to say “you think?” “Maybe you should.”
She suddenly felt too warm and unzipped her jacket. “An infant was left on the doorstep of a home owned by two brothers in Braden last month. The only identifying item left with the baby was the note. Unsigned, as I said. On common, white paper. No clear fingerprints. But the reference to Jaxie presumably meant Jaxon Swift, who is one of the occupants of the home. Mr. Swift owns a business in Braden and he had an employee for a short while named—” she inclined her head slightly “—Daisy Miranda, who was the only one who ever used that nickname for him. But she left Mr. Swift’s employment more than a year ago and he hasn’t heard from her since.”
“So? The kid is his. Why else leave her for him? What’s the problem?” His eyes looked cynical. “Jaxie doesn’t want to take responsibility?”
“That was our assumption, too, at first. That he was the father, I mean. But DNA tests have already disproved his paternity. He’s not Layla’s father. The business Mr. Swift owns is a bar. Magic Jax. Karen was a cocktail waitress. Their uniforms are, um—”
“Skimpy?”
She hesitated. She’d been known to work as a cocktail waitress at Magic Jax a time or two for extra money. She was taking a few shifts right now to help get her car out of auto-shop jail. “Let’s just say the outfits are closely fitted. Given the timing, it’s unlikely that your sister was even pregnant when she quit working there. There are no records locally about Layla’s birth, but we estimate she’s now about three months old.”
“So where is the baby?”
Ali kept herself from shifting. “The judge in charge of her case has placed her temporarily with a local family while we investigate.”
His lips twisted. “He’s put her in foster care, you mean.”
The term was accurate, but implied a formality and distance that wasn’t the case at all, since it was Ali’s own sister Maddie and her new husband, Lincoln Swift, who were providing the care. “Yes. A very good foster family. Can you give me any information about Karen’s friends? If she was involved with a particular man?”
“No. I didn’t even know she’d been here in Wyoming.”
Ali waited a moment for him to explain further, but he didn’t. And even though she tried to give him her best demanding stare, his gaze didn’t shy away.
She was afraid that she was the one who came away feeling unsteady. She wasn’t used to feeling unnerved by a man. Even an unreasonably handsome one.
Determined to get back on track, she reached into the inner pocket of her jacket and pulled out one of her business cards. They were generic cards for the police department, but she kept a small supply on which she’d added her badge number, email and phone number. “If there’s anything that comes to you, anything at all, please consider calling me.”
He didn’t take the card. “So you can arrest her for abandoning her child?”
She thought about the sweet baby that she herself had rocked and played with and fallen for just like everyone else who’d come into Layla’s orbit. It didn’t really matter what had drawn this man and his nomadic sister to the same place at entirely different times.
What mattered was Layla.
She placed the card on the center of the table as she stood. “So I can find a child’s mother,” she amended quietly.
He didn’t respond. Didn’t reach for the card.
She squelched a sigh. “Thank you for your time, Mr. Cooper.” She turned to leave the kitchen.
“I haven’t talked to Karen in nearly three years,” he said abruptly.
She stopped and looked at him. She couldn’t imagine not speaking with any one of her siblings for three days, much less three years. “That’s a long time.”
“You don’t know Karen.” He stood from the table and escorted her from the barren kitchen back through the nonlivable living room. “She’s flighty. Irresponsible. Manipulative. But she wouldn’t have done this.” He opened the front door and a rush of bitterly cold wind swept inside. “She wouldn’t have dumped off her baby.”
“Not even if she was desperate?”
His lips tightened. “If she was that desperate, she would have let me know.”
“Well...” Ali zipped up her jacket. Fortunately, her departmental SUV had good heating. She stuck out her hand, hoping to show him that she wasn’t his adversary. “If you think of anything at all that might help us find her, please consider calling me.”
He looked vaguely resigned. He briefly clasped her hand, then shoved his fingers in the front pockets of his jeans. “I won’t think of anything.”
She fought the urge to tuck away her own hand, because her palm was most definitely singing. “But if you do—”
“But if I do, I’ll contact you.”
It was the best she could do at the moment. Bringing up the subject of testing his DNA to help identify whether or not Karen, aka Daisy Miranda, was actually Layla’s mother wouldn’t get her anywhere. Not just yet. She didn’t have to possess the kind of brilliant mind that had been bestowed on her siblings to recognize that particular fact. “Thank you.” She barely took two steps out the front door when it closed solidly behind her.
She didn’t look back, but let out a long, silent exhale that clouded visibly around her head as she went down the steps and headed to the SUV. At least she’d learned Daisy’s real name.
Daisy Miranda might have seemed to have disappeared off the face of the earth.
But maybe Karen Cooper hadn’t.
She pulled open the truck door and climbed inside, quickly turning on the ignition and the heat.
Only when she drove away did she finally rub her palm against the side of her pants until the tingling went away.
* * *
Grant Cooper watched the SUV until it was out of sight.
Then he turned on his heel and strode through the disaster zone that was the living room, heading back to the kitchen.
The sight of the book sitting on top of his packing crates stopped him.
He picked up the thick novel. Stared for a moment at the slick black cover featuring an embossed outline of a soldier. The author’s name, T. C. Grant, was spelled out in gold and was as prominent as the title—CCT Final Rules.
He turned and threw the book—hard—across the room.
It bounced against the plaster wall, knocked a can of white paint onto its side and fell with a thud to the floor.
He still felt like punching something.
If not for Karen, he never would have written the damn book he’d just thrown. But what was a little signature forgery, which had locked him into writing a fourth CCT Rules book, compared to abandoning her own child?
