Tom woke, lying on his stomach, surrounded by soft sheets and Celia’s clean scent. Residual pleasure and contentment lingered in him and he smiled into the pillow.
I’ll be there, if you want me to.
The intensity with which he craved that support, craved her, speared through him all over again. However, she wasn’t here now. He was alone in the bed. He shifted to his back, the sunlight streaming in at the window indicating it was well after dawn.
The rushing of the shower filtered through the bathroom door. He rolled from the bed and followed the sounds of water and Celia’s quiet humming. In the bath, steam rose in lazy curlicues and the frosted glass door blurred the lines of Celia’s nude body. An eagerness beyond mere sexual wanting settled in him.
He slid the shower door aside. Water streamed over Celia’s body in a shimmering fall. Her gaze met his, a smile curving her lips. Sultry passion flared in her eyes.
“Good morning.” She slicked dripping hair away from her face.
Resting a hand on either side of her head, he leaned in and kissed her. “Now it’s a good morning, even if I did wake up without you.”
“I went for a run.” She laid her palms flat against his pecs. “You looked so peaceful I didn’t want to wake you. The last couple of days have been rough.”
“You make it better.” Zings of pleasure shot out from the soft caress of her fingers on his damp skin. He leaned in again to take her mouth in a wet, open kiss. On a quiet moan, she slid her hands up, winding her arms around his neck and pressing into him, the slick globes of her breasts gliding against his chest. Parting her lips further, she gently sucked his tongue deeper into her mouth. Renewed desire slammed into him. With a low growl, he backed her into the wall.
She moaned again, a low sound of approval. He caught her chin in one hand, holding her under his kiss until he lifted his mouth from hers long enough to whisper, “Mine.”
“Yours.” She murmured the affirmation into his mouth, arching into him. He slipped his other hand between them, down the wet surface of her stomach, sifting his fingers through the curls between her thighs and skimmed two fingers along the damp cleft of her sex. She gasped and he caught the sweet intake of breath with his lips.
“Open to me.”
She complied, thighs falling apart, allowing him greater access. Water fell about them, sheeting on heated skin, caressing. He stroked her, circling her clit, delving a pair of fingers into her clenching wetness. Another muffled moan rewarded him. She sagged against the wall, holding onto him with fingers that dug into his muscles.
“I love the way you kiss me,” she breathed. He trailed his mouth down her neck, suckling, nipping. She bit her lip, a raw groan slipping free. “Love the way you touch me.”
He twisted his fingers inside her, driving higher, sweeping his thumb across her clit in tiny circles. “I love how you respond to me.”
“Because it’s you.” She threw her head back, offering him more of her throat. “God, McMillian, I want you inside me.”
“Not this time, baby.” He deepened his thrusts, keeping up the rhythm between her thighs. Being with her kept the uncertainties surrounding Jessie’s death, his possible paternity at bay, but even more, the need to pleasure her, to return in this small way the simple peace she’d brought to his life, consumed him. In this one moment, isolated from the world, she was his. And he was hers. “Let me.”
A ragged sigh puffed from between her lips. Letting his other hand slip to caress and tease at her breast, he closed his teeth on her neck in a light, scraping pressure. She grabbed for his shoulders. “McMillian…”
Muscles contracted around his fingers, heat spreading along his nerves as the orgasm took her body. She cried out, nails abrading his skin, and he continued touching, thrusting, kissing, tweaking, until the small tremors died away and she slumped into his embrace, face pressed to his throat. A warm tightness took his chest, squeezing his heart and lungs in a weird pleasure-pain. Smoothing wet, tangled hair from her face, he cupped her jaw and lifted. Her lashes rose, eyes filled with lazy satiation and a reaffirmation of her promise from the previous night. He dipped his head to take her mouth once more, but in a softer kiss permeated with tenderness.
He could do this, could face the unthinkable, as long as he had her.
Breaking the kiss, eyes clenched against a wave of hot emotion and cold fear, he wrapped her close. Against his chest, her still-thundering heart thudded in a heavy, reassuring rhythm. He clung to that pulse like a lifeline in deadly seas.
