Dylan and the Baby Doctor

by Sherryl Woods

  “Or there’s a connection between the two of you,” Lizzy suggested lightly. “I vote for that. I think he’s as upset because you don’t trust him as he is because there might be something that could help in the search.”

  Kelsey sighed. “Yes, that was the impression I got, too.” She met Lizzy’s gaze. “Am I wrong? Would it help to tell him why I think Paul really took Bobby?”

  “I honestly don’t know,” Lizzy said. “But we’re not the experts. Only Justin and Dylan know for sure if it would help. Maybe it’s time to break your promise to Paul. After all, he hasn’t exactly lived up to his end of the bargain.”

  “I know. I just keep thinking he’ll freak if he finds out. Then what?”

  “There’s no reason for him to find out you’ve told them. It’s not like they’re going to announce, hey, buddy, we hear you’ve been popping too many painkillers and getting them illegally, to boot.”

  “But they could file charges,” Kelsey said.

  “He didn’t write the forged prescriptions in Texas,” Lizzy pointed out. “The crime occurred in another jurisdiction.”

  “I suppose.” She buried her face in her hands. “This is so awful. I never in a million years thought things would come to this when I left Paul. I thought it was over, that he would see that the agreement was in his best interests. He’s a brilliant man. His whole career, everything he’s worked so hard for, all of it’s on the line. How could he be so dumb?”

  “Because his brain is clouded by narcotics,” Lizzy said flatly. “That’s what makes the whole situation so dangerous. He can’t possibly be thinking clearly.”

  She sat down next to Kelsey and grasped her hands. “I think you need to tell Dylan or Justin the whole truth. Now, Kelsey, before something happens and you live to regret it.”

  She drew in a deep breath, then nodded. “Okay. As soon as Dylan comes back, I’ll tell him,” she promised.

  “You don’t want to call him, get him back here?”

  “No. He’s out looking for Bobby. Maybe he’ll find him and all this will become moot.”

  Lizzy looked as if she was about to argue, but her father’s arrival silenced her. “Hey, Daddy,” she said, when Harlan Adams rapped on the back door. “Come on in.”

  He came straight to Kelsey and held out his arms. “How are you, darlin’ girl? This must be making you crazy.”

  “I’ve had better days,” she agreed. “Thanks for stopping by.”

  “Just wanted to see for myself how you’re holding up. Janet says if you need her, just give a shout and she’ll come in. She’s in the car, but thought you might be getting sick of people hovering.”

  “Not the two of you,” Kelsey said.

  “Is my grandson doing right by you?” he asked.

  “Justin’s been wonderful.”

  “To tell you the truth, I thought he’d have that boy back by now. Maybe I ought to start making a few calls. I’ve got some friends around this state who can shake things up.”

  “Daddy, leave this to Justin,” Lizzy said. “He doesn’t need you interfering in his work.”

  Harlan regarded Lizzy indignantly. “Who’s interfering? I’m just trying to see that the job gets done.” He turned his gaze back to Kelsey. “What about this Delacourt fellow? Is he any good?”

  “He seems to be,” Kelsey said. “He and Justin have come up with some solid leads. They’re checking them out now.”

  “Tell him to come by the house. I want to meet him, see for myself whether he’s up to the job.”

  “Daddy,” Lizzy protested. “You can’t cross-examine Dylan. He’ll tell you to mind your own damned business.”

  “If he does, he does. At least I’ll have had a look at him. I like that sister of his a lot. She’s settled Hardy down, turned him into a regular family man.

  Didn’t get to see too much of her brothers at the wedding, except to notice that they’re a handsome lot. Dark-haired, blue-eyed scoundrels from the look of them. And of course, I know they’re from a fine family. Jordan says the Delacourts are honorable people.”

  “Well, you would certainly know all about scoundrels, wouldn’t you?” Lizzy teased. “Just look at the men in this family.”

  “Watch your tongue, young lady. I raised fine, honorable sons and a couple of rambunctious daughters. My grandbabies are living up to the same tradition. I won’t listen to anyone who says otherwise.”

