“Thanks,” Shaw said sarcastically. He reached out and took the tape recorder. “Now I can confiscate this. As potential evidence in a quadruple murder investigation.”
“Keep it. Use it to put that weasel behind bars.” Rouse flashed a dry smile at Gavin and walked out.
“I’ll give you a DNA sample,” Gavin volunteered.
Again, that seemed to imply he was innocent, but without Rouse’s DNA for comparison, it was an empty gesture. Still, Shaw wouldn’t turn it down. It would come in handy if they managed to get Rouse’s.
“Go to the dispatcher at the front desk. He or she will make arrangements for a DNA swab,” Shaw told him. He helped Sabrina to her feet. “In the meantime, I’ll see about getting the court order for Rouse’s sample.”
“Do that, because he’s my father, and I want him to pay for what he’s done.”
Shaw left Gavin still fuming in the interview room, and he led Sabrina back toward the flop room. “You think either Rouse or Gavin could be behind this?” she asked.
“Maybe. But I keep going back to that third deleted file. Taking your DNA test, I understand. Maybe things went wrong, and the gunmen decided you’d make a good hostage to cover their tracks. I can even understand Rouse wanting his DNA file deleted to protect his name. Or Gavin deleting it to make Rouse look guilty. But then what was in that third file?”
Sabrina made a sound of agreement. “Will your computer techs be able to recover it?”
“They’re trying. I got an update while we were at the clinic, and I found out that there’d been two recent attempts to break into that lab at the hospital. That’s the reason the new security camera was installed. The head of security had also changed the codes to access the DNA storage room.”
“Yes. That makes sense. The gunman, not Burney Monroe, but the other one, he was furious when he couldn’t open the door. That’s when he shot the med tech. And then he shot the lock on the door. That’s how he got inside.”
So, maybe the Gavin or Rouse theory was right. If the dead med tech had agreed to help either of them, for a price, of course, he would have been a loose end. That could have been the reason he was killed so early on in the standoff. The gunmen no longer had any use for him. That meant Shaw needed to look for a connection between the gunmen and the lab tech.
Shaw opened the flop room and looked around, just to make sure there was no gunman or rogue cop lurking around and ready to attack. After the incident in the hotel, it would be a long time before he stopped looking over his shoulder.
“Sir, here’s the takeout you ordered,” someone said from behind him. It was one of O’Malley’s men, someone Shaw trusted. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have taken the bag and handed it to Sabrina. “I figured you’d need to eat something,” Shaw told her.
She thanked him, Shaw gave the officer some money, and he closed the door and locked it. The toiletries he’d requested were there as well, sitting in a plastic grocery bag. There was even a change of clothes stacked next to the bag. Lieutenant O’Malley certainly worked fast.
“Eat,” Shaw insisted. “And then get some rest.”
She tipped her head toward the bathroom. “I think I’d like a shower first.”
He nodded. The shower might help her relax, and it would give him a few minutes to get some much needed updates about the case. But Sabrina didn’t head to the bathroom. She turned, stepped closer and looked up at him.
“I know I’ve been saying this a lot, but thank you. I’m not sure I would have gotten through this without you.”
“You would have.” But Shaw was glad he’d been there. For the baby’s sake.
Sabrina’s sake, too, he reluctantly admitted.
She leaned into him, putting her head against his shoulder. Like the other times they’d touched, he felt the attraction. The heat simmering between them. But he felt something else, too.
An intimacy that went beyond the attraction.
Again, he wanted to think this was all about the baby, but it scared him to realize it wasn’t.
“What am I doing?” he asked, aloud. He’d meant to keep that question inside his brain, but it somehow made it to his mouth.
Sabrina pulled back, studied his face and then gave a heavy sigh. “I ask myself that all the time. I want you, too much,” she added with a grimace. “But you’re Fay’s husband.”
“Widower,” he corrected, and he hoped that would sink in if he said it often enough.
