by Julie Miller
After shaking Cooper’s hand, he raised his own in apology. “I recognized Roberta and wanted to stop by and say hi. We’re old friends, aren’t we? Haven’t seen her recently. Of course, she’s been out of the office a lot.”
Maddie turned to the older woman, whose expression had gone as pale as the white in her salt-and-pepper hair. She’d seen that same look of fearful recognition in Karen’s face more than once. “What’s wrong? Who is this guy?”
The questions startled Roberta and, while the other woman smoothed her ruffled composure, Maddie picked up Tyler’s diaper bag and secured her greatnephew firmly in her own hands. She was beginning to have her suspicions as to why Roberta had become such a friend after this afternoon’s custody hearing. Maybe she’d expected to run into Craig at the courthouse and didn’t want to meet him alone. The man could be an old boyfriend, an ex-husband.
“Yes, um, Craig,” Roberta stammered. “He’s my supervisor. It’s good to see you.”
Liar.
An engine gunned in the distance and the feeling that something was off in the world around them intensified. She glanced over her shoulder toward the floor above. What was taking Dwight so long? He’d recognize this man if he worked at the courthouse.
Maddie’s momentary distraction gave Craig an opportunity to reach down and stroke his fingertip across Tyler’s cheek. “I have a new granddaughter about the same age. My son and daughter-in-law just adopted her.”
“Hey.” Maddie flinched away at the uninvited caress, but she needn’t have bothered.
Roberta had snagged Craig by the wrist. “Don’t touch him.”
Cooper’s hand closed around Maddie’s arm just as Craig twisted out of Roberta’s grip. Any pretense of a friendly reunion had vanished. “You disappear for two whole days without a word? And now I find you here?”
“Roberta?” The woman needed someone to stand up for her.
But Cooper was already dragging Maddie up the incline. “This isn’t our fight.”
“We have to help—”
The next several seconds ticked by in slow-motion clarity.
The squeal of tires became the roar of a beat-up white truck, picking up speed as it whipped around the corner and barreled toward the security booth.
“Roberta!” Maddie screamed.
“Run!” Cooper shoved her up the ramp.
“No!”
Craig Fairfax’s eyes widened like saucers as the car barreled toward him. “Crazy moron!”
Maddie craned her neck to see around the barricade of Cooper’s shoulders. “Look out!”
Roberta spun around. Craig pushed.
Saving her? Or killing her?
Cooper swore and leaped off the ramp, diving in front of the oncoming truck.
“Cooper!”
His arms snapped around Roberta’s skinny body and the two flew through the air as the truck’s fender clipped them both. Maddie’s scream was drowned out by the deafening sounds of the truck slamming into an SUV, then squealing to find traction. Burning rubber stung her nose as the truck ground through its gears and cut back up the ramp, racing straight toward her.
“Maddie! Move!”
She was already running when strong arms lifted her, spinning her and Tyler out of harm’s way. A breeze stirred around her legs as the truck zoomed past. She heard the groans of injured people before the hardness of the concrete wall at her back and the unyielding strength of Dwight’s chest registered.
“Officer down! Repeat. I’ve got two men down.” A. J. Rodriguez’s distinctive accent drew her attention to the crumpled body of a black man in a dark blue uniform, lying behind the SUV the truck had bashed into. A.J. had pulled the officer’s radio off his shirt and was calmly relaying instructions about the situation, the location and an urgent need for backup and medical attention. Then he was on his feet. He lay a hand on Dwight’s arm, glanced at Maddie and then back at Dwight. “You got things under control here?”
Dwight nodded. “Go.”
Then A.J. was off. Making his own shortcut, he scrambled from one concrete tier to the next, climbing his way toward the surface of the parking garage in an effort to catch the speeding truck.
Maddie fought her way through shock and confusion to focus on the cold fury in Dwight’s stormy eyes as he cupped her face and demanded she talk to him. “I’m fine,” she managed to say. She glanced down to see Tyler in his carrier, secured in Dwight’s fist. “We’re both fine.”
