Maryse’s body was alight with a need to shake answers out of Dee White. Literally take her by the shoulders and do it.
She’d never in her life considered herself to be an aggressive person, and it had never occurred to her to try to extract information using force. Of course, she’d also never been away from her daughter for more than a few hours, either. And she’d never had Camille’s life—or her own—lined up in the crosshairs.
But God help me, she thought as she moved through the crowded kitchen, if that woman doesn’t stop crying and start talking...
In the five minutes since they’d entered the home, the overblown waterworks hadn’t subsided. And Maryse wasn’t buying it. She didn’t believe for a second that the fury Dee White exuded had turned to concern or remorse, or whatever it was that had the tears rolling. It was an act. Another barrier between her and Cami. And she wanted to call it out. She’d ordered Brooks—in sign language—to let her do it. He’d refused. He hadn’t even acknowledged the gestures.
He’d suggested—verbally and in a too-gentle voice—that she might be close to the edge. Then he all but insisted that she put a bit of physical distance between herself and Dee. Just for a few moments. And he’d suggested the tea. What he’d really meant was that she wasn’t detached enough to be reasonable. And it was the exact reason she was standing near the stove, waiting for a kettle to boil, when she would rather have been by Brooks’s side, demanding to know the truth.
Her eyes sought the clock on the wall. Another full minute had gone by, making the total wasted number six.
Brewing tea for the woman who had Camille. Who took her.
Maryse’s stomach knotted up.
Where was Cami now?
How had she looked when Dee saw her?
Had she asked for Maryse?
The tumble of questions made tears prick at her eyes, and her body bristled with tension that she couldn’t diffuse. Brooks might be in there, trying to find the answer to the first one, but would he ask the second and third? Would he be thinking of her child’s welfare the same way she was?
She shook her head.
He was a good man. But he didn’t have a personal attachment to Camille.
The kettle’s whistle put a temporary hold on her negative thinking. She lifted the pot, poured the water over the waiting tea bag, then sloshed it directly into the mug. She refused to let it steep. Or to offer the woman milk or sugar. This wasn’t some pleasant afternoon party where they needed to play nice. Dee White could just take her tea as it was served.
She stalked from the kitchen back to the living room, half expecting to find Brooks seated beside Dee on the couch, his arm wrapped around the other woman, comforting her.
The mental image made Maryse stop so short that the hot liquid spilled over the side of the cup, scalding her hand. She bit back a yelp and settled for a wince. And it wasn’t just about the pain. It was about the scenario itself.
I’m jealous.
The realization stung.
It was an over-the-top reaction, especially when it wasn’t even something that she knew was happening. But that didn’t stop the tickle of green-tinged emotion from being real.
Maryse stood just outside the living room door, pondering what it meant. She appreciated Brooks and his help. She liked him. And there was no denying the intense attraction or the way she felt when they kissed. But jealousy? It was a stretch.
She tightened her grip on the mug and forced her feet to move forward. And she was ridiculously relieved to find Dee on the couch with her feet curled under her body, but Brooks standing beside the table with his arms at his sides. Not even in touching distance.
Maryse let out a breath, then stepped toward the table. As she brushed by the big off-duty cop, he pressed a hand to her hip very briefly.
“Better?” he said.
“Hoping to be,” she replied pointedly, setting down the mug in front of Dee.
The other woman lifted her eyes. They were still red. Still angry. Maryse glanced Brooks’s way, thinking he had to see it, too. But his expression was sympathetic, his shoulders relaxed. Did he actually believe Dee White’s act?
Maryse’s chest tightened with worry.
“Do you want me to give a recap, so you can drink that tea and relax?” Brooks said, his voice full of compassion.
“Please,” said the woman on the couch.
He nodded at Dee. “Ms. White was just telling me about the ordeal she went through.”
What about Camille! Maryse wanted to scream.
Brooks bent down, lifted the mug up, then turned the handle toward Dee. “Go ahead.”
The woman took a tiny sip, then sighed like he’d done her the biggest favor in the world. In response, he smiled a kind, full-mouthed smile that made Maryse squeeze both of her hands into fists. But she kept her lips pressed tightly together and held in her anger, even when Dee smiled back.
“Thank you.”
“No problem.”
Maryse thought her head might explode. But then Brooks shifted on his feet and touched the weapon at his waistband, and she remembered what he’d said about being an award-winning actor in another life, and she knew, suddenly, what he was doing.
They were still on the same page.
Thank God.
Brooks turned his easy smile her way, and she saw the slightest hint of tension in his eyes as he spoke. “Ms. White, her boyfriend and his brother have been on the run for a while now, trying to keep ahead of some bad debt.”
