Untraceable

by Laura Griffin

  “She told me what she’d be wearing.”

  The woman in the red T-shirt and white visor was seated on a bench across from the cathedral. Beside her was a young mom with a stroller and a toddler who was tossing bread at some pigeons. “Peggy” looked to be in her early sixties. And harmless. But Nathan still didn’t like this. He kept his weapon hand ready.

  Alex strode right up to the woman, but Nathan hung back, glancing around for potential threats.

  “I’m Alex.”

  The woman gazed up from the bench, a worried look on her face. “Is Melanie with you?”

  “She’s in the hospital,” Alex said. “The ICU, actually.”

  “What happened?”

  “She was involved in a shooting last night.”

  “Oh, Lord.” Peggy clasped her hands together in front of her face, like she was praying. “It was Craig, wasn’t it?”

  “The police are investigating.”

  “Oh, Lord,” she repeated, shaking her head. “I was afraid of something like this. Is she going to be okay?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Nathan watched the woman’s reaction closely. She seemed to be on the verge of tears now.

  “You said you had something important for me?” Alex checked her watch. “Sorry to be short, but I’m on my way to the hospital.”

  Still shaking her head, the woman pulled her purse into her lap and started digging through it.

  Nathan glanced around. The patrol officer was watching them with a bored expression. Tourists streamed back and forth along the sidewalk, stopping at hot-dog vendors and street artists. On the corner of Chartres and St. Peter, a silver-painted mime entertained a knot of kids.

  Nathan checked all directions but didn’t see any suspicious cars or pedestrians who didn’t fit. Still, there were balconies and rooftops all around. He eased up close behind Alex and rested his left hand on her shoulder.

  “Hurry this up,” he whispered.

  “You saw her yesterday?” Alex was asking.

  “She’d been staying at my house off and on,” Peggy said. “She came in on the bus, oh, about ten days ago, I guess it was.” Peggy pulled an envelope from her purse and passed it to Alex.

  Nathan’s attention shifted from the patrol officer, to the mime, to the seemingly empty balcony above the nearest souvenir shop. The mom on the other end of the bench took her toddler’s hand and led him toward an ice-cream stand.

  Nathan’s gaze homed in on the stroller. The hair on the back of his neck stood up. Alex’s shoulder tensed under his hand.

  “She what?” Alex swayed backward, bumping into him.

  He caught her around the waist. “What is it?”

  She glanced up at him, wide-eyed.

  “I thought you knew.” Peggy cast a worried look at Nathan. “She didn’t know?”

  “Know what?” Nathan’s gut tightened as Peggy’s gaze moved to the stroller, the same stroller Alex was staring at now, mouth agape.

  “About Grace,” Peggy said.

  A whimper came from the stroller, and Peggy stood up. Alex and Nathan stepped back and watched—speechless—as she clucked and murmured over the baby there. She picked up the bundle wrapped in pink blankets and settled it in the crook of her arm.

  Alex stared, goggle-eyed, at the baby. She turned to Nathan.

  “She has a baby.” Alex held up the letter. “Did you know about this? She has a baby!”

  “How would I know about this?”

  Peggy stepped forward, and Alex recoiled as the woman tried to hand the infant over to her.

  “I can’t hold it!”

  “She’s fine.” Peggy stepped closer and pushed the bundle into Alex’s arms. Nathan heard her sharp intake of breath. The baby’s cheeks reddened, and her face screwed up in a frown.

  “She can’t possibly think I’d take her.” Alex whirled to Nathan. “She can’t think that!”

  “Calm down,” he said, although he felt anything but calm. He looked at Peggy and tried to read her face. “This is Melanie’s baby. You’re sure about that?”

  “Melanie and Joe’s. Bless her little heart, she’s not even three weeks old. And now Melanie’s in the hospital.” Peggy shook her head. “I knew she was in trouble. She wouldn’t say what it was, but I knew. I knew something wasn’t right from the second they showed up at my house. And her letting me babysit? Now, that was desperate, that’s what that was. Mel knows better than anybody what a struggle I been having these last few months.”

