Lock, Stock and Secret Baby

by Cassie Miles

  His other arm angled around her upper body and pulled her tighter, so tight that her breasts crushed against his hard, muscled chest.

  His mouth tasted of whiskey, an exotic flavor that she usually didn’t care for. This taste was different, and she loved the sharp tang, couldn’t get enough. Hungrily, she parted her lips and drew his tongue into her mouth.

  Her senses heightened. She ran her fingers through his hair and reveled in the exquisite texture. His mysterious, utterly masculine aroma tantalized her nostrils. Her ears rang with precisely tuned chimes. Each note vibrated through her.

  When her eyelids opened, she was dazzled by his perfect features. She inhaled his breath, drew it deep inside her lungs. She was meant to be joined with Blake. He was the man she’d been waiting for.

  His grasp loosened.

  She stepped backward. Still caught up in the pure pleasure of his kiss, she was unable to function normally. She couldn’t speak, couldn’t think. Her mind—usually sharp and clear—blurred in wonderful confusion.

  Struggling to regain her equilibrium, she tried to choke out a coherent sentence. “We should, um, do something. I think. Do you?”

  “Absolutely,” he said.

  She could tell by the flush of color on his cheeks and his grin that he’d been similarly affected by their kiss. But Blake had an excuse. He was half-drunk.

  “Coffee,” she said, grasping at the threads of reality.

  Before she could float from the room, he grounded her with a statement of fact. “I talked to the homicide detective looking into my father’s murder.”

  The importance of their investigation paled when compared to that incredible kiss. “Uh-huh.”

  “He’s going to your house in Boulder. The crime scene investigators will look for forensic evidence.”

  The facts pierced her romantic haze like darts into a balloon. Her sensual epiphany began to deflate. “They won’t find fingerprints. The men were wearing gloves.”

  “There might be a hair. A footprint.” His gaze turned toward his father’s desk. “They didn’t find anything useful in here.”

  Back to earth, she realized that they were standing in the middle of a crime scene. The other time she’d been in his father’s office she hadn’t been paying attention. Her thoughts had been too distracted by finding out she was pregnant. “What were you doing in this room?”

  “For one thing,” he said, “my aunt refuses to come in here.”

  “Cut her some slack. Aunt Jean is a nice woman.”

  “I know. And I’m glad she’s praying for me.”

  He didn’t look glad. His features had become as rigid as Mount Rushmore. In less than a minute, he’d gone from “at ease” to strict “attention.” His chin pulled back. His spine was ramrod stiff. It didn’t seem possible for him to erase the passion they’d shared so quickly. “Was there another reason you came in here?”

  “The whiskey bottle in the lower desk drawer,” he admitted. “And I wanted to visualize what happened. Recreate the scene.”

  “Like we did at my house.” She moved toward the windows, giving herself a wider perspective. Don’t think about sex. It’s not appropriate. “Tell me about the forensic evidence.”

  “As if you were my partner.”

  “Exactly.”

  Grudgingly, he said, “My father was seated behind the desk. Shot three times in the chest. He had a gun in his hand.”

  “Was his gun fired?”

  “Four times.”

  Blake pointed out the bullet holes in the wall. The pitted marks, circled in black to facilitate forensic photos, were above the framed photographs on the wall. Almost at the ceiling. Either Dr. Ray was a terrible marksman or he hadn’t been trying to hit his target.

  She asked, “Signs of a struggle?”

  “None.”

  “Do you have a theory about what happened?”

  He stepped away from the sofa and stood beside her. When his arm came close to hers, he leaned away, almost as if he wanted to avoid touching.

  “Shortly before he was murdered, Dad sent me an e-mail, which explains why he was at the desk. The person who broke in bypassed the alarm system.”

  “Suggesting a professional burglar.” She glanced at the wall safe behind the desk. The heavy door stood ajar. “What happened to the contents of the safe?”

  “Gone.”

