The Cradle Will Fall

by Maggie Price

  What she didn’t understand was that he had spent the past six years with her crowding his thoughts. Day after day. Month after month. Year after year. Maybe it was a fluke that an investigation had brought them back together. One huge coincidence. Karma, brought on by a shifting of planets. He didn’t care why their lives had intersected again. The point was, they had, and he damn well wasn’t going to let her go this time. They would deal with their different lifestyles. Figure out some way to see each other more often than every six years.

  Somehow. Some way. They would make things work.

  Mark tightened his hands on the steering wheel as rain continued to pelt the windshield. He had grown up bereft of love. Spent his adult life budgeting his emotions meticulously. As a result, he had no way to compare his feelings for Grace with anything he’d experienced before. He might possibly be in love with her. Love, after all, meant giving and sharing deep intimacies. They had definitely done a lot of emotional and physical sharing over the past two days.

  He slicked a look toward the passenger seat. Lights from the dash illuminated Grace’s face in a pale glow. If there hadn’t been a bug planted in the car, he wasn’t sure what he would have said to her during their almost silent drive. And even if he’d known what needed to be said, he had no idea how to say it. Not yet, anyway. He would figure out something before he left Oklahoma City.

  “I wonder what changed for her,” Grace said. “Why she suddenly decided to meet us.”

  “We’ll find out soon enough, darling,” Mark said. He shifted his attention back out the windshield. The car’s headlights stabbed through the darkness and sheeting rain to illuminate the curved road that had narrowed to two lanes.

  The directions Stuart Harmon had given over the phone were to a small café on the outskirts of Oklahoma City. Believing he and Grace were the Calhouns from Houston, Harmon had no way of knowing they were both familiar with the area that sported poorly maintained roads, farmhouses and an occasional mom-and-pop convenience store. Their final destination was just beyond the upcoming wooden bridge, and Mark surmised that business wouldn’t be booming at the café on the rain-soaked night.

  Just then, glaring headlights snapped on behind them. Narrowing his eyes against the bright beams, Mark realized a car had turned in behind them at some point after they’d left the interstate. With the rain coming down in sheets, he’d had no clue it was there.

  And because of its bright lights, he could barely make out the vehicle’s shape. The headlights were positioned higher and wider than those on the rental car. Some sort of SUV, he theorized.

  He sensed Grace tensing beside him. “Mark—”

  His name was all she got out before the SUV rammed them.

  Years of training prevented Mark from slamming on the brakes. Doing so on the wet pavement would have sent the car into a spin. Instead, he pumped the brake pedal, attempting to reduce the car’s speed before they reached the narrow bridge.

  The bridge that spanned deep banks and a rushing creek.

  “Your seat belt fastened?” he shouted.

  “Yes. Yours?”

  “Yes.”

  The SUV rammed them a second time. Mark gripped the wheel while the car fishtailed. The headlights did a wild dance, glinting off the railing that stood between the narrow edge of road and the creek below. He had the sudden image of the car smashing through the railing and plunging into the dark abyss.

  Not going to happen, he told himself, using the next half second to think, to anticipate, to plan. He couldn’t let the SUV come up beside them. It was massive, higher off the ground than the car and could easily shove the lighter vehicle’s rear wheels into a sideways skid. Doing that would force the car into the bridge’s not-so-stable-looking railing.

  When the SUV surged into the lane beside them, Mark yanked the wheel to block its path.

  The sound of metal on metal screeched above the thunder of the engines as the side of the SUV smashed against the bridge’s railing. Obviously fighting for control, its driver slammed on the brakes. The SUV crashed against Mark’s side of the rental car with teeth-loosening intensity, then careened back against the bridge, ripping off pieces of railing.

  Pumping the brake, bearing down on the wheel, Mark battled against momentum that tossed the car sideways. Skidding wildly, the car smashed into the bridge.

  Over the roar of blood in his head, over the squeal of tires, Mark heard the thud when Grace’s head hit the passenger window.

  Chapter 15

  When Grace opened her eyes, everything swam in and out of focus. The right side of her face throbbed. She closed her eyes again.