  Alex held the baby out to Peggy. “I’m sorry. For the… inconvenience here. But there’s really no way I can help you with this problem.”

  “Melanie said you’d say that.” Peggy glanced down at the baby, who was whimpering and squirming now. “But she gave me your number and said to call you if she wasn’t back by this afternoon. You’re the only person she trusted in case of an emergency.”

  “But you’re her friend—”

  “So are you.” Peggy picked up her purse and hitched it up on her shoulder. She stepped closer, and Nathan saw the tears glistening in her eyes as she looked at Alex. “I’d do this for her, if I could. God knows that husband of hers is evil incarnate. But I got my own demons to worry with.”

  “But—”

  “I’ll get by the hospital, soon as I can.” She glanced down at the baby and bit her lip. “You tell her mama hi for me now, okay?”

  Peggy turned and walked away.

  Nathan watched her go, acutely aware of Alex’s raspy breathing. She glanced up at him, and the look on her face was pure panic.

  “She can’t leave me with Melanie’s baby!”

  “Looks like she just did.” Nathan pulled his phone from his pocket and dialed information.

  “But… but I don’t know anything about babies!”

  The child’s face crumpled, and she let out a wail. Alex gazed down at it, horrified.

  “This is crazy! I don’t know what to do with a baby!”

  “I do.” Nathan listened to his phone as the call connected. “New Orleans, please. Department of Social Services.”

  Alex stood beside the wrought-iron table and scanned the plaza for the thousandth time.

  “You can sit down, you know.”

  “I don’t want to sit down.” She swayed side to side, which was the only thing she seemed to be able to do to keep Grace from crying. “How long has it been?”

  “Almost an hour.” Nathan sipped his coffee and picked up the last bite of a beignet.

  “How can you eat right now?”

  He licked the sugar off his fingers. “I’m hungry.”

  Alex rolled her eyes and turned her back on him. Just the thought of food made her stomach roil. She couldn’t believe this. How had she not known? How had Melanie kept something so important from her for so many months?

  Grace squirmed, and her little eyelids fluttered open.

  Please, please, please don’t start crying again.

  The sound of her crying made Alex crazy. She felt helpless and stupid and incompetent, all at the same time. Grace had cried the entire distance across Jackson Square, howling in Alex’s arms until her little face turned beet red. Finally, Nathan had secured them a corner table at this outdoor café, and Alex had discovered the side-to-side sway thing that seemed to help. She’d been doing it now for the past forty minutes, and her hip was sore, but anything was better than that wailing.

  Grace squirmed again, and Alex swayed faster, praying she wouldn’t start up once more. Maybe she should hum something. A lullaby. But for the life of her she couldn’t think of a single one. The only song that would come to her was “Get the Party Started,” which had been playing in some bar earlier when Nathan had led her through the Quarter.

  She turned and looked at him.

  “What are you smiling at?”

  “You,” he said. “You’re funny.”

  “I’m glad you think this is funny. This child is a heartbeat away from being orphaned. What the hell’s funny abou
t that?”

  “That’s not what I meant, and you know it.”

  Grace’s brow furrowed, and she wiggled some more.

  She hadn’t come with a bottle. Or a pacifier. Or a lactating nipple. Peggy had left behind a shopping bag crammed with baby clothes, diapers, and a half-empty carton of formula. The powdered kind.

  Grace squirmed again. Alex shot a glance at the stroller, wondering if there might be some bottles stashed in the bottom part. But she didn’t really want to check. Even if she found one, she had no idea what to do with it. She’d never mixed baby formula before.

  Exasperated, Alex turned around to look out over the square. Where was this woman?

  “You told her it was an emergency, right?”

  “You heard every word I said,” Nathan reminded her. “She’ll get here as soon as she can. Now sit down and have some coffee.”

  Grace whimpered.

  “Shh…” Alex held her closer. “Shh…”

  “You want me to hold her?”