  Eve understood why the police suspected a burglary gone wrong. The evidence indicated that an armed intruder had disabled the security to enter the house and proceeded to the office with the intention of robbing the safe. “Did he keep valuables in there?”

  “Not to my knowledge,” he said. “The safe was for important documents, like deeds and investment information. Since all his information on the Prentice study is missing, I suspect those papers were in the safe.”

  That was why he’d said his father’s research was stolen. “Was anything else taken?”

  “His laptop.”

  Seeking a different visual angle, she went behind the desk. In spite of the clutter, she discerned an order. Unopened mail and magazines were on the left side. The file folders and papers on the right showed signs of use. A framed photograph of Blake and his mother leaned against those piles.

  Blood stained the leather chair and the worn Persian carpet. Splatters dotted the desktop clutter in an irregular pattern. “Some of these files have been moved.”

  “I’ve shuffled through these papers. Nothing of interest. Mostly, it’s outdated correspondence and notes from conferences. No patient files.”

  “Where did he keep his patient files?”

  “At his office downtown. He shares space with a couple of other shrinks. I’ve already been there to search for the Prentice-Jantzen research.”

  “What about patient confidentiality? I’m surprised they’d let you go through the files.”

  “They didn’t,” he said. “But I stood over the secretary’s shoulder as she flipped through documents and scanned the computer.”

  She noticed that the center area of the desk was cleared; that must have been where Dr. Ray placed his laptop. Without touching, she leaned down to examine the surface which was dotted with blood. “Apparently, he moved his laptop before he was shot.”

  “Why do you think so?”

  “If the laptop had been on the desk, there would have been a blank space in the spatters.”

  “Good observation.”

  “Suppose he put the laptop in the safe,” she said, “because he knew it contained valuable information—data that he didn’t want to fall into the wrong hands.”

  “Which meant that he knew someone was after it.” His voice took on an edge of enthusiasm. “My dad was aware of the threat. He knew they were coming for him.”

  Now they were getting somewhere. “What else can you tell me about the forensic evidence?”

  “He was shot in the heart. His death was almost instantaneous. Which means he wouldn’t have had time to retaliate with four shots.”

  She drew the logical conclusion. “Dr. Ray fired first. Before he was hit.”

  “And he aimed high.”

  The logical action when being attacked would have been to shoot directly at your assailant. “What might cause your father to sit at his desk and fire four shots toward the ceiling?”

  “Maybe he heard the intruder in the hallway and fired his gun to warn him off. Before he was hit, he had enough time to punch the speed dial and alert the security company.”

  Without sitting in the bloodstained desk chair, she pantomimed those actions. First, she pretended to hit the button on the phone, then she cocked her finger like a gun. “Like this. Bang, bang, bang, bang.”

  Blake moved to the doorway, playing the role of the assassin. “The killer steps inside and shoots.”

  “But if your father knew he was being attacked, he would have ducked behind the desk for cover.”

  “Unless he recognized his attacker. That might have caused him to pause for a fatal few s
econds.”

  Their logic was beginning to create a complete picture. “He hides his laptop in the safe. Then, he hears an intruder, calls security and fires warning shots. Then he stops himself from shooting when he sees someone he knows. The killer wasn’t an anonymous intruder or a burglar or even a hitman. This was someone he recognized. A coworker. Or a patient.”

  “Or someone he’d known from birth,” Blake said darkly. “One of the subjects from the study.”

  Someone like them. A highly intelligent individual bent on murder.

  Chapter Seven

  In the kitchen, Blake leaned against the oak cabinets and watched as Eve precisely measured coffee grounds and poured them into the basket of the coffeemaker. She’d taken off her shoes, revealing slender, well-shaped feet. He had to wonder what the rest of her body looked like under the shapeless Trekkie T-shirt and loose-fitting denim slacks.