“Bad debt?” Maryse repeated, careful to keep her voice neutral.
Brooks nodded. “Not your average credit-card kinda debt, though. The knee-capping, finger-breaking kind that needs a whole new identity.”
“And?”
“And these guys—very bad men, from what I understand—felt that Ms. White and her friends owed them something more than money.”
“Camille.” Her name came out a whisper.
Maryse didn’t know how her daughter connected to the men in question, but she was sure all the same that it was true, even before Brooks nodded a second time.
“These men came to Ms. White and offered to forgive the debt in exchange for retrieving your daughter.”
“But...why?”
The woman on the couch spoke up then. “They said the little girl belonged to them.”
It was all Maryse could take. “Belonged to them? She’s my daughter. She doesn’t belong to anyone because she’s a person. And I have no idea who ‘they’ are!”
“We didn’t actually give her back,” Dee said.
“Give her back?”
The other woman shot her a defensive look, then pointed to her forehead. “That’s why I got this. They hit me. I ran and hid in the shed, and they left.”
“Because they really just wanted Camille. And you weren’t going to hand her over like you promised.”
“It was Greg’s brother’s idea.”
“Who?”
“The man who took you from the hotel,” Brooks explained.
Dee nodded. “He said if the kid was worth that much to someone else, she’d be worth even more to her mother.”
Maryse connected the dots, finally seeing how the money aspect factored in. “You thought I would pay you.”
“Wouldn’t you?”
For the first time, icy fury overrode her fear. She would’ve taken a step toward Dee, but Brooks’s hand closed on her elbow and pulled her back.
She couldn’t muster up the strength to push him off and instead sagged against him and said, “But he didn’t even ask me for money.”
“Dee doesn’t know why he didn’t ask. But we need to listen to the rest of what she has to say, sweetheart,” he said.
“Unless she knows where Cami is—”
“She might not know where she is, but she does know who has her. And that’s worth something.”
Maryse blew out a breath. He was right. It was worth more than something. It was worth everything. At least so long as it was the only thing. But that didn’t mean she had to like it.
She made herself speak as calmly as she could manage. “Who has her, Dee?”
“They’re a gang. Run by a man named Caleb Nank.”
The name meant nothing to Maryse, but Brooks’s hand tightened on her elbow. Did it mean something to him? She thought it must. And his next words confirmed it.
“Maryse,” he said. “Can you excuse me and Ms. White for a moment?”
“What?” She couldn’t keep the surprise from her reply.
“Just for a minute. Maybe two.”
Her first instinct was to argue. She wanted to hear whatever it was that Brooks was going to say. Needed to know what he was going to ask, and learn the answers, too. But when she turned to glance his way, the urge fell away with no effort on her part.
His expression was neutral, but that pinch was back around his eyes, and his jaw was just a little bit tenser. He looked like a tightly wound spring, trying its damnedest not to uncoil. Whatever it was that bothered him about the name Caleb Nank, it was something big.
And then he signed, Please trust me.
So instead of fighting him on it, Maryse nodded and stepped out of the living room and into the hall, careful to put herself far enough away that she couldn’t hear what they were saying. She knew she needed to defer to Brooks’s expertise.
But it’s not just expertise, is it? It’s the whole blind-faith thing.
His silent request had hammered it home.
She’d told him that this was the first time she’d ever trusted anyone else with anything to do with Camille. And she’d been honest about that. But what about herself? When was the last time she’d given over that kind of trust on her own behalf?
She leaned against the wall, considering it. Her friendships were superficial by necessity, limited to the other moms at her daughter’s school. In her relationship with her brother, she’d been the reliable one, the one who could be counted on and trusted, not the other way around. And as far as romance was concerned...
Seven years.
That gave her good pause.
It had been seven years since she last kissed a man. The year before Camille, she’d had a steady boyfriend, but things had fizzled out so slowly that she’d barely noticed. She hadn’t even felt a need to call him and tell him that she was leaving town.
Her eyes traveled up the hall toward the living room. Strangely, she felt like if she suddenly needed to run again, she’d want Brooks to know.
Maryse shook her head. It was on the same level of ridiculousness as being jealous of Dee White. But it was true nonetheless.
Somehow, he’d got under her skin. Slipped in behind her wall. And if he could do that in a few hours, what would it be like in a day? Or two?
Her eyes sought the living room door again. But what they found instead was another door, slightly ajar. Maybe it was a need to fill the moments until she was allowed back in the room, or maybe it was plain old curiosity. Either way, she felt a strange compulsion to look inside.
She moved forward, opened the door and stared. The room was full of sophisticated printing equipment.
Broken fingers and new identities. That was what Brooks had said.
