“No.” King lowered his chin. “Detective Campbell said he had been assigned to Kate’s case.” He told me everything Campbell shared with him at the scene of the crime. “Then I got a call from the medical examiner tonight. It’s her belief that Kate didn’t die of an overdose but maybe due to an infection she got after giving birth. But that she also suspects fentanyl to show up in her system and that it could have been administered by a health professional.”
I listened to King, hung onto every word. No matter what I did, I couldn’t get my body warm. It was as cold as our investigation. “Was the baby with her?”
King’s eyes hooded as he shook his head. “Alvarez and I got to talking.” He swallowed hard. “The way Kate was found made it look like suicide. But with the possibility of the drugs being administered by a doctor, we started wondering if there’s a black market going on.”
My stomach twisted. “What kind of black market?”
I could see the pain in King’s eyes. This was almost worse than the school shooting we’d experienced five months ago. “Best case: stealing babies and giving them up for adoption.”
When he didn’t continue, I asked, “Worst case?”
“Harvesting their organs.”
I couldn’t speak. I remembered the moment Mason was placed in my arms and my heart went out to these young women getting caught up in something that was ruining—and ending—their lives.
“There’s more,” King finally said. “We found Tracey Brown’s car.”
My neck craned with disbelief.
“We found a bottle of prenatal vitamins inside.”
I held a hand over my mouth and felt my eyes prickle with tears. “She was pregnant?”
He nodded.
“That makes three,” Erin said close behind me.
Heather was smart enough to keep her mouth shut, but I knew she was listening just as close as the rest of us.
“But you haven’t found Tracey?”
“Only her car.”
“Are you pinging her cell phone? Tracing her credit cards? Why can’t you find her?”
“Sam, the department is doing everything they can to locate her.” He sighed. “And Cameron, too.”
I pressed my palm against my forehead and went on blaming Campbell for his slow response to each of these cases. I believed King was doing everything in his power, but not Campbell. “Then why does it feel like Campbell doesn’t give a rat’s ass?”
King rocked slightly before saying. “Sam, not everyone in the department likes how you’re conducting your work.”
“Good,” I snapped. “Then I’m doing my job.”
King nodded in agreement. “And, just so we’re clear, I have your back.”
“Really? Because it didn’t seem like it earlier.” My chest heaved as an intense heat finally warmed my body.
“That’s why I’m here now.”
“To tell me how to do my job?”
“Quite the opposite, actually.”
“What do you mean?” I didn’t want to argue. It was wasted energy when we should have been working together.
Erin must have seen something I hadn’t because she stepped forward and said, “Let him speak, Sam.”
King walked us to the table and told us everything. That he and Alvarez spent the evening tracking down Tracey’s place of employment; speaking in great length to her colleague; and how her now dead parents disagreed how best Tracey should go forward with her pregnancy. It was all helpful information, and even Heather joined the conversation after promising nothing we said tonight would leave the house.
“But if her parents had the means, why did Tracey try to do this without their help?” Heather asked.
“Your guess is as good as any of ours. It might be something we never know.”
“We’ll know because we’ll find Tracey,” I reminded the table—rejuvenating our sense of purpose. I was sharing a knowing look with King when the house line started to ring.
Ignoring it, Erin swept her gaze off the table and asked King, “Do we know if she had been seeing a doctor?”
King shook his head. “But, according to Tracey’s colleague, Tracey responded to an online ad that promised medical assistance and money. I’ll be looking into it in the morning, but now you know where we’re at in our investigation.”
I mouthed a quick thank you and smiled. It wasn’t about exclusive stories or self-interest. We helped each other in order to speed up the investigation with hopes of solving the crime before another was committed.
“Cameron Dee was short on money, too,” Erin reminded me.
“Did she respond to an online ad?” King asked.
We didn’t know. Erin ran one hand over her head. “Not that we’re aware of.”
The phone finally stopped ringing when Mason stepped out from the kitchen. “Mom, it’s for you.”
“Not now, baby.”
“It’s Allison.”
I sprang to my feet and hurried into the kitchen with my heart racing. “Hey girlfriend. You home yet?”
Allison chuckled, but I could hear she wasn’t her usual self. “It’s bad news, Sam.”
I felt every fiber in my body tense with fear. “Did they find out why you fainted?”
“No. But they found something else.” Allison sighed and was quiet for a long pause. “Come by tomorrow and I’ll tell you all about it.”
Chapter Thirty-One
The Guardian Angel slammed his car door shut, hit the lock button on his key fob, and hurried inside the office. He stripped off his sport coat along the way and was hanging it on the rack when the nurse met up with him.
“How far along is she?” the Guardian Angel asked.
“Eight centimeters.” The nurse hesitated, the look on her face frantic.
The doctor didn’t bother putting on his lab coat. Instead he requested to see the patient’s charts. This was an emergency situation and a decision was going to have to be made quickly.