  Alex glared at him. “No.”

  “Maybe you should put her on your shoulder.”

  “Why?”

  “Because when you hold her horizontal like that, she probably thinks it’s time to eat.”

  Alex went still. She gazed down at the little mouth rooting around beside her chest. She glanced up at Nathan. Then she shifted the baby to her shoulder.

  She quieted instantly.

  Alex resumed the swaying and shot Nathan a suspicious look. “How’d you know that?”

  He shrugged.

  “No, really. You know about babies, I can tell. Where’d you get all these tidbits?”

  He sighed. “I’ve got nieces and nephews. I pay attention.”

  Alex patted Grace’s back through her terry cloth pajamas. She gazed across the square again.

  “What did the letter say?” Nathan asked.

  Alex glanced down at him. He’d probably wanted to read it, but she’d stuffed it in her purse, right alongside the birth certificate that had been folded into the envelope with Melanie’s note.

  If you’re reading this letter, Craig finally got what he wanted.

  “It wasn’t long,” she told him. “It didn’t say much.”

  Nathan watched her expectantly.

  You have to keep her safe, Alex. Craig knows there’s a baby, and he knows she’s not his. You have to keep him from finding her.

  Alex cleared her throat. “She thinks Craig would hurt Grace, if he knew where she was. She wants me to conceal her identity somehow.”

  If anyone can hide her from him, it’s you.

  “She says that in the letter?”

  “More or less.”

  “You’d better hang on to that. It could be used in court someday, if we end up trying him for Melanie’s murder.”

  Alex shuddered at the word and turned around again.

  A tall, African American woman was making a bee-line toward the café. Her gaze fastened on Alex.

  “That’s probably her,” Nathan said, and Alex felt dizzy with relief.

  She watched the social worker who had come to take charge of this mess. The woman had a thin, angular face and a determined stride. As she neared them, Alex saw that her brown eyes were warm and intelligent. Alex needed someone with eyes like that, someone who would listen and be willing to bend the rules for the sake of a little baby. Grace’s real name couldn’t end up on any of the paperwork that resulted from this.

  The woman stopped in front of them. Alex stared at her across the low, wrought-iron fence that separated the café from the sidewalk. Nathan came to her side, and she felt the comforting weight of his hand on her waist.

  The woman smiled at them. “This must be Grace.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY - FOUR

  Nathan glanced at Alex in his passenger seat. Sitting there yesterday, she’d looked drained. Now she looked shell-shocked.

  “You really didn’t know?”

  She glanced at him, startled, as if she’d forgotten he was chauffeuring her across town in his car.

  “I had no idea,” she said.

  Nathan had done the math. Melanie had first gone to see Alex before her pregnancy would have started to show. But still, Nathan found it odd that Alex hadn’t picked up any clues, especially when she’d seen Melanie just the other day.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Alex said. “You may as well say it.”

  “What am I thinking?”

  “That I’m an idiot. I should have known.”

  “I don’t think you’re an idiot.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “You do realize, though, that Melanie’s probably involved?”

  Alex frowned at him. “In what?”

  “Coghan’s operation. The grow houses. She gets out of that coma, she could end up facing charges.”

  “What makes you think she’s involved?”

  “My partner’s been checking out her boyfriend, the one we pulled out of Lake Austin.” He cut a glance at Alex to see if she knew what he was about to say.

  She looked blank.

  “Guy’s name was Joe Turner,” Nathan told her. “He was a real estate agent. His name’s on the documents connected to each of those three vacant houses in Captain’s Point.”

  “Does Coghan own them? He’d have to be making a hell of a lot of money—”

  “We don’t know who owns them. So far, it looks like a shell corporation. Hodges is looking into it, but there are a lot of legal smoke screens in place. Which just shows how elaborate this thing is. Coghan couldn’t have set it up all by himself.”

  Alex looked away. “I don’t think Melanie’s involved.”

  “Her boyfriend was neck deep in this shit.”

