by Selena Kitt
“It is the end of a very long day for me, too, Agent Findley. As I’ve just explained, we’ve spent a lot of time going over our video surveillance footage of an illegal in-vitro fertilization attempt of an unknown woman. Yours is one of the samples that’s missing, therefore—”
“See, and that’s where you keep losing me, Miss Long. I don’t have a sample in storage at your clinic.”
“Not anymore,” she agreed. “We believe your deposit was used to potentially impregnate our little criminal.”
“But that’s impossible.” Nolan felt as if his head were about to float away from his shoulders. “I’ve never donated a sample to your clinic, Miss Long. The only reason I was ever even in your clinic was to get a sperm count done to satisfy my ex-wife’s need to blame anything other than her own medical issues for our lack of children.”
“Please, sir, there is no need to…exaggerate. Please don’t feel embarrassed, we have many donors on record and I assure you, your name is never associated with your sample except in a password-protected file on Doctor Trentham’s computer. Until this…event, we have guaranteed anonymity and efficient practices and I assure you that, in future, we will be increasing our security measures.”
“I have never—”
“Sir. I am looking at your paperwork as we speak. Really, you should have informed us when you changed address, but your old office gave us the number for your current place of employment. You have signed all the necessary documents for storage of your semen sample, as well as permission for your spouse to use it at a later date should she so desire.”
Nolan grew dizzy. “Permission?”
“She has permission to use your sample, yes,” Sarah Long said brusquely. “It is, of course, the only reason I’m contacting you directly. Your sample is gone. Would you care to replace it?”
“No.” Nolan shook his head. His throat closed around the rising sickness and his heart did its best to kick through his ribs. His fingers ached with the grip he used on the phone and he shot to his feet on shaking legs. “You tell Director Trentham I want to speak to her. Right now.”
“She’s busy with the police chief. He’s taking her statement.”
“Statement for what?”
“For the illegal procedure Doctor George Milliken performed last week. We are almost certain yours was the sample used, though we’re double-checking the details of his confession. Haven’t you been paying attention? The doctor was caught on camera—”
“My sample?” Nolan’s brain finally kicked into gear. “You have video footage from security cameras? You have clear images of the procedure performed? Can you identify the people involved?”
Nolan grabbed for his notepad and started scribbling Sarah’s answers. Another thirty minutes of conversation with her gave him all the adrenaline he needed to get him through the coming night. He added up the mileage in his head as he listened to her, multitasking efficiently, mentally plotting his route and estimating that the drive would take him nearly eight hours—still faster than a bus or a train and he didn’t have the tolerance to take a plane just then. No telling how long he’d be in Vermont, so he’d have to pack a bag and grab something to eat, too. A glance at the clock told him he had just enough time to inform his supervisor of his plans before they all went home for the night.
“You tell your boss I’ll be there first thing in morning,” he warned Sarah. “I’ll want to see the security footage, and the paperwork I supposedly signed.”
* * *
His hand shook around his coffee cup as caffeine battled adrenaline and came out the loser. Nolan was beyond exhausted, bleary-eyed and angry all at the same time. He felt certain he’d have no molars left after his impromptu trip back to the place he’d hated above all others—he ground his teeth almost constantly while listening to Doctor Trentham drone on and on with patently false sympathy.
He glanced at the police chief, who at least had the decency to sit still and expressionless in the chair next to Trentham’s. The man adequately represented everything Nolan hated about Vermont—the silence, the stoicism, the underhanded nosiness of ‘well-meaning’ neighbors and the tolerance for breaking the law that all-too often led to lax punishments or outright forgiveness for criminals Nolan would sooner see rot in jail. Like Doctor Milliken and his unidentified female patient. Unfortunately for Nolan’s peace of mind, the jail Milliken would end up in was more like a country club, and the woman would disappear into thin air, with no one but him concerned enough to look for her.
Director Trentham, a well-put together woman of indeterminate years, pursed her lips until faint lines could be seen around them. “I’m fairly new here, but within weeks of my arrival, I noticed the disappearance of semen samples. Not so many to cause an uproar, until I demanded a complete accounting of our inventory. For too long, this clinic was poorly run, and I aim to change that.”
“Looks like an uphill battle, from where I’m standing.” Impatience hardened the edges of Nolan’s temper, but he fought to remain calm and in control. He struggled to listen to every word through his shock and rage…and fear.
God, the fear was tearing him apart. He couldn’t understand his own emotions beyond the negative reactions crowding his chest, but somewhere in the back of the strange mix heating his blood was a thread of what-if.
What if the woman had been hired by his ex-wife as a surrogate? What if the woman was successfully fertilized with Nolan’s sperm? What if they came to him, looking for financial assistance, child support, college funds…
What if the pregnancy was viable, went all the way and produced a tiny little person Nolan could physically hold, hug and care for? God knows, he’d gone through hell to have a child with his ex-wife, but it clearly hadn’t been meant to be.
