Confiscated Conception

He still used the same shampoo.

It had always reminded her of the sea. And sex. But then a lot of things about Jared still reminded her of sex.

He was so unlike the other guys she’d dated in college. No comparison really. He was basically a grown-up bad boy who’d won his share of fights, some with his fists. The tiny scar on his chin and the other on the edge of his right eyebrow were evidence of that.

Like the rest of him, his hair was a bit untamed, a little too long—with a natural style that fit his personality to a tee. No glossy polish. No pretenses. Just a man who had a unique way of reminding her that she was very glad indeed to be a woman.

Even now, with all the uncertainty of the moment, she still had the same reaction to Jared that she usually did. Much to her disgust, he pretty much stole her breath. God knows how many times that had happened, so she couldn’t blame it on the adrenaline. All he had to do was walk into a room and she melted into a puddle of…something.

Something that Rachel quickly pushed aside.

Those days of lust and great sex were over. They were on the brink of a divorce and their lives were in turmoil. This wasn’t the time for the-way-we-were musings.

“I appreciate the plural pronoun, and the concern for my safety,” Jared commented. “But I seriously doubt Esterman wants to tangle with me.”

Rachel wasn’t so sure. Tangling seemed to be something that didn’t intimidate Clarence Esterman, and that was only one of the reasons why the thought of his going free chilled her to the bone.

She checked the time. It was nearly twelve-thirty. In a half an hour she was supposed to be on the stand to testify about all the incriminating documents and memos she’d observed her boss shredding. Since there were no other witnesses, she was essentially the prosecution’s case. Yet, here she was, in a remote cabin at least thirty miles from the courthouse. The district attorney’s office and dozens of other people were probably in an uproar by now.

“I can build a fire if you want to dry off,” Jared offered.

“No thanks.” Despite the rain, the room was muggy and warm, which wasn’t unusual for a Texas spring afternoon. However, that combined with the spent adrenaline was making her feel woozy. She definitely needed a clear head for the things they were about to face. “I’d rather try to figure out how we’re going to find the baby.”

The sooner that happened, the sooner she could take the stand. And the sooner she’d know if the baby was actually their baby. Rachel didn’t want to think beyond that. One step at a time was all she could handle right now.

He draped his jacket over the back of a chair, the drops of rain sliding off it and spattering onto the hardwood floor. “Like I told you in the car, I’m hoping Aaron Merkens can give us a starting point.”

Yes. That would prevent them from having to take the needle-in-a-haystack approach, but it still wasn’t very reassuring. After all, Sasha Young had been in prison, and Merkens was her friend.

“You think you can trust him?”

“No way in hell.”

She almost wished Jared had hesitated. The fact that he hadn’t meant the meeting that was supposed to take place in seven hours might just be a trap.

Maybe Esterman had known they’d find Merkens and try to get information from him. And if Esterman had known that, then he also could have arranged for the cops to be there to take her back into protective custody.

Talk about the ultimate irony. When it came to her testimony, Esterman and the cops were now on the same side. Both would do just about anything to get her to take the stand. One, however, wanted her to lie.

With his back to her, Jared peeled off his wet shirt and hung it over one of the other chairs to dry. “Remember Mason Tanner, the P.I. I’ve used for some of my cases?”

“Sure.” When she and Jared were still together, Turner came to the house a couple of times. “What about him?”

“He’s helping us out. A lot. I’m having him check out the park where we’re meeting Merkens, and he’ll try to make sure it’s safe. I can’t leave you here by yourself. You’ll have to come with me.”

Rachel hadn’t considered staying behind to be an option, anyway. As difficult as it was to be around Jared, it would have been impossible to do this solo.

“What about this leak in the department you mentioned earlier?” she asked, trying not to look directly at him. It seemed a little too intimate to be so close to him while he was half naked. Instead, she straightened the stack of old magazines in the center of the table.

It didn’t help.

Her body still knew he was half naked.

“A couple of weeks ago someone put a tap on my phone at work.” He extracted the envelope from his jacket and tossed it next to the magazines. “Then I caught this officer over in homicide, Sergeant Colby Meredith, trying to access some security files. Files that would have told him the location of the safe house where you were staying.”