  “Maybe so. But I don’t think she was part of it. At least, not willingly. Coghan controlled her every move and treated her like garbage. I seriously doubt he’d give her any kind of important role in his business. And she definitely wasn’t making any money off it. As long as I’ve known her, she’s been practically broke.”

  “Didn’t she have a job? I thought she was a clerk at some health clinic.”

  “Coghan controlled all their money. It took her years to pilfer enough to leave him.”

  Nathan gazed ahead at the road, understanding a little better now why Alex had agreed to take Melanie’s case for next to nothing. The woman had been desperate. And Alex, being Alex, had felt compelled to help.

  He glanced at her. She looked lost in thought again.

  “You know she’ll be fine, right?”

  “Who?”

  “Grace,” he said. “I’ve seen situations like this after violent crimes. DSS has foster families on call. They’ll probably have her placed in a matter of hours.”

  Alex crossed her arms and looked away, clearly unconvinced.

  Nathan watched her uneasily. The idea of being left in charge of that baby had completely rattled her. But she seemed almost as upset by the idea of Melanie’s child ending up with DSS. Nathan had seen Alex’s hesitation when the social worker had reached out to take the baby.

  Surely she wasn’t thinking of stepping into this mess?

  He turned onto Airline Drive, and the sign for the All Saints Motel came into view. It wasn’t dusk yet, but still the neon red blazed, just above a blinking VACANCY sign. He pulled into the parking lot and spotted the Sunliner at the far end of the building, exactly where it had been yesterday night. The Saturn was parked right beside it.

  Nathan looked at Alex. “You want me to come with you to the hospital?”

  “No.”

  The speed of her answer irked him. He pulled into an empty space alongside the convertible.

  “Don’t you need to get back to Austin?” she asked.

  He cut the engine and looked at her. It was a loaded question, and she knew it, too.

  He smiled bitterly to himself. He’d driven seven hours and ditched work to help a woman who, evidently, wanted him to take a hike.

  “I figure you prob
ably need to head back soon,” she said, “for work and everything.”

  “I do.” He met her gaze and didn’t tell her how he wasn’t really ready to leave yet, how he’d blow off another couple days of work—and probably get his ass suspended, if it wasn’t already—if she’d just ask him to stay. But that wasn’t going to happen.

  “When are you going back?” he asked.

  “I’m not sure.” She glanced away. “Whenever I get this resolved.”

  “Resolved?”

  She wouldn’t look at him.

  “Alex, it might not get resolved. Not like you want.”

  She didn’t say anything.

  He leaned closer. “She might never wake up, Alex. You need to get your mind around that.”

  “I have,” she said, but the defensiveness in her voice told him she hadn’t at all.

  Nathan shook his head.

  “She doesn’t have anyone,” Alex said. “I feel like I should stay a while until things have settled down.”

  “That could take weeks. Months. Years, even.”

  “I feel obligated.”

  “You’re not,” he said sharply. “She isn’t your family.”

  “I know.” She fidgeted with the strap of the purse in her lap.

  “Where do you get this sense of obligation?”

  “Why are you so opposed to me doing my job?”

  “This isn’t your job!” he snapped. “What is it with you and these women? You don’t know when to quit. You nearly took a bullet last night, and still you won’t leave it alone.”

  He gripped the steering wheel and thought about the phone call he’d had with his partner this morning. “Were you planning to tell me about Thursday?”

  “What about Thursday?” she asked, innocent as hell.

  “How you got caught up in some shooting at the god-damn shopping mall?” He watched her reaction and knew she’d had no intention of ever telling him. “Alex, what are you trying to prove here?”

  “I’m not trying to prove anything.”

  “Are you trying to get hurt?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Then let the police handle this. Every time I turn around, you’re deeper into trouble.”

  She glanced up at him, and he saw the storm brewing in her eyes. “You act like this whole thing is my fault! Have you forgotten that the person behind all this is a cop? Sorry, but my faith in law enforcement is a bit shaken right now.”