The Collingwood Heirs

She remembered awakening to the sound of her hospital door closing. Oh, God!

Full-blown panic gripped her heart. What if the person who’d entered her room hadn’t been a nurse? What if the Hollywood Goliath was actually telling the truth?

“I want other tests done at a lab of my choosing,” she snapped, clutching the arm of her chair for support.

“Of course. No one wants to make a mistake with a matter this serious.”

She hadn’t expected him to agree to that demand, which convinced her this was no joke. She lurched to her feet. Her sister Lorraine worked in a law firm as a paralegal. She could help her find a lawyer. “I’m calling a lawyer.”

He stood up, too, towering over her. For a second the serious intensity of his expression shifted to something that bordered on genuine sympathy. She had the distinct impression he was about to touch her, but then he locked his expression up tight and threw away the key.

“I’d rather you not do that,” he said.

“Why? Because I’ll discover this is some scam? I think it’s time you left, Mr. Halloran.”

His jaw flexed into an intractable bulkhead, his mouth a flat line. He removed a paper from his pocket. “Read this. It’s the ransom note from the kidnappers.”

Stef heard time throb in her temples like a hammer striking a stake as she made herself take the note from his strong brown fingers. Fingers that were strong enough to take her baby from her. But he’d have to kill her first!

She read the note, each terrifying word.

Riana Collingwood is alive. She is a bright, pretty child with her father’s eyes and her mother’s smile. Prepare a five million dollar cash ransom and await further instruction.

Five million dollars! Oh, God, that wasn’t good.

Neither was the last line.

Involve the police this time and lose her forever.

Stef started to hyperventilate.

The man who had just destroyed her life took her elbow, his hand hot as the devil’s touch. “Hey, sit back down. Now bend forward and put your head between your knees, okay?

“Just breathe.”

She did what he ordered, even though what she really wanted to do was to smack him.

He sat on the arm of the chair and she felt the tentative stroke of his hand on her back like a zap of electricity. “I wouldn’t advise bringing a third party into this now. It could put your real child’s life in danger.”

She sat bolt upright, still gulping for air.

“I’m assuming that the hair samples the kidnapper sent belong to your real daughter. We’ll have to do tests immediately to confirm that. Regardless, the Foundation will cooperate fully with the kidnapper’s demand and pay the ransom.” He rubbed a slow circle that burned into her skin and made her forget all about breathing. “There’s no kind or gentle way to say this—if the kidnapper realizes he has the wrong child, he could kill your daughter.”

Stef glared at him, his Hollywood-handsome face inches from hers. She’d heard all she could take. Tears welled in her eyes. God, somewhere in Mitch Halloran there had to lurk a touch of humanity. He’d tried to soothe her when she’d started to hyperventilate and he was stroking her back, infusing her with the iron-core strength of his hand.

“Please, can’t you just go away? The Collingwoods are dead. Just say it’s a mistake. No one will know. Mistakes happen all the time in labs, don’t they?”

His cobalt eyes flickered like shadows in the night, indicating he was considering her request. Her heart filled with hope as she prayed he’d relent.

“Is that what you really want me to do, Mrs. Shelton?”

His voice dipped with scorn. “Just go away and forget about your real daughter, who doesn’t have red rubber boots or a real mommy to take her trick or treating?”

Fury gripped her at his callousness. She tried to shove him off the arm of the chair. “You bastard.”

To her shock, he grabbed her in an attempt to gain his balance and landed on top of her in the chair, his chest pressed against hers, his nose inches from her face. She could feel the steely hardness of his muscled body and smell the scents of citrus and sea salt on his skin.

Even his teeth were Hollywood perfect. “You’re not thinking straight,” he said bluntly. “I saw you in the yard with Keely. I know if you thought you had a child out there, you’d move heaven and earth to get her back.”

Stef felt hot tears slip onto her face. Her stomach knotted as she tried to imagine the face of the little girl the kidnapper had described, who’d come from her womb. Yes, in her mother’s heart she desperately wanted her child. But all she could see was Keely’s face—the beloved little girl whom she’d fed and changed, and whose voice was the sound of happiness. She elbowed Mitch in the ribs. “Get off me!”

Oh, God, this wasn’t happening!

“Are you going to take Keely from me?” she demanded as he levered himself off her.

