“And he was stolen right out of the hospital nursery—with the new security codes and everything!” Nancy Allen explained, her voice trembling with outrage.
The news didn’t come as a surprise to Everett, but he pretended to be surprised…and horrified. “This happened tonight?”
“Yes. After visiting hours. I was just getting off my shift when the police cruisers drove up and officers began searching the hospital. Brian and Carrie are going to be sick about this. Absolutely devastated.”
“Brian and Carrie Summers? What do they have to do with it?”
“I guess I forgot to mention it to you. They’re adopting Lisa Sanders’s baby.”
Everett swallowed hard at that news. Brian Summers was rich and probably had all kinds of connections. Composing himself, he replied, “I imagine they’ll take the news hard.” He put false encouragement into his voice. “Maybe the police will find the baby soon.”
“I have this feeling that they’ll never find him.” Nancy’s voice had gone low.
“Why do you say that? Maybe this was a deranged woman who just wants a baby of her own and she didn’t go far.”
“I don’t think a deranged woman would have a keycard and know the security code. I think there’s a black-market baby ring at work.”
Fear grabbed Everett’s heart. “It’s a long jump to that conclusion.” He didn’t want Nancy going down that road.
“I’ve been hearing things,” Nancy said.
“What kind of things?” He tried to keep his voice steady.
“Remember those two couples I told you about who were turned down by the adoption agency?”
Everett’s heart was racing now.
“One of the other nurses told me both of them have babies now. How could that have happened so quickly?”
Everett knew exactly how. “Private adoptions occur all the time. Remember, I told you I have a friend who’s a lawyer in that field. I spoke to Brian and Carrie Summers about it, but they didn’t want to go that route.”
“Maybe they should have,” Nancy said sadly. “I still think I should go to the police and tell them what I think.”
“That’s not a good idea. If you do, they could start an investigation into Children’s Connection. That’ll damage its reputation.”
“Its reputation won’t mean anything if more of this goes on. I really think I should talk to the police about this. I’ll go in the morning.”
Everett felt a noose tightening around his neck. “You can’t do that, Nancy!”
“Why not? I—”
Suddenly Everett heard voices in the background on Nancy’s end.
She muttered into the phone, “Wait a minute.”
There was silence for a few seconds while sweat broke out on his brow.
When she came back she said, “Everett, I’ve got to go. I thought I was off for the night, but one of the internists has a question about a patient I cared for. I’ll talk to you later.”
And she was gone.
“Nancy? Nancy?”
She couldn’t go to the police. She just couldn’t. His head was pounding and he didn’t know what to do. He’d had another one of those “visions” earlier. A tall man was clasping his hand. They were in a baseball stadium. He could feel the little-kid excitement of being someplace big and noisy, and seeing real baseball players for the first time. Then the vision…the memory had faded. That man had been his real father. Lester Baker, the man who had stolen him, had never taken him to a baseball game.
Everett shook off the memory of a happy life as well as memories of his time with Jolene and Lester Baker…memories of a family that was so dysfunctional it defined the word.
Whatever past pictures his mind held, he didn’t have time for them now. He had to call Charlie. He had to find out what to do about Nancy.
Everett had been watching TV on his brown leather couch when Nancy had called. Now, with his cordless phone in hand, he punched in Charlie’s cell phone number.
Charlie didn’t pick up on the first ring, or the third, and Everett was starting to panic. But then he heard, “Yeah, Baker. Whaddaya want?”
Everett knew Charlie had caller ID and always screened his calls. “Where are you?” Everett wanted to know.
“I’m at my sister’s. She’s changing the kid now and cooing all over him like she was his mother. What’s up? Do you have the name of a couple for me?”
“No. I’m afraid we’ve got trouble. Nancy’s putting too many things together. She suspects somebody took the Sanders kid to make money.”
