cold, black eyes popped into Dwight’s head. Just because the bastard was locked away in Jefferson City didn’t mean he couldn’t make a phone call, didn’t mean he couldn’t make arrangements to add to Dwight’s misery.
Dwight slipped his key into the outer door, but, already unlocked, it drifted open. This wouldn’t be the first time someone had broken into his office. But he had a feeling that what awaited him on the other side of the door was far more dangerous to him than any burglar or maid or injured stray.
Dwight crept through the set of cubicles that served his secretary and department clerks. The music was louder here—he could make out the wordless melody from a children’s movie now. The tune was punctuated by discordant wails from… Please, God, be that damned cat.
Clenching his jaw with a tightness that shook through him, he narrowed his gaze to the trail of crimson dots along the gray carpeting. There was a smear on the wall beside the door to his inner office, as if someone had tried to wipe it clean.
Dwight hurried to the thick walnut door that separated his work space from the others. He didn’t even bother with his keys. He pulled out his handkerchief and, as he suspected, the doorknob turned without protest and he stepped inside.
The full force of that soft, powdery scent, tinged with the odor of something slightly more pungent, caught him off guard and sucker punched him in the gut. He gripped the knob tightly, just short of snapping it off in his fist. This was a bad dream. Another one of those damn nightmares.
Only he was helplessly awake. “Son of a bitch.”
In four strides, he’d dropped his briefcase, circled his desk and taken note of the bloody palm prints on his telephone receiver and on the note tucked beneath the music box that played beside it. “No way. No friggin’ way.”
But the blood didn’t scare him half as much as the bundle sitting squarely on the middle of his desk, bawling through toothless gums and batting at the air with helpless fists.
Dwight’s jaw hurt with everything it took to keep himself from crying or cursing in front of the tiny, abandoned baby.
With shaky fingers, he unfolded the blood-stained blanket, unhooked the straps on the carrier and checked the infant. He was small, fragile and clean. Dwight’s hands were big and out of practice—and afraid. He quickly re-buckled the straps. Thank God. No visible signs of injury. The blood had another source.
“You’re okay, kid. You’re not…” His breath stuttered and caught in the tightness of his chest. The baby wailed in earnest now, and the sound shivered along Dwight’s nerves, chilling him and awakening dark things inside him.
The kid was stinky. Hungry, no doubt. Alone.
And Dwight couldn’t do a damn thing to help him.
He curled his fingers into his palms and pulled away as his vision blurred behind a sheen of tears. The tiny, blue knit cap and appled cheeks were too similar, too much of a reminder of his own son’s sweet, angelic face. A face that had been bruised and pale and still the last time he’d seen it.
“Stop that.” Dwight turned away, not sure if he was talking to the infant or the nightmare. He smashed the knob on the music box with his fist, silencing the repetitive tune. Then he picked up the folded note, scrawled on a sheet of his office stationery.
Depositing a baby in his office was too cruel to consider any type of joke. And if this was some kind of sick message to remind him about his own son… If this was the manifestation of that unspoken threat from Sanchez…
Dwight opened the note and read the short message scribbled inside. “Son of a bitch.”
He turned his back on the baby, embarrassed to have cursed in front of the kid. “This can’t happen.” He almost crushed the paper in his fist but, at the last moment, remembered the whole concept of untainted evidence. He tossed the paper back on top of the desk. “I won’t let it happen.”
More at home taking action than dealing with emotions, Dwight pulled the cellphone from his belt and strode out of the office, leaving the smells and softness and memories behind him. He was out in the hallway, pacing the length of the cool, dark corridor before the number he’d punched in answered.
“Rodriguez.”
“A.J.” Dwight hadn’t even considered the time, but the sleepy sound of a woman’s voice in the background reminded him. “Damn.” Dwight planted his feet and filled his deep barrel chest with a cleansing breath as he gathered his wits about him. “Sorry to call so late. I didn’t mean to wake you or your wife, but I need a detective’s expertise.”
A subtle rustle of movement told Dwight that A.J. was moving out of bed.
“The ADA doesn’t call at twelve-thirty in the morning unless there’s a problem. What’s up?”
“I’m at the office.”
“You work too much, amigo.”
“I wish this was about work. It might be. I came in to check messages and… Hell, I don’t know. I’ve probably already compromised the crime scene.”
“Crime scene?” The sudden gravity of A.J.’s voice was drowned out by the renewed fussing of the infant two rooms away. “Is that a baby? Madre dios. What’s going on?”
Dwight turned and walked away again. “You once said that you owed me one after helping you and Claire take care of that incident at Winthrop Enterprises last year.”
“I meant that. Most of KCPD owes you a favor, counselor.” A.J.’s hushed voice was insistent now. “Tell me what you need.”
“I need to call in that favor.”
“YOU WENT DOWN to No-Man’s-Land on your own?”
Maddie glared across the desk at the bald man who sounded more like one of her high-school students than a badge-wearing, gun-toting detective. How many times was he going to ask that same question? “Yes.”
“At night?”
“Yes. I was there last night.”
“Are you crazy?”
The detective, who looked almost ten years younger than her thirty-six, wasn’t bald so much as he’d shaved his head. And he wasn’t impressed by the temerity of her forays in the night so much as he seemed to think she was totally bonkers for taking it upon herself to help the only family she had left.
“I’m desperate, Detective Bellamy. Katie’s only seventeen. I’m supposed to be raising her and protecting her.”
“From what?”
From monsters like the man who killed Katie’s mother. From users like Zero. From a world that overlooked a woman who was shy and sensible and took advantage of a girl who was vulnerable and afraid.
“I need to protect her from whatever made her run away in the first place.”
Cooper Bellamy nodded and thumbed through the papers in his file. It was pitifully thin, considering she’d first reported Katie’s disappearance a month ago. “Let’s see. You said there was no inciting incident
