by Julie Miller
He held it surely as he nudged open the broken door. “Miss McKane? It’s Niall Watson with the KCPD crime lab. I’m concerned for your safety. I’m coming in.”
The mournful wails of a baby crying itself into exhaustion instantly grew louder on this side of the walls separating their living spaces. He backed against the door, closing it behind him as he cradled the gun between both hands. A dim light in the kitchen provided the only illumination in the condo that mirrored the layout of his own place. Allowing his vision to adjust to the dim outlines of furniture and doorways, Niall waited before advancing into the main room. He checked the closet and powder room near the entryway before moving through the living and dining rooms. Empty. No sign of Lucy McKane anywhere. No blood or signs of an accident or struggle of any sort, either. In fact, the only things that seemed out of place were the bundles of yarn, patterns and knitting needles that had been dumped out of their basket onto the coffee table and strewn across the sofa cushions and area rug.
He found the baby in the kitchen, fastened into a carrier that sat on the peninsula countertop, with nothing more than the glow of an automatic night-light beside the stove to keep him company. A half-formed panel of gray knitted wool hung from the baby’s toes, as if he’d once been covered with it but had thrashed it aside.
Niall flipped on the light switch and circled around the peninsula, plucking the makeshift blanket off and laying it on the counter. “You’re a tiny thing to be making all that noise. You all alone in here? Do you know where your mama is?”
The kid’s red face lolled toward Niall’s hushed voice. It shook and batted its little fists before cranking up to wail again. Niall didn’t need to take a second whiff to ascertain at least one reason why the baby was so unhappy. But a quick visual sweep didn’t reveal any sign of a diaper bag or anything to change it into besides the yellow outfit it wore. Had Lucy McKane left the child alone to go make a supply run?
Niall moved the gun down to his side and touched the baby’s face. Feverish. Was the kid sick? Or was that what this ceaseless crying did to someone who was maybe only a week or so old?
The infant’s cries sputtered into silent gasps as Niall splayed his fingers over its heaving chest. Not unlike his grandfather’s earlier that day, the baby’s heart was racing. A quick check farther down answered another question for him. “You okay, little man?”
How long had he been left unattended like this?
And where was Lucy? There was no sign of her in the kitchen, either, despite the dirty dishes in the sink and what looked like a congealed glob of cookie dough in the stand mixer beside it. It seemed as though she’d left in the middle of baking a dessert. Why hadn’t she completed the task? Where had she gone? What had called her away? And, he thought, with a distinct note of irritation filtering into his thought process, why hadn’t she taken the baby with her?
“Hold on.” Niall’s gaze was drawn to a screwdriver on the counter that didn’t look like any piece of cooking equipment he’d ever seen his late mother or Millie Leighter use.
After a couple of silent sobs vibrated through the infant’s delicate chest, Niall pulled his hand away. Tuning out the recommencing wail, he opened two drawers before he found a plastic bag and used it to pick up the tool. The handle was an absurd shade of pink with shiny baubles glued around each end of the grip. He rolled it in his hand until he found what he suspected he might—an empty space in the circle of fake stones. Niall glanced back through the darkened apartment. The bead stuck in the frame of her door suddenly made sense. But even if his neighbor had lost her key and had to break into her own place, she’d turn on the lights once she got in. There’d be signs of her being here. And she’d damn well take care of the baby.
Unless she wasn’t the one who’d broken in.
“Don’t go anywhere,” he ordered needlessly. Wrapping the screwdriver securely in the bag, Niall slipped it into his pocket and clasped the gun between his hands again. “I’ll be right back.”
A quick inspection through the bedroom and en suite showed no sign of Lucy McKane there, either. He didn’t see her purse anywhere, and her winter coat and accoutrements were missing from the front closet. There was no baby paraphernalia in any of the rooms.
Had she been kidnapped? What kind of kidnapper would leave evidence like the screwdriver behind? Had she been robbed? Nothing here seemed disturbed beyond the topsy-turvy knitting basket, and anything of typical value to a thief—her flat-screen TV, a laptop computer—was still here.