“Sweet heaven.” Rachel had never heard Esterman mention this particular person, but he had a lot of people on his payroll. “You confronted Meredith?”

“Sure did. He only recently transferred in from Austin, so he covered for himself by saying he wasn’t familiar with the files and accidentally typed in the wrong code. I didn’t believe him for a minute, so I’ve been watching him. But I figure Esterman put Meredith in place to find you so he could have one of his hired goons personally deliver the news about the baby. When Meredith wasn’t successful, Esterman had no choice but to use me as a middleman.”

Of course. They probably hadn’t wanted to involve Jared since he was a cop, but he was one of the few people who could get to her. That one little detail had embroiled him in all of this.

He turned to type something on the keyboard, and Rachel saw the scar. An angry slice across his chest, just below his heart. She actually took a step back, to put some distance between her and that brutal reminder of what had happened nearly eighteen months earlier.

“Pretty disgusting, huh?” she heard him say.

Only then did Rachel realize she’d been staring at his chest.

Unable to answer him, she merely shook her head. Disgusting wasn’t the right word. More like distressing. The injury had nearly killed him. In fact, the doctors told her that his heart had stopped beating while he was in surgery.

Jared shrugged and went to the closet. He grabbed two T-shirts off hangers, slipped on one and handed the other one to her. “They tell me it’ll fade with time.”

The scar would, yes. The memory of it wouldn’t. Nor would the rift it had caused between them.

In the end, the event that had caused that scar had also cost them their marriage. For Rachel, it had been easier to fall out of love with Jared than to risk another nightmare like that. She’d had enough nightmares to last a lifetime.

Rachel changed her shirt in the tiny bathroom and hung the other up to dry. She turned to leave, but first made the mistake of glancing in the mirror. No makeup. Her hair was soaking wet. She was much too pale. She looked even worse than she felt—something she hadn’t thought possible.

“We’re connected to the Internet,” Jared called out. “Think you can try to find out some information about Sasha Young’s last known address?”

“I’ll try.” Glad that she could do something to get her mind off their situation, Rachel went back into the room and took the seat in front of the computer.

Jared moved the envelope closer to her, and she noticed the address written on the outside. “I got that from Aaron Merkens,” he explained. “It’s supposedly a rental house on the south side of town, but it could be bogus. There was no phone listing for it. While you’re doing that, I need to call Tanner.”

Jared took out his cell phone and walked into the kitchen to make his call. Rachel didn’t waste any time. She used some of her CPA knowledge and located the real estate tax records for the county. With any luck, the actual owner of the property would be listed.

While she waited for the file to load, she glanced at the envelope. She already knew it contained the photos of the dead woman and the baby, but she was almost afraid to find out what other surprises it held—especially since they were dealing with Esterman here.

Trying to ignore the envelope, Rachel quickly scanned the tax information on the screen, but it wasn’t good news. The owner of the rental property was a corporation. Probably a dummy company at that. If Esterman owned the house, he was too smart not to bury that information under layers of paperwork.

She fed in the next search to try to find out more information about the corporation, while toying with the flap on the envelope. Rachel tried to talk herself out of opening it, but even knowing that the contents could break her heart, she couldn’t stop herself. The first thing she saw when she glanced inside was the photo of the baby.

It took her a moment just to find her breath and longer to steady it. As if it were fragile and might shatter in her hand, she lifted it out and placed it neatly on the table next to the computer. She hadn’t really looked at the image when Jared tried to hand it to her in the bedroom at the safe house, but she studied it now.

The tiny round face was perfect. Beautiful. A delicate mouth. A spattering of bronze-colored hair on his head. The color of Jared’s hair. Of course, that meant nothing. Lots of babies had brown hair.

He could be anyone’s child. Anyone’s. And Esterman could be using him the same way he’d used dozens of other people over the three years she’d worked for him. Still, Rachel couldn’t seem to take her gaze off that precious little face.

His eyes were closed in what appeared to be a peaceful sleep. She prayed that it was indeed peaceful, and that he had no comprehension whatsoever of the danger he was in.

God.

