Deadly Secrets (34 page)

“Ella, it’s the FBI, they look for missing kids. Right now, that’s our priority. We need all the help we can get to find her.”

Anger flamed through the panic she was shoving back, but like a rising tide, she could feel it building.

“I know that, Quinlan,” she whispered. “I know what they do, or say they’ll do. I was helping them—him.” She closed her eyes and admitted, “I listened to Jareaux when he said I could help them. When he said I was in the perfect situation to help them.”

She felt him still, could feel the tension tighten around him. She opened her eyes and met his, glittering emerald green and just as hard.

“You were what?” he asked quietly.

She licked her lips. “Helping them—the FBI—or trying to. I did what he said. Jareaux. I tried . . . But I think he lied. Maybe about all of it. I wrote you letters telling you about the baby and how when the investigation was over I wanted us to be a family. I was sorry. Am sorry. Doesn’t matter now . . .”

She dropped her head back on the pillow.

“You were helping the FBI with some sort of investigation because Jareaux asked for your help and he didn’t mail the letters you wrote to me?”

“Missing babies, missing women from the place where I worked.”

He nodded, the skin across his face tight, a muscle bunching in his jaw. He opened his mouth, then shut it. He took another deep breath.

They didn’t have time for this. Again she tried to sit up, if she could find Lisa she might . . .

“Lie down,” he told her.

She shook her head. “I have to find her, Quin. I have to look. Lisa . . . I have to . . .”

Again he put his hands on her shoulders and gently pressed her back down. “Ella,” he said, his voice quiet steel. “You almost died, and if you think I’m going to let you get up and waltz out that door so you can finish the job, you can damned well think again.”

Her eyes filled.

“I have to find her,” she whispered, felt the warmth of tears trickle down her cheeks.

“We will. You have to heal, though.”

The panic she’d been holding back crested and broke over her, sending chills quaking through her body. “She’s so little, Quin. So little. Early, she’s early.”

“How early?” he asked, trying to keep her calm.

“Over three weeks early. You can check with Dr. Merchant or Radcliffe, though I don’t know if they’ll be honest. I don’t know anything anymore, Quinlan. I just know I want my baby. I have to find her. I have to—” Again she tried to sit up, but he pressed her down again.

“Calm down. Please, look at me, Ella. You can’t help by leaving and collapsing, but you can talk to the FBI, or whoever. They have questions about the baby, the locals have questions, the state police. Ian, my brother, he’s talked to them, he and his wife are great at finding things and are here in New Mexico right now.”

“They are? Really?” She thought back to their time together.

He grunted. “If there’s anything to find, he’ll find it. You need to concentrate on helping us at this end.”

“She’s so little, Quinlan. And she’s early. What if something was wrong. How will anyone know? How will we find her? What if whoever has her isn’t nice? What if she’s . . .”

“No ifs. We’ll find her. Now, look at me.”

She met his gaze. A shadow dusted his jaw.

“How did you get here? Do you remember?”

Exhaustion slid through her veins. What drugs were they giving her?

She took a deep breath. “Journal . . . I have a journal. I wrote it all down who I thought was behind it, not Lisa though,” she muttered.

“Who?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know exactly. One of the doctors, I think. The midwife? I don’t know. I don’t know!” The image of her friend holding her baby. “Lisa, Lisa helps them.” She gripped his hand. “I wrote it all down, not the Lisa part!”

Fractured and broken images skittered through her brain. The couch in her living room, the other room with gray walls, a hallway.

“Where’s the journal?”

“I started one for the baby, but added other stuff. I think they took it, I don’t know, it was in my bag. There was another on my laptop, but that was in my bag too. Where’s my stuff?”

He shook his head.

“I made a copy of my journal and a few other things on a flash drive. I gave it to my neighbors to keep.”

“Flash drive?”

“To keep stuff safe, in case anyone looked.” Because someone always seemed to be watching, trying to talk her into giving up her baby.

Someone is very interested in your child, Ms. Ferguson.

“I haven’t decided yet and I don’t believe the father will ever sign them.” She used the same excuse she’d always given them.

This time though . . .

“That can be gotten around,” the woman said, smiling. “Just leave that to us.”

Her heart was racing. Racing.

. . . A quarter of a million dollars . . .

Her chest tightened. Panic roared. They took her. Took her precious little angel.

“I think you should rest,” Quinlan said to her as a machine started to beep.

A nurse came in. “Is something wrong? Our monitors show . . .”

“You have to get the journal! Quinlan, you have to get the journal. I just wanted to get away, but I knew, I knew they could stop me and they did. I told you. You have to get it!”

“Mrs. Kinncaid, you need to calm down.”

Calm down? Her baby was out there somewhere and she was stuck in the damned hospital.

She shook her head and tried to sit up, but the room spun and tilted. She pulled at the IV needle.

“No, I need to find my baby. I’ve got to find her. We have to find her. We have to . . .”

A hand on hers stopped her. “Ella.”

She shook her head. No. No. She couldn’t stay here. “Quinlan, help me. Please.”

The nurse said something, and from the corner of her eye Ella saw her inject something into the IV line.

“No. No, don’t! I don’t need it!” She shook her head. “Please, not yet. I have to find her. I have to . . . Where . . .” God, she wanted to yell, to scream, and yet she barely managed whispers. “Please.”

“You need to calm down, Ella,” Quinlan told her. “Take a deep breath.”

Her eyes locked on his green ones as he gently pushed her back down.

She took a breath.

“Another. Come on.”

She listened to his calm voice.

Another voice came through the fog of panic.

“How much did you give her?”

“Half a dose. I know the FBI want to talk to her but she was becoming too agitated again.”

