Page 4 of Ransom for His Secret Son

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.”