  “Baby, open your eyes. Grace, look at me.”

  Mark’s voice, and his unrelenting tapping on her left cheek with his fingertips made it impossible to sink back into the darkness.

  “I’m okay.” Blinking and disoriented, she shoved his hand aside. “I’m okay.” When she started to sit up, her stomach took a dip and she hissed out a breath.

  “Easy.” Mark gripped her shoulder. “Keep your eyes open, but stay down for a minute longer.”

  “Good idea.” She touched a finger to her cheek, instantly clenching her teeth against a jolt of pain. Her brain felt fuzzy and disjointed. Which was exactly how Mark’s face looked, hovering above hers. “What…happened?”

  His hand, warm and gentle, curled around hers. “You used the side of your head as a battering ram against the car’s passenger window.”

  “Oh.” It all came rushing back now. The glare of lights, the jarring impacts when the vehicle rammed their car from behind. The sickening screech of metal. Her head slamming against the window. The way her vision doubled, then tripled before she blacked out.

  Taking a deep breath, she eased herself up. Only then did she realize she was on a gurney in the back of an ambulance. A female EMT with blond hair scraped back into a ponytail hovered at Mark’s side. Grace recognized the woman whose fingers were currently wrapped around the pulse in her wrist from the years she’d worked in Patrol.

  “Hi, Stella. How you doing?”

  “Better than you right now, Sergeant McCall.” Stella looked at Mark’s hand wrapped around Grace’s. “In some areas. How many fingers am I holding up?”

  “Two.”

  “What’s the date?”

  “December twenty-third.”

  “Who’s the governor?”

  “Of which state?” Grace asked. “Do I pass?”

  Stella nodded. “With flying colors.”

  Grace looked back at Mark. “I’m still fuzzy on some details. I remember Junior called the suite and told us Lori Logan wanted to meet the Calhouns at that café.”

  “A ruse,” Mark said. “I sent a cop to check the café. Lori hasn’t been there. Junior called because he wanted to get us out in the open. The way things look, our cover got blown somehow, and he decided to kill us. Our car running off a narrow road on a rainy night and crashing into a creek would have probably looked like an accident.”

  Grace closed her eyes, opened them. “I take it Junior was driving the car that rammed us?”

  “Yes. Actually, it was a minivan,” Mark said. “Registered to Iris Davenport. She wasn’t in the van, though. An agent from the Bureau’s Oklahoma City office and an OCPD black-and-white are on their way to pay Iris a visit.”

  “What about Junior? Did you get him?”

  “Nabbing him was a piece of cake since he was passed out in the van.” His expression concerned and intense, Mark ran his knuckles down Grace’s uninjured cheek. “Junior wasn’t wearing his seat belt. When the van slammed into the bridge, his head hit the steering wheel. He came to while being transported to Baptist Hospital. Which is where you’re going.”

  “Not in the back of an ambulance.”

  “Grace—”

  “I’m fine.”

  “You hit your head. You’ve been unconscious. You need to get checked by a doctor.”

  “I will. We have to go to Baptist to see about Juni
or, so I’ll ride with you. I can have an E.R. doc take a look at me.”

  “Our rental car is out of commission. I’ve got an OCPD patrol car waiting to take me to Baptist.” Mark glanced across his shoulder. “Your call, Stella. Is Sergeant McCall cleared to ride to the E.R. in a black-and-white, or does she go in this ambulance?”

  “Her pulse is steady, memory good, vision and speech are clear. She can ride with you as long as she sees a doc at the hospital.”

  “I’ll make sure of that,” Mark said, looking back at Grace. She glimpsed something in his dark eyes, some emotion she couldn’t read.

  The EMT shifted her gaze from Mark to Grace, then back to Mark. “I get the feeling that while Sergeant McCall hangs with you, she’s in very good hands.”

  The E.R. was the usual bevy of nurses, ambulance personnel and patients.

  While a distant radio broadcasted nonstop Christmas music, a still-wet-behind-the-ears intern pronounced Grace fit to return to duty the following day. Ignoring the “following day” part of his prognosis, she turned down his offer of a prescription painkiller. Instead she swallowed aspirin for the headache that snarled in her right temple.