“How does she suspect? Unless you told her—”
“I haven’t told her anything. Do you think I’m crazy? I don’t want to get caught any more than you do. Some nurse told her about couples who got turned down by the agency, then suddenly had babies a month later.”
Charlie whistled through his teeth, and then swore. “So who’s she talked to about all this?”
“Just me, so far. She wants to go to the police, though. Tomorrow.”
Dead silence met his statement, and Everett knew immediately he had done the wrong thing. He never should have called the Stork.
“I’m glad you called me with this, Baker. I’ll take care of it. I’ll take care of it tonight.”
“What are you going to do?”
“What do you think I’m going to do? Don’t you worry about Nancy Allen. We’ll both be safer without her. Now I gotta get goin’. You find me another couple, Baker. And find one fast, or I’ll be givin’ my sister your cut.”
At that, the phone went silent.
Fifteen minutes later, as a cold drizzle trickled down his windshield, Everett parked in one of the parking places designated for hospital staff near the emergency room at Portland General and hurried inside, well aware of two squad cars also in the parking lot. This might be the stupidest move he’d ever made. But he couldn’t let anything happen to Nancy, and he knew something was going to happen to her tonight if he wasn’t with her.
Understanding how dedicated she was to her career, he’d guessed she’d still be at the hospital. And he was right. After he inquired about her at the desk, the nurse on duty pointed down a corridor that led to examination rooms. The nurse, who recognized Everett from his frequent comings and goings to see Nancy, said, “Officially, she’s off duty. Remind her she has to get some sleep. She’s taking over my shift tomorrow night so I can go to my son’s open house at school.”
“I’ll remind her,” Everett answered, having no plan in mind at all.
All he knew was that he had to keep Nancy safe. She was the best thing that had ever happened to him. She was the only person who had ever really listened to him. She didn’t seem to mind that he didn’t always know what to say, especially to a woman. He’d never had a real relationship before because before he’d paid women for the pleasure of sex.
His yearning for Nancy had gotten stronger every time he was with her. In fact, he’d backed away over and over again, at first, to keep himself disentangled from unknown territory, and then for her sake, because of what he’d been doing and what he’d become. Tonight, though, he had to figure out how to stop Charlie and whatever he’d planned to do to Nancy.
Moments later he found her exiting an examination cubicle. As soon as she saw him, she smiled, and in spite of everything that was going on, he felt lighter inside.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“You sounded upset on the phone. I thought you might get tied up here for hours if there was questioning. Thought you might need some company.”
“The police were finished with us before I called you. I should have said something to them then.”
“That’s one of the reasons I came to pick you up. I want to talk to you about that.”
“You came to pick me up?” She looked perplexed.
“I know you’re off now, and I thought maybe I could take the day off tomorrow.” He could feel a flush crawling up his neck. “I thought I could take you home and—”
“You’ll spend the night?” Her eyes were wide. She’d invited him to stay before and he hadn’t.
“Yes, I’ll stay the night. Then tomorrow, if you want me there—”
“I want you there.” Her eyes moistened, and Everett felt his whole heart coming alive in a way it never had before.
In the car, Everett thought about what he should be doing and saying. He’d never known affection, so it was hard for him to show affection. Yet with Nancy, he knew he had to push past the curtain that had always seemed to surround his life and reach for more—even if he only might have it for an hour, or a day, or a week.
With one hand on the steering wheel, he reached over to her and laid a hand on her knee. “You must be exhausted. You pulled a double shift, didn’t you?”
“Yes. But right now I’m anything but tired.”
He heard the slight teasing in her voice, the slight edge of seductiveness. That was meant for him.
Ten minutes later, Nancy was using her key to let herself into her apartment. Everett couldn’t help but look over his shoulder. Nancy’s apartment complex was on the outskirts of Portland. She was on the ground floor, and Everett now saw that as a detriment for security’s sake. All of the apartments had sliding glass doors in the back that led into the dining area of the kitchen. There wasn’t much he could do to make glass doors really secure.
