by Julie Miller
He wasn’t alone.
But he didn’t for one moment think that a friend had dropped by to pay a surprise visit. The people he called friends knew he didn’t do surprises anymore.
A slice of light cutting across the hallway diverted his attention to the emergency stairwell, where the door stood ajar. He paused in front of the inch-wide gap to listen but heard nothing beyond the usual creaks and moans of the old steel-and-limestone building that had adorned the skyline of downtown Kansas City since the Truman era.
Dwight pulled off his tie and stuffed it inside his suit jacket pocket. He’d never considered himself any kind of paranoid alarmist. But he’d learned a thing or two about survival over the years. Not just in the courtroom, but in life. He took note of details, no matter how small or insignificant they might seem. Then he processed them until they made sense.
This didn’t make sense.
Did the open door mean someone had escaped? Or snuck inside?
The roar of the air conditioner fans shut off as the thermostat leveled off. But instead of the eerie silence Dwight had expected, he heard a low, mewling noise somewhere in the dark interior of one of the offices down the hall. Had a stray cat gotten trapped inside the building? But how could a streetwise feline account for that sweet, oily scent?
His gaze dropped to a fleck of crimson, almost unnoticeable on the mottled gray-and-black pattern on the marble floor. How did he account for that?
Crouching down on his haunches, Dwight touched the dot of color. The floor was icy cold beneath the tip of his finger. But the spot was wet, sticky and definitely fresh.
Blood.
Suffused with a wary energy that heightened his senses and put him on guard, Dwight stood, balancing himself on the balls of his feet and prepping for whatever adversary lurked in the shadows.
A muted howl turned his attention back toward the hallway. The glow from the stairwell spotlighted another drop of blood. And another. The irregular pattern of droplets zigzagged across the floor, as if whoever was bleeding had staggered from side to side. Had the wounded creature struggled to get into the building? Or to reach the exit?
Dwight overruled his instinct to close the stairwell door behind him to protect his back. If the eighth floor had become a crime scene, the CSI team would want everything left just the way he’d found it.
But if it was just a stupid cat—maybe one who’d gotten into an alley fight—he wasn’t waiting for the police to find out and make the ADA their joke of the week.
Dwight followed the trail to his office and cursed. He could hear music now, something instrumental and indistinct. Had a maid left a radio on? Cut herself on a sharp object and run downstairs for help? Why not take the elevator? Why not use the crew’s walkie-talkies and call for assistance?
An image of Arnie Sanchez’s cold, black eyes popped into Dwight’s head. Just because the bastard was locked away in Jefferson City didn’t mean he couldn’t make a phone call, didn’t mean he couldn’t make arrangements to add to Dwight’s misery.
Dwight slipped his key into the outer door, but, already unlocked, it drifted open. This wouldn’t be the first time someone had broken into his office. But he had a feeling that what awaited him on the other side of the door was far more dangerous to him than any burglar or maid or injured stray.
Dwight crept through the set of cubicles that served his secretary and department clerks. The music was louder here—he could make out the wordless melody from a children’s movie now. The tune was punctuated by discordant wails from… Please, God, be that damned cat.
Clenching his jaw with a tightness that shook through him, he narrowed his gaze to the trail of crimson dots along the gray carpeting. There was a smear on the wall beside the door to his inner office, as if someone had tried to wipe it clean.
Dwight hurried to the thick walnut door that separated his work space from the others. He didn’t even bother with his keys. He pulled out his handkerchief and, as he suspected, the doorknob turned without protest and he stepped inside.
The full force of that soft, powdery scent, tinged with the odor of something slightly more pungent, caught him off guard and sucker punched him in the gut. He gripped the knob tightly, just short of snapping it off in his fist. This was a bad dream. Another one of those damn nightmares.
Only he was helplessly awake. “Son of a bitch.”
In four strides, he’d dropped his briefcase, circled his desk and taken note of the bloody palm prints on his telephone receiver and on the note tucked beneath the music box that played beside it. “No way. No friggin’ way.”
