living with people who have no idea who he is. And somehow you think babysitting me is more important than finding that little boy?”
“Well,” she said, leaning in and getting close to his lips, “since you put it like that, I’m dumping you for Baby Jarvis.” She kissed him hard then straightened up. “I’ll call you later. And, in case you didn’t hear me before, I’m pretty sure I love you.”
Before he could respond, she grabbed her purse and hustled out the door.
“That’s good,” he said to air, “because I’m pretty sure I love you too.”
Chapter Twenty
Rosalind’s file cabinet was a treasure chest, full of hundreds of adoption cases.
Thank God she’s Type A.
Unfortunately, Taylor still hadn’t found the gold she was looking for.
Hours ago, she’d started searching for the file on Baby Jarvis. Hours ago, she’d had hope.
More than hope. She’d been sure she’d find a red folder from all those years ago with a child’s stats inside that matched the ones she’d worked up for the Jarvis boy. A folder that held a fake birth certificate.
So far, she’d found plenty of blond-haired, blue-eyed male babies—they were the most popular it seemed. None of them from the correct time frame though. Regardless, Taylor had put Beck to work on a handful of them, running down the information on the natural parents and double-checking birth certificates. Every single one had come up legit.
The file has to be here. He has to be here!
Taylor sat on the floor of Ros’s office with folders scattered around her in a circle, the overhead light too bright for her tired eyes.
Meredith’s voice came from the doorway, interrupting her. “Glaw finally admitted to the murder.”
Taylor did a fist pump. “I knew it. Matt will be so happy. He’s the one who uncovered the truck sticker, and that’s what led us to Glaw.”
Mer folded her arms over her chest and leaned on the frame. “Glaw claims Rosalind and Dottie hired him to kidnap Felicity Jarvis, and later, after the Lamaze gal delivered the baby, they told him to kill her. He got cold feet; it wasn’t what he’d signed up for. He claims the only reason he kidnapped her in the first place was because he needed money for his brother, to help him pay for cancer treatments. Ros threatened him, told him she’d ruin him and he’d never work again, legitimately or otherwise and he could kiss his brother goodbye, so he caved and did the deed.”
“So Kristina was in on it too.” Taylor shook her head and yawned. “How do people with no heart at all end up running an adoption agency?”
“Why do most people go into crime?” Mer shrugged. “It’s lucrative. Any luck tracking down the Jarvis boy?”
Taylor closed the folder in her lap. “Ziltch. Honestly, most of the files I’ve had Beck look into are all legal adoptions. It doesn’t fit. Ros and Dottie only did black market ones on occasion, it seems. Why?”
At that moment, Grey walked in. “Because of the buyers.”
“Grey? What are you doing here?”
He rocked back on his heels and shot Meredith a steely look. “It’s still my case, as I recall, or do I need to call our mutual friend at the Justice Department?”
Meredith paled. “Don’t push your weight around with me, Greystone. It’s your case for the moment, but my people are currently doing the dirty work of getting confessions and lining up prosecution.”
The corner of Grey’s lips twitched in his signature non-smile. “Speaking of confessions, I just had a powwow with Dottie. Sounds like Ros occasionally attracted whales—big spenders—who provided incentive pay to find the perfect baby for them. If she couldn’t find what they wanted from her normal pool, she forced the issue. Found a set of parents with the right genes, IQ, or talents and did what she had to in order to get the baby she needed.”
Taylor’s stomach was empty, but it still churned at the injustice these women had perpetrated. Not only on people like Felicity and Walt, but on their children.
Meredith waved a hand. “Aside from the fact you must have booted Leo down the chain of command in order to talk to one of our suspects, did Dottie give up anything about the Jarvis kid?”
“We were interrupted by her lawyer before I got her full confession. And, by the way, Leo wasn’t even at the Bureau when I was there. Apparently, he had a dinner date that was more important. Crack team you got there, Meredith. Taylor aside, of course.”
Grey crouched near Taylor and eyed the files. “Would you like some help? I have Teeg on standby if we need him to dig deeper than Agent Pearson can for anything on the birth certificates and records.”
