by Alice Sharpe
They walked quickly along the sidewalk, ducking into the respective bathrooms. Hannah opened every stall door with an increasing sense of loss. After the Dumpster proved fruitless, she’d been sure she’d find Aubrielle inside this building because, face it, where else did you leave a very small child at such a desolate spot? If she wasn’t here, she was outside and that thought was untenable.
Wait—the dry cleaner. She’d forgotten the dry cleaner. “Hannah?” Jack shouted from outside.
Hannah realized she’d been standing, staring into the last empty stall with tears running down her cheeks. At the sound of his voice, she turned and left the building. Maybe Jack had found her!
He shook his head in defeat as his gaze took in her equally empty arms. That left the vast, dangerous, cold beach.
Squealing brakes behind them announced the arrival of a car. It parked a few feet away. The male driver sat there a second, his red hair so vibrant it was like a drop of blood in the gray and white world. Hannah’s heart was on the verge of implosion.
At last the door opened and a wiry guy wearing a white hooded sweatshirt with a large black and gold fleur de lis on the chest stepped out.
Jack moved in front of Hannah. She could feel the coiled tension in his body.
“Awful day for the beach,” the man grumbled, and, giving them a wide berth, disappeared into the men’s room.
As the door closed behind him, both Jack and Hannah raced to the car and peered in every window. Between its size and design, there were no hiding spots. A briefcase, a wooden dowel half buried under a raincoat, a fedora—nothing else, most important, no baby.
They stepped back onto the sidewalk just as the driver reappeared, his hands stuffed into the long single pocket that ran across the front of his hoodie.
Hannah couldn’t take her eyes from him, but he ignored her and made straight for his car. In another few seconds, he’d driven away.
“He was nobody,” Hannah whispered.
“Just a traveler with a full bladder,” Jack added. He turned to face the beach again. Without speaking, they both stepped onto the sand and began navigating their way around the rocks, searching the gaps and crevices for some sign of Aubrielle. It resembled a bizarre Easter egg hunt with the hope of a priceless reward.
Their search was frantic by nature, thorough by necessity. Eventually, they ended up near the slack tide, the ocean strangely quiet as the waves lapped the beach, as if it, too, held its breath.
“It’s impossible,” Jack said, staring out at what was visible of the water. “I should go back to the truck for the binoculars.”
“We should have called the dry cleaner,” she said, fumbling with her phone, but in her panic she couldn’t even remember the name of the place.
“Call your grandmother. Make sure the baby wasn’t returned to the house.”
A surge of hope was crushed as Mimi explained she and her friends had searched the perimeter of the house several times for some sign of Aubrielle and come up empty. At Hannah’s urging, one of the friends recalled the name of the dry cleaner and used her cell to call them to ask if someone had left a baby in their care. “They thought she was joking,” Mimi reported a minute later. “Oh, Hannah, what are we going to do?”
Hannah hung up the phone. Jack’s tall form had moved away from her toward the water. Dressed in his dark suit and black loafers, he made an incongruous sight on the gray deserted beach, a strong dark shape in the shifting fog.
Something about the way he stood alerted her and she moved toward him, directing her gaze out to where he looked. She’d almost reached him when she caught sight of something floating in the water. Something pinkish…
In a flash, he’d begun running through the waves, water splashing against his legs as he plowed through them on an interception pass with whatever it was.
For the umpteenth time that day, Hannah all but stopped breathing as she followed him, stopping short when, in waist-high water, he scooped something out of the water and held it high, turning back to her so she could see. She stood there frozen by fear.
And then she realized he held a mass of seaweed with some kind of cloth running through it. Dragging it back with him, he trudged through the water, wet now from his waist down. For the first time, the numbing cold of the water registered in Hannah’s brain and she shuddered from her mist-dampened hair to her frozen toes.
Jack was beside her, dropping the sodden mess on the sand. Hannah knelt to investigate. What if it was a piece of Aubrielle’s blanket or clothing…?
But it wasn’t. It appeared to be a man’s shirt and from the way it had twisted and twined in the kelp, it had been in the water a long time.
Jack touched her shoulder and she looked up at him. “We can’t just wait for this person to decide to return her,” he said.
Tears that had been rolling down her cheeks and soaking into her coat for an hour erupted into a terrified sob.
He gathered her into his arms, holding her tight, pressing her against his solid chest. She allowed herself a few seconds and then she pushed herself from the haven of his arms.
“That officer you like, Latimer, right?” he said, his eyes searching hers. “Let’s get him to meet us somewhere. It’ll be easier talking face-to-face with him than trying to explain all this over the phone.”
You are being watched. One hint of police involvement and you’ll never see your baby again.
“But what if—”
He shook his head. “I’m going to be blunt. Abby is too tiny to survive outdoors. We don’t have a choice, we need help before it’s too late,” he said.
She drew strength from the conviction in his voice. She knew he was right. “Okay.”
“Let’s go back to the house and call him from that phone just in case. Think of a good spot to meet him. We’ll think of a diversion of some kind.”
His voice trailed off. Was he thinking someone could tap her cell phone? He took her hand and kept it in his all the way back across the beach. The car park had an isolated, forsaken feel to it. The whole world felt forsaken. Jack opened her door and moved aside.