More unanswered questions. Niall’s concern reverted to irritation.
This child had been abandoned. Lucy McKane was gone, and the woman had a lot of explaining to do.
Niall was surprisingly disappointed to learn that she was the type of woman to leave an infant alone to run errands or enjoy a date. She was a free spirit, certainly, with her friendly smile and ease at striking up conversations with neighbors she barely knew and ownership of far too many pairs of panties. But she’d told him she was a social worker, for pity’s sake. He wouldn’t have pegged her to be so self-absorbed and reckless as to leave a child in an unlocked apartment—to leave the child, period. If she’d left by choice.
With the mandate of both his badge and his medical degree, and three generations of protecting those who couldn’t protect themselves bred into him, Niall could not walk out that door and abandon this baby himself. So, understanding as much about children as his medical books could teach, he tucked his gun into its holster, pulled his phone from his pocket and picked up the baby in its carrier. He spared a glance at the soft wood around the deadbolt catch, debating whether or not he should retrieve the decorative bead jammed there or report Lucy as a missing person. Making the crying infant his first priority, Niall closed the door behind him and carried the baby into his apartment before dialing the most knowledgeable parent he knew.
The phone picked up on the third ring. “Niall?”
“Dad.” He set the carrier on the island in his own kitchen and opened a drawer to pull out two clean dish towels. A quick glance at his watch indicated that perhaps he should have thought this through better. “Did I wake you?”
“It’s three in the morning, son. Of course you did.” Thomas Watson pushed the grogginess from his voice. “Are you still at the hospital? Has there been a change in Dad’s condition?”
“No. The doctors are keeping Grandpa lightly sedated. Keir will stay with him until one of us relieves him in the morning.”
“Thank God one of my boys is a doctor and that you were there to give him the treatment he needed immediately. We should be giving thanks that he survived and no one else was seriously injured. But knowing that the bastard who shot him is still...” Thomas Watson’s tone changed from dark frustration to curious surprise. “Do I hear a baby crying?”
Niall strode through his apartment, retrieving a towel and washcloth along with the first-aid kit and a clean white T-shirt from his dresser. “Yes. Keir will contact me if there is any change in Grandpa’s condition. I told Grandpa one or all of us would be by to see him in the morning, that the family would be there for him 24/7. I’m not sure he heard me, though.”
“Dad heard you, I’m sure.” Niall could hear his father moving now, a sure sign that the former cop turned investigative consultant was on his feet and ready for Niall to continue. “Now go back to the other thing. Why do you have a baby?”
Niall had returned to the kitchen to run warm water in the sink. “Can I ask you a favor?”
“Of course, son.”
“Dad, I need newborn diapers, bottles and formula. A clean set of clothes and some kind of coat or blanket or whatever babies need when it’s cold. A car seat, too, if you can get your hands on one at this time of night. I’ll reimburse you for everything, of course.” Niall put the phone on speaker and spread a thick towel out on the counter, pausing for a moment to assess the lock
ing mechanism before unhooking the baby and lifting him from the carrier. “Good Lord, you don’t weigh a thing.”
“The baby, Niall.” That tone in his father’s voice had always commanded an answer. “Is there something you need to tell me?”
“It’s the neighbor’s kid,” Niall explained. “I’d get the items myself, but I don’t have a car seat and can’t leave him alone. Oh, get something for diaper rash, too. He needs a bath. I can use a clean dish towel to cover him up until you get here, although I don’t have any safety pins. Do you think medical tape would work to hold a makeshift diaper on him until you arrive?”
“You’re babysitting? I never thought I’d see the day—”
“Just bring me the stuff, Dad.”
Another hour passed before Thomas Watson arrived with several bags of supplies. His father groused about bottles looking different from the time Olivia had been the last infant in the house and how there were far too many choices for a feeding regimen. But between the two of them, they got the baby diapered, fed and dressed in a footed sleeper that fit him much better than Niall’s long T-shirt. At first, Niall was concerned about the infant falling asleep before finishing his first bottle. But he roused enough for Thomas to coax a healthy burp out of him before drinking a little more and crashing again. Niall was relieved to feel the baby’s temperature return to normal and suspected the feverish state had been pure stress manifesting itself.