“Do you suppose there’s any way in hell you could stop throwing yourself in harm’s way?” Maddie heard the desperation in Dwight’s voice and heard it echo in her own.
“The others—Cooper, Roberta, Mr. Fairfax—are they all right?”
“You’re my main concern.”
She clutched at Dwight’s lapel, pressed her fist against his heart. “No. I can’t be. We have to help them.”
With a jerky nod, Dwight moved his hand to hers and squeezed. “You’re right. I’ll check Bellamy and Mrs. Hays. You look after the guard. And don’t—” He squeezed harder, then lifted her fingers to his lips and kissed the back of her hand. “Do not leave my sight. You or the kid.” He released her and hooked the carrier over her arm. “Understand?”
MADDIE MADE HER WAY to the groggy security guard. Beyond basic first aid, there wasn’t much she could do. But she checked the reaction of his pupils, tested the evenness of his breathing and pulse and pressed his white handkerchief to the back of the man’s head. “Who did this?” she asked. “Did someone hit you?”
“A man coldcocked me from behind.”
With his slurred speech, Maddie didn’t want to push for a clearer answer.
She’d seen a man driving the truck, too. But it had all happened so fast she couldn’t give any better description beyond short and dark-haired.
She gladly moved aside as the paramedics arrived. As police units and ambulances pulled up and other guards blocked off the area with yellow tape, the scene took on the same feeling of organized chaos that had overwhelmed her when the TAC officer had been killed outside her house. The same pall of heartless violence filled the air and seeped into her bones.
Cooper was sitting up, complaining to the paramedics trying to tend to his injuries that he had a job to do and that they were keeping him from it. Roberta was tied down to a body board, her neck and head framed by an immobilizing brace. The DFS caseworker’s hand felt cool when Maddie tried to hold on and offer words of comfort. And though the paramedics insisted that Cooper had saved her life, Roberta’s eyes never opened. Her lips never moved.
And her alleged supervisor and probable ex never once asked how she was doing.
In fact, as Maddie stepped back to let the paramedics load Roberta’s gurney onto an ambulance, she slowly turned to scan the uniformed figures and curiosity seekers alike. What had happened to Craig Fairfax? And why had Roberta been so afraid of him?
Maddie inhaled the familiar scents of pressed cotton and musk an instant before she was enfolded in a layer of warmth.
“Penny for your thoughts?” Dwight’s deep voice rumbled against her ear.
“You haven’t got enough money for what I’m thinking.” Neither one of them laughed. “Have you seen Craig Fairfax?”
“Who’s that?”
“Roberta’s supervisor. We met him just before that truck…” Maddie swallowed, not wanting to recreate the images the words would conjure. “You’ve probably seen him around the courthouse. Older gentleman. Receding hairline.”
“I don’t know any Fairfax. But you just described half the men I work with. You should mention it to A.J.” Savoring the comforting weight of Dwight’s jacket settling across her shoulders, she didn’t protest when he draped his arm around her and pulled her to his side. “C’mon, he needs your statement.”
He took Tyler’s carrier from her a second time and hauled it at his side while he guided her to the security office that KCPD had taken over as a command post. As soon as they were inside, he set Tyler on a desk an
d pulled out a chair for her.
“He wants us to wait here until he’s done talking to Bellamy,” Dwight said, explaining the empty room. “He says Bellamy’s a regular hero—just what that young pup needs to give him a swelled head.”
“He’s a good kid,” Maddie insisted. “He’s going to be a great cop.”
“Yeah, well, we’ll hire him to baby-sit for a few days, then.”
“I don’t get it, Dwight.”
He pulled out a chair to sit across from her.
She reached for his hands and pulled them into her lap. “Why is this happening to me? To my family? I’m just a high-school English teacher. I’ve never broken the law or anybody’s heart. The most rebellious thing I’ve ever done is let Katie talk me into putting highlights in my hair.” She traced her thumb along one scarred-up knuckle. “But people around me are dying. People I care about are getting hurt.”