  “Because you’re prejudiced,” she accused.

  Kelsey listened to the banter, then chuckled despite the gravity of her own circumstances. “You two are so wonderful,” she said. “You might bicker and tease, but there’s so much love there. It’s the way with your whole family. I want Bobby to grow up feeling that kind of love.”

  As suddenly as she’d laughed, her voice caught on a sob and the tears flowed again.

  Harlan Adams took her hand in his. “He will, darlin’ girl. You can count on it. If there’s a God in heaven, Bobby will be back here before you know it. Just have faith.”

  Kelsey wanted desperately to believe him, but right this second her faith was in short supply.

  When Justin was parceling out search assignments, Dylan opted for going to scour the Dallas-Fort Worth area. He needed to put some space between himself and Kelsey James. He was too irritated with her. He was also undeniably attracted to her. It was a lousy mix for a situation that required cool, calm objectivity.

  Besides, he was itching for action. Some private investigators could spend all day just doing computer research. Not him. He needed to be on the move, especially when he had so many reasons for wanting to succeed.

  A part of him wanted to find Paul and Bobby, so he could be the one to reunite mother and son. Another less attractive part of him wanted to put a fist in the other man’s face. It was a toss-up which part would win when the moment of truth came.

  And there was still a tiny, albeit rapidly fading, part that hoped the dad made a clean getaway with his boy. That part made him work all the harder to find the two of them and get them home.

  Armed with pictures of Bobby and Paul, along with the tag number and description of Paul’s car, plus the Yellow Pages’ listings of hotels and motels, he began making his way around town.

  He started with the fancier places first, guessing that even in a situation like this Paul would want his creature comforts. From everything he’d learned from Kelsey, the man was seriously into status. Besides, exclusive, luxury hotels were famed for their discretion. They might be inclined to ask fewer questions of their guests as long as their credit cards had very high limits.

  He strode into the lobby of the fifth hotel just as a man and a boy exited the coffee shop off the lobby. His pulse leapt. He crossed the lobby in quick strides, almost panicking when the elevator doors opened before he got there. But the elevator was going down, not up, and the pair waited for the next car.

  Dylan edged closer, then took a good hard look. The boy had Bobby’s sun-streaked hair, but that’s where the similarities ended. The eye color didn’t match, the freckles that should have stood out across his nose weren’t there. The man regarded Dylan with an open, friendly smile, then turned away as the elevator came.

  “You going up?” he asked, holding the door.

  Dylan shook his head. “No, sorry. There’s something I need to do first.”

  He headed back to the desk. Here, as at the other hotels, the clerks shook their heads after looking over the pictures.

  “Nope. Haven’t seen them,” the supervisor said. “If you want to wait a minute, I’ll compare the tag number to those on file.”

  “How about letting me do that?’ Dylan suggested, offering the man a fifty-dollar bill.

  The man pushed it back with obvious regret. “Sorry. It’s all on computer, and I can’t let you back here.”

  Dylan nodded. “I’ll grab a cup of coffee and come back.”

  He ate a sandwich while he was at it, though five minutes later he couldn’t have said what it was. He kept th
inking about the last few minutes he’d spent with Kelsey, about her refusal to trust him. He wasn’t sure why that had cut straight through him. He’d tried telling himself it was just because her silence could be keeping him and Justin from finding her kid, but it was more than that. It was personal.

  After all, he thought, still vaguely disgruntled, he’d put aside his reservations about her and the whole sole-custody thing. He’d respected her feelings, listened to her, but when push came to shove, she wasn’t willing to return that same level of trust.

  Why? he wondered. Just because he was a man and her ex-husband had turned her off men? Or was it about him, some innate distrust of him specifically?

  Or was it as simple as fear? Was whatever she was hiding so devastating that she felt she didn’t dare reveal it? What could be that bad?