Maryse took a step inside. A half a dozen passport pieces—Canadian, American and at least two she couldn’t identify—were spread across a large desk. There were pictures and slices of trimmed paper and empty laminated cases.
Not very subtle.
She eyed the nearest set of passport pieces. And froze. The tiny face staring up at her was one she knew as well as she knew her own.
What did it mean?
She took a final step into the room and reached for the photo before she even got to the desk. And as she lifted it up, an object underneath it made her head still, then start up again thunderously.
In one hand, she held a tiny photo of her own daughter. In the other, she held a bracelet she knew well—the silver, heart-shaped beads on an elasticized string were usually around Camille’s tiny wrist. Proof that she’d been there. And proof of something else, too.
* * *
Brooks was having a hard time maintaining his cool. Everything about Dee White screamed of deception, manipulation and narcissism. As far as suspects went, he knew her type well. At some point in her life, she’d lost control. Now she was making up for it, desperate to feel like she was the one leading the chase. For every fifth or sixth thing she said, only one would be true. Normally, Brooks would be happy enough to feed into it and use it to his advantage. He might even sympathize a bit and try to understand what had made her turn out this way.
Not now.
With Maryse’s kid’s life on the line, he didn’t have the time required for picking through her lies in search of tidbits of truth. Playing along was wearing on him.
And Caleb Nank...
The man wasn’t some low-level criminal. He was the chief operator of a company that acted as a front for some very dirty dealings. The man was just smart enough to keep evading the law, somehow managing to orchestrate every one of his shady deals without making himself culpable. Or even visible, for that matter. On paper, the man was a saint. In real life, he was a ghost.
And you were supposed to take him down. No. Scratch that. Are still supposed to be taking him down now.
He’d spent years trying to build a case against Nank. Brooks gritted his teeth, forced off the reminder and nodded at whatever falsehood was currently dripping from Dee’s mouth. Thinking of Nank had thrown off his game, and it was a scramble to fall back into the congenial role he’d taken on to get the woman on the couch to talk.
So he didn’t try.
“Nank runs out of Nevada.”
Dee blinked at his abrupt statement. “You know him?”
“I run out of Nevada.”
“You— Oh. I get it.”
He nodded, not caring whether or not she understood which side of the law he was on, and dropped his own tidbit of truth. “Nank is the reason I’m stuck in this town. So, yeah. I know him.”
She flipped her scraggly ponytail over her shoulder and glanced toward the door. Her eyes turned shrewd.
“And you don’t want her to know.”
“Her knowing won’t help us get her daughter back.”
“You’re a hundred percent sure the girl is hers?”
“Yes.”
Dee shook her head. “You might want to consider that you’re wrong. Nank and his men have pretty compelling evidence that says otherwise.”
“Unless it’s a DNA test, I’m not buying it.”
The woman sent him a cool-eyed stare. “And if it is a DNA test?”
Brooks refused to bite. “I’d still be hard to convince.”
“You said you know Nank, so you probably also know what he normally deals in.”
“His guys have been busted for fraud, for prostitution, for possession... He’s got a finger in a lot of pies.”
“But not kidnapping,” Dee said pointedly.
“Maybe he’s initiating a career move.”
“Why would his men say the kid was Nank’s if she wasn’t?”
It was a valid question. What did the crime boss want with a deaf child? Clearly, she wasn’t implying that Nank was the kid’s biological father. Or was she? His hand tightened into his fist.
No.
There was no way Maryse would’ve been involved with a man like that.
Brooks schooled his expression into an impassive one and said, “I’d never pretend to understand what motivates Caleb Nank.”
“If you don’t believe me, why don’t you bring your girlfriend back in and ask her why someone like Caleb would take the kid?”
Brooks didn’t answer. The details of why Camille had been taken had been on his mind from the get-go—motivation for the crime was probably even key to finding her—but he’d made the decision to trust Maryse’s judgment. She wouldn’t risk her daughter’s life for the sake of a few details.
He opened his mouth to say as much, then stopped when Maryse herself appeared in the door. Her face was even paler than usual, and she had two small, dark-colored notebooks and a stack of papers in one hand and a slim laptop computer in the other. She held them out, her face ashen.
“What were you doing with these?” She directed the question to Dee, and Brooks could hear every ounce of tension in her voice. “Were you trying to pass her off as your own?”
“It was just another option,” Dee responded.
“Where were you taking her?”
Brooks eyed the notebooks a second time and realized what they really were. Passports.
Maryse turned his way, fear and worry evident in her eyes. “One for her. One for Greg. And all these pieces of paper are left over from making one for Camille. And the laptop was left on a travel website.”