Stef saw the stark truth in his face before he could shutter his expression.

“That’s not my job. My concern is finding out whether the child being held is your daughter and getting her back safely. I’ll need a DNA sample from you. And I’ll need something that might have your husband’s DNA on it.”

“Like what? I have some of Brad’s things stored away that I thought Keely might find comforting to have,” she said, trying to bend her mind to comprehend the sickening thought that her flesh-and-blood child had been in the care of kidnappers for the past thirty months. Her heart jerked. Had her child been neglected? Or abused?

“Did you keep a jacket or a ball cap? Something that may have come in contact with his neck, wrist or forehead is more likely to have his DNA on it.”

“I’ll see what I can find.” She forced herself to stand and brush past his towering frame. On stiff legs, she marched to the alcove to get Keely. She wasn’t leaving Mitch Halloran alone with her daughter.

Her daughter. A sob clawed up her throat. Even if another DNA test proved Keely really was the Collingwood heir, she couldn’t accept for a moment that Keely wouldn’t be in her life forever. As soon as this was over, she’d get a lawyer. Surely no judge in the country would take a baby away from the woman who’d raised it if the biological parents were dead?

But this isn’t any baby, insinuated a doom-and-gloom voice in her mind that sounded remarkably like Mitch Halloran’s blunt-edged baritone. Her sunshiney daughter who loved to dance and sing and bake cookies was the Collingwood heir—the heir to one of the largest family fortunes in the United States.

Who was she kidding?

Stef stopped in the arched doorway to the alcove, overwhelmed by the battle she was up against. Keely, the delightful center of her universe, was pretending to feed toy plastic fruits to a doll. “Eat, baby, eat,” she chanted. She glanced up and saw Stef and her blue-green eyes rounded with empathy.

“Mommy—sad?”

Stef sank onto the floor and pulled Keely into her lap, committing to memory the tropical scent of her hair, the perfect peanut shape of her nose and the snug heaven-on-earth feel of her compact body. How could she bear losing this darling child? “Mommy’s very sad, Kee. But when I hold you everything’s better.”

To Stef’s dismay, Keely started to sing their “I love you” song. The tears Stef had been struggling to hold back burst out in a torrent.

She rocked Keely tightly in her arms. “I love you, too, baby. I love you, too.”

SHE WAS CRYING.

Mitch stiffened as his every muscle tried to deflect the sound of Stephanie Shelton’s anguished sobs. His stomach felt as if it were coated with hot tar. The only thing that made the situation bearable was the hope that she’d soon be reunited with her own lost child.

Mitch knew what a gift a mother like her would be to that child. Everything his own mother had never been.

He’d give Stef a few more minutes, then gently prod her into action. Time wasn’t on their side—there was no way of knowing when the kidnapper would again make contact with specific instructions for the ransom. For all they knew, whoever had switched Riana and Keely could have another plan in the works to switch them back.

Flexing the tight muscles in his shoulders, Mitch unclipped the cell phone from his belt and punched in The Guardian’s phone number.

“The Guardian,” G.D.’s militarily brusque voice said.

Mitch’s lips curled in wry humor. Uncomfortable with his new boss’s curt directive to address him as sir, he’d quickly dubbed The Guardian “G.D.,” which stood for goddamn. As in goddamn he couldn’t believe he’d handed in his gun and his badge because The Guardian had asked him for assistance with this case.

Mitch had wanted to be a detective since he was twelve, when he’d gone to live with his grandfather who worked as a janitor in the Parker Administration Building of the L.A.P.D.

On days when Paddy’s back had pained him from his shrapnel injury—a nasty souvenir from the Korean War—Mitch would come along to pick up wastebaskets and mop the floors in the Detective Headquarters Division. He’d never thought about not being a police detective. He’d thought he’d probably drag his last breath on the streets of L.A.—a fitting way to go for the life he’d chosen.

Mitch angled a surreptitious glance at Stef who was guiding Keely toward the bedrooms. His heart tightened at the paleness of her face and the moist path of tears on her cheek. For the first time in two years he had no doubt whatsoever that he was right where he was supposed to be.

He could almost hear Paddy telling him to keep soldiering on. It never gets any easier, son.