Taking her to his place wouldn’t be much better. Although he wasn’t on the ground floor, a fire escape went up the back of his building. It was old, and the window latches weren’t that tight. All he could do was protect Nancy during the night and convince her not to go to the police. He’d wrestle with the problem of Charlie in the morning.
As Nancy entered her living room, she picked up a stray newspaper, a mug of tea she’d left on the coffee table. Her apartment was everything his wasn’t. She had plants everywhere, from African violets to a potted palm. The love seat and chair were upholstered in a rose-and-green floral print, which added to the feeling of a garden. She had fern-green drapes on the windows. The caramel-colored braided rug on the floor matched the oak furniture, as well as the frames around the Victorian cottage prints on the wall. Nancy’s apartment was light and warmth and welcome. His was utilitarian, sparse and empty of the life he felt here.
“I didn’t straighten up,” she said, looking embarrassed. “I didn’t expect to have…company.”
Crossing to her, he took the newspaper from her hand and laid it back on the sofa. “You don’t have to straighten up for me. I don’t care how neat your place is.”
A wealth of emotions seemed to cross her face. “I’ve been waiting for tonight for weeks.”
“Then let’s not wait any longer.”
All the way home in the car, Carrie tried to rehearse words for what she had to say. But words seemed to scatter with thoughts of Lisa…with the idea of Timothy Jacob missing…with the vision of Brian’s face when he heard the news.
The rain stopped and started again as they drove. She watched a rivulet travel down the window, her heart trembling with worry about Timothy, her stomach tight with dread because of what came next. She wished for an escape from what she had to do, but she knew the truth had been a long time coming.
Brian hadn’t said a word since they’d left the hospital. He parked in the garage, and after they entered the house he reset the security system. What good were security systems?
“How could a baby disappear from a nursery?” she asked him now. “Alarms and codes and the latest technological bells and whistles can’t keep anyone safe, can they?”
They’d reached the kitchen when Brian answered, “Maybe it was a false sense of security. Someone should have been in that nursery every minute.” His hand clenched into a fist and he brought it down on the granite counter.
Crossing to him, Carrie covered his fist with her hand. “Don’t. You’re only going to hurt yourself.”
“I want to wring somebody’s neck. I want to be out there on the streets searching myself. Maybe that’s what I should do.” He checked his watch. “And while I do it, I’ll call the private investigator my firm’s used in the past for background checks. Maybe he’ll find something the police can’t.”
When Brian would have started for the garage again, she grabbed his arm. “Wait. I have to talk to you.”
“Carrie, I know women handle this kind of thing by talking, by going over it again and again. But I have to do something.”
She released his arm. “I know you do. But please, let me say what I have to say before I lose the courage.”
Focused on her, he gave her his full attention now as he stood perfectly still. “Why would you need courage to tell me anything?”
As soon as the words were out of his mouth, something about him changed. His back became ramrod-straight, his eyes narrowed and his mouth was a tight line until he asked, “Are you having an affair? Is that what you’re hiding?”
“No! How could you even suspect that of me?”
“Because something hasn’t been right between us. Something besides not being able to have a baby.”
“Something hasn’t been right since the day we got married,” she admitted. But when his expression became even grimmer, she hurried to say, “Not that I don’t love you, that I didn’t love you. I did. And do. And always will.”
“Then what is it?” His voice was patient but frustrated…patient but strained on the edge of an emotion she was perched on herself.
There was no way to wrap the truth in a pretty package. The time had come for complete honesty, and she had to just tell him what had happened. “When I was eighteen, I was raped.”
It took a few moments for her words to sink in. When they did, he swore. “My God, Carrie. Why didn’t you ever tell me?”
“Because there’s more.”
“More than a woman surviving rape?” He started to reach for her. “So much makes sense now.”
She wouldn’t let him embrace her and backed away. “Listen to me, Brian. Listen to everything.”