But the blood didn’t scare him half as much as the bundle sitting squarely on the middle of his desk, bawling through toothless gums and batting at the air with helpless fists.
Dwight’s jaw hurt with everything it took to keep himself from crying or cursing in front of the tiny, abandoned baby.
With shaky fingers, he unfolded the blood-stained blanket, unhooked the straps on the carrier and checked the infant. He was small, fragile and clean. Dwight’s hands were big and out of practice—and afraid. He quickly re-buckled the straps. Thank God. No visible signs of injury. The blood had another source.
“You’re okay, kid. You’re not…” His breath stuttered and caught in the tightness of his chest. The baby wailed in earnest now, and the sound shivered along Dwight’s nerves, chilling him and awakening dark things inside him.
The kid was stinky. Hungry, no doubt. Alone.
And Dwight couldn’t do a damn thing to help him.
He curled his fingers into his palms and pulled away as his vision blurred behind a sheen of tears. The tiny, blue knit cap and appled cheeks were too similar, too much of a reminder of his own son’s sweet, angelic face. A face that had been bruised and pale and still the last time he’d seen it.
“Stop that.” Dwight turned away, not sure if he was talking to the infant or the nightmare. He smashed the knob on the music box with his fist, silencing the repetitive tune. Then he picked up the folded note, scrawled on a sheet of his office stationery.
Depositing a baby in his office was too cruel to consider any type of joke. And if this was some kind of sick message to remind him about his own son… If this was the manifestation of that unspoken threat from Sanchez…
Dwight opened the note and read the short message scribbled inside. “Son of a bitch.”
He turned his back on the baby, embarrassed to have cursed in front of the kid. “This can’t happen.” He almost crushed the paper in his fist but, at the last moment, remembered the whole concept of untainted evidence. He tossed the paper back on top of the desk. “I won’t let it happen.”
More at home taking action than dealing with emotions, Dwight pulled the cellphone from his belt and strode out of the office, leaving the smells and softness and memories behind him. He was out in the hallway, pacing the length of the cool, dark corridor before the number he’d punched in answered.
“Rodriguez.”
“A.J.” Dwight hadn’t even considered the time, but the sleepy sound of a woman’s voice in the background reminded him. “Damn.” Dwight planted his feet and filled his deep barrel chest with a cleansing breath as he gathered his wits about him. “Sorry to call so late. I didn’t mean to wake you or your wife, but I need a detective’s expertise.”
A subtle rustle of movement told Dwight that A.J. was moving out of bed.
“The ADA doesn’t call at twelve-thirty in the morning unless there’s a problem. What’s up?”
“I’m at the office.”
“You work too much, amigo.”
“I wish this was about work. It might be. I came in to check messages and… Hell, I don’t know. I’ve probably already compromised the crime scene.”
“Crime scene?” The sudden gravity of A.J.’s voice was drowned out by the renewed fussing of the infant two rooms away. “Is that a baby? Madre dios. What’s going on?”
Dwight turned and walked away again. “You once said that
you owed me one after helping you and Claire take care of that incident at Winthrop Enterprises last year.”
“I meant that. Most of KCPD owes you a favor, counselor.” A.J.’s hushed voice was insistent now. “Tell me what you need.”
“I need to call in that favor.”
“YOU WENT DOWN to No-Man’s-Land on your own?”
Maddie glared across the desk at the bald man who sounded more like one of her high-school students than a badge-wearing, gun-toting detective. How many times was he going to ask that same question? “Yes.”
“At night?”
“Yes. I was there last night.”
“Are you crazy?”
The detective, who looked almost ten years younger than her thirty-six, wasn’t bald so much as he’d shaved his head. And he wasn’t impressed by the temerity of her forays in the night so much as he seemed to think she was totally bonkers for taking it upon herself to help the only family she had left.
“I’m desperate, Detective Bellamy. Katie’s only seventeen. I’m supposed to be raising her and protecting her.”
“From what?”
