Chapter Eight
Cat had a lot of time to think on her way back to her office in Fortune Creek.
Her thoughts kept circling back to Dylan Walker.
Did she just want to believe him because he seemed so sincere? Or was she being taken in by his extremely good innocent act? She’d never let a handsome man unnerve her, yet the pain she saw in him did make her feel compassion for him.
It hadn’t been all that long ago that he’d lost his wife and now this.
Whatever this was.
All Cat knew was that she had a dead woman and missing baby mystery to solve.
She didn’t feel like she was getting anywhere with this case.
Yesterday, she’d made dozens of calls to hospitals, motels, hotels, bed and breakfasts.
No woman matching Athena’s description had checked in.
As pregnant as Athena was, she would have stood out.
Cat found Helen knitting.
“Any messages?”
The older woman shook her head without looking up from whatever she was making.
It wasn’t until Cat was sitting in her office that she noticed how small the knitting project appeared to be.
What startled her most was that the yarn was blue.
She opened her door and approached the receptionist-dispatcher-knitter.
“Are you making this by any chance for the missing baby?”
“What if I am?”
Helen said without missing a stitch.
“I think that’s nice, but what makes you think the infant is a boy?”
Cat had only recently learned that the baby was male.
“I saw the way she was carrying.
Low.
Knew it was going to be a boy.”
“Huh,” Cat said.
“Just like you’re carrying high. Girl.”
She didn’t comment on that, but she hadn’t told anyone that she was having a girl.
Nor did she feel any compulsion to admit that Helen was right.
She was more interested in where Helen got her information.
“What else do you know about the woman?”
“She was lying.”
“Based on what?”
“Years of experience in this office,”
the older woman said with authority.
So maybe she hadn’t been listening in on phone calls from the coroner.
“All right, then who’s the father of the baby?”
“That’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it.”
She reached over as a call came in, picked up her old-fashioned headset and answered, “Fortune Creek Sheriff’s Department.
Yep, she’s right here.
It’s for you,”
she said as she put the call through to Cat’s desk and went back to knitting.
Helen was making baby clothing for the missing infant.
Maybe it was the pregnancy hormones, but she liked this side of Helen.
In her office, she took the call.
It was the coroner asking if she’d gotten his report.
She’d just dropped off Dylan Walker’s DNA sample, too early to have results.
She tapped her computer to life and saw that JP had sent her the autopsy results.
The weapon used to kill her had been a .38 caliber.
Three shots to the heart at close range. Why would Athena Grant have let the man who threatened her get that close? Unless he forced his way in to wherever she’d been staying.
Nothing made sense.
Why hadn’t the woman stayed at the hotel across the street? She might still be alive and her baby… Where was her baby? Was he still alive?
She turned her attention to what JP was saying.
“Wait, what?”
“She had help delivering the baby.”
“But the hospitals and emergency rooms—”
“Not at the hospital.
That alarm you put out about the missing baby got a response.
I know the woman who owns the motel.
She called me.”
“The baby’s been found?”
“No, but a motel maid called to say she thought a woman had given birth in one of her rooms she cleaned.
Bloody bedsheets and the placenta in the trash.
The man in the next unit hearing a baby cry in the middle of the night.”
He gave her the name of the motel, The Siesta Vista, and told her to talk to the owner.
The moment she disconnected, she found what photos she could of anyone who might have helped Athena that could have been connected.
The list was short: Ginny Cooper Walker (dead), Patty Cooper Harper, Ginny’s sister, and Rowena Keeling, a complete stranger according to her.
She got mugshots from drivers’ licenses or in the case of Patty Cooper Harper, her school ID.
If it hadn’t been either Patty or Rowena having helped Athena have her baby, then Cat was out of suspects.
Back at the ranch, Dylan noted Rowena’s car was in front of the house.
As soon as he’d returned to where he had internet service, he’d made the call to a contact he could trust.
The conversation though now had him feeling as if he’d fallen in a rabbit hole.