His chest filled with an echo of longing for the gruff man who’d given him the only home he’d ever known. Who’d given him clumsily wrapped Christmas presents and had taken him to Dodger games to celebrate his birthdays where he’d slipped Mitch sips of his beer. They were not the kind of memories that made sappy movies, but they were incredibly precious to a kid starved for attention.

Mitch realized his thoughts were drifting when G.D.’s voice rumbled, “Who’s calling?”

He snapped back into focus. “Operation Bassinet. It’s Halloran, G.D. I just spoke to Mrs. Shelton. She’s devastated, but she’s on board.”

Concern edged The Guardian’s tone. “Is Riana okay?”

“Right as rain. We should be back in the city tonight. By the way, the husband is dead. Two years ago. In a rock climbing accident. Think there’s anything fishy in that? It could be a coincidence, but whoever abducted Riana from the hospital knew how to rappel.”

When Mitch had accepted the job one day after the ransom demand had been received, The Guardian had apprised him of the details of Riana’s kidnapping. The suspect was a Caucasian male who’d sneaked into the maternity postpartum wing during visitor’s hours using a stolen visitor’s badge and a hospital identification bracelet similar to those given to the new dads. He’d hidden in an unoccupied room and zapped the nurse, who’d been returning Riana Collingwood to the nursery after a late night feeding, with a stun gun.

Within minutes the kidnapper had bound the nurse and made his escape with the baby through a hole he’d cut in the second floor window to circumvent the hospital’s state-of-the-art alarm system and the high-tech baby identification bracelets equipped with receivers.

By the time the staff realized the Collingwood heir had been stolen, the kidnapper had been long gone.

“I’ve already assigned some men to do a background check of the family. I’ll ask them to dig up what they can on the husband’s death. Brad Shelton would have been in a perfect position to switch the babies. If a man walked into a hospital carrying a baby, who’d question him if he walked out carrying one?”

“We’re on the same wavelength, G.D.”

“Will you be able to get the husband’s DNA sample?”

“I’m on it.”

“Excellent. We don’t want any doubts as to the identity of the child the kidnapper has. I’ll be waiting for you and Mrs. Shelton at the hotel.”

The Guardian disconnected the call, but not before Mitch heard the distinct cry of a baby in the background and the soothing murmur of a woman’s voice.

That was odd. He hooked his cell phone back onto his belt and went to check on Stef. Had The Guardian been with another client? Or did G.D. have a personal life?

G.D. was a man cloaked in mystery and Mitch was determined to at least learn his name. A man who didn’t know who he was working for was a fool of an employee.

He’d already had a buddy in L.A.P.D.’s Scientific Investigative Division lift G.D.’s fingerprints from the paper on which he’d written his ridiculously high offer to Mitch. But all he’d discovered was that The Guardian’s lily-white fingerprints weren’t on file. Figured.

Mitch walked down the hall and found Stef and Keely in the tiny master bedroom, which was crammed with a walnut double-bed, a matching chest of drawers and a sewing machine in a cabinet. Keely was petting scraps of orange fur on the floor near the sewing machine and calling them “kitty” while Stef rummaged through the closet.

Mitch took in the intriguing view of Stef’s jeans-clad bottom as she reached for the jumble of clothes, luggage, shopping bags and shoe boxes piled up on the closet shelf. “Careful,” he warned as Stef stood on her tiptoes and tugged on a shoe box.

Too late.

A landslide of shopping bags, sweaters and shoe boxes slid off the shelf in slow motion, raining down on her.

Keely giggled and clapped her hands. “Oopsie, doopsie, all fall down, Mommy!”

Stef rolled her eyes and Mitch heard the tears hovering in her voice. “It’s not supposed to all fall down on Mommy, Kee. Now we have a real mess on our hands.”

Shoulders hunched, Stef plucked a royal-blue ball cap from the debris field and held it out to him, her face flooded with color that made her seem even more vulnerable. Mitch was consciously aware he was treading into no man’s land, becoming too hypersensitive to her emotions. He gave himself a mental kick in the butt.

“Will this do? Brad wore it for company ball games.”

Careful to allow her some dignity, he kept his gaze averted from her moist eyes and examined the inner headband of the Office Outfitter’s cap. It was stained with sweat. “This’ll do.” He gestured at the mess on the closet floor. “Since you’ve already got your luggage out, pack a bag for you and your daughter.”

“Why?”