“Mr. Kinncaid, I told you to keep her calm,” the voice said.

Ella turned and saw a tall, dark-haired, blue-eyed man in a lab coat. She frowned.

“Hello, I’m Dr. Forrester.”

The doctor.

She ignored him and looked back at Quinlan, who sat on the edge of her bed. “I want my baby . . . The journal will explain. The journal. I gave it to Mr. Richardson to keep it safe in case they looked through my stuff. The flash drive.”

“I know Mr. Richardson, I’ll ask him, okay?”

“You could call them, they would come and bring it.”

“We’re not in Taos, Ella. We’re in Albuquerque.”

“Albuquerque?”

She tried to wrap her mind around that. “But how? When? I was leaving. Had the car packed and ready to go. Called you . . .” Ella shook her head. “Where is she? Where is she, Quinlan? Who did they give her to? Who did they sell our child to?” The blood pressure cuff went off again and she started to shake.

“Calm down, honey.” He brushed a strand of hair off her forehead, the brush of his fingers warm to her. “You need to rest. We’ll figure it out. All of it. And I swear to you, we’ll get her back.”

“I’ll talk to them, whoever, to help. I’ll talk to them,” she told him, feeling the slide of calm that coated over her nerves. “Don’t leave me with them, please. I don’t know who to trust. Jareaux didn’t have time to listen . . . Please don’t leave. I don’t know who to trust . . .”

Her eyes were heavy. She felt his hand cup her jaw, brush across her cheek.

“You can trust me, Ella. I won’t leave,” she heard Quinlan say.

“They’ll kill me. I know too much . . . Too much . . .” She slid into a calm pool of whatever drugs they were giving her. “They killed others. They’ll kill me too.”

“No, they won’t. I won’t let them.”

Chapter 24

Quinlan waited until Ella dozed off and then stepped outside the door to call the Richardsons. He knew they were coming. He’d talked to them earlier this morning. Mr. Richardson said they’d be there after lunch. He had expected them before now. And now, he needed the journal. The call went to voice mail. Perfect. Next he called Ian and told him about the journal and Ella’s mistrust of Jareaux. Ian agreed they’d check him out and that he’d be up in a minute, he was just grabbing a drink from the cafeteria.

The doctor walked out of the room just as he got off the phone with Ian.

“Mr. Kinncaid, we’ve discussed this. She
needs
to remain calm,” the doctor snapped, frowning.

“Yes, I know.” He raked a hand through his hair and leaned on his cane. His leg was killing him.

“Look. New mothers can be . . .” Again his eyes narrowed. “Can often be fragile. Especially new mothers who have been traumatized as Ella has been. Are you
trying
to push her off the deep end?”

“What?”

Dr. Forrester narrowed his eyes. “I know you want to know what happened, that you want to know where your child is. I get that. I do. But you can’t push her much more. She’s stable now, but still shocky, and her blood pressure isn’t where I’d like it to be. Too high, to be perfectly honest. And until her tox screens are clear, or at least clear of whatever she was given, I don’t really care to have her shut down, or spiral into postpartum depression.”

He agreed, he did. He got it. “I know, but she wants to help, and the police need to talk to her. These bastards, whoever they are, scared her, pressured her, terrorized her.” He saw Brody and Aiden stroll around the corner with the fed and two other policemen. Just seeing Agent Jareaux pissed him off.

They stopped beside him and the doctor, who turned to the newcomers and said, “I will be present when you speak to Mr. and Mrs. Kinncaid, gentlemen. As I just told Mr. Kinncaid, she’s not completely out of the woods yet.”

Agent Jareaux and the others nodded. The two—state and local—followed the doctor in. Just as Jareaux stepped up, something in Quinlan jerked tightly.

Without another thought, he swung out and right hooked the son of a bitch, who then tripped and slammed into the wall.

“Fuck,” Brody said, grabbing his arm.

Quinlan threw him off and pressed his cane across the bastard’s chest. “You and I have a few things to get clear, Jareaux,” he bit out.

“Quinlan, for God’s sake,” Aiden said beside and behind him.

“You put her in danger. You put
my wife
in danger. You didn’t listen to her, didn’t have . . .” He pressed closer. “Time, I believe she said, didn’t have time to babysit her or hold her hand. Didn’t have time for her or the investigation
you
threw her into the middle of.”

Jareaux’s eyes, gunmetal gray, stared at him. He made no move to defend himself. “Mr. Kinncaid, I get that you are upset.”

“Oh, no, Jareaux, I’m far, far beyond upset,” he said very quietly, very calmly. “You endangered my wife.
No one
endangers my wife, let alone my child. Where is my daughter, Jareaux?”

He heard other voices join his brothers, heard, “Mr. Kinncaid, step away from Agent Jareaux.”

“You, Jareaux, are just as responsible for my wife lying in there hurt and broken as much as the bastards who put her there.” He straightened back, felt someone’s hand on his shoulder and shrugged them off, never taking his eyes off the bastard with the gun—which was still in the man’s holster. “One more thing, you have property that doesn’t belong to you or the bureau. I want them back. Or, if you prefer, give them to my wife, as she signed and addressed them to me.”

The agent swallowed. “Mr. Kinncaid, the investigation—”

“Fuck you and your investigation.” He raked the man with his eyes. He stepped closer again, or as close as his brother grabbing his arm would allow him. “Your investigation led to this mess. They kidnapped her, forced her labor and
stole
her child. My child!”

He jerked his arm away from his brother and gave Jareaux one last piece of advice. “You be careful with her in there”—he pointed to her room—“you be very, very careful with her.”

“Agent Jareaux is no longer working this case,” a voice said behind them.