When he raked his hand through his hair, she knew he was restraining every impulse inside of him to enfold her into his arms. But she couldn’t let him do that yet. When she was done, he might not want to.
“I had just moved to Portland a couple of months before—after graduation. My career had really taken off. I had already done shoots in New York and London, and offers were coming in to my agent every day. I was sending money home, money like my family had never seen. We were able to move out of the poorest section of Windsor to an apartment that was clean and bright with a small garden. It was all like a dream come true, and none of us could believe it. I was just beginning to. Mom and Dad were dreaming about never using food stamps again. Mary and Brenda were dreaming about college. Foolish and naive as I was, I was dreaming about more magazine covers and traveling…visiting the French Riviera.”
“Carrie,” he said softly.
She shook her head. “But then I was walking home after a shoot one night. A few blocks from my apartment, he grabbed me. He was wearing a ski mask. I fought him but—” She stopped for a second then went on. “Somehow, I made it to my apartment, but then something happened to me. I spiraled down into a black hole. Mom came and got me and took me home, but we didn’t tell anyone—not Dad, not my sisters, not anyone. Dad knows now. Mom just told him recently, but—” She swallowed hard. “Once Mom took me home, I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t eat. I just stayed in bed and cried. A few weeks afterward I missed my period.”
Now Brian looked stunned. She realized she was delivering blow after blow, but it all had to come out, every single sordid bit of it.
“You were pregnant,” he stated flatly.
“Yes. And everything was on the line—my family’s life, my future and my career.”
She could make excuses, but she wasn’t going to. This was her responsibility. “Through the grapevine, Mom had heard of a doctor who performed abortions. I went to him. A week later I had a fever of one hundred five and he put me on antibiotics. I didn’t know then—” Her voice caught and she stopped.
“Didn’t know what?” Brian prodded.
“I didn’t know the infection was more extensive than I’d ever dreamed. I didn’t know I’d never be able to have children—until we couldn’t get pregnant and I went to the specialist.”
Shell-shocked. Brian looked absolutely shell-shocked.
“When we got married, I wanted a baby as much as you did. I didn’t know, Brian. You’ve got to believe me.”
He looked away, then his gaze returned to hers and seemed to pierce right through her. “But there was the medical report…about your tubes being blocked.”
“That was accurate. There had been scarring—extensive scarring. That’s probably why in vitro didn’t work, either.”
“The doctor knew about all of this?”
“I had to tell him. I had to know for sure what our chances were. He said we had a chance, but then it didn’t work—”
“And still you didn’t tell me.” Brian sounded so pained, so betrayed.
He had a right to everything he was feeling. There was only one thing she could do. “You deserve to be married to a woman who can give you children. You didn’t sign on for this. If I had been truthful with you from the beginning, maybe we would have never gotten married. Maybe we would have considered adoption sooner if we had. This whole situation with Lisa never would have happened. I want to find Timothy Jacob with all my heart, and I still want to adopt him. But I can understand if you don’t want to be part of that. I understand that keeping all of this from you, and the abortion itself, might be too much to forgive.”
Brian’s expression was absolutely unreadable. She wished he’d say something, anything, but he didn’t. She knew how he felt about right and wrong, black and white, taking the high road. She represented a blurring of everything he believed in. She wasn’t the woman she’d portrayed to him, and she’d been right to think their marriage could never recover from the truth of it all. Brian’s silence told her more than words. There was only one thing to do.
“I’m going to pack a suitcase and go to a hotel tonight.”
“It’s late,” he protested.
“I know. I’ll go to the Ambassador. I’ll be fine. We both need time to think about everything.”
“I have to call the private investigator and search for Timothy,” Brian said, as if the rest of it were secondary. She supposed it was just too much to take in. Searching for the baby they’d lost seemed simpler.
“I won’t be here when you get back,” she said.
