Chapter Two
Remi kept her grip gentle on the baby, bracing herself against what would almost certainly be Brody’s shock. And, of course, a mountain of disbelief. It wouldn’t be easy for him to consider this possibility. Not easy for her either.
Mercy, had this really happened again? But this time, had it happened to Brody, too? She didn’t want to believe it, but her gut was telling her that she was right.
Brody started pacing in front of her, his movements sharp and agitated. “That’s impossible,” he snapped. “It can’t be my child.”
“You could be right. And I’m not saying it makes sense,” she said, keeping her tone steady and calm. Or, rather, trying to do that, but she had a storm of emotions inside her, too. “But I’ve seen this before.”
He stopped pacing, the sudden stillness as jarring as any shout he might have released. His eyes locked on hers, dark and furious, but it was the way his fists clenched at his sides that hit her the hardest. Those clenched fists carried the weight of six years of grief and anger.
“Seen what before?” he demanded. “Someone leaving a random baby on a grave? My wife’s grave, Remi,” he added through clenched teeth. Yes, the anger was there, all right.
Remi swallowed the knot that was trying to take hold of her throat. She hated this part of the job. The part where she had to lay out the ugly truths and watch people try to make sense of the nightmares that others had created for them.
But the ugly truth would have to wait because a Lost Canyon cruiser and an ambulance sped into the parking lot.
“I’ll tell you everything I know,” Remi promised, glancing in the direction of the stone wall where John Smith had disappeared. “But it might not be safe for us to be out here. And we need to make sure the baby is okay. The EMTs should take a look at him or her.”
That reminder seemed to jar Brody out of the shock and anger, and it put him back in sheriff mode. With his breathing still ragged, he nodded, hooked his arm around her and pulled both the baby and her against him.
Her body had a bad reaction to that. An unwanted tug of heat. Remi shoved it aside. She’d always been attracted to Brody, always, but there was no way she would give that attraction a chance to build.
“Boss, what’s going on?” the deputy said, stepping from the cruiser.
Remi knew her. No surprise there, since there were often little to no degrees of separation in a small town like Lost Canyon. She was Deputy Jolene Lawson, and they’d been friends in high school, but the steely look Jolene gave her let Remi know the officer was on Brody’s side.
And that made Remi the enemy.
Then again, she was probably the enemy to everyone in town. She had no ties here anymore. No family either, since her parents had died in a car crash well over a decade ago.
“I’m not sure what’s going on,” Brody admitted to Jolene, and he made a beeline toward the ambulance. “We found a baby on…one of the graves.”
As expected, that put some alarm on the faces of Jolene and the two EMTs who got out of the ambulance. One of the EMTs rushed toward them to take the child, and he carried the baby into the ambulance bay. His nametag IDed him as Hal Robards.
“I need you to arrange a search for a man who fired shots at us and escaped over the stone wall,” Brody told Jolene, putting yet more alarm in the deputy’s eyes. “About six feet, slim build, wearing all black and a ski mask. Consider him armed and dangerous.”
Jolene gave a quick nod and hurried back to her cruiser, no doubt to get started on that search.
Brody shifted his attention to the EMT who was now easing back the baby’s blanket. “It’s possible the man’s DNA will be on the baby’s clothes,” he advised the EMTs.
“Everything will be bagged for the lab,” Hal assured him.
The second EMT, whose nametag read Caleb Gomez, climbed into the back with his partner and took out medical equipment to check the baby’s vitals.
“Start talking,” Brody insisted, sparing her a glance before putting his attention back on the baby.
Remi nodded, gathered her breath. “A year ago, I worked a case where a fertilized embryo was stolen from a fertility clinic,” she explained.
“The embryo belonged to an assistant district attorney and her ex-husband, and it was implanted into a surrogate without her knowing it was stolen. Then, the newborn was used to try to blackmail the ADA into tampering with evidence in a case that involved her ex.”
That got his attention back on her. Brody’s eyebrows shot up, but he stayed silent, his hard expression deepening as she continued.
“The ADA’s ex, Tarrant Eddington, is mean, a bully, and a trust-fund brat, and he was out on bail awaiting trial for manslaughter.
A bar fight gone wrong. And his trial had multiple delays because of some legal wrangling from his lawyers,” she explained.