Twenty-four hours. By this time tomorrow, he’d know if he faced his greatest nightmare all over again.
By this time tomorrow, he’d know whether or not he’d fathered a child he could do nothing to protect.
“Gentlemen, thank you for coming.” Ignoring Cook’s icy look, Tom closed the conference room door and indicated the chairs around the polished table. Beyond the room, activity stirred in the offices: phones ringing, low conversations, the muted buzz from the television playing the local station’s midmorning newsbreak. “Ms. St. John will join us shortly.”
“I won’t lie, Tom.” Sheriff Stanton Reed pulled out a chair. “I’m not happy about your hijacking this case.”
Tom shrugged, not deigning to sit. Cook remained standing also, his shoulders set in a tight line. “What hijacking? I merely had Ms. St. John explore another line of thought than your investigators.”
Relaxed in a chair, Tick Calvert rested his chin on his hand. “Word games. You’re poaching and you know it.”
“Considering I’ll be prosecuting Jessica’s killer, I wouldn’t call it poaching.”
“Prosecuting yourself. Interesting concept.” Cook folded his arms over his chest. “Kind of like being told to go fu—”
“All right.” Reed held up a quelling hand and shot a hard look at Cook. “That’s enough. I’m all for cooperation, Tom, and I’m open to what you have to share with us. I’m also not opposed Celia’s rejoining the investigation.”
“And what are you planning to offer in the way of sharing?”
Reed and Calvert exchanged a look. “We have some interesting DNA results.”
“So do we.” Celia spoke from the doorway. Tom glanced around at her. She looked calm and cool, her hair twisted into a sleek chignon, a navy pinstriped suit hugging her body. He remembered their hands tangling the night before and his palm tingled as a rush of well-being spread through him. “Who wants to go first?”
“The deceased baby from Tuesday?” Cook tugged a chair away from the table with a tight, frustrated movement. “Jessica Grady wasn’t the mother.”
“I sense a ‘but’ there.” Celia crossed the room and took the chair across from him. She lifted her chin, a challenging expression on her face.
“But there are similarities in DNA between the baby and the placental remains in Ms. Grady’s uterus.”
Tom frowned. “Similarities?”
“The babies share some of the same genetic material,” Cook explained. “Ford believes they’re related in some way. Siblings, with the same father, or cousins, maybe.”
“Well.” Celia tapped the faxed report in front of her. “That father is definitely
not
Mr. McMillian.”
She met Tom’s gaze and he saw his own relief reflected in her eyes. Finally able to completely relax, he pulled a chair away from the table and sat before his suddenly weak knees put him on the floor.
“We got a hit from the national database on our John Doe suspect’s prints.” Cook’s steady, icy voice pulled Tom’s attention back.
Celia leaned forward, excitement spiking on her face. “Who is he?”
“His name is Danny Blanton.” Tick pulled a folder from the small stack he’d brought. “He’s from Hamilton County, Florida. Has a list of priors a mile long, mostly small-time stuff.”
“So, what are we saying?” Celia frowned. “He escalated to kidnapping?”
Tick smiled and shook his head. “He’s associated with a bunch down there out of Taylor County that I remember from my days with the bureau’s Organized Crime section. His main function seemed to be as a courier or a runner for them.”
“Are we talking the mob here?” Tom asked.
Tick shook his head. “Dixie Mafia. These boys in Florida had loose ties to the Reeses and Hollowell up here. You can’t tell me there aren’t still people they’re associated with around here. And you know they’d be into anything with money attached.”
Celia arched an eyebrow. “Like money laundering?”
Tick laughed. “Definitely. Prostitution, drugs, gambling. You name it, they’ve done it. Less organized than the traditional mob, but they’re definitely still around.”
Her eyes narrowed in calculation, Celia looked at Tom once again. “We need to look deeper into Jessica’s life. There’ll be a connection somewhere. We just have to find it.”