Feeling like he was breathing underwater, Nolan got to his feet and tried to expend the restlessness in his legs by pacing before Trentham’s desk. “Right. The sample count was off, the current inventory different than the records you had in your personal files.”
“I knew immediately that something underhanded was happening,” Trentham agreed.
Nolan saluted her with his coffee cup. “I bet you did.”
Doctor Trentham adjusted her posture and cleared her throat. “Without informing the staff of anything—after all, we do have signs posted warning that the premises are under surveillance—I had the real cameras installed.”
“Hidden behind the dummy ones you’ve got strewn about this place. The staff never knew the difference.” Nolan pointed to the fake recording device bolted to the top of the wall in the corner behind the doctor. “You hoped to figure out who had been stealing semen samples, but instead caught an illegal IVF procedure?”
The police chief nodded a single time. “Doctor Milliken is in custody. He claims the procedure was the first he’s performed outside proper protocol, and he says he was blackmailed by the patient.”
“Did he now?” Nolan’s fingers clenched, causing real damage to his paper cup. He willed his grip to ease before he spilled his coffee.
“Apparently,” the chief explained, “Milliken got his nose out of joint back when he and his wife got divorced. The court ordered them to sell all the possessions they’d bought together and split the proceeds, except Milliken had a Lepine he was pretty damned attached to.”
Nolan hefted a brow. “A Lepine?”
“It’s a painting.”
“Actually, Stanislas Lepine was an artist, but, please, continue.” Nolan waved the man on.
“Well, Milliken didn’t want to get rid of an original work of art, so he hired a forger to make a new one to sell.”
“Netting him the money from the forgery and allowing him to keep the original.” Nolan nodded as the crime started taking shape in his brain.
“Milliken claims the woman he saw last week was the forger, name of Moon, but that’s all he knows about her. He says she threatened to let it be known that the painting he sold for a hefty, five-digit sum was, in fact, a fo
rgery, and that he knew it was a forgery.”
“That does make a difference in sentencing, yes. If he specifically commissioned the forgery for the sole purpose of sale, duping the buyer, well, that comes with extra penalties.” Nolan mentally ran through the ramifications. “Okay, so he was blackmailed. He still committed a crime.”
“And we’re looking into that,” the chief agreed.
“Uh-huh.” Nolan spun on his heel and gulped his coffee. “You didn’t catch the sperm thief, though.”
“No. Just Doctor Milliken’s illegal procedure.” Director Trentham grimaced. “In his confession, he confirmed that the woman, Moon, chose your sample for the insemination.”
Nolan came to a stop in front of Trentham and slammed his paper cup down on her desk. Leaning low, he braced his hands on the edge and purposefully gave her his most intimidating glare. “For the record, I’ve never donated a sample to this clinic. I’ve never signed anything that gave permission to store my little army, or to give it up to my bitch of a lying ex-wife who must have forged my fucking signature so she could hold on to a goddamned pipe dream.”
“We didn’t know.” Trentham shook her head, remaining calm in the face of his anger. “I didn’t know. All I have to go by are the papers in our files.”
“That is the sole reason I haven’t ripped you a new one by now.” Nolan straightened. “But you better fucking believe my lawyers will be contacting the board that runs this place.”
Trentham slowly got to her feet. “Fair enough, Agent Findley. Would you care to see the security footage now?”
* * *
The picture quality was excellent. Nolan sat in his chair doing everything he could to keep his breathing even, in spite of how his lungs had seemed to turn inside out. To help ease his agitation, he whipped out his pad and took notes.
The woman came through the side entrance typically reserved for deliveries—toilet paper and carpet cleaner, not baby deliveries, which Nolan made certain to differentiate in his report. She didn’t act furtive, she didn’t act suspicious and she didn’t glance around in a manner that could even possibly be construed as mysterious. She was, however, obviously guarded, reserved and distrusting of Doctor Milliken, as evidenced by the way she attempted to avoid even accidental contact with him. She refused to shake his hand and when he bumped into her going around the first corner of the hallway, the woman flinched violently. It appeared she’d given the doctor a dressing down too, but the cameras weren’t equipped for sound, so Nolan only had her flying hands to judge by.
The woman’s face was pretty in a sweet, wholesome, unremarkable way totally at odds with the peculiar crime she’d committed. Rounded cheeks and chin, though tending toward gaunt, as if she’d missed a few too many meals recently. She had blonde hair verging on light brown, tucked back into a wispy braid that reached her shoulders. Ordinary, nothing exotic or spectacular or eye-catching.
Her body was harder to catalogue due to the sheer volume of fabric covering it. Nolan would have guessed she possessed an average build, and even made a note of it, but long hours into the surveillance proved him wrong. The angle of one camera was able to catch just a portion of the interior of the room Milliken had led her to, and, once he’d left, she disrobed without self-consciousness.