“Their divorce had been bitter, so the ADA thought Tarrant had arranged for the baby to be born so he could use the child to manipulate her into tampering with the evidence.”
“Was he behind it?” Brody asked.
“I think so, but I couldn’t prove it. I managed to find the baby, but Tarrant wasn’t with him, only a nanny who didn’t have a clue what was going on.
She couldn’t positively ID Tarrant since they’d communicated solely through phone calls and texts.
He wasn’t even the one to bring her the baby.
An unknown woman did that and then disappeared. ”
Remi paused again. “As I was bringing the baby to the hospital to be examined, Tarrant must have gotten word that his plan had failed. So, he went to his ex’s house, murdered her and then fled before he could be arrested.”
The flashbacks came. Along with the relentless guilt that was eating her alive. Remi hadn’t considered Tarrant would go after his ex. And because she hadn’t considered it, a woman was now dead.
Correction: another woman.
She already had Miranda’s death on her conscience, so now she had to live with knowing she could have possibly saved two people, the ADA and Brody’s wife, if she’d just made better decisions. It hurt even more that Miranda had been Remi’s close friend.
“A few months later, there was another case,” Remi continued after she took a moment to steady herself. “Not mine but one that a cop friend was working on. A newborn girl born from a stolen embryo was used to blackmail a witness into changing her testimony.”
She paused again. Had to. “Now…now I think this might be another stolen embryo,” Remi whispered. “One that belonged to you and Miranda.”
The silence that followed was thick and suffocating. Remi could feel Brody’s anger building even more, simmering just beneath the surface and ready to come to a raging boil.
“You think someone took our embryo? Mine and Miranda’s?” he finally snapped out, his words as sharp as a blade.
“Possibly. I know how it sounds,” she was quick to add, “but whoever’s behind those other two cases targets people with stored embryos. People who wouldn’t even know it was happening until it was too late.”
Brody let out a hard breath, dragging a hand through his hair. “So, what? They’re just handing out babies now? Dropping them off like some twisted delivery service?”
“No,” she said, her voice low. “They’re using the babies as pawns. Tools for leverage. And if I’m right, this isn’t solely about the baby. Whoever’s behind this has a bigger plan. I just don’t know what that plan is. Yet.”
Remi watched his jaw tighten, his hands curling into fists again. She knew what he was thinking—about Miranda, about the life they’d lost, about the fact that she was the one standing here telling him all of this.
Something flashed through Brody’s eyes, and he took out his phone.
“One way to find out if you’re telling the truth.
I’ll call the station and get a deputy on this.
” He tapped in a number. “Harlan,” he said after Remi figured that Deputy Harlan McCall had answered.
“Contact the Sanderson Fertility Clinic, and find out if there’s been some kind of breach or robbery.
Specifically, find out if anything my wife and I had stored there is missing. I need that info now.”
Remi could only imagine how shocked the deputy was after hearing that, but maybe he’d get quick answers. If the embryos were still there, then maybe that meant this baby wasn’t Brody’s.
She shifted her focus to the baby, who let out a soft whimper as the EMT pressed a stethoscope to his or her chest. His she silently amended when she saw that Hal had pulled back the side of the diaper.
A boy.
Maybe Brody’s son.
“No signs that he’s been hurt in any way,” Hal relayed to them.
While that didn’t give them answers as to who was responsible for this, the tight muscles inside her unclenched a little. Remi was beyond relieved that he hadn’t been hurt.
“He’s recently been fed,” Hal went on. “There’s still some formula around the corners of his mouth. And he’s recently been changed, too.”
So someone had taken care of him. That fit with the other two cases. Those babies had been well tended while they’d been used as pawns.
And that caused Remi to mentally stop.
Those other two babies hadn’t been left for someone to find before a demand had even been made.
In her case, she had found the child and rescued him before Tarrant could get his ex to tamper with evidence.
In the other, the newborn girl had been left for the parents to find after the mother had fulfilled the demand and had recanted her statement for an upcoming trial.
But there’d been no demand for this little boy.
Did that mean she’d been wrong? That this wasn’t Brody’s child after all and this was about something else? Sweet heaven. It was possible, and she didn’t even know what to hope for. Because if the baby wasn’t Brody’s, then he belonged to someone else. Who? And why had the baby been left like this?