Cook waved a hand in an annoyed gesture. “Would you mind sharing, or are you two going to continue talking in secret code over there?”
“In going through Jessica’s banking records, we discovered some evidence of possibly money laundering—large cash deposits, withdrawals, transfers.”
“And we think someone may have been paying her for carrying this baby.”
Eagerness dawning on his face, Cook tapped a finger on the table. “Grady specialized in family and divorce law, didn’t she?”
Tom frowned. “Yes.”
“Does that include adoptions?”
“I don’t know.”
“Yes, it does.” Tick cleared his throat. “Cait and I talked to her about what was involved in a private adoption earlier in the year. She said she had people who helped her find birth mothers. We, well, something about the way she said that made it seem like it was something we didn’t want to be involved with.”
“Oh God.” Celia stared at Tom. “You don’t think…?”
“A baby ring.” Disgust colored Cook’s voice. “You said it, Tick. Anything with money attached. Wonder what a healthy white infant goes for these days?”
“Obviously more than fifty grand.”
“You know who I want to talk to again? That couple from Cader County.”
Celia nodded. “Both of them.”
“We want to make them come to us.” Tom rubbed a hand over his jaw. “I think we also want to take a look at any adoptions she’s put together in the last year as well, especially any she had in the works when she was killed.”
“Couple’s name was Campbell.” Cook looked up from his notebook and focused on Celia. “Now where have we heard that name before?”
Awareness dawned on Celia’s features. “The DVDs. One of them was labeled Campbell. But I don’t remember seeing the husband on any of the ones we watched.”
“Because he’s not. The husband is Wesley Campbell. The Campbell we have on the DVD is Jameson Campbell, the county administrator from over in Cader County.”
“They’re brothers,” Tick offered. “I’ve met Jameson once or twice and my brother bought some farm equipment from Wesley.”
“Coincidental, isn’t it?” Cook lifted an eyebrow. “Wesley and the wife wanting a kid so bad, and Jameson has an affair with a woman who turns up dead with her baby cut out of her belly?”
Tom chuckled. “Coincidental enough that I think we want to invite both the Campbell brothers and the wife over to the sheriff’s department for a little talk.”
Cook cleared his throat. “Well, St. John, feel like going for a little drive?”
“I made a couple of calls to agents I knew from the OCB.” Tick handed Tom a cup of coffee. “According to them, neither of the Campbell boys is on the bureau’s radar.”
Tom sipped the hot brew, grimaced at the strong taste, and studied the white board set up in the department’s small conference room. Celia’s neat handwriting filled in areas not covered by Cook’s slashing script. They’d spent thirty minutes or so writing up leads and theories on the board before heading out to Cader County. In the corner of the board, Celia had written
Jessica, second pregnancy?
The notation niggled at him as much as it seemed to bother Celia.
He slanted a look at Tick. “You said Jessie told you she had ways to find birth mothers?”
“Yeah. And something about the way she said it? Made my skin crawl.”
His attention drifted back to Celia’s notes. Jessica had said the same thing once about the idea of being pregnant. If she’d had access to birth mothers, why carry a baby herself? The money?
What made that particular baby worth so much?
“I started looking through the records we pulled from her law offices.” Tick indicated a banker’s box on the table, a stack of manila folders beside it. “Her laptop is gone, so I’m afraid some of what we wanted to look at was on it. All her files at home were personal stuff.”
“Find anything?”
“You’re the lawyer.” Tick handed him the topmost file. “They look okay to me. They’re ‘open’ adoptions. Records of contact between the birth mother and the adoptive parents before the baby was born, questionnaires on the adoptive parents, home studies, that kind of stuff. The waiver of parental rights from the biological parents, the adoption orders.”
Tom frowned. “Let me see the others.”
With a shrug, Tick slid them across the table. “Be my guest.”
“I don’t believe this.” Tom flipped through them quickly. A disbelieving laugh rumbled through him. “All of these orders are signed by the same judge.”
“That’s not kosher?”