“Are you aware that all of the women you asked me about were adopted?”
“Why is that important?”
Dylan had asked.
“Russia formalized its international adoption program in the middle of 1991,”
his government contact had told him.
“That year only twelve children were adopted by American families.
That number topped a thousand by 1994.”
“Wait, you’re telling me that Ginny, her sister Patty and Athena Grant were all born in Russia and adopted by American families?”
Dylan had said.
“All adopted the same year by families in the Denver area,”
his friend had told him.
“Ginny and Patty to the same family, the Coopers.
Athena Grant to Lindsey and Lloyd Martin.”
He let out a curse.
Now at least he knew where Athena had gotten the name she’d used the day she’d come out to the ranch.
Because she thought he would recognize it? He frowned and felt a start.
Had Rowena recognized it?
“What about Rowena Keeling and Sharese Harmon?”
he asked, waiting for confirmation as he looked toward the big house and saw Rowena headed his way.
He wasn’t surprised that she would come down to see him.
She’d be curious to know what he’d told the sheriff and deputies earlier.
“Keeling and Harmon were in a later batch of Russian babies adopted to American families that same year, along with Harmon’s brother Luca.
You had no idea your wife was adopted?”
“Not a clue.
But there was a lot about Ginny I didn’t know, as it turns out.
Wait, Sharese has a brother named Luca who was also adopted.
By the same family? Where?”
“By Bob and Lynette Harmon of Missoula, Montana.”
“Whoa, that close by,”
Dylan had said, unsure what to make of the information, but knowing that it had to be the connection he’d been looking for.
“I’m curious why you would be asking about these people.”
He hesitated to even voice it.
“Is it possible they are part of a sleeper cell?”
He knew from his career that there had been instances of real-life “sleeper agents”
who’d dealt in spying, espionage, sedition, treason and even…assassinations on behalf of their mother country leaders.
“It’s possible, I suppose.
All from the same area.
If they all knew they were adopted from Russia, became friends, were approached by someone, I suppose that’s what they might have become.”
“I’m worried that’s exactly what happened,”
he admitted.
“What do you plan to do with this information?”
“Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone where I got it.”
“But maybe you should tell someone about what you’ve discovered,”
his friend said.
“Someone who can stop whatever this group might be up to.”
“At this point, I have no evidence.
Once I do… Thanks for this information.
I owe you.”
He disconnected, unable to shake off the feeling that he was on to something.
He remembered some of the questions his wife had asked him about his job.
He’d assumed she only knew about the real one—not the undercover one.
But now he wondered if it was why she’d married him.
She’d definitely been the one to pursue him, he thought looking back.
It had been more than flattering.
She’d literally swept him off his feet with her enthusiasm for all things, especially him.
What a fool he’d been, he thought with a curse.
What scared him was where his brother might have come into all of this—if he had.
Beau had always colored outside the lines.
His job, like Dylan’s, had put him in places and situations that were dangerous in so many ways.
Had Beau gotten involved with the wrong people? The wrong people being Ginny Cooper Walker? Is that why the two of them were targeted?
He thought about the acquaintance who’d detained him the night of the gala.
The man had saved his life.
Was that what he’d intended to do? Now he was suspicious of everyone and everything that had happened.
Raking a hand through his hair, Dylan felt his mind spinning.
What if nothing was as it seemed? And more to the point, what if Rowena Keeling had been in on all of it? That would certainly explain how she’d gotten into their lives and why Ginny had let her.
But right now, he didn’t have the time to consider what to even do about it.
Groaning, he saw Rowena climb his deck steps.
The acting sheriff—he couldn’t help thinking of her as Cat from the first time she’d introduced herself—had asked his houseguest not to leave the area.
Which gave Rowena the perfect excuse for hanging around longer.
Not that he couldn’t kick her out.
But wasn’t he smarter to keep her close?
Athena Grant was dead.