“Widower.” Sabrina repeated it, as well. When her gaze met his again, there were tears in her eyes. “You know what Fay said to me right before she died?”
He knew, though it hurt too much to remember. Fay had phoned Sabrina, after she’d taken a bottle of sleeping pills, and Shaw knew this because it’d been Sabrina who had contacted him, had told him to get to Fay, that she was dying. Shaw had listened to the message that Fay had left on Sabrina’s answering machine. It’d been part of the routine investigation to declare Fay’s death a suicide.
“We don’t have to talk about this,” he insisted.
But Sabrina continued as if she hadn’t heard him, “Fay told me to take care of you. I swear, I tried to do that.”
She had. That’s what this baby was all about. At least, it’d started that way. It felt different now. He felt different. But the guilt was still there.
“Do you know what Fay said to me when she was in my arms dying?” he asked. Part of him wondered why he was opening this too-raw wound, and the other part knew it had to be done.
Sabrina blinked back tears and shook her head.
“Fay said I should take care of you, that you and I should have the baby that she couldn’t give me.”
The breath rushed out of her, and Shaw held her because she looked ready to fall. “I’m sorry. So sorry,” Sabrina repeated. “I didn’t know she said that. She shouldn’t have asked that of you.”
“Yeah. She should have. Fay had a lot of problems. Old baggage from being abused in her childhood. New baggage from the infertility issues. But she always put me first. Even when she was dying, she knew how important a baby was to me. How much I wanted a family of my own.”
That was his old baggage. He hadn’t been adopted like Sabrina or abused like Fay, but his parents had been killed in a car accident when he was five years old. He’d been shifted around from one family member to another, never finding a place he could call home.
Yeah, the old baggage had shaped him, too.
Shaw had to take a deep breath. “If I hadn’t wanted a child so much, then Fay might be alive today.”
Sabrina frantically shook her head. “She desperately wanted a baby, too. You’re not at fault here. Fay’s depression is what killed her.”
“You’re not at fault, either,” he whispered. He reached out and wiped away the tear that was sliding down her cheek.
She stood there, staring at him and blinked. “Did we just have the air clearing that we’d been avoiding?”
“Yeah. I think we did.” And it felt good. Not perfect. But good. Shaw certainly didn’t think this would take away the guilt. It would always be there.
But the question was, just how was it going to affect what he was starting to feel for Sabrina?
“Time for that shower,” she mumbled, and grabbed the bag of toiletries and stack of clean clothes from the table. She walked toward the bathroom, leaving him to deal with that question he might never be able to answer.
“If you don’t mind, I’ll leave the door open just a fraction,” she called out to him. “That way, I can hear you if you call. Or if I call you. I might have a little trouble getting out of the tub.”
That got his attention. “You need help?” And yeah, it sounded a little sexual, but he was serious. He didn’t want her falling.
“I should be fine, and I promise if you have to come running to haul me out, I’ll cover myself with the towel. I wasn’t kidding about those stretch marks.”
She grinned and adjusted the door so there was about a two-inch
gap.
Shaw smiled as well and then cursed because this wasn’t the time to be cheerful. Maybe he’d get a chance to do that when Sabrina and the baby were safe.
He heard her turn on the shower and about a minute later, he caught just a glimpse of a very naked Sabrina stepping into the tub. She slid the shower curtain so that it shielded her, but not completely. He could still see her outline behind the vinyl.
Oh, man.
The raunchy thoughts started, and here only minutes earlier, he’d been a somber widower. Now, he felt more like a sex-starved teenager.
Because he had to do something, anything, to get his mind off her, he rifled through the takeout bag, took one of the three sandwiches—turkey on wheat—and started to eat. He also forced his eyes away from Sabrina’s nude silhouette. Thankfully, he got a little help in the distraction area because his phone buzzed.
“Lieutenant O’Malley,” Shaw answered after he saw the officer’s name on the ID screen.