Tom shook his head. “Adoption orders should be filed in the county in which the couple resides. Somehow, I doubt all of these people live in Chandler County.”
“Who’s the judge?”
Tom dropped the files back on the scarred tabletop. “The Honorable Alton Baker.”
“That’s…interesting.”
“Do me a favor.” Tom pulled a legal pad in front of him and began a list of the adoptive parents and birth mothers. “Run these. See if we can get current addresses and phone numbers on any of them.”
Tick reached for the paper. “Will do.”
“I don’t fucking believe it.” Tom stared at the names before him.
Interest flared in Tick’s dark eyes. “What?”
Tom turned the paper so the investigator could see it. “Look at this.”
Tick whistled. “Holy hell.”
“So, was offering to take me along an olive branch, Cook?” In a low murmur, Celia tossed the question at him as they followed the unhappy Campbells up the department steps.
He shrugged. “Something like that.”
“Still pissed at me?”
With a quick glance at her, he caught the door behind Wesley Campbell and held it for her. “I worry about my friends, St. John. I don’t want to see you hurt.”
Touched by his gruff concern, she grinned. “I’m a big girl this time around, Cook. I know what I’m doing.”
“I sure as hell hope so,” he muttered. “Come on, let’s see where your boss is.”
He ushered the Campbells into the squad room and she smiled at the careful, almost undetectable way he separated the three. Watching the woman and two men in the squad room, she and Cook stepped to the doorway of the conference room. Surprised, Celia stared.
McMillian and Tick had flipped the white board to use the opposite side. His jacket and tie gone and sleeves rolled up, McMillian stood at the board, writing a list. “All right. I’ve got four Stephanie Nichols, three Jennifer Skylars, and what looks like two Natalie Bradleys.”
Tick nodded, looking up from a legal pad balanced on his knee. “That’s what I’ve got.”
“What’s going on?” Celia asked and Tom glanced around at her, excitement glinting in his sharp blue gaze. He waved her into the room.
“Come look at this.”
She stopped at his shoulder and looked at the list—repeated names with dates beside them. “It’s a list of names.”
His mouth twisted. “Funny. Look, Celia. These are the birth mothers Jessica listed on the adoption papers.”
“Rather prolific, aren’t they?” She frowned. “Those are not nine-month spans between babies.”
“Oh, it gets better.” Tick tossed a small stack of Internet articles on the table. “Stephanie Nichols died of leukemia when she was three. Jennifer Skylar? Car accident before she was a year old. Natalie Bradley drowned at age four.”
“My God.” Celia shook her head. “That’s nine babies. Where did they come from?”
“Good question,” Cook said. He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “Maybe the Campbells can help us find an answer.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Jameson Campbell laid his hands atop the table, obviously preparing to leverage up from the chair. “I damn sure don’t know anything about a baby, either.”
“You want to know what I think?” Celia tilted her head to one side and leaned forward, lowering her voice. “I think you had an affair with Jessica and she got pregnant. I think she told you about the video and the baby and tried to shake you down. And then? Then I think you killed her.”
“You’re crazy.”
“Where’s the baby, Mr. Campbell?” Cook scraped his thumbnail along his teeth, appearing bored by the whole proceedings. Bored like a big, edgy lion waiting to pounce.
“I don’t have to stay here and listen to this bullshit.”
“No, you don’t. You’re free to go at any time.” Cook dropped his feet from the corner of the table and sat up straight. “Hey, St. John, you still got that friend at the TV station, right?”
He fixed Celia with an inquiring look and she swallowed a laugh. “Yeah, I do.”
Campbell’s gaze swung between them in a wild arc. “What are you talking about?”
Cook spared him a pithy glance and shrugged. “You don’t want to tell us where the baby is and we have to find it. Figure when our friends over at the NBC affiliate run the next Amber Alert, they can show your video with it. Someone’s bound to put two and two together for us.”
Celia smiled. “Of course, they’ll have to blur parts of the film.”
Cook nodded. “But it’s about to be sweeps month. Hell, Mr. Campbell, you might make
Dateline
.”