  She sure as hell didn’t work at being attractive. Hers was an unintentional beauty. Potent, nonetheless. Damn it, he shouldn’t have kissed her. That was just plain wrong.

  “Do you think half a pot is enough?” she asked.

  “Doesn’t matter.” He wished that she’d stop treating him like a drunk. It took more than a couple of shots to affect him. “Coffee doesn’t really sober you up.”

  “Is that the voice of experience talking?”

  “The only real effect of caffeine on alcohol is to make you a more wide-awake drunk.”

  “I’ll settle for wide-awake.” She turned on the coffeemaker and faced him. “Are there any security measures we should be taking?”

  “I turned on the burglar alarm.”

  “The same system that the killer disconnected before?”

  “This is an upgrade.” The security company had been apologetic about the failure of their equipment and had installed a state-of-the-art digital system that supposedly couldn’t be breached without setting off buzzers. Still, she had a point. Blake knew better than to trust everything to technology. “Plus, you’ve got me as a bodyguard.”

  Her wide mouth stretched in a grin. “Is that supposed to be reassuring?”

  “Seriously, Eve. I can protect you.”

  “Seriously? You’re not armed.”

  Actually, that wasn’t true. He’d borrowed a handgun from the general, which he’d hidden under the pillows in his bedroom. He didn’t need an arsenal to protect her, and she needed to understand that. “I always carry a knife.”

  She challenged him, “Are you any good with it?”

  He whirled, grasped the handle of a butcher knife in a block on the counter, pulled it and threw. The blade stuck in the oak door frame, exactly where he’d been aiming. “How’s that?”

  “You made your point.” She shrugged. “No pun intended.”

  Her nonchalance was annoying; he’d been going for shock and awe. “Come on, Eve. That was one hell of an impressive display. At least give me an ‘atta boy.’”

  “Can you show me how to do it?”

  “Depends. How’s your coordination?”

  “Not bad.” She padded across the tiled kitchen floor to the refrigerator. The shelves inside were packed with plastic containers of leftovers. In the crisper, she found a bag of oranges which she scattered on the countertop. Giving him a smirk, she started juggling a couple of them.

  “Only two?”

  “Getting warmed up.”

  She added a third orange. Her concentration was intense. The tip of her tongue poked against her lower lip as she rotated the oranges in the air. Damn, she was cute.

  “How about four?” he teased.

  “Three’s good.” Her hips swayed in rhythm with the motion of her arms. “I only do prime numbers.”

  “Like five,” he said.

  “Think you can outdo me?”

  She tossed the oranges to him, one at a time. Without missing a beat, he continued to juggle. Three were easy. When she flipped a fourth toward him, he worked it in.

  “Atta boy,” she said as she opened the refrigerator door again.

  In his peripheral vision, he saw her take something else from the fridge. A small white oval. An egg.

  Before she could throw it, he stopped juggling, allowing the oranges to thud to the floor. He stepped forward, took both her hands and squeezed them around the egg. The shell cracked but nothing oozed out.

  “Hard-boiled,” she said, looking up at him with mischief in her eyes. “I put them away when I was helping your aunt. Did you really think I’d pelt you with a raw egg?”

  “The thought crossed my mind.”

  That wasn’t the only thing he was thinking. Standing close to her, he remembered the way her body had molded against his. She’d felt too good in his arms; it couldn’t happen again.

  He forced himself to release her hands. Pacing across the floor, he yanked the blade from the door frame and returned it to the butcher block. “Since you’re the target, it’s probably best if we sleep in the same room.”

  Though her grin didn’t slip, her eyes widened. He imagined that she was calculating her response. “What are you suggesting?”

  “Sleep,” he said. “Anything more would be wrong.”

  “Wrong?” Her smile vanished. “That seems like a strong word.”

  Their kiss in his father’s office was a mistake. He hadn’t considered the ramifications. Apparently, neither had she.