He was in danger because Esterman had chosen to use him as a pawn in a very sick game.

But was this her baby?

Was this the child she’d desperately wanted but had given up hope of ever having?

The memories of her infertility blended together with the tormenting thoughts of the baby. Looking back on it, Jared had never seemed as committed to having a child as she had. He hadn’t objected. Not really. But then, he hadn’t poured his whole heart into it, either. He’d proven that when he refused to let her use the fertilized embryos immediately after they separated. He hadn’t wanted to bring a child into a broken relationship.

Or so he said.

At the time, his steadfast refusal had felt like the ultimate slap in the face. It still did. If she hadn’t gotten involved with the undercover investigation into Esterman’s wrongdoings, she almost certainly would have pursued the issue in court. That was the only reason the embryos still had been in storage. So, in a way it was her fault that Esterman had been able to carry things through to this point.

She touched the photograph again, running her fingertips over the baby’s mouth. His lips were pursed slightly as if he’d just had a bottle. That brought on another wave of fear and panic. Were they feeding him? Was there anyone to hold him when he cried?

Rachel wasn’t even aware that she was crying until she felt a tear slide down her cheek. More followed, and though she tried to choke it back, the sound of her sob cut through the room.

Jared was suddenly there, next to her. He didn’t reach out for her. Thank God—she didn’t think she could handle that right now.

“I’m sorry,” Rachel whispered, shaking her head. “I tried to hold it together.”

“No apology necessary.” He slid his hands into the pockets of his jeans and rocked back on his heels. “I know this isn’t easy for you.”

“Still, the tears won’t help. They never do.” She swiped the rest of them away. “You’re the only man who’s ever seen me cry. You know that?”

“Women tell me that all the time.” Jared smiled. “I’m not sure it’s a compliment.”

It was the right thing to say. A lighthearted and typical Jared comeback to diffuse an otherwise tense moment. Rachel wanted to give in to it, to sit there and let him comfort her. But she couldn’t. If she took that kind of comfort from him, it would be too easy to fall back into the same old patterns.

Jared was still a cop. A cop who put duty above anything else, including his own life.

And that would always be there between them.

Rachel stifled the rest of her tears and returned to the computer. But Jared didn’t move. He stood there staring down at her. When she lifted her gaze to his, she saw that his immobility wasn’t just because of her tearful reaction to the photo.

“Did you get through to Tanner?” she asked.

Jared nodded. “We couldn’t talk long. He had to make another call.”

“What’s wrong?” Rachel held her breath and waited for an explanation.

“Tanner just told me that the cops found Sasha Young’s body a couple of hours ago.”

“Oh.” It hit Rachel a lot harder than she would have thought it would, and the breath swooshed out of her. Moments earlier, Sasha Young had been simply a possibility. A potential piece of a puzzle.

“She was murdered,” Jared continued. “Strangled. Her body was dumped in the Guadalupe River, but some fisherman spotted it and called the cops.”

As horrible as that was, Rachel knew he wasn’t finished. There was more. “And?”

“Tanner knows the medical examiner, so he got the guy to give him a preliminary report. Miss Young recently had a C-section.” Jared looked her straight in the eye. “He estimates the surgery was done about a week ago.”

A week. The timing was perfect. The pieces were starting to come together—with one horrible, inevitable conclusion. Esterman’s plan was real. Not some hoax meant to scare her into cooperating.

There was indeed a child.

Somewhere.

And he was in terrible danger.

Chapter Four

He listened while Mason Tanner fleshed out the news he’d just delivered, but Jared seriously doubted the fleshing out would make it any more palatable.

Basically, it sucked.

“Your captain wasn’t pleased when I told her I didn’t know where you were,” Tanner continued. “I guess she figured we’d be in touch, and that I’d try to talk some sense into you. Well, consider yourself talked to, because I’m on your side all the way. I don’t think you have a choice about what you’re doing right now.”

“Thanks,” Jared mumbled. But he didn’t need anyone, including his friend, to reiterate the fact that his options were slim and none. He was painfully aware of it.

“So Captain Thornton basically thinks I’ve kidnapped Rachel?” Jared asked Tanner.