“Sir, the baby is breech,” the nurse said after handing over the charts. “We’ve tried everything to get it to flip, but I’m afraid all our efforts have failed.”
The Guardian Angel felt his heart stop. This was something he hadn’t heard. The situation was far worse than what he’d been told on the phone. “How is the mother?”
The nurse’s face was pale—not a good sign considering the luck they’d been having. “Not well.”
The Guardian Angel stood there as the walls began closing in. His vision tunneled. He was living out his worst nightmare. He hadn’t expected two of his patients to go into labor so close together. He and his team could handle it, but it was never his intention to happen that way.
It felt like his feet had melted into the floor.
He was still reeling with the effects of last night. It was a tough blow to his ego—having lost both baby and mother—and he was determined to not repeat his mistake.
“We must do everything we can to save the baby,” he said firmly as he marched to the patient’s room.
“Sir,” the nurse followed him one step behind, “she’s asking for her mother.”
The doctor stopped at the door and turned to face the nurse. He studied her expression and didn’t like what he saw. He was gone only for a few hours and it now seemed that the entire operation had turned belly-up the moment he left.
“And what did you tell her?” he asked.
The nurse kept rubbing at her lips. The doctor knew this couldn’t be good.
The pressure was mounting—the clock ticking, a bomb close to detonating.
There was too much on the line to trash everything they had worked so hard to achieve. He could see the light at the end of the tunnel. Everything he’d set out to accomplish was now within reach—he could feel it.
“Speak, dammit!”
The nurse found her footing and stammered, “It happened so fast. We still don’t know how she did it.”
“Did what?” The doctor’s muscles flexed beneath his shirt.
“The patient stole a cell phone and made a phone call.”
The Guardian Angel’s eyelids snapped wide open. A cold breeze swirled around his ankles.
The nurse was still blabbering on, speaking to the floor, with her palms opened wide when a sharp pain in the doctor’s chest reminded him that he was still alive. His chest rose and fell as quickly as his blood pressure.
“She what?” The Guardian Angel breathed fire.
“It was only one call that we know about before we caught her,” the nurse’s eyes watered with fear, “and that’s when everything made a turn for the worse.”
The Guardian Angel turned and faced the wall. He rubbed the nape of his neck, conjuring up the worst-case scenarios to help come up with a game plan on how to deal with the situation. Alarm bells were ringing inside his head and everything was signaling for him to jump ship and get out before the whole thing went down—but he knew he couldn’t. He still had a baby to deliver.
“We have to keep our heads on straight here.”
The nurse’s nods were short little bursts of frantic energy.
“Let’s get the baby out safely and then decide what to do next.” The Guardian Angel quickly told her the plan and, when she was ready, they entered the patient’s room together.
Inside, the temperature was warm and the energy was much calmer than the doctor anticipated. Though his head still felt like it was trapped between a vice grip, he played it cool—always cool when working under immense pressure.
The patient’s eyes were closed. She was between contractions.
The Guardian Angel stepped up to the patient’s bed and gently stroked her cheek with his thumb. His gaze traveled the length of her naked and sweaty body draped with a white sheet. Suddenly, her eyes opened.
“Focus on me,” the Guardian Angel said as he heard the nurse work behind him to assemble the pieces of their plan.
The woman turned her head but her gaze was distant. Her hair wet and matted to her forehead, her body limp with exhaustion.
“We’ll get through this together,” he told her. “You’re doing great.”
“I can’t,” the young woman cried.
The doctor hooked the woman’s chin with his finger and brought her eyes up to his. He smiled. “You can.”
“I can’t feel the baby.”
Suddenly, the Guardian Angel felt his heart stall for a moment. The data populating the screen assured him the baby was still alive but they needed to get her out ASAP.
“Your baby is doing just fine,” he told her.
The woman’s face contorted through another contraction. Her body tensed and he coached her through the incredible pain, knowing she was without medication. By the time it was finished, the woman’s eyes were closed and she was resting once again.
The nurse tapped the doctor on the shoulder. The Guardian Angel turned and took the equipment into his own hands. He slid the mask over the patient’s face, saying, “Don’t worry, this will all be over soon.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
It was still dark when I woke the following morning. Without thinking, I extended my arm and reached to the empty spot in the bed next to me.
A hollowness cratered in the center of my chest.
It was where King should have been. I wanted him to stay the night and seduce me with pillow talk, stay wrapped inside his arms through the duration of the night. I didn’t have to tell him to go, that it wasn’t appropriate for him to stay. He already knew and made the decision himself.
Burying my face into my pillow, a groan of regret escaped from somewhere deep inside of me.
King was right as much as I wished he wasn’t. My house was already too busy with my sister in town and Mason constantly in and out of the house because of spring break. Even if King stayed, we wouldn’t have had the privacy I would have wanted—that I needed.
I flopped onto my back and stared into the popcorn ceiling.
It was impossible to forget our work responsibilities or the names and lives at stake. King never mentioned Campbell by name, but he made it clear he was the source of my new problem with the DPD.