“I don’t have much info for you, but I figured you’d be anxious for an update.”
“I am.” He was anxious for a lot of things, including the woman behind the shower curtain. Shaw forced his attention to stay on the conversation. “What did you learn?”
“Still no word on that third file that was deleted, but we’ve accessed the hospital’s online storage. The company that manages it is going through the cache of old files and comparing them to what’s in the system now. We might get lucky and find out what was deleted.”
“Good, that’s a start. What about the officers who might have known where Sabrina and I were staying?”
“Newell’s on the list of those who knew, along with about a dozen others in Special Investigations. The location was kept in the department, but we’re still looking at hotel employees. One of them could have tipped off the gunmen.”
True. Shaw had minimized how much time Sabrina was in the lobby and in front of the hotel, but it was still possible that someone had recognized her. After all, the hostages’ photos had been all over the news.
“I’m still running the background check on Newell,” O’Malley continued. “Nothing immediately sticks out, but I’m getting his financials.”
Another good start. “Any idea why he was at the hotel this morning?”
“None. He was off duty, but he does seem obsessed with this investigation. About a year ago, he had a case with a hostage, and it didn’t end well. The hostage was killed. Maybe that’s all there is to it—he’s trying to right an old wrong.”
After what he’d been through with Fay, Shaw understood that, but he wasn’t about to trust Newell just yet.
“Keep digging,” Shaw insisted.
“I will, and I might soon have an update on the evidence we’re processing both from the hospital and the hotel room where Burney Monroe was shot and killed. CSI and Trace are working nonstop, and the reports are coming in.”
Maybe there’d be something in all that evidence that would break this case wide open.
“I had a conversation with Wilson Rouse and Gavin Cunningham in interview room 2B,” Shaw told the lieutenant. “Could you have someone look at the disk? It was recorded. What I need is for someone to review it and get me a court order for Rouse’s DNA.”
O’Malley hesitated. “That won’t be easy.”
“No,” Shaw agreed. “But it might provide us with a motive. I also want a tail put on Gavin Cunningham. He’s probably still in the building giving us some of his own DNA. After you see the interview, you’ll know why all of this might turn out to be critical.”
“It sounds it. Anything else?”
Shaw went through his long, mental to-do list. “Any word on the second gunman?”
“Not yet. He’s still at large.”
Yeah. And as long as he was, then Sabrina wouldn’t be safe. “Any leads?”
“Maybe. Burney Monroe was a low level computer tech for a supply company. That might have been why he was hired to do this particular job. He definitely had the computer hacking skills. He also has a younger brother, Danny. He has no phone and no listed place of residence, but he works as a data entry clerk, also low level, and his boss said he’s due on shift at midnight.”
Shaw jumped right on that. “Did this brother miss work during the time of the hostage incident?”
“He wasn’t on the schedule so the boss doesn’t know where he was. Still, he said Danny’s a good worker, and he never had any problems with him.”
“But Burney could have talked him into this.” Or someone else.
“True,” the lieutenant agreed. “If the two learned about Sabrina and you, maybe they thought they could use it somehow. Maybe to gain money, maybe to gain some kind of legal favors?”
Yes. Because the bottom line was that Rouse and Gavin might simply be distractions. This whole mess could have been orchestrated by the two gunmen, Burney Monroe and his partner. And if they found the partner, they might learn there was no need for Rouse, Gavin and their collective DNA.
Still, he couldn’t discount that it was Gavin’s DNA file that had been deleted and the sample stolen.
“One more thing,” Shaw continued. He checked first to make sure Sabrina was still in the shower. She was, and with the water running she wouldn’t be able to hear this. “Have someone run a check on Dr. Claire Nicholson, Sabrina’s OB.”
O’Malley made a sound of surprise. “You think she might be involved in this?”
“Probably not. But I keep going back to the fact that the gunmen stole Sabrina’s DNA. I want to know who told them to do that, and why.”