She was thin and pale and drab, yet Nolan became riveted. Just the simple act of her pulling her shirt over her head had him stilling in his seat and holding his breath, until he got a good look at what was underneath. Skin marked by a few visible scars made him wonder what sort of trauma she’d known and the shadows along her ribcage made him estimate how many times a week she skipped eating. She was too skinny, making her hipbones more prominent than necessary.
Nolan shifted in his chair as he watched the process. Guilt and awkwardness stormed through him, making him more fidgety than he dared to show. With Trentham at his side giving him a running monologue of every piece of equipment visible in the room and its function, he couldn’t show her how affected he was by the sight of one thin woman…who was about to impregnate herself with his sperm.
Jesus, he had a raging hard-on.
Nolan didn’t know what was wrong with him. The woman was nothing special—should have been nothing special. Ordinary and commonplace, no discernible features to make her stand apart from the crowd beyond the scars she’d kept hidden under her clothes. The heated wave of awareness that insisted on traveling up and down his spine was surely nothing more than anger, betrayal and confusion over why someone would go to such lengths to conceive his child.
The idea that his ex-wife had put the woman up to it as a surrogate was firmly lodged in Nolan’s mind. He didn’t know the truth of it, but it wouldn’t surprise him. After all, why his sample? It was enough to make him want to leave immediately and demand answers from his ex.
But Nolan was glued to his chair. “Will her weight affect the chances of conception?” he asked.
“Yes.” Trentham made a soft noise Nolan interpreted as pity. “There are many factors at play, Agent Findley. I believe I can set your mind at ease about her chances of conception. They have dwindled with each new thing I’ve learned about our little criminal, and now I hardly think it’s even possible for her to have had a successful implantation.”
Nolan cleared his throat, unsure of how he felt about that statement. “Why mine?”
“Milliken only said she picked. I don’t think he was privy to the inner workings of her reasoning.”
“Huh.” Nolan did his best to find a comfortable way to sit in the chair that suddenly felt too confining and watch the rest of the film.
Hours passed as the footage rolled on. There were times Nolan became so uncomfortable he could hardly breathe, but he sat like stone and waited it out. His belly flipped like a circus act, but he watched the whole process and ignored the demanding ache in his balls. And the squeezing around his heart.
“It seems like that should take longer,” he whispered, only half-aware he spoke out loud.
“It’s outpatient surgery,” Trentham explained. “I will admit we usually do this with a bit more finesse and a qualified anesthesiologist, but this was an illegal procedure, so that should be taken into account.”
“She wasn’t comfortable being alone with him, half-naked.”
Trentham nodded. “I noticed.”
“It makes me curious about her.”
“Agent Findley, I’m sure there are many things that make you curious about the woman. Do you think you’ll find her?”
Nolan took a deep breath and felt determination fill his lungs in equal measure with oxygen. His heart pounded and his blood heated, his answer was grim. “I won’t stop until I do.”
Chapter 3
It took two days to get his first lead.
Nolan only flinched a little when the file folder landed on his desk with a flat thwack that indicated there wasn’t much inside. He glanced up to see one of the newer agents standing in front of him.
“Weslyn Marie Moon,” his coworker said cheerfully. “You got lucky. The San Diego office had a grainy photo. They believe she’s responsible for an art forgery connected to a murder they were looking into a couple years back.”
“A murder?” Nolan snapped up the folder. “They think she’s involved?”
“Not anymore.” The other agent shook his head. “Guy commissioned a painting from her. A few days after she dropped it off, he turned up dead. He had a cheap security camera watching his premises and San Diego PD picked up the surveillance footage.”
Nolan lifted a brow in his comrade’s direction. “Did they bring her in?”
“Didn’t find her and they’re not wasting time looking.” The other man shook his head again. “I talked to the agent in charge of the case. Lot of money involved, but it’s low priority. Nobody can even say for sure if she’s the artist, but her name came up.”
“Low priority?” Nolan scanned the first few sheets inside the folder he held. “It says here she was wanted for questioning
concerning a forgery of a Hobbema masterpiece.”
The other agent nodded. “The guy gave a fake Hobbema landscape to his dope supplier, but the supplier obviously wasn’t satisfied. Local police caught the guy’s thugs responsible for the murder and nobody seems to know who the girl is. She’s only on the hook for forging art.”
“Doctor Milliken commissioned a fake Lepine from the lady. Guess she’s got a thing for nature.”
“If that’s what you call it. I mean, where are the ‘happy little trees’ huh? The pictures in that folder look like the drab things my grandma used to hang over the back of her couch.”
“Have a little more respect for great art.” Nolan’s exhale ruffled the edge of the paper he held. “Why would a drug dealer want a phony landscape with a lesser-known Dutch Master’s signature on it?”