The acting sheriff seemed to think not only had he fathered the woman’s child, but also that he’d killed her and done what with the baby? He felt sick at the thought of the infant.
He had wanted a child so badly with Ginny.
As Rowena reached the deck, he walked out to her.
As he did, he tried to gauge how her interview had gone with the sheriff earlier.
He really doubted Cat would have been intimidated by Rowena in the least.
“Have a nice talk with the sheriff? You left pretty quickly afterward.”
She mugged a face.
“I had an appointment.
Do you even have to ask how it went with the acting sheriff?”
She sounded cocky, but when she moved to the edge of the deck and took hold of the railing, he thought she looked…nervous? Or was it scared?
Until that moment, he hadn’t even suspected that she might have done something to Athena Grant and her baby.
But it had been Rowena who’d turned the woman away at the gate, who had gone down to the mailbox to take the note.
He swore under his breath as he moved to her, touching her arm, forcing her to look at him.
“Tell me you had nothing to do with that woman’s death or her missing baby.”
She stared at him as if shocked that he would ask such a thing.
“You can’t be serious.
Who do you think I am?”
she demanded indignantly, but she didn’t quite pull it off.
“That’s just it, I have no idea.”
Her expression changed quickly to coy, which he assumed was her default.
“Because you haven’t wanted to get to know me, your loss.”
She cocked her head at him, her blue eyes alight with mischief.
“What did you tell your cute acting sheriff about me?”
she asked coquettishly.
“I’m curious how you described our…relationship.”
“We don’t have one, and quite frankly, I’m not even sure how to describe you, let alone explain what you’re doing here,” he said.
“You shouldn’t have to explain yourself to some small-town sheriff. Really.”
Rowena could get more meaning into a single word.
“Who does she think she is to question you—let alone me, your houseguest?”
His houseguest.
It hadn’t slipped his mind that Rowena had arrived shortly before all this had begun.
He couldn’t imagine how she might have orchestrated it, though.
But then again, there was a good chance that she’d lied about having never met Athena Grant.
He had no proof that the women had all known each other, but he’d bet his life on it.
The thought unsettled him as he realized he just might be doing exactly that.
He frowned, trying to remember if Rowena had been at the wedding.
No, Ginny allegedly hadn’t met her yet because Rowena hadn’t moved in next door.
But that didn’t mean the two of them didn’t know each other before Rowena moved into their building.
How could he forget that everything Ginny had told him probably was a lie? But did that include her relationship with Rowena—and Athena Grant? He now knew that all four of them were connected by birth in Russia.
All four adopted by American families in Denver.
And now there were two more, Sharese and Luca Harmon, adopted in Missoula—not all that far away.
He shook his aching head, afraid it was starting to make sense.
Rowena had paid a visit to Sharese, he had to assume she too was in on whatever they were up to.
His wife’s supposed best friend being here now wasn’t a coincidence.
Still he wasn’t sure how all the pieces fit together.
Athena Grant had been pregnant, that much was true.
For some reason she’d tried to contact him with this bogus claim that he was the father of her baby.
She even went to the sheriff to get him to talk to her.
Why go to all that trouble? Because she was trying to warn him?
Dylan hated to think she’d done it so she could get to him without the others suspecting her true reason.
Maybe she’d wanted to tell him about Ginny and his brother.
Or warn him that they were coming for him next? If he hadn’t gotten stopped on the way out of the gala, he and his brother and wife would have been killed.
But if Ginny and Beau were working for Russia, why kill them? His head whirled with too many possibilities.
“Are you all right?”
Rowena asked, frowning at him.
He realized he’d been rubbing his temples, his head aching.
“I could use a drink.
Why don’t I make one for you too?”
Earlier he’d wanted Rowena to leave.
Now though he realized that nothing was quite like he’d thought.
No way was he going to let this woman make him a drink.
He’d never mistrusted her more than he did right now.
But he also needed to now what was going on.
“Maybe it’s time you tell me who Rowena Keeling really is.”