For a second she stared at the crumpled green sweater on the front seat. She didn’t remember it being there before, but maybe Jack had grabbed it from the house before they left in hopes they’d soon need it to wrap around Aubrielle. It was her grandmother’s favorite, the one with the orange and brown trim, the huge one that was more coat than sweater.
There was something pinned to it, another note, printed out like the last one, upside down to Hannah although she could make out the first line: Next time the old lady.
As fury and frustration collided in Hannah’s gut, she grabbed for the sweater and the note, almost mindless in light of the implications of yet another unfathomable threat.
At the last minute, Jack reached around her and grabbed her wrist. “No, Hannah,” he said.
Had he seen something? A bomb hidden in the folds? Anything seemed possible.
And then she saw it, too. Movement. The sweater was wrapped around something—
An outraged cry, a hearty kick and a tiny foot emerged from beneath the bundle. Heart leaping into her throat, Hannah quickly spread the sweater open.
Aubrielle’s very pink, very outraged face came into view. Hannah swayed for a second as relief sapped the strength out of her bones. Jack steadied her. In the next instant, she’d gathered her baby into her arms, never so glad to hold anyone in her entire life.
She was hardly aware when Jack unpinned the note, glanced at it briefly and put it in his pocket.
Chapter Ten
“Get in the truck, Hannah.”
Apparently hearing the urgency in his voice, she held the baby tight against her chest and did as he asked. Maybe she’d had a chance to read the whole note, maybe she knew it warned that they were still being watched and if they didn’t go straight home, Mimi would be next.
He swore to himself as he backed up the truck. He wasn’t sure how it had happened, bu
t these three females were now his responsibility and would be until he found whoever was doing this and stopped them.
How did he reconcile that with the gut feeling there were a lot more people a half a world away who were also depending on him to stop screwing around and figure out what was going on?
He glanced at Hannah and wondered what she wasn’t telling him. There was something, he knew there was. Everything had been happening so fast today he hadn’t had a chance to think, but he could feel she was holding something back.
And since when did he go around “feeling” things? Where was his head?
Hannah was peeling away Mimi’s sweater, checking out her squirming baby, making sure she was all right. Aubrielle suffered the turning and caresses with pretty good grace although an occasional squawk seemed to him a warning Hannah better knock it off soon.
Maybe she felt him looking at her, for she looked up, flashed a smile and said, “She looks okay. Her diaper is a little soggy, but it doesn’t appear whoever took her harmed her.”
“That’s a relief.”
“Did you read the note?” she added. “May I see it? I didn’t get a change to read it all.”
He was glad she’d come back to earth and dug it out of his pocket and handed it to her. She read it silently as she rocked Aubrielle in her arms.
“It’s time to figure out the why and the who,” she said, her statement mirroring his thoughts again.
“Yes, it is,” he said. “Was there anything peculiar about the money?”
“David’s money? Not that I could tell. It’s still in a locked box so we can go look at it tomorrow.” After a moment, she added, “Fran.”
“What about Fran?”
“She’s the one who told me to meet her at the car park. It has to be her.”
“Maybe,” he said.
“How can you say, ‘Maybe’?”
He rubbed his eyes. The new suit and shoes, ruined now, were sticking to him. Where he’d spent months being hot and sweaty all the time, he was now cold and clammy and needed a shower.
With her. He wanted to take Hannah into the shower with him and make love to her the way they had in Costa del Rio. He wanted hot water, soap and hot sex with her. No one else.
Man, he was in trouble. He needed to figure this out and drive away from Allota and Hannah and her baby and never, ever look back. “Jack?”
He blinked a couple of times. “The note said go to the place that was good for you.”
“The car park.”
“But Fran picked the car park, right? Not you. Besides, the baby wasn’t waiting for us there, she arrived later, after we’d gone down to the beach, or we would have seen the whole thing. It seems to me we were followed. You could have gone anyplace. As soon as we were out of sight of the car, wham, the baby is returned along with more threats.”
“But Fran knows something,” Hannah persisted.
“Why do you say that?”
Hannah took a deep breath. “Gut feeling?”
He smiled. “Good. Nice to know you’re thinking with something other than your head because your head has been a major stumbling—”
“What does that mean?” she interrupted.
He turned into Mimi’s driveway. Before he could respond, Mimi and her friends flew out the door and it dawned on him that they hadn’t called to report they had the baby. He felt ashamed of the oversight.
“What do you think of the idea of trying to get her to leave for a while?” Hannah said suddenly.
“Your grandmother? I think it’s excellent. I was going to suggest something like that. Any ideas?”
“I think so. I’d rather not show her the note. It’s so terrible.”
“I agree.”
“Jack, I also have to insist you don’t contact the police. You read the note. Whoever’s doing this is at least one step ahead of us and I won’t risk Grandma or Aubrielle again.”
“Your call,” he said. If Hannah could get her grandmother to leave, maybe he could get Hannah to take Abby and go with her.
The look on Mimi’s face as Hannah climbed out of the truck carrying her baby wrapped up in Mimi’s sweater was downright heartwarming. Jack shook his head at himself. He was getting soft.