  Less than a minute after the doctor disappeared through the privacy curtain circling the exam table, Mark stepped in. His expression was set, his eyes grim.

  “What’s happened?” Grace asked, still perched on the edge of the table.

  “Iris.” He handed Grace her purse, which he’d retrieved from the wrecked rental car. “When the FBI agent and patrol cop showed up at her house, they found her dead.”

  “Dead?” Grace’s eyes widened. “How?”

  “The M.E. says it looks like she fell and hit her head on the edge of a heavy wooden coffee table. Whether she had help falling is something we don’t know at this point.” Mark reached into the pocket of his trench coat, pulled out photos and handed them to Grace. “The agent snapped these at Iris’s house. He brought them by, knowing we’d want a look at the scene.”

  Grace studied the photos. Iris, dressed in a green sweater and jeans, lay on her back, her eyes open and glassy. The last two photos had been taken in the garage. A silver, mud-spattered Porsche was parked on one side. “Does the Porsche belong to Iris?”

  “No. It’s registered to Stuart Harmon, Jr. The lab guys found cocaine in the glove box. They’ve towed the Porsche to their evidence garage and are already going over it.”

  “Interesting,” Grace murmured. “Any idea why Junior was driving Iris’s minivan tonight?”

  “My guess is he decided a Porsche was too easy to identify while running cops off the road. We can ask Junior his reason whenever you’re ready. His forehead is stitched and he’s in a room down the hall with a cop guarding the door.” Mark paused. “I talked to the doc who treated him. He’s also got several scratches on one cheek. The doc isn’t sure, but he doesn’t think Harmon got them when the van crashed.”

  Grace remembered the fake nails Iris had worn in Vegas. They could do major damage to a face. “You think they’re from fingernails? That he and Iris struggled and she scratched him?”

  “Maybe. But the doc said they don’t look like fingernail scratches. The lab people will check under Iris’s nails for traces of skin and blood.”

  “What about his father?” Grace asked while using a fingertip to gingerly explore her throbbing cheek. “We don’t know where he fits in. How deeply he’s involved in illegal adoptions, if at all. We need to interview him tonight, too.”

  “We will. One of our agents picked him up in Winding Rock, told him Junior was under arrest and injured. They should be here soon. I’ve got another agent working on getting a search warrant for the Harmons’ office and residence. Since Junior lives in the same house as Senior, that means we can look for evidence of involvement on both their parts at the same time.”

  Angling her chin, Grace conducted a slow study of the man standing a few feet away. His black trench coat hung open; she could see his pressed jeans and gray turtleneck sweater beneath. The exam room’s harsh fluorescent lights seemed to emphasize the dark, somber handsomeness of his features. Loving him, wanting him, Grace knew the way Mark looked at this one moment in time would haunt her secret dreams for the rest of her life.

  She swallowed around the lump that settled in her throat. “You’ve had a lot on your plate tonight, Santini. Taking care of business while your partner was unconscious, then getting poked by a doctor. I haven’t exactly held up my end of the workload.”

  Mark stepped to the edge of the table, placed a hand on her thigh. “Seeing you hurt. Unconscious…” His eyes stayed steady on hers while a muscle in his jaw tightened. “There are things I want to tell you, Grace. Need to tell you.”

  Whatever he intended to say was lost when a uniformed cop stuck his head through the curtains.

  “Sergeant McCall? Dispatch got a call from a woman trying to locate you. Her name’s Millie Usher. You need her number?”

  “I’ve got it.” As the cop stepped out of view, Grace looked at Mark. “She might be calling to tell me Lori Logan has gone into labor.”

  “You can use my cell,” Mark offered.

  “Here’s mine,” Grace said, pulling her phone out of her purse. She checked the display. “Millie’s tried to call me twice. Must have been while I was unconscious.” Grace stabbed the recall button. Less than a minute later she had the director of Usher House on the line.

  “Thank goodness I’ve found you, Sergeant McCall.” The reedy panic in the woman’s voice stiffened Grace’s spine.