Brian’s gaze swept over her. Then, as if he couldn’t stand to look at her another second, he left the kitchen and went to the garage. She heard his car door slam. She heard him start the engine. She heard him drive away.
Finally letting all the emotion come to the surface, she felt a sob tear through her, and tears began falling down her cheeks. She had to leave. She wouldn’t be able to stay, living with the guilt of what she’d done, seeing recriminations in Brian’s eyes. Seeing hurt…and pain.
Everett lay in bed with Nancy, curled spoon-fashion, his arm around her. She was warm, her skin was soft, and her hair smelled like strawberries. They had made love twice. The first time he’d felt like a fumbling idiot, and she’d made it easy. She’d even made putting on the condom a new adventure. The second time they’d made love, it had seemed natural. His climax had hit the same time as hers. Nothing had mattered except being inside of her, being with her.
Still, it couldn’t last.
Tightening his hold on Nancy, he let his thoughts drift as he dozed. They were a mixture of good and bad, past and present, but no future.
Suddenly he went on alert. There was a noise. The glass doors opening?
Slipping out of bed, he was glad to see Nancy was still asleep. She’d been exhausted after her double shift in the E.R. The parking lot’s light came through the edges of the blind. Everett scooped up the first solid heavy object he saw. It was a sculpture of a cat done in bronze. Hoisting it to his shoulder, he was ready to throw it at anything that moved. Going through the living room, he saw a figure dressed in black in the kitchen.
He flattened himself against the inside wall and waited. There was one step, and then another. As he brought up the sculpture, he took a huge breath. When the figure stepped through the doorway, he brought it down solidly, clipping the man’s shoulder. There was a grunt, then a parry, as a gun fell out of the man’s hand and flew almost at Everett’s feet. He could see it in the light of the street lamp coming in the window.
The man in black swore. “Hell, Baker, is that you?”
Everett realized it was the Stork himself, and not some henchman he’d hired. His voice was a low threat. “Get out of here, Charlie. I’m not going to let you hurt her.”
Charlie’s eyes darted to the gun, but Everett scooped it up before the man could even think about doing it. He pointed it at his once-friend. “You are not going to hurt her. Get out of here before she wakes up.”
“What if she goes to the police?” Charlie hissed.
“If she does, I’ll discredit her somehow. Trust me, Charlie. I’ll handle it. If you get any ideas about hurting me, as well as Nancy…” He hefted up the gun in his hand. “Well, I’ve got this now. And I’ll use it.”
Charlie gazed at him with something Everett had never seen in his eyes before—respect.
“Everett? Is that you? Is something wrong?” Nancy called from the bedroom.
“Get out of here,” he ordered Charlie.
Without his gun, all Charlie could do was snarl. “You’d better fix this, Baker. You’d better fix it right.” Then he scuttled to the kitchen.
“It’s just me, Nancy,” Everett called into the bedroom. “I thought I heard something, but it must have been the rain and the wind.”
Once Charlie was gone, Everett locked the door behind him, then he didn’t know why he bothered. Locked doors weren’t going to keep Charlie out—not if he really wanted to get in. But Everett had felt the balance of power shift a little bit tonight.
After stowing the gun behind a large vase in the china cabinet, Everett carried the bronze cat back into the bedroom. He’d retrieve the gun in the morning while Nancy was taking her shower.
“What were you doing with that?” Nancy asked, sitting up in bed.
“I was going to use it on an intruder.” He managed a smile.
She patted the bed beside her. “Come back to bed.”
First he turned off the light, set down the cat, then he crawled into bed.
When they faced each other, she declared, “I’m going to the police tomorrow, Everett. I have to. If I’m right about this, maybe we can save other couples heartache. I can only imagine what Brian and Carrie are going through tonight.”
Everett had fallen for Nancy Allen because she was the woman she was—caring, compassionate and much too good for him. “I’ll go with you,” he assured her, already planning damage control, already working out a strategy to keep both of them alive.