When my eyes closed, I touched my lips.
They still tingled from the kiss King left me with after I had walked him to his car. I promised him I wouldn’t publish anything until the department scheduled an official press conference and I had someone besides him to quote as my source. It was an easy promise to make, considering it would ease some of Dawson’s worries as well.
Killing two birds with one stone—my specialty.
Kicking the covers off, I planted my feet to the floor and left my bed. I thought about going for a run, but decided against it. I was too anxious to see Allison—hear her big news—and wanted to get to her as soon as possible. There was no time to waste.
Allison’s call had kept me on edge. Though she didn’t say what exactly the doctors had found, I knew it wasn’t good. My imagination ran wild and, as I conjured up every scenario I could, one thing remained true; her hospital stay reminded me how fragile each of our lives truly were.
I slid a shirt over my head and stomped my legs through a pair of jeans as I reflected on my own life and the loss of Gavin. It was so easy for us all to get caught up in the moment and take our good health for granted when we were really just chasing our goals and racing to the finish line of each day. I regretted many things, but I swore to myself my relationship with Allison wouldn’t be one of them.
I was braiding my hair and tying it off when I entered the kitchen on a mission to brew my first pot of coffee. Suddenly, I came to a dead stop at the sight of Heather’s packet perfectly forgotten in the center of the kitchen table. She must have taken it out again last night after everyone had left or gone to bed.
The room spun as I stared and considered my options.
I heard Cooper jump off the couch, the sounds of his nails clacking his way to me. He nudged his head against my thigh and let his tail wag back and forth.
I took one step forward and felt my heart threaten to explode.
I couldn’t help myself. I needed to know what the big secret was and why Heather insisted on keeping it hidden from me. It was so strange the way she had been acting. My curiosity only grew the more I thought about how protective of it she was. Was this a setup? Would my sister purposely leave this out knowing I would open it? Why hadn’t she opened it?
I glanced to the front room where I knew Heather was sleeping and held my breath.
My ears perked as I listened.
Silence.
Finally, the suspense of not knowing killed me and I took the plunge.
I pinched it between my fingers and quickly opened it as I fell into a seat at the table with a soft thud. My eyes darted from left to right and I felt the blood leave my face as I thumbed through the pages.
Surrogacy… earn between $45K - $75K…
I made note of the clinic’s name—North Denver Reproductive Medicine—and address, and I kept shaking my head, whispering to myself, “No. No. No. Why would you do this?”
“Oh my god!”
Heather’s voice came out of nowhere and made me jump to my feet. We stared and I didn’t say a word. She had caught me red-handed—guilty as charged.
I was still holding her papers in one hand when she lunged for them. “You’re going through my things now?”
“You can’t be seriously thinking of doing that?” Heather was in deeper shit than I thought.
Heather’s movements were frantic as she hurried to shove the papers back inside the envelope. “Why not?” she snapped without bothering to look me in the eye. “I can help a family bring a life into this world.”
It sounded like the biggest load of BS I had ever heard. My eyes widened and my body language caused Cooper to get excited. “That’s no job,” I said. “It’s a Band-Aid solution to whatever financial difficulties you’re in. Besides, don’t they want women who’ve had kids before?”
Heather’s mouth slackened
as she glared.
A moment of awkward silence passed before I asked, “How deep of a hole are you in?”
Heather dropped her head into her hand. She closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose.
Were my assumptions right? “There are other solutions.”
She swept her head up. “It’s not only about the money.”
I couldn’t even begin to imagine what else there might be. My thoughts flickered between which route she would go—would she just need a turkey baster or have an embryo implanted. But I didn’t have the guts to ask. All I could say was, “And what if you become attached to the baby? Because you will. I guarantee you will.”
Heather’s eyes began to water as I realized how much I sounded like her always telling me what to do and how to feel. My shoulders dropped and I sighed, questioning if I was getting too far ahead of myself.
“I have nothing, Samantha.” She shook her head and looked away. Her tone, completely deflated. “And I certainly don’t want to keep working in a dead-end profession that leads me to nowhere.”
My neck was still ticking hard when I said, “And where do you think this will lead you?”
Heather was still staring at the packet.
“Babies kick themselves out after nine months. Then what will you do? It’s another dead-end that will come far faster than what you’re imagining now.”
“With this,” Heather pointed to the packet and turned to look me in the eye, “I’ll have freedom to explore.”
I snorted as I huffed out my disbelief. “You think you’ll be traveling while pregnant?”
Heather rolled her eyes at me. “Explore my passion. I want go back to school—and finish this time.” She jabbed her finger at me. “And before you start judging me, I want you to know that I’ve thought this through. This time it will be different. I’m older and more driven and know what I want.” She jabbed the packet with the tip of her index finger. “This will pay for school, and it will also give me access to healthcare which I wouldn’t otherwise have.”
My arms were crossed and I still wasn’t sold on the idea. “Did you not hear anything we discussed last night?”
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