  “What’s wrong, Millie?”

  “Right after we talked this afternoon, I headed downstairs to check on Lori Logan, like you asked me to. One of the kids had left a book bag at the top of the stairs. I was preoccupied and didn’t see it. I tripped over the darn thing, tumbled all the way down.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “Broke my arm in two places. It took a couple of hours at the clinic to get me patched up. But that’s not why I’m calling. It’s about Lori.”

  “What about Lori?” Grace looked up, met Mark’s waiting gaze.

  “I was in so much pain after I fell that I forgot about her for a while. When we got back to the shelter from the clinic, I didn’t see Lori with the other kids. Turns out, no one has seen her.”

  Grace’s felt her throat close. “Since when? When’s the last time anyone remembers seeing her?”

  “Right after lunch. Just before she slipped away in the van to drive to Winding Rock to see Mr. Harmon.”

  “She made it back, right? You saw the van in the parking lot.”

  “Yes, the van’s still here. All of our vans are. But none of the kids remember seeing Lori after the van came back. Sergeant McCall, we’ve looked everywhere for her. Scoured the neighborhood. My assistant director drove to all the places we thought Lori might have gone, just to hang out. Nothing.”

  “It’s possible she went into labor.”

  “We called every clinic and hospital in the city with no luck.”

  “Have you reported her missing?”

  “When I couldn’t get you right off, I called 911. A patrol officer came and took a report.”

  “Did you give him a picture of Lori?”

  “Yes. He said he would make sure it got distributed.”

  Concern for the young mother-to-be settled on Grace’s shoulders, leaden and oppressive. “You’ve done everything you can right now, Millie. Call me if Lori shows up or you hear from her. I’ll contact you if we find her.”

  “This isn’t good,” Mark stated when Grace ended the call. “Our cover gets blown. One of our suspects drops Lori’s name to draw us into an ambush. Now she’s missing. No way we’re dealing with any kind of coincidence.”

  “Mark, we need to interview both Harmons,” Grace said as dread curled in her stomach. “If Iris was murdered, if they took Lori…” She shook her head, not wanting to think about the prospect of Lori and her unborn baby having met the same fate as Iris.

&nb
sp; Five minutes later Mark nodded to the uniformed cop guarding a room down the hallway from the E.R. The cop opened the door, then led the way inside. Grace followed; Mark brought up the rear.

  Mark took in the room, which was a small rectangle with gray walls and white vinyl flooring. The air reeked of hospital disinfectant. A single table was positioned in the center, with four gunmetal-gray straight-backed chairs gathered around it. Their prisoner sat in one of the chairs, his wrists handcuffed behind him.

  Although still wearing his gray cashmere T-shirt and black slacks, Stuart Harmon, Jr. barely resembled the man they’d met earlier that day. His narrow face looked pale and gaunt. His small wire-rim glasses were missing; his coal-black hair was disheveled. Just above his heavy dark brows, a line of stitches and a jagged bruise mottled his forehead. While the uniformed cop uncuffed Harmon’s wrists, Mark paid particular attention to the scratches on the man’s right cheek that looked livid against his bone-white skin.

  “Cops.” Harmon regarded Grace and Mark as they settled into the chairs on the side of the table opposite him. “Never would have guessed. When it comes to two people acting like they’re in love, you guys take first place.”

  Mark kept his expression unreadable. Seeing Grace bruised and battered had shaken him from the inside out. He’d almost lost her again. Forever. Knowing that had put things into perspective.

  Grace gave Harmon a sedate smile. “How and when did you find out we were police officers, Mr. Harmon?”

  “Just now. When you walked in the door.” His mouth curved. “It’s the badges and guns clipped to your belts that gave you away.”

  Mark recited Harmon’s Miranda rights, then asked if he understood them.

  “I’m a lawyer,” Harmon said, massaging his wrists where the cuffs had been. “I know my rights. You need to tell me why you’re harassing an innocent citizen.”

  Grace arched a brow. “You’re not a lawyer, nor are you innocent, Mr. Harmon. You’ve never passed the bar exam and you attempted to kill me and Agent Santini tonight.”