With sickness churning in his gut, Brooks took the passports and opened them. They looked as good as real, and he had a feeling they’d stand up under closer scrutiny, too. He turned to Dee.
What the hell had they been planning?
He didn’t get a chance to ask. The tiny woman was suddenly on the move. She sprang up from the couch, reached under the coffee table and drew out a gun. By the time Brooks could get his own weapon free from his side, she had hers pointed at Maryse.
He raised the barrel and automatically tried to move in between the two women, but Dee cocked her gun, freezing him to the spot.
“Stay right there,” she ordered. “Put down the gun slowly or I’ll shoot her.”
Brooks did as he was told, cursing inwardly. He should’ve anticipated the woman’s forethought and he shouldn’t have underestimated her palpable need for control.
“You don’t want to do this,” he said, dropping into police-negotiation mode as he set his weapon on the coffee table. “Whatever it is you need, we can get. No one has to get hurt.”
Dee shook her head. “Little too late for bargaining. Nank has the girl. I’ve got the gun. And you two have nothing.”
“What about Greg?” Brooks replied.
The woman shook her head a second time. “Idle threat. You didn’t kill him. And I don’t think you will. So it’ll just be a matter of time before he shows up to help me. Give me the passports.”
As Brooks handed them over, Maryse inhaled sharply. He wished he could offer her some reassurance. Instead, he had to concentrate all his efforts on getting them out of the situation.
“There has to be something else you want,” he said, careful not to sound desperate.
“You have a car?”
He nodded. “You need a ride somewhere?”
“No, actually. I just need your keys.” She held out her hand.
He reached into his pocket, grabbed the metal ring, then pulled it out and tossed it toward her. In the split second she raised her free hand to catch the keys, Brooks leaped into action. He threw his body forward, arms out. His calf cracked the table, and Dee jumped back at the last second, but he still managed to catch her forearm with the side of his hand. The gun wobbled, then fell. They both went after it, scrambling across the floor. The petite woman was closer, and she reached the weapon first.
“Get down!” Brooks shouted at Maryse as Dee lifted the gun from the ground.
A blur, gasp and thump let him know she’d complied. Which was a damned good thing because the second she hit the ground, a shot rang through the air. It only took a second—and a few chunks of flying drywall—to figure out where the bullet had landed. Straight into the wall where Maryse had been standing just a moment earlier.
With his ears ringing and a growl building in his throat, Brooks grabbed the edge of the coffee table and propelled himself toward Dee. She was just readying the weapon again when he reached her. He snapped out a hand in an attempt to grab it. She stumbled back and out of reach. He lunged again. His hand closed on the barrel of the gun, and he lifted it up. With just a moment to spare, he noted that Dee’s finger was on the trigger. He dropped his grip as she squeezed, narrowly missing the searing heat as the weapon fired a second time.
The ceiling above them cracked then shuddered, and somewhere in the distance, sirens sprang to life. They were far off, but there was no doubt about where they were headed. Someone with quick fingers had clearly dialed 9-1-1, and the nearest patrol car was on its way.
Time was about to run out.
Dee White appeared to realize it, too. She stepped backward, hands out, gun up.
“I’ll take a ninety-second head start,” she announced, then eyed Maryse up and down. “And just for fun, why don’t you use the time to explain to him how Camille’s not actually your daughter?”
“She is my daughter.”
“My grandmother had a saying. Don’t split hairs. She’s not your biological daughter. Don’t bother lying.” The tiny woman’s eyes flicked to the window as the sirens got a little louder. “Ninety seconds.”
Then she bolted from the living room. Moments later, a door slammed from somewhere in the house, and with the exception of the approaching sirens, silence reigned. Brooks moved through the room, using his sleeve to wipe anything he thought he’d touched. He snapped up the pieces of phony passport with Camille’s info, then grabbed the keys Dee had discarded. Finally, he turned his attention to Maryse. She stood stiffly, her gaze on the laptop in her hands.
Doubt tickled at Brooks’s conscience, but he refused to acknowledge it. His instincts were rarely off. He didn’t see how they could have failed him in regards to this situation.
Tension hung in the air, and he knew the only way to clear it was to get the truth from her. But not right then.
“I think our minute and a half is up,” he said instead.
She didn’t move, and when she spoke, her voice was barely loud enough to be heard. “Brooks... I told you it was complicated.”
“I believed you. I still believe you.”
“I understand if you don’t.”
Brooks took a step forward and reached out. “I do, sweetheart. But now we’ve got to go.”
Finally, she lifted her eyes. Then one of her hands. And she let him pull her through the house and out the back, just as the flash of red and blue rounded the corner near the front of the house.