Mitch made the mistake of looking at her. Her green-gold eyes were as dangerous as a riptide and fringed with long sooty lashes. He was none too happy that he was making personal observations about the length of her eyelashes. He was too seasoned a cop to let himself get sucked in by a pair of pleading eyes. The anguish in Teresa Lopez’s eyes when he’d informed her that her granddaughter was dead would haunt him to his dying day.

Don’t think about Carmen or Theresa, he told himself. This is another case. Another chance to save a child.

Cold detachment firmed his voice. “You’re coming with me. Keely’s the Collingwood heir. You’re both under my protection until this is over.”

THE KIDNAPPER WAS CAREFUL to arrive after dark to avoid being seen. Aunt Helen and Uncle Fred’s farmhouse was set back from the road, but you couldn’t be too careful.

Aunt Helen answered the door, her worn face brightening into a smile. “Well, this is nice, two visits in a month. I was just washing up the dinner dishes. Let me cut you some cake. It’s chocolate with butter-pecan frosting. Emma put the pecans on all by herself.”

“Then I definitely want some. Where is she?”

“Helping Fred feed the rabbits out back.” Aunt Helen stopped in the dingy hallway papered with faded blue windmills and folded her gnarled fingers in prayer, her voice a fervent whisper. “Have you heard from him?”

“Sorry, but I got an e-mail from Emma’s mother’s sister. She was looking for her sister and didn’t know about Emma.”

“Did she offer to take her?”

“I didn’t ask in so many words, but I told her about Emma and offered to send a picture. I’m hoping once she sees her she’ll be open to the idea of looking after her.”

“That would be wonderful. I can’t understand how adults can just abandon their children and their responsibilities. Fred and I love her dearly but we won’t be able to take care of her forever. Fred’s getting more and more forgetful. Yesterday he forgot he’d turned the kettle on and nearly started a fire.”

The kidnapper made sympathetic noises. What Aunt Helen didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her. Killing her son had been an unpleasant, but necessary precaution. And frankly, the world was better off without that shiftless SOB. “I’m sure he will turn up eventually. You know I’ll do whatever I can to help with Emma’s expenses. I’m just sorry I can’t come by more often.”

Aunt Helen shook her head. “We know you’re busy.” She made shooing motions toward the kitchen. “Now come sit down and tell me what’s going on in your life.”

The kidnapper winced, the question striking too close to home. Everything would work out according to plan as long as The Guardian cooperated with the ransom demand. “Didn’t you say something about cake?”

Aunt Helen cut a thick wedge of cake and served it on a chipped china plate.

The fork rattled as boots clomped up the back steps and the rear kitchen door burst open.

Emma, barely as tall as Uncle Fred’s knee, entered first in a navy-blue jacket, her blue eyes glowing beneath a dark fringe of bangs and her cheeks like polished apples. “Gamma, we’re ba-ack.”

“So you are, little duck. Take off your jacket and your boots,” Aunt Helen said with a smile, rising to help her. “And come say hello to your daddy’s cousin.”

“Quack-quack,” Emma sang back vociferously.

“That means hello,” Uncle Fred interpreted, shrugging out of his red-and-black plaid wool jacket and hanging it on a wooden peg near the door. The retired electrician looked thinner than ever, his pants held around his waist with a belt cinched small as a dog’s collar. Even his handshake felt feeble.

They sat around the table and talked while Aunt Helen fixed tea and Emma drew pictures on construction paper with stubby crayons.

When it was Emma’s bedtime, the kidnapper offered to read her a story. It was simple enough to snap a picture of her in her pajamas holding the front page of today’s edition of the New York Times.

Soon, the picture would come in very handy.

Chapter Two

Stef held Keely in her arms and stared mutinously at Mitch Halloran over the roof of the black luxury sedan as he stowed their luggage in the trunk. She was not ready for this. Night surrounded them with cold velvet. The stars were crystal-clear overhead.

Stef couldn’t bring herself to touch the door handle. It had been hard enough to pack clothes and toys for Keely and to allow Mitch to collect a DNA sample from their mouths with a swab. She did not want to get into this car and drive toward an uncertain future, which might not include the precious baby she held in her arms.

She couldn’t do it.

She had to do it. Another child needed her.

Mitch closed the trunk and stared back at her, not saying a word, but his Goliath expression said plenty.