Turning away from the reunion, he circled the house to the back, coming to a stop outside Aubrielle’s bedroom window. His plan was to examine the softer dirt of the flower bed, hoping the foggy, damp day had softened the ground and he might be able to find a footprint.
What he found was that the kidnapper had pulled a lawn chair over to the flower bed beneath the window and used that to get high enough to gain leverage to bust the window lock.
No way was he going to call the police behind Hannah’s back, but he wasn’t a cop. He didn’t know how to process a crime scene or have the tools even if he had known the procedure. And then there was the fire across the street. That needed to be investigated—no way was it a coincidence.
His instinct was to bag all the notes and other incriminating items, including the sweater, seal off the nursery and solve the crime himself. Then he could hand the criminal and the evidence to the police so they could make an arrest.
Hannah turned the corner of the house and approached him. She had Abby clutched tight against her in a viselike grip.
“How’s your grandmother?”
“Terrified. I asked Barb if she’d be willing to take Grandma on a road trip, just the two of them. Barb is excited about it, Grandma is dragging her feet, but I think she’ll agree.”
“You and the baby could go with them,” he suggested, willing her to say yes.
“No. I have to see this through. This concerns me in some way I don’t understand. I’m not walking away and leaving it unfinished. This has to be someone I know. I can’t hide forever.”
“Then you and I and Aubrielle will go check into a hotel under my name.”
She opened her mouth and he steeled himself for the protest he knew was coming. Instead, she looked over his shoulder at the violated window. He could almost feel the shudder that ran through her body as she clutched the baby even closer.
“I don’t want to go back inside this house,” she said softly. “I couldn’t bear to put Aubrielle back in her crib or ever leave her in that nursery again. A hotel sounds great and maybe if Grandma knows we’re leaving, too, she’ll agree to go with Barb.”
“Go convince her. Pack some things for you and the baby while you’re in there. Do you want me to hold the baby?”
She gave him a once-over. “You’re kind of wet,” she said. “You go change and pack first, then you can relieve me and I will. Ask Grandma to come outside and I’ll talk to her on the porch. I’m not taking Aubrielle inside that house again and I’m not putting her down.”
She’d finally started taking everything as seriously as the situation demanded. It was a relief not to have to pry and prod her. He sent her grandmother outside, then took a quick lonely shower, changed his clothes thanks to the fact that his duffel bag was in the back of his truck, and packed what little there was left to be packed. By the time he returned to the living room, Mimi was lining two suitcases up by the door. Jack could see Hannah outside, sitting on the porch swing, Aubrielle now wrapped in a rosy blanket instead of her great-grandmother’s green sweater.
“Oh, Jack, I wanted to talk to you,” Mimi said. Her green sweater was looped through her arm.
He gestured at the suitcases. “You and Barb going on a drive?”
Mimi’s eyes filled with moisture. “Am I doing the right thing leaving Hannah?”
“Absolutely,” he assured her. “You have to leave your sweater, though. Someday the police might need it to compare fibers or something if they get a suspect. I’ll put it in the closet for you.”
“What about my car? Hannah said someone broke the windshield.”
“I already called a garage. They’re towing it in for you. Don’t worry.”
She nodded as he took the sweater and returned with a brown co
at he’d seen her wear.
“I wouldn’t go if she didn’t have you to depend on,” Mimi said as she took the coat.
Him to depend on. Innocent enough words, so why did they make him quake inside?
“I’ll pay you, you know, whatever the going rate is for being a bodyguard.”
“We’ll work it out later,” he told her, and surprised himself by leaning down and kissing her cheek. He was glad she’d reminded him this was a professional situation. He was the baby’s bodyguard, that’s all.
She patted his face. “I like your haircut though I have to admit it was sexier before.”
“It’ll grow back,” he told her, smiling.
A big blue sedan pulled up outside. “That’s Barb,” Mimi said, hefting the smaller suitcase. Jack took the larger one in hand. “You take care of my girls, okay?”
With a sudden pang of fondness for Mimi, he put a hand on her shoulder. “Mimi, be sure you register under Barb’s name. And share a room with her. And keep going, don’t spend more than one night in any one place. If you feel threatened by anyone or anything, go to the cops. Call Hannah every night.”
She laughed at him. “You make it sound like I’m on the lam,” she said as they walked out onto the porch.
He helped Mimi load her things into Barb’s trunk and stood silently by as Hannah and her grandmother said their goodbyes. Hannah stood on the sidewalk watching the big blue car roll down the street as he retreated to the porch and waited for her to relinquish control of her baby. He wanted to get out of there. He was way too aware someone might be watching them.
She eventually wandered back onto the porch but still she lingered. He guessed her reluctance to part with Abby had to do with maternal instincts and the terror of the afternoon, but man, get it over with. He finally more or less took the bundled baby from her hands and pushed her through the door.
“Watch her head,” Hannah demanded.
“Go pack,” he said.
The baby made a little crying noise as he jostled her and Hannah almost turned back. “Hannah,” he said sternly. “Go pack. We’ll be fine.”
She finally left.