Oh, God. She was going to cry. She could feel the tears stinging her eyes and she was too tired to stop them. “All I ever wanted was a family. Someone to love. Someone who needs me. How did I get mixed up in all this? How can I make it stop and get back to my boring old life?”
“First of all, I doubt that life with you would ever be boring.” Dwight shifted his grip so that he was holding on to her now. She studied his bruised and battered boxer’s hands that had always been so gentle with her. “You’re mixed up in this because you give a damn. Criminals are threatened by people who care, people who take a stand against the things that are wrong in this world. If courageous people like you didn’t stand up to bastards like Joe Rinaldi and that Baby Factory, then I’d be out of a job. And they’d be running this city.”
Maddie frowned and sat back in her chair. Dwight’s vehement argument made logical sense and should have been a comfort to her. But those weren’t the words that registered.
“Wait a minute. Go back. Why are we hiring Cooper to baby-sit?”
Dwight’s deliberate pause should have prepared her. Nothing could have.
“Because I want you to marry me.”
“What?”
Maddie heard the words. She knew Dwight’s voice, recognized the intensity of his gray-green eyes.
And though her heart expanded with an unexpected joy, it contracted just as quickly as common sense and experience kept her from believing that the words were sincere. “Did you say marry you?”
“Not for real.” Dwight released her hands and stood, towering over her for a moment before pacing to the opposite side of the room. “But if half of the KCPD believes we’re a couple already, then I think we can pull it off.”
“Pull what off?” Maddie stood as well. She’d never been proposed to before, but she was pretty sure this wasn’t how it was supposed to happen.
“We’re going to try this Commissioner Cartwright’s way.” He pounded his right fist into his palm. “We’re going to take the fight straight to whoever this Roddy and the Baby Factory people are. We’re going to find Katie and bring her home.”
“By getting married?” she repeated in robotic disbelief.
Dwight nodded.
Oh, God, the man was dead serious.
“You and I are going to adopt a baby.”
Chapter Eleven
“You’re sure I have to keep this on the whole time?” Maddie asked, squirming to adjust the wire that had been taped beneath her breasts and at her waist.
“Yes,” Dwight answered unequivocably. Though she’d directed the question at the female TAC officer who had shown her how to attach and conceal the listening device, Dwight wanted Maddie to understand that, although he’d finally agreed to Commissioner Cartwright’s plan, he still wasn’t going to take any more chances than necessary with her safety. “That’s the only way backup can monitor your situation and location at all times.”
He held out Maddie’s suit jacket to slide it over her shoulders and further mask the wire hidden beneath her sleeveless cotton turtleneck. He held on longer than necessary, smoothing the tan linen down her arms. Massaging his fingers into her soft skin, he wondered if the faint trembling he felt were her nerves or his own.
“Dwight.” She reached up and lay her hand over his, giving him the reassurance he should be giving her. “I can do this. I won’t let Katie down.”
And he wouldn’t let her down. Not the way he’d dropped his guard with Braden and Alicia.
He leaned forward and pressed a kiss to the copper silk at Maddie’s temple, sealing that vow. “You’re not the one I’m worried about, Red.”
Dwight pulled away before he changed his mind about this whole charade. In the mirror above his mantel, they looked every inch the image of a well-to-do professional couple who took what they wanted from the world and bought whatever else they couldn’t get their hands on. Maddie’s hair had been tamed into a sleek style, and her makeup had been applied in such a way as to play down the lush shape of her lips. Her pretty blue eyes were less pronounced, her features as pale as he’d ever seen them. They’d erased the vibrancy that turned Maddie from ordinary to irresistible and left a coolly untouchable sophisticate in her place.
While part of him longed to comb his fingers through her hair and muss it up to reveal the real Maddie again—the one who smiled and laughed and rambled on at the mouth when she got nervous—another part was thankful that the undercover experts at the KCPD could alter her appearance so dramatically. Joe Rinaldi might be dead, but there was no knowing if the man who’d killed him—or tried to run her down in the parking garage yesterday—knew Maddie. He could recognize her by the sway of her hips or the pursing of her mouth, but another man wouldn’t notice those select, sensuous details on this Stepford woman.