The infant boy was sleeping in Thomas Watson’s lap as the older man dozed in the recliner, and Niall was reviewing a chapter on pediatric medicine when he heard the ding of the elevator at the end of the hallway. He closed the book and set it on the coffee table, urging his waking father to stay put while he went to the door.
He heard Lucy McKane’s hushed voice mumbling something as she approached and then a much louder, “Oh, my God. I’ve had a break-in.”
Niall swung open his door and approached the back of the dark-haired woman standing motionless before her apartment door. She had turned silent, but he knew exactly what to say. “Miss McKane? You and I need to talk.”
Chapter Two
“The man wasn’t following me,” Lucy chanted under her breath for the umpteenth time since parking her car downstairs. She stepped off the elevator into the shadowed hallway, trying to convince herself that the drunken ape who’d offered to rock her world down on Carmody Street wasn’t the driver of the silver sports car she’d spotted in her rearview mirror less than a block from her condominium building a few minutes earlier. “He wasn’t following me.”
Maybe if she hadn’t spotted a similar car veering in and out of the lane behind her on Highway 71, she wouldn’t be so paranoid. Maybe if her voice mail at work didn’t have a message from her ex-boyfriend Roger that was equal parts slime and threat and booze.
“Guess what, sweet thing. I’m out. And I’m coming to see you.”
Maybe if it wasn’t so late, maybe if she’d felt safe in that run-down part of Kansas City, maybe if she wasn’t so certain that something terrible had happened to Diana Kozlow, her former foster daughter, who’d called her out of the blue yesterday after more than a year of no contact—maybe if the twenty-year-old would answer her stupid phone any one of the dozen times Lucy had tried to call her back—she wouldn’t feel so helpless or alone or afraid.
Fortunately, the silver car had driven past when she’d turned in to the gated parking garage. But the paranoia and a serious need to wash the man’s grimy hands off her clothes and skin remained. “He was not following me.”
She glanced down at the blurred picture she’d snapped through her rear window the second time the silver roadster had passed a car and slipped into the lane behind her on 71. Her pulse pounded furiously in her ears as she slipped the finger of her glove between her teeth and pulled it off her right hand to try and enlarge the picture and get a better look at the driver or read a possible license plate. Useless. No way could she prove the Neanderthal or Roger or anyone else had followed her after leaving the rattrap apartment building on Carmody, which was the last address she had for Diana. Not that it had been a productive visit. The super had refused to speak to her, and the only resident who would answer her questions about Diana was an elderly woman who couldn’t remember a young brunette woman living in the building, and didn’t recognize her from the old high school photo Lucy had shown her. Ape man had been willing to tell her anything—in exchange for stepping into the alley with him for a free grope.
None of which boded well for the life Diana had forged for herself after aging out of the foster system and leaving Lucy’s home. Lucy swiped her finger across the cell screen to pull up the high school photo of the dark-haired beauty she’d thought would be family—or at least a close friend—forever. “Oh, sweetie, what have you gotten yourself into?” she muttered around the red wool clasped between her teeth.
She glanced back at the elevator door, remembered the key card required to get into the building lobby.
“Okay. The creeper didn’t follow me,” she stated with as much conviction as she could muster. “And I will find you, Diana.”
She was simply going to have to get a few hours’ sleep and think this through and start her search again tomorrow. Except...
Lucy pulled up short when she reached the door to 8D. The late-night chill that had iced her skin seeped quickly through the layers of clothing she wore.
“Oh, my God. I’ve had a break-in.”
So much for feeling secure.
The wood around the locks on her apartment door was scratched and broken. The steel door itself drifted open with barely a touch of her hand. Lucy retreated half a step and pulled up the keypad on her phone to call the police. After two previous calls about Diana’s failure to show up for lunch or return her calls, they were probably going to think she was a nutcase to call a third time in fewer than twenty-four hours.