  When he looked into her lovely, intelligent blue eyes, the heat in the kitchen shot up by several degrees. The delicious aroma of freshly brewing coffee swirled around them. If he reached out, he could touch her, pull her close against him. He was physically attracted to her. And he shouldn’t be.

  “Genetically,” he said, “we might be brother and sister.”

  Her brother? Eve stared at him with a mixture of disbelief and disgust. Had she kissed her brother? And enjoyed it? “You’re creeping me out, Blake.”

  “Think about it. Prentice drew from a limited number of volunteers. They had to meet certain requirements in terms of physical health, mental acuity and fertility. The testing wasn’t all that easy. This was over twenty years ago when the IVF process was relatively experimental. Of course, lots of guys would be willing to participate—”

  “But not so many women.”

  The procedure for harvesting eggs was more complicated than the male side of the fertilization equation. How had Prentice convinced these women to be involved? She tried to imagine how she’d react if approached by a scientist and asked to donate the most personal, most private part of herself.

  “Eve? Are you all right?”

  “I’m thinking.” Be logical. If Prentice had asked her to volunteer to be pregnant, she would have certainly refused. Raising a child changed the entire focus of her life and involved a great deal more than mere biology. But giving up an egg? Or two? Or ten? “I would have done it. In the name of science and to help other women who were infertile, there’s a more than sixty-six percent chance that I would have said yes.”

  “Like your biological mother.”

  Here was evidence: her values were similar to those of the nameless, faceless woman who had donated her egg. Eve wondered what other traits they shared. Had her mother been a scientist? More important, was she also Blake’s mother? There had to be a way to calculate the odds.

  She remembered an earlier conversation. “There were twenty-four superbabies in the study.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Vargas told me.”

  At the mention of Vargas’s name, Blake scowled. “Keep in mind that he might also be your brother.”

  “Whatever.” She wasn’t attracted to Vargas, certainly not in the same way she was drawn to Blake. “It does seem likely that there were fewer female volunteers—each being given a drug that caused them to produce several eggs per cycle. The question is—how many? Four? Fourteen?”

  “Without the documentation, there’s no way of knowing.”

  She hated the uncertainty, hated the possibility that
she and Blake could be genetically related. Finally, she’d found a man who rang her chimes, and he might be her brother.

  “It can’t be,” she said emphatically. “We don’t look anything alike. Don’t have the same coloring. My eyes are blue. Yours are brown.”

  “That’s not proof.”

  Reaching up, she pushed back the hair on his forehead. “Ha! You don’t have a widow’s peak, but I do. That’s a dominant characteristic.” She grabbed his chin and turned his head. “Oh, no, we both have detached ear lobes.”

  He shoved her hands away. “Stop groping me.”

  “I’m not.” If he was her brother, groping would be sick. “I need to develop a probability model for you and me utilizing secondary physical traits.”

  “Face it,” he said. “Until we have access to information about our biological parents, we won’t know for sure.”

  “DNA,” she said triumphantly. “All we have to do is compare our DNA.”

  “The testing could take a while.”

  “I’ve already had my DNA profiled.” She’d volunteered for a study in grad school. “It’ll take some digging, but I can get the results. How about you?”

  “The army requires that you give blood for DNA testing, and I know my sample has been processed.”

  He raised his coffee mug to his lips, trying to hide the tension in his mouth. Again, she marveled at how easily she could read his expressions. She knew, without asking, that the processing of his DNA was related to an unfortunate event, probably to get positive identification for a soldier killed in action. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “Sarge was a good man. He gave his life to save the rest of the platoon. We were forced into hiding for ten days.”

  During which time, the army must have compared his remains with the DNA of the other missing soldiers. Her heart ached for Blake’s sadness and his sorrow. The empathy she felt was painful, as if they were truly close. As close as a sister?

  “We need to get those DNA results,” she said. “And we need to move our investigation forward. I don’t want to hear any more grumbling about how you always work alone. We’re in this together.”