Deadly Secrets (27 page)

“Now, be still.” Lisa’s voice floated somewhere from above her. Somewhere far above and yet right beside her. The light pierced her eyes and stabbed against the pain in her head. So bright.

“I don’t want the IV coming out again.”

The voice sounded so normal, but none of this was normal.

Was she in the hospital? What happened? Why couldn’t she remember?

“Have to . . .” She licked her chapped lips. “ . . . to . . . leave . . .”

She needed to leave. She’d
tried
to leave. She remembered packing . . .

Where was she? She couldn’t really see beyond the lights.

Pain built again, tightening not just her abdomen but also across her thighs. It wasn’t time.

Wasn’t time yet.

She wasn’t due for another month almost.

Oh God.

Humming, someone was humming Handel. Lisa.

The room swam in and out of focus. She screamed as another contraction ripped through her.

“I know it’s intense, but you’re ready. You’re already dilated and have been for the last week and effaced. I don’t think we’ll have any problems.”

There was a slight swish and whoosh . . . like water. Swish. Whoosh. She’d heard it before. It was like . . . like the . . .

Baby’s heartbeat.

“Please,” she said again.

“Please what?” Lisa asked. “I have to go see about a few things, but don’t worry, I’ll be back. We’ll see then how far along you are.”

The woman she thought was her friend, dressed in bright stupid cheery scrubs, walked out the door, closing it behind her with a quiet snick.

Ella jerked and jerked again. Her hands and feet were bound. She couldn’t move.

No. No. No. This was not happening, this couldn’t be happening. No. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. Things were going to be different. Quinlan was coming. He’d been calling her phone. He was flying out here to Taos. To her. To them. He’d been upset, of course, she’d heard that in his voice. But he’d called her wife. Called her Mrs. Kinncaid. He’d told her not to worry, that he’d be there, that he’d help.

He’d help her. Help her keep their daughter safe.

Pain pulsed through her wrists but she kept working at them. Gritting her teeth, she raised her head and looked down at her right wrist. An eyebolt, about waist level, was sticking out of the light wooden bed frame. A zip tie was threaded through and secured her wrist.

No. No.

She shook her head back and forth. Oh God, what did she do? What did she do?

Think. She had to think. No, this wasn’t happening.

She strained and pulled, jerked and twisted her arms and hands. The ties burned, her muscles trembled, and still she couldn’t get free.

Leaning her head back, she screamed and screamed and screamed until her throat hurt.

“Help! Please God, someone help! Help me, please!” she begged. And still she yelled and screamed more, hoping someone would hear her, help her. Help them.

She’d waited too long. Too long to get away . . .

Jareaux’s voice swam through her mind . . .
Help us find the evidence . . .
Evidence of what they were doing.

Evidence of the births with no records, evidence of adoptions not meant to be, of the wrongness of it all.

She wasn’t stupid. She’d never really been stupid about anything other than Quinlan.

Quinlan.

No. No! She had been so close to being safe, to seeing Quin and telling him everything, of begging for his forgiveness . . . So close, so damned close.

Another pain started to build.

“Please!” she screamed. “Somebody help me! Please, help me!” Again, she screamed and screamed until her throat was dry and her neck hurt. Still she couldn’t move, couldn’t get the zip ties to loosen no matter how damned hard she strained and pulled.

They, the Nursery, were
not
going to do this to her. To her baby, her family.

This was an adoption agency. She knew what they would do. What they’d done before.

If the children were already slated for adoption? The money already taken from prospective families and then the mother changed her mind?

Hundreds of thousands.

She’d bet more. Jareaux never actually told her, but it had to be.

That was a lot of reasons to want her out of the way.

There was a clinic here in Taos. Is that where she was? Jareaux knew of the clinic. Maybe . . . maybe . . .

She narrowed her gaze and tried to focus. The wall swam from blurry to vivid. A regular wall with an older door, like a closet? Looking up, she realized the ceilings were higher than normal. Where was she? This wasn’t a clinic. She took a deep breath, trying to calm down. The medicinal scents she was used to were the first she picked up, but she also smelled dust and . . . and . . . mildew?

A window to her right showed the afternoon sun through the cracks.

She screamed again and again. And kept screaming, jerking at her bindings, wishing there was a way, any way out. Maybe someone would hear her.

Please, hear her.

“Please, God,” she moaned. She blinked and looked up. Noticed the bags hanging from the IV stand. Saline. A bottle hung up there as well. She followed the line and noticed it wasn’t hooked up yet. What was it?

She blinked as things still focused and swam. She couldn’t make it out but doubted it was good.

Her baby.

She opened her mouth and screamed again.

“Help! Help!” She screamed and screamed, but no one ever came.

Another pain ripped through her abdomen. Claws tightened along her spine and quickly gripped around her hips, her stomach, even her thighs.

“Oh God.” She whimpered and tried to curl up on her bed.

She knew what she was supposed to do. She was supposed to be breathing and . . .

Her baby . . .

They were going to take her baby . . .

“Please, no, please, please . . .
Please!”

Her hands shook and not from pain, she wasn’t really feeling the pain in her wrists anymore. She had to get out of here. Had to.

She jerked on her bindings, working them back and forth against the bolts. Blood slicked her wrists, ran down her palms, twirled around her fingers to drip onto the floor. Her hands were bleeding. She’d broken the skin, she didn’t care. She had no idea how she’d get her legs free if she ever managed to get her arms free.

Something beeped on the small monitor set on the bedside table.