  He went over it and over it and couldn’t come up with a thing. What could a woman like Kelsey James, a brilliant doctor from all reports, have to hide? Or was it her ex’s secrets?

  Damn, this was getting him nowhere. He went back to the desk where the supervisor told him he hadn’t been able to find a match for the tag number. Dylan gave him his card. “Call me if anything turns up, okay?”

  “Absolutely. I have kids of my own. I can’t imagine what that mother must be feeling.”

  “She’s terrified,” Dylan said succinctly.

  “Well, I’ll keep my eyes open. You can count on that.”

  Dylan nodded and set off for the next hotel on his list. He was running out of big, impersonal hotels. A few more and he’d be down to the moderately priced chains. There were a lot of them, scattered from one end of Dallas to the other with more in Fort Worth. Maybe he should just take a page out of Becky’s book, find a room for himself and settle down with a phone. He could call faster than he could visit. It was a less time-consuming form of legwork, even if it was less likely to put a dent in his restless energy.

  He booked a room near the airport, ordered up a pot of coffee, then settled down at the desk. The first call he made wasn’t to a hotel on the list, but to Kelsey. Most clients didn’t get frequent updates, didn’t expect them, but this case was different and not just because she was a terror-stricken mom, either. It was because he had the unmistakable feeling that she was the kind of woman who could matter to him, a disconcerting discovery in the middle of a kidnapping investigation, especially when there was so much distrust between them.

  “Hey, Kelsey,” he said when she snatched up the phone on the first ring.

  “Dylan? Where are you?”

  He tried not to sigh at the eagerness in her voice. It wasn’t for him. It was for news of Bobby. There was no point in lying to himself about that. “In Dallas, checking out the hotels.”

  “Anything?”

  “No. Sorry, darlin’. Anything turn up back there? Any calls from Paul?”

  The question was greeted by silence.

  “Kelsey?”

  “Oh, sorry. No. I was shaking my head, but I guess you couldn’t know that,” she said wryly. “I’m not thinking very clearly.”

  “You’re excused.” He fell silent himself, aware that he had nothing more to say that she really wanted to hear and that they were tying up the line as well. “Listen, I’ll check in with you every so often. You hang in there, okay?”

  “I’m doing the best I can. And Dylan…”

  “Yes?”

  “When you get back, we need to talk.”

  “About?”

  “We’ll discuss it when you get here,” she said. “Face-to-face.”

  So, he thought, staring at the phone after they’d hung up, she was going to share her secret, after all. He couldn’t help wondering if it was worth dropping everything to go straight home to hear.

  Then again, maybe he could get through with these calls in record time and be back in Los Pin˜os before daybreak. His spirits brightened at the prospect. He figured the reasons for that didn’t bear close examination.

  “Daddy, I want to play outside,” Bobby pleaded for the tenth time in as many minutes.

  “No,” Paul said, clinging to his patience by a thread.

  “I don’t like it in here. It smells funny.”

  The room did have the musty smell of smoke and old furniture that had absorbed the scents of too many guests. Paul doubted it had had a good cleaning in months, if not years. Normally he wouldn’t have set foot in a dive like this, but he figured the police would be looking for him in the big, fancy hotels he tended to favor. Besides, he’d discovered that there were a lot of small, out-of-the-way motels in Texas where a man could buy silence. He only needed a few more days. By then, he was pretty sure Kelsey would agree to anything he asked.

  “Why can’t we go out?” Bobby asked.

  “Because I said so,” Paul snapped. “Watch TV.”

  “No,” Bobby said with a stubborn tilt to his chin. “It’s all fuzzy. Want to play catch.”

  “Not now.”

  “When?”

  “Later.”

  “When is later?”

  Paul sighed. This was harder than he’d anticipated. Entertaining a three-year-old was time-consuming work. He’d forgotten that. It wasn’t like he didn’t have other things on his mind, either.

  “Look, son, I’ll get you some books next time I go out. You can look at the pictures, okay?”

  “I like my books. Call Mommy. She knows which books I like.”