Wearing a microphone and going on the streets to make contact with the mysterious Roddy from the Baby Factory wasn’t Dwight’s first choice when it came to uncovering the illegal-adoption ring, locating Katie and putting an end to these dangerous attacks that kept forcing Maddie into the line of fire. But he’d been a fighter for enough years—in the boxing ring and in the courtroom—to understand that the best defense often meant going on the offensive.
The only way Maddie would stop risking her life and making him nuts with the fear that he couldn’t protect her was to reunite her family and eliminate the threat to them.
Tonight, he intended to do just that.
Dwight adjusted his striped silk tie to camouflage the monitoring devices he wore. “You’re picking up everything we say?” he asked, dipping his chin toward his collar, where a chip-sized microphone had been hidden.
“Just talk naturally.” A.J. slipped around the corner from the kitchen. A small, curling wire ran from his ear to his collar and disappeared beneath his black T-shirt. “We’ll hear everything you say. I already have men posted around No-Man’s-Land so we can keep a visual and auditory lock on you at all times. Neither you nor Maddie have receivers. You won’t be able to hear us. But we’ll be in constant contact among ourselves and the van as we follow you.”
“That’ll keep Zero from hearing you, too,” added Bellamy from his perch on the couch, where he’d elevated his strained knee. Tyler lay beside him on the seat cushion, gurgling and cooing through all the last-minute preparations. “Do you remember the panic word in case you or Mr. Powers runs into trouble or you think your cover’s about to be blown?”
Wearing a big smile, Maddie scooped the kid up in her arms and gave her answer to him. “It’s Mr. and Mrs. Payne,” she corrected, reminding herself and Dwight not to make the easy slip in names. “And the word A.J. and his men will be listening for is TKO. We’re gonna knock those bad guys out and bring your mom home, aren’t we?”
She buzzed Tyler’s cheek with her lips before cuddling him against her shoulder.
Technical knockout. They’d chosen the boxing term assuming that the sport wouldn’t come up in any discussion about adopting babies. Dwight refused to see it as an omen, either good or bad. He didn’t rely on luck when he entered the courtroom and he wouldn’t
rely on it now to help end this craziness. The direct threat of Joe Rinaldi might be lying in the ME’s morgue, but there was still someone out there willing to kill in order to reclaim a baby and cover his or her tracks.
Bellamy limped to his feet and tucked a burp rag between Maddie’s shoulder and Tyler’s chin. “You concentrate on what you need to do and don’t worry about Tyler here. The Royals are playing tonight and I intend to teach him the finer points of baseball. We’ll be locked up snug and tight.”
“Thanks, Coop.”
Once the bald detective lowered his bruised body back onto the couch, Dwight became aware of a set of tiny blue eyes fixed on him. Maybe it was just the position Maddie held him in over her shoulder. Maybe his memories were playing tricks on him again. But he’d be damned if the kid wasn’t looking right at him.
So what was he trying to say?
Get it right this time.
Bring Mommy home.
Take care of Aunt Maddie.
“I will,” he promised.
“You will what?” Maddie asked, catching him in the snare of expectant blue eyes.
Damn. How did he explain that fanciful lapse in judgment? A grown man answering a baby who was probably just passing gas. Yeah, he was a real sharp-witted asset to this operation.
He took a deep breath and steeled his mind against anything resembling weak or distracted or fanciful.
“Put the kid down,” Dwight ordered, checking his watch and glancing out the front window to verify that the evening was darkening into night. When Maddie’s hands were free, he reached for one and folded it in his grip. “C’mon, Mrs. Payne. Let’s do this.”
“Keep your wits about you,” A.J. advised, following them out the door as Bellamy locked it behind them. “Make sure the other guy does more talking than you do.”
Dwight opened the car door for Maddie, then looked over the roof of the Mercedes at his friend. There were no second chances on this sting, no room for mistakes, no detail that could be overlooked. “Just make sure you’re there to get her out in one piece if anything goes south.”