From monsters like the man who killed Katie’s mother. From users like Zero. From a world that overlooked a woman who was shy and sensible and took advantage of a girl who was vulnerable and afraid.
“I need to protect her from whatever made her run away in the first place.”
Cooper Bellamy nodded and thumbed through the papers in his file. It was pitifully thin, considering she’d first reported Katie’s disappearance a month ago. “Let’s see. You said there was no inciting incident that prompted her to run away—no breakup, no family squabble, no change in location?”
“No. None of that.” For four years now, Maddie had done everything she could think of to provide Katie with a stable, secure home life. “She’s a normal, healthy teenager.”
“Except for the pregnancy?”
Maddie kneaded her purse in her lap, feeling the stirrings of the temper she worked so hard to keep in check. “Katie was fine with the baby. I was fine. She and the father amicably parted—he didn’t want any responsibilities to ruin his opportunity to attend Stanford, and she didn’t want a father who wasn’t interested in the baby.”
He flipped another page in the file. “Do you think she could be trying to reach her own father?”
Joe Rinaldi. The sickness that infected Maddie’s and Katie’s lives—shadowing every memory, coloring every decision.
Trust me, sweetheart. The only time I’ll send you flowers is for your funeral. He’d sent a dozen roses to the house just after Maddie’s sister, Karen, and Katie had moved in. The roses had arrived the day before Karen had disappeared from work. Two days before Maddie had been called to the morgue to claim her sister’s mutilated body.
But that was four years ago. Karen had been his obsession, his daughter little more than an afterthought. Katie had been an innocent bystander trapped in the nightmare.
But that nightmare had nothing to do with this one, right?
Maddie steeled her voice against the inevitable guilt, fear and loathing she associated with mention of her ex-brother-in-law’s name. “Joe’s in prison, serving a life sentence. He’s not a part of Katie’s life anymore. He’s not a part of our life,” she enunciated, as if saying it could make her believe it. “Joe Rinaldi couldn’t have had anything to do with Katie’s disappearance.”
“You’d be surprised what a man can accomplish from inside a prison cell if he’s determined enough.”
Hadn’t Joe made a similar promise to her on that last day of sentencing in the courtroom? A private little aside for her ears alone before the bailiff led him away?
I’ll find a way to get to you, bitch. Tellin’ those lies about me. You’re just jealous I married Karen instead of you. You turned her against me. Don’t think no jail cell is gonna keep me from giving you what you deserve.
But someone else had heard the threat that day. The prosecuting attorney, Dwight Powers. A cold, unflappable man who’d done the one thing no other man had ever done before or since in Maddie’s life—he’d saved the day. Defended her honor. Got in Joe’s face and told him, in no uncertain terms, that he would be watching every move Joe made. And if he did one little thing to challenge the verdict or violate the sentencing he’d worked so hard to obtain…
“Ms. McCallister?”
There were no heroes in Maddie’s life to save the day now. She pressed her back into the vinyl chair, sitting up as straight and tall as five feet five inches would allow. She had to fight her own battles. She had to be the hero Katie could count on.
Weary from a night without sleep, Maddie wished she’d taken the time to do more than shower and throw on some lipstick and jeans. Maybe a power suit. She should have at least put her hair up in one of those sensible buns that made grown men and the high-school students in her English class take her more seriously.
She tucked one brash-colored strand of hair behind her ear and put on her best schoolteacher voice. “I don’t think Joe has anything to do with Katie’s disappearance. I’m more interested in what that man named Zero told me last night.”
The detective stopped shuffling his papers. “Zero? Hefty black guy? Lots of jewelry?”
Maddie nodded. “I’m sure he’s a pimp. I was talking to one of his girls first, a woman named—”
“KCPD is well aware of who Zero Chambers is. You don’t have any business messing with him.”
“Yes, well—” she breathed deeply to ignore the memory of his hands and body rubbing against hers “—he mentioned something about a clinic. One where pregnant women go to sell their babies. I guess it’s more profitable than giving the child up for adoption.”