“You think it’s connected to you, because you’re her baby’s father?”
“Could be. When the gunmen took her from the hospital, Sabrina overhead them say they were going to use her to get me to cooperate.”
“Well, that could be motive. But a lot of people already knew the child was yours. Newell certainly knew because I heard him talking about whether or not to collect money to buy a baby gift.”
Hell. So, they were back to square one—still suspecting Newell but knowing that this could all be circumstantial.
“I’ll put together a team I trust to start handling this,” O’Malley let him know. “And, Captain, hang in there. We’ll get this SOB even if he’s one of our own.”
Shaw hoped that was true. A dirty cop wasn’t always easy to catch. But neither was a dirty community leader or a lawyer.
And speaking of cops… “How’s Bo Duggan?” Shaw asked.
O’Malley wasn’t quick to answer. Shaw understood. O’Malley was married, the father of three, and he was no doubt thinking of his own wife and family. “Bo’s trying to deal with it. It’s not easy. Plus, he’s got newborn twins to take care of.”
That would have been more than enough on one man’s plate, but now Bo had to bury his wife. “Make sure Bo gets as much time off as he needs.”
“I will.”
He thanked the lieutenant and hung up just as Sabrina turned off the shower. Shaw knew it wouldn’t be long before she came back into the room, so he quickly composed himself. There wasn’t anything he could do to help Nadine Duggan, but he sure as hell could find the people who’d contributed to her death and put them behind bars.
The shower curtain rattled back, and he got up in case she needed help. Just seeing her helped with the blue mood, and he wondered when the hell Sabrina had become his lifeline to getting through this.
Right.
It’d happened when he started lusting after her.
Yeah, he watched her and told himself it was because he wanted to make sure she didn’t fall. That was a huge part of it, but that didn’t justify the cheap thrill of seeing her naked. He didn’t see any stretch marks, probably because he was gawking at her breasts. They were full and looked ready for the taking.
His taking.
He groaned, looked away and walked closer to the door. “You okay?”
“Yes, other than having no clean panties. There weren’t any
in the stack of clothes. But I’m washing the ones I have and hanging them on the towel rack. As thin as they are, they’ll be dry in no time.”
There was the sound of more water running, some moving around sounds, and several minutes later, the door fully opened. Sabrina stood there in a loose blue dress the color of the Texas sky on a good day. Barefooted. Her wavy, long auburn hair was damp and clung to her neck and the shoulders of the dress.
She looked and smelled like Christmas and his birthday all rolled into one.
“Did you just admit you’re not wearing panties?” he asked. He meant it as a joke, but the joke didn’t quite come through in his voice.
The need did, though.
“It was meant as a warning, so you wouldn’t be shocked when you see them dangling from the towel rack.” Her expression was light, too, but he didn’t miss the long, lingering look she gave him.
“You need to eat,” he reminded her. And himself. He stepped to the side so she could get past him. “There are some sandwiches, apples, juice and milk.”
Sheez, he sounded like a waiter and decided to shut up.
He couldn’t turn off his eyes, though. Shaw watched her cross the room. She was light on her feet for being eight months pregnant.
“Join me,” she insisted. She took the bag from the table and took it to the sofa, probably because it was more comfortable than the metal chairs at the small table in the kitchen area.
He did join her, after taking a deep breath.
She opened the plastic bottle of milk, took a sip and stared at him from over the top of the bottle.
The air was suddenly scalding hot.
Still, Shaw took his partially eaten turkey sandwich from the table and sat next to her on the sofa. He was hungry. His stomach was growling, but food didn’t seem to be his body’s top priority.
Sabrina lowered the bottle and licked the milk from her lips. She probably hadn’t meant for it to be provocative, but it was.
Hell, at this point her breathing was provocative because it pushed her breasts against the front of her dress.
“What are you thinking?” she asked. She set the milk on the coffee table.
The Baby’s Guardian Page 9