She hated him, she really did. Hated how he loomed over the car—a golden malevolent griffin with sun-bleached hair. Hated how she noticed how endlessly broad his shoulders were and how she could feel his eyes silently reminding her that her flesh-and-blood child was spending yet another day without her real mommy.

That was the worst part of it. Nausea and anger churned in her at the heart-wrenching thought that she’d only known her real baby for a day. What if her real daughter was dead? Or would be killed once the ransom was paid. What if she never saw her again?

“Mommy?” Keely’s voice sounded pitifully small and tired in the darkness. “I don’t like that man. He makes you sad. I want my snuggie and my beddy-bye time.”

“Kee, that was rude. Mr. Halloran is a detective, which is kind of like a police officer, and he needs Mommy’s help. So we’re going to go with him and help him, okay? It’ll be fun. An adventure.”

Keely didn’t look convinced. Her brow wrinkled like a plump raisin. “No.”

Stef saw the white flash of Mitch Halloran’s patient smile in the darkness as he walked to the driver’s side door. He obviously knew better than to clash wills with an obstinate two-and-a-half-year-old. She smoothed the hair back from Keely’s forehead and kissed her frown away, her throat tightening with suppressed emotion. “Sometimes, Kee, we have to do things even when we don’t want to do them.” God, what an understatement! “I have snuggie and I’ll tuck it around you and we’ll have our beddy-bye time in the car.”

As she spoke, Stef opened the rear door of the car. The door handle felt cold in her grasp. “Okay, baby gorilla, into your car seat. I’ll sit right beside you.”

To her relief, Keely obeyed, though she moved at an excruciating turtle’s pace. Stef fastened her daughter into the car seat and covered her with her snuggie, the crocheted rainbow-pastel blanket that had been a gift from Brad’s former boss. Then she handed Keely her cup of milk with the leak-proof lid.

Stef was uncomfortably aware of Mitch Halloran’s unrelenting size filling the car, his scent commingling with the scents of leather and the sweet baby smell of Keely’s blanket. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been so aware of a man’s presence. It had probably been her wedding day when she’d walked down the aisle and seen Brad waiting for her at the front of the church.

Brad. He’d been handsome, engaging and unreliable.

Funny how she’d fooled herself into thinking he’d always be there for her. The fact that he was estranged from his parents, who hadn’t been invited to their wedding, should have been her first clue that family wasn’t at the top of Brad’s priority list. She wouldn’t be going through this nightmare if he’d stayed overnight in the hospital with them. But he’d had that job interview the next morning, which he’d blown anyway by arriving late.

Guilt struck her. It wasn’t Brad’s fault that someone had stolen their baby.

Mitch looped an arm across the back of the front passenger seat, his face a study of intense sharp angles as he backed the car out of the driveway—away from the home she’d bought with the money from Brad’s life insurance policy. At least he’d been responsible enough to buy life insurance when Stef had discovered she was pregnant.

Angry tears blurred her vision. She licked her dry lips as Mitch put the car in drive and her house receded from view. Next time she came home, would Keely be with her?

She straightened, lightly stroking Keely’s hair. She had to think positively. As soon as her real daughter was safely returned, she’d hire a lawyer and fight for custody of Keely, even if she had to sell her house and everything she owned to pay the legal fees.

Were there even any Collingwood family members who’d fight for custody of Keely? The Collingwood murders had been all over the news—speculation running rampant on the talk shows over who would get the money because there were no other living relatives except Lexi’s greedy sister, Annette York. Annette was probably going to get the death penalty for killing her sister and brother-in-law.

Stef cleared her throat and glared at the back of Mitch’s head. “Where are we going?” she asked.

His face was reflected in the rearview mirror. He drove the way the cops on those reality TV shows drove, both hands on the wheel, his body language vigilant as if he expected trouble to come leaping out of the bushes.

Oh, God. Did he?

Visions of car-jackings raced through her mind. She suddenly realized that if Keely really was the lost Collingwood heir, she’d stand to inherit a fortune, which was why she’d been kidnapped in the first place. Her inheritance would make her vulnerable all of her life.

“We’re going to New York City,” Mitch said, his baritone bursting Stef’s panicky realization that he hadn’t exaggerated when he’d said Keely needed protection. “The Foundation has offices there. My boss has reserved a suite at a hotel. He’ll meet us there.”