“Wait a minute. Go back.” Cooper touched his fingers to the back of Maddie’s hand, where she still clutched her purse in her lap. “Zero knows about a clinic where they’re buying babies?”
Isn’t that what she’d just said? “Is Zero—this Mr. Chambers—reliable? He talked as if it were something he’d considered investing in.” Maddie pulled her hand away, embarrassed that she wasn’t a better judge of men. “Maybe he just made it up. I’m sure he was trying to shock me.”
Instead of another lecture on the foolhardiness of conducting her own private investigation, Cooper Bellamy was suddenly, intensely interested in everything she had to say. “If there’s word on the street, Zero would know about it.” He pulled out his pen and notepad and turned to a fresh page. “Now tell me again exactly what he said about this clinic.”
Hoping that she’d finally provided a lead in the search for Katie while praying that a place that bought and sold babies couldn’t really exist, Maddie carefully related the details of her encounter with Zero—minus the touchy-feely, groping part. “I can’t imagine anyone doing something so awful—taking advantage of the most vulnerable people in our society—and not hearing about it on the news.”
Detective Bellamy raised his dark eyes from his notes and looked at her as if he thought she was simpleminded. “It’s not something they want to advertise, Ms. McCallister. Those babies are for sale. They want to keep their operation way under the radar so that it doesn’t generate any press. They have to be sidestepping a bunch of legalities—medical licenses, government inspections, forged documentation, taxes.”
“Who’d want to buy a baby?”
“Wanna-be parents who can’t or don’t want to conceive themselves. Couples who’ve gotten stuck for years in the legal-adoption process or who don’t qualify for some reason. If they can meet the asking price, Junior can be theirs.” He pulled up something on his computer and scrolled down the screen.
“KCPD suspected something like this was going on.” He spared her a glance from his furtive work. “Six months ago, we had an eighteen-year-old show up in rehab. The girl’s parents claimed she’d been pregnant before disappearing on a meth binge. The girl wasn’t pregnant when she surfaced again, and she had no recollection of the baby’s whereabouts or even having
been pregnant.”
“Katie isn’t a drug addict. If that girl you mentioned was a meth user, then her baby might have—” it was tragic to even suggest the possibility “—died. Katie wouldn’t take drugs, drink or smoke anything that could harm a fetus.”
Bellamy nodded, but Maddie had a feeling the detective’s interest in her search had moved way beyond Katie. “We had another vic, unidentified, show up two months back who, according to the medical examiner, had recently gone through a healthy delivery. The mother was dead, but there was no sign of the baby—alive or dead. It matches a case in St. Louis. We haven’t had any leads—”
“Dead? The mother was dead?”
The idea that anyone would treat an innocent baby like a commodity didn’t stun her as much as the expression on the detective’s face that said Zero’s story could be true.
Maddie felt the blood draining to her toes, leaving her light-headed and sick to her stomach. “Katie doesn’t want to give up her baby. She picked out names. We decorated the nursery together. We’re not rich, but we’re not hurting for money, either. She wouldn’t get involved in something like that. Not if she had a choice.”
But Cooper wasn’t listening now. He was on his feet, glancing through the deserted rows of paired-off desks and cubicle walls that filled the Fourth Precinct’s Detectives Division.
Katie wouldn’t sell her baby. Where would she meet such people? Why?
For the first time in twenty-nine days, Maddie hoped that Katie was just another teenage runaway.
The blood of determination started pumping through her veins again. Maddie braced her hand against the desk and rose to her feet. “Katie’s in more trouble than I thought, isn’t she? She might already be dead.”
Cooper’s own color blanched, as if he just now realized how many gruesome details he’d shared. “I’m sorry, ma’am. I was just thinking out loud. I’m sure your niece will turn up perfectly fine. The baby, too. The possibility of that clinic is just something we were briefed on. Something to watch for. If it happened in another town, it could be happening here. But we don’t have any proof of that yet.”