  “We are not calling your mother.”

  “Why?” Bobby’s eyes filled with tears. “I miss Mommy. Why can’t she come with us?”

  “Because she’s a very busy doctor and this is just a guy trip. You and me, buddy. Okay?”

  Bobby heaved a sigh, then curled into a ball on the bed, looking miserable. Paul regarded him with real regret and heaved a sigh of his own.

  Then he reached for the bottle containing his last few pills.

  Chapter Seven

  He must have made a hundred phone calls, all without picking up so much as a whiff of Paul James and Bobby, Dylan thought, slamming the motel phone down in disgust. He was wasting time. He might as well head back to Los Pin˜os, which he’d wanted to do the night before. Kelsey finally appeared to be in a talkative mood. Maybe he’d get something out of a heart-to-heart with her. He could be there in a few hours, longer if he stopped to check the guest registers of any motels he passed along the way.

  He punched in the number for the Los Pin˜os sheriff’s office and got Becky on the line. “Any news?”

  “Nothing,” she said, sounding as exhausted as he felt.

  “There’s nothing here, either. I’m coming back. Let Justin know, okay?”

  “Will do. Gotta run. There’s another call coming in.”

  “Thanks, Becky. See you soon.”

  He made one last call, this time to Trish. “Hey, sis.”

  “Dylan, where on earth have you been? I’ve been worried sick.”

  “Why?” he asked, not used to anyone worrying about him. It had been a long time. After a couple of years, Kit had given up asking about his schedule. She’d said she was tired of his insensitivity. He’d accused her of nagging. In fact, that had been the beginning of the end of their marriage.

  “I thought you’d at least check in last night,” Trish scolded.

  “Sorry. As soon as I was assigned to do a quick search in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, I took off. It never even occurred to me to call you.”

  “I think I’m beginning to see why Kit complained so bitterly,” his sister said mildly. “You get so caught up in the hunt, you forget all about the people who love you.”

  “Okay, Trish. I get it. I’m sorry.”

  “Good. Now, tell me, did you find anything? When are you coming back?”

  “Nothing,” he said for the second time that morning. “And I should be back in a few hours. Do me a favor.”

  “Anything,” she said at once.

  “Call Jeb and see what he’s got going on at work.

  Tell him I
could use him on this, if he can get away.”

  “You want me to get our brother to come to Los Pin˜os and help you on a case? Won’t Father have a cow?”

  Dylan chuckled. “I certainly hope so. I try to stick it to him whenever I can. Jeb’s a better P.I. than he is an oilman and everyone except Dad knows it.”

  “You’re kidding,” Trish said, clearly amazed. “He’s worked with you before?”

  “Every chance he gets,” Dylan told her.

  “What about Michael and Tyler?”

  “No, I am very much afraid that neither of them will leave the family business, though Tyler is showing evidence that he’d like to slip out of a suit and tie and go work the rigs. Dad hasn’t quite decided how he feels about that one yet.”

  “How come I didn’t know about any of this?”

  “Because you were too busy with your own rebellion.”

  “Yes,” she agreed thoughtfully. “I suppose I was. Okay, I’ll call Jeb. Anything else?”

  “Nope. Just pray that today’s the day we get a break. I don’t like the way this is dragging on. I want that boy back home, where he belongs.”

  He heard Trish’s quiet intake of breath.

  “Dylan, does that mean you’re really okay with the fact that she’s got full custody? There’s not a part of you hoping that Paul will get away with Bobby?”

  “Not anymore,” he said, praying he was being truthful.

  “You’re sure?” she persisted.

  “I have to accept that Bobby’s with her for a reason. I just wish to hell someone would come clean and tell me what it is. See you later, sis. I will check in. I promise.”

  “You’d better, or I’ll tell Laura that her favorite uncle is a perfect example of the kind of man she should steer clear of.”

  “That might be good advice under any circumstances,” he admitted. “Just don’t lay it on her now.”

  “Don’t give me any reason to,” she countered. “Love you.”