What were the heartbeats supposed to be?

She had no idea. She couldn’t really remember.

The door opened.

“Let’s see how we are progressing, shall we?” Lisa asked, sipping from a Sonic cup before she set it aside, and said something softly to someone else.

Who?

“Go to hell,” she snarled, her voice already raspy.

Lisa only smiled and walked closer. Lisa pulled a syringe out and put it into the back of the IV inserted halfway up Ella’s arm.

“Please,” she said, but it sounded like a whisper.

Lisa merely smiled. “Don’t worry, this will make it all easier . . .”

“Why?” she mumbled. Her vision took a nosedive and the swishing sound grew louder. She blinked.

“I love how quickly the meds work on you,” Lisa said and chuckled. “As to your question . . . Why? My dear, you and your baby were just too good to pass up.”

Ella tried to stay focused, conscious, but things swam in and out, away and close.

She heard someone screaming at some point and realized it was her. Bright flashes of clarity. Dull, cloudy waves rolled over her.

The pain. She focused on the pain . . .

Her baby. She had to stay with it for the baby . . .

But it was so hard . . .

Time passed but it meant nothing, nothing. How much time, she had no idea. The pain crashed into her like the rising tide, relentless. Wave after wave. Taller waves, bigger waves, until she was drowning under the onslaught of pain.

Someone was talking to her.

She couldn’t make out the words.

A sharp sting on her cheek. “Listen to me! Grab your legs and push!”

It was then she realized her hands were no longer bound. She tried, but her arms felt funny, rubbery. Her hands slipped off her legs and someone cursed.

Something wiped at her palms, fingers.

“Now! Grab and push!”

Ella hissed, feeling the tightening muscles across her stomach, back, everywhere, and gripped. The wave of pain rose, bearing her with it, and she pushed. Listened to the voice and screamed.

Pushed and screamed.

How much longer? How long had it been already?

Hours. It had to be hours.

Cloudy . . .

Flash.

Lisa was pacing, running her hands through her hair. “You can do this. You can do this.”

Who was she talking to?

The wave was coming again, coming hard and fast and higher than the others. They all felt higher than the others.

Ella took a deep breath and realized there was an oxygen mask on her nose and mouth.

Ella wanted it over. Just over.

Images flashed again, almost popping in her mind . . .

The pain built, grew to a monster and burned through her. There was no way she would survive this. It wasn’t time. The baby was too early.

“Too early,” she muttered behind the mask.

“What?” Lisa’s voice floated to her. “It’s fine. All the tests show she’s fine. Now push. Push. I see the head.”

Ella bore down. Pain unlike any she’d known before grew and swallowed her, burned through her. And then she heard the baby cry.

A weight on her stomach.

Ella blinked. Blinked again and looked down, saw the bright red hair, the scrunched-up pink face, and cried again. So beautiful. She shoved the oxygen mask down.

Her daughter. Her baby. “Hi,” she whispered brokenly. Her hands shook, her fingers numb as she gently touched her daughter. So soft. She leaned and kissed her daughter on her head. “You are . . .”

Perfect. She was perfect. Little fists pumped jerkily in the air. Pale skin; a blotch marred the inside of her right arm. A birthmark.

Just like her own.

She grinned, even as Lisa massaged her stomach and said, “Come on. Come on. Push!”

She delivered the placenta even as pain ripped inside. She winced and moaned.

“Oh well,” Lisa muttered. At least she thought she did, but she didn’t ask, focused as she was on her daughter

Perfect. “You’re so perfect. You’re just—”

“Not yours,” Lisa’s voice cut through.

“No,” she whispered, shaking her head. “No. She’s mine.”

She tightened her hold on the bare skin of her little girl.

Lisa shook her head and reached for the baby, jerking her from Ella’s grasp.

The baby cried and squirmed as Lisa held her and put her on a scale across the room.

Ella shook her head. “Mine,” she tried to say, but it came out more as a broken whisper. “Mine.” So weak. So . . .

She couldn’t focus again, couldn’t see . . .

Had to get up. Had to . . .

Lisa turned and there was another syringe in her hand.

“No. No. Please no. My baby. My baby. You can’t have her. She’s mine!”

“For a quarter of a million, she’s not yours. Bidders win, they get her.”

She tried to bat the needle away, but her hands shook so badly, her whole body shook so badly.

The baby’s mewls and cries pierced straight into her.

Lisa just said, “Shhh. Shhh . . .” Cool fingers brushed across her forehead. “It’ll all be over soon. If you’re still here when I get back, I promise to make it quick. Your placenta didn’t detach properly, so I doubt it’ll take long. But I do promise to make it quick if you’re still here later. A large dose of heparin because, sweetie, you’re already bleeding, and you’ll just go to sleep, so I doubt I’ll have to.”

She blinked and kept whispering pleas as Lisa stood there fussing with the IVs.

What did she mean? The words jumbled around in her brain, falling like puzzle pieces.

“No . . . No . . .”

Lisa walked over and picked up her baby.

“Please, please. She’s mine. She’s mine.” Her voice was hardly more than a whisper. “You can’t take her. She’s mine.”

The bright scrubs disappeared through the door.

“Noooo! She’s mine! She’s mine!” she tried to yell, though it was little more than a rasp. She tried to get up but couldn’t.

The door shut.

Wake up. Wake up. Wake up!
But she didn’t wake up any more this time than she did the last time. She shook her head, back and forth, back and forth. No. No. No. Her damp hair was sticking to her damp face.