Maybe that was it. Maybe Teeg could create some Justice Team magic and find Baby Jarvis.
Matt should be here. He’d been the key to solving this. A part of Taylor wished she could turn the birth certificate search over to Grey so she could go back to the hospital.
At least Grey was willing to sit down on the floor with her and get his hands dirty. “I’ll take any help I can get. All the dates and stats are starting to blur.”
Mer pushed off the frame. “I can help, too. Why didn’t you say something?”
Competition—sometimes a healthy thing.
Taylor waited for each of them to settle on the floor, then divided a pile of folders from the last drawer of the cabinet between them. She reminded them of the physical profile she’d built for Baby Jarvis and the date range they were looking for.
She took the final stack and dug in. “Are Mitch and Caroline all right?” she asked Grey as she thumbed through the folder on top. Girl. She passed it into the stack of female babies.
“Right as rain. Mitch is already lining up a lawyer to bring a civil suit against Glaw for giving him a head concussion. Caroline, I believe, had my fiancee, Sydney, line up a spa appointment for her at Syd’s favorite place.”
“Good call,” Taylor said, imagining a long spa weekend in her future. Maybe she could talk Matt into going with her.
“I could ask Syd to get you an appointment too,” Grey offered, as if reading her mind. Concern touched his eyes.
Damn, how long had it been since she’d pampered herself? Months? Years? She opened the next folder. “Thanks, but I’m guessing Sydney has better things to do than book spa appointments.”
“She likes taking care of people.”
Taylor was about to respond when her attention landed on the date of the birth certificate in front of her.
Six weeks after Felicity’s kidnapping.
Sex: boy.
She flipped to the next page for the child’s description. Blond hair, blue eyes, weight, length…the stats were a match.
An exact match to what she’d profiled.
Taylor hated to get her hopes up yet again, but oops, too late. As she cruised through the remaining paperwork, she found the intake form for the couple wanting to adopt. A power couple from Tampa—billionaires—looking for a son. Was this the whale who’d offered Ros enough money she’d committed murder for i
t?
In Ros’s handwriting, a note listed several things the couple were adamant about, one of them making Taylor’s pulse speed up.
Good stock, the note read.
Jesus, she now absolutely hated that phrase.
Apparently from the copied check attached to the folder for the down payment, they were willing to pay big bucks.
A six-figure down payment? Looked like they had a contender. “I have something here,” she told Mer and Grey. “A boy named James that fits the parameters.”
“Send the info to Agent Pearson,” Mer said.
“And Teeg,” Grey added.
Ah yes, competition was a good thing. Using her phone, she took a picture of the birth certificate and sent that, along with the info regarding the birth parents to both techies. She’d see which one could confirm or deny the legitimacy of the adoption first.
“You should think about joining my team permanently,” Grey said, continuing to look through his stack of folders. “I can use someone like you.”
“Are you kidding me?” Mer blustered. “And give up her career at the Bureau? She’ll be filling my shoes soon. You can’t even offer paid vacation.”
Taylor snickered, not because Meredith was correct, but because it felt nice to have people fighting over her.
Grey started to retort and Taylor held up a hand to stop the brewing argument before it gained speed. “I’ll think about the offer, Grey, thank you, but at this moment, all I want to focus on is finding this boy and helping Matt get back on his feet.”
“He’s a good PI.” Grey shuffled his stack. “A good man.”
Yes, he is. The Bureau had definitely blown that one when they’d denied his application. “Agreed. You might consider using his skills on future cases, but I advise against poaching him from the sisters. They’re very protective of him.”
Her phone buzzed, two incoming texts in quick succession. One from Beck, the other from Teeg. She read both of them, a grin breaking over her face. “Gotcha.”
Mer closed the open folder on her lap. “Is it him? The baby?”
Taylor held up James’s folder. “The parents listed on this birth certificate both died in the 40s and are buried in the cemetery right down the street. Ros used their names and social security numbers. What do you want to bet that Baby James is the child of a US Senator and a former world-renowned ballerina?”
Missing Justice (The Justice Team Book 7) Page 24