That garnered Rachel’s attention. Jared saw her fingers still on the keyboard, and she looked up from the screen. Her left eyebrow arched questioningly. She probably wanted to know how he felt about that.

In other words, a rhetorical question.

Jared decided it was a good time to stare out the window and finish his conversation.

“Have they made it official?” Jared asked, lowering his voice. “Is there an APB or anything else I should be aware of?”

“No. Not as of an hour ago, anyway—but the cops are quietly looking for you. The chief of police apparently isn’t too eager to put out an APB on one of the department’s most decorated officers. Face it, Jared, you’re the Dudley Do-Right poster child for SAPD.”

Jared shook his head and silently cursed Tanner’s sarcasm. “And they think their poster child has gone skydiving off the deep end but that I’ll soon come to my senses?”

“Something like that. A temporary insanity kind of thing brought on by the upcoming divorce and the ordeal that Rachel’s been through.”

The affirmation had his throat tightening. Hell. He’d known all along that it could come to this. His reputation would basically be trashed. Perhaps along with his career. A career he’d spent twelve long years building.

Esterman couldn’t have planned it any better. In one swoop, the man had hit both him and Rachel where it hurt the most.

The baby and the badge.

Jared didn’t even want to guess what else Esterman had in store for them. Round one sure wasn’t going that well.

“What about the meeting with Merkens?” Jared asked, forcing his attention back to the matter at hand. He couldn’t dwell on things he couldn’t fix, and at the moment his reputation at headquarters was well out of the repairable mode. He had to solve this case before he could even start damage control. “Is that a go?”

“Sure, but you know there’s no way I can guarantee that either the location or Merkens will be safe. Too many variables and too much open space.”

“I know. I didn’t pick the location, and I wasn’t asking for miracles. I just don’t want to be ambushed by Esterman’s men before I step out of the car.”

“I’ll do my best. My advice—watch your back. And your front.”

Oh, he would do that. But Jared wasn’t certain that’d be enough.

Jared ended the call and slipped his phone back into his jacket pocket. “Good news,” he told Rachel. Best to try to sound optimistic even if there wasn’t squat to be optimistic about. “They delayed the trial to give the prosecution a chance to find you.”

She didn’t say anything for several moments. “The cops are after you?”

It really wasn’t a good time for her to ask that. And maybe it was his imagination, or else the massive amount of baggage between them, but Jared heard the old disapproval in her tone. Not that he needed more, but it fueled his frustration and put him on the defensive.

“I still have my badge,” he said quickly. “I’m still a cop.”

She made a sound that could have meant anything, or nothing. Unfortunately, it felt like something.

“Look, I know you don’t approve of what I do, Rachel, but if you don’t mind, I’d rather skip the cold shoulder and lecture this afternoon. I’ve already got enough to deal with here without rehashing the past.”

She issued a dismissive glance and calmly turned her attention back to the computer screen. “Thanks for that reminder, Jared.” He couldn’t help but notice that she pressed the keys a little harder than required. “I was starting to have a few lustful thoughts about you, but I’m sure that’ll fix the problem.”

Jared had already geared up to move on to the next subject—the meeting with Merkens—but then her comment sank in.

“Lustful thoughts?” he repeated.

Rachel nodded. “You know, as in those thoughts dealing with lust?”

Nope. He hadn’t misunderstood her. It was a very succinct and sarcastic answer. Now, the question was—how should he respond? Should he respond?

Rachel helped him along with his decision. Well, in a roundabout sort of way. She didn’t even blink. But she did hike up her chin and pull the ice-princess act that he pretty much hated. And she knew it, too. He could tell by the almost smug glint in her eye.

“Believe me, that wasn’t the clarification I was looking for,” he insisted. “What I meant was…” Jared stopped and rethought the question that had been about to fly out of his mouth. There was a fine line between a request for information and an idiotic remark. Best to go for the direct approach. “What the hell are you saying, anyway?”

She shrugged. “I don’t have Alzheimer’s, Jared. I know how good we once were in bed.”

So did he. And for some reason those memories had gotten a lot more vivid since he’d seen her at the safe house.

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