“Miss McKane? You and I need to talk.”
Lucy’s fear erupted in a startled yelp at the succinct announcement. She swung around with her elbow at the man’s deep voice behind her, instinctively protecting herself.
Instead of her elbow connecting with the man’s solar plexus, five long fingers clamped like a vise around her wrist and she was pushed up against the wall by a tall, lanky body. Her phone popped loose from her slippery grip and bounced across the carpet at her feet. Her heart thumped in her chest at the wall of heat trapping her there, and the loose glove she’d held between her teeth was caught between her heaving breasts and the broad expanse of a white tuxedo shirt. What the devil? Diana was missing, and she had no idea why her tall, lanky neighbor was glowering down at her through those Clark Kent glasses he wore.
“Wow,” she gasped, as the frissons of fear evaporated once she recognized him. No one else roamed the hallways this time of night except for him. She should have known better. “Sorry I took a swing at you, Dr. Watson.” She couldn’t even summon the giggly response she usually had when she said his name and conjured up thoughts of medical sidekicks and brainy British detectives. Not when she was embarrassingly aware of his hard runner’s body pressed against hers. Nothing to giggle about there. The full-body contact lasted another awkward moment. “I didn’t hurt you, did I?”
“Of course not.” Once he seemed certain she recognized him as a friend and didn’t have to defend himself, Niall Watson released his grip on her arm and stepped away, leaving a distinct chill in place of that surprising male heat that had pinned her to the wall. “I shouldn’t have startled you.”
“I thought you...were someone else.”
“Who? Were you expecting someone?”
“I, um...” She wasn’t about to explain her paranoid suspicions about ape man or Roger and the silver car, so she covered her rattled state by stooping down to retrieve her glove and phone. “Sorry if I woke you. I’ve had a break-in. I thought this was supposed t
o be a secure building in a safe neighborhood, but I guess there’s no place that’s truly safe if someone is determined to get to you. That’s probably why I swung first. A girl has to take care of herself, you know. I’d better call the police.”
Niall Watson’s long fingers reached her phone first. He scooped it up and tapped the screen clear. “A 911 call won’t be necessary.”
Frowning at his high-handedness, Lucy tilted her face up. “Why not?” She was halfway to making eye contact when she saw the crimson spots staining his rolled-up sleeve. She stuffed her loose glove into her pocket, along with her phone, and touched her fingertip to the red stains on the wrinkled white cotton clinging to his long, muscular forearm. There were more droplets of blood on the other sleeve, too. Irritation vanished, and she piled concern for him onto the fears that had already worn her ragged today.
“Are you hurt? Did you stop the intruder?” She grasped his wrist in her hand, much the same way he’d manhandled her, and twisted it to find the wound. Despite the tempting awareness at his toasty-warm skin beneath her chilled fingers, she was more interested in learning what had happened. She knew he was affiliated with the police. Had he stepped in to prevent a burglar from ransacking her place? Had Roger followed his release from prison with a road trip to Kansas City? Had Diana shown up while she was searching the city for her? Now she looked up and met those narrowed cobalt eyes. “Have you already called for help? Do I need to take you to the hospital?”
A dark eyebrow arched above the rim of his glasses before he glanced down to see the source of her concern. Blinking away his apparent confusion, he pulled out of her grip to splay his fingers at his waist. “This isn’t my blood.”
“Then whose...?” His stance drew her attention to the holster strapped to his belt. Had she ever seen Niall Watson wearing a gun before? His badge, yes. But she’d never seen the erudite professional looking armed and dangerous the way he did tonight. Had he just come from a crime scene? “You wore a tuxedo to work?” Wait. Not his blood. That meant... A stone of dread plummeted into Lucy’s stomach. Was that Diana’s blood? “Oh, God.” Before he could say anything, she spun around and shoved open the door to her apartment. “Diana?” Niall Watson was a doctor. But he wasn’t hurt. That meant someone else was. “Diana? Are you here?”
