piercing ache shot through Lara’s heart as she thought of her child now in the hands of the cold, hard bastard who had fathered her. Moretti...he was the very devil himself.
What was his plan for the sweet baby girl? Would he hurt her? Would he kill her to spite Lara? Would they eventually find Emily’s little body lifeless and cold with death?
She mentally shook her head. Don’t go there, a little voice whispered in her head. She couldn’t allow her thoughts to go to that dark place, or she’d go stark raving mad and would be of no use to anyone.
“What we all need to do right now is try to pinpoint what Moretti’s next move might be,” Victoria said. “We can assume he has Emily, and we need to figure out where he would go with her. What is his plan? I want all of you to go over your notes from the beginning of this case to now, and see if a clue can be gleaned as to where he might be.”
Lara got up out of her chair, unable to sit still for another minute. She paced back and forth next to the long conference table as she tried to think back to the time when she’d been close to Moretti, the time when she’d believed him to be Andrew Moore, a man who had infiltrated the organization for his own supposedly honorable reasons.
Lies. All lies. And she’d swallowed them hook, line and sinker, never knowing that the hot, sexy arms commander Andrew Moore was actually the monster himself.
Victoria’s cell phone rang, and Lara froze in her tracks and stared at her boss as she took the call. Everyone else in the room was once again silent. The call took only a minute, and when Victoria hung up, her gaze held Lara’s once again.
“A second vehicle was found abandoned close to where Marshal Linden’s car was located. It wasn’t an official US Marshal vehicle, but it was dressed up to look like one,” she said.
“So, Moretti and whoever picked up the...uh, Emily in what appeared to be an official vehicle and then transferred to another car,” Xander said, stating the obvious.
“And we have no idea what kind of car they’re now using,” Ty added.
The news wasn’t a surprise to Lara; it was just a dreadful confirmation that Moretti was once again back in control. She looked at all of her teammates. “He’ll contact me. Sooner or later I’ll hear from him, because he won’t be able to help himself. He’ll need to brag about how brilliant he is, he’ll want to crow about his successful escape. And more than anything he’ll want to tell me that he has Emily, and there’s nothing I can do about it.”
Christina stood and walked over to Lara. “Give me your cell, and I’ll link it with my computers so that if and when he calls I might get a chance to trace his location.”
Lara pulled her phone from her pocket and handed it to the tech guru. She didn’t wait to hear what the others might say. Instead, she left the conference room and went into the break room where she could be alone for a little while.
The scent of hot coffee wafted in the air as she walked over to a nearby window and stared unseeing outside. She needed to be alone and think.
Somehow, someway, she had to remember everything that Andrew Moore had ever told her about his past. She needed to try to separate the lies from any truth he might have said that could be helpful in finding him now.
When Moretti had been acting as Andrew, had there been any truth at all in what he’d told her? Her stomach bucked and kicked with nausea as she thought of just how close she’d gotten to Andrew. Close enough to consider blowing her own cover, close enough to have sex with him and get pregnant and have a baby that he now probably had in his clutches. God, she’d been so stupid.
And now Emily was at risk, and Lara needed a way to figure out where Moretti might have her. She wanted to bang her head against the window until all the answers she needed popped into her head.
“Lara, I’ve linked your phone.” Christina’s voice came from the break room doorway. Lara didn’t turn around. “Uh, I’ll just leave it here on the table.”
Now all she needed was for Moretti to phone her, and hopefully Christina would be able to trace the call to lead them to wherever the bastard might be holed up.
Emily had now been in her father’s possession for well over sixty long minutes.
“Lara, we’ll get her back safely.” Nick’s deep voice turned her around from the window. He stood just inside the break room entry, as if unsure whether she would welcome his presence or not.
“You have no idea what he’s capable of,” she said. Her legs began to shake, and she walked carefully across the room and sank down in a chair.
Nick moved to the chair next to hers and also sat. “We’ll find him and we’ll get her back.” He reached his hand out toward hers, but then withdrew it when she made no move to meet him halfway.
She might have spent the night with him, but she didn’t need him to hold her hand right now. What she needed was for somebody to tell her where her daughter was located and how to get her back where she belonged. What she needed was to be strong enough, smart enough to deal with a man who once again seemed all omnipotent.
Nick’s eyes were dark and unfathomable as he gazed at her. “It must have been so tough on you...finding out that you were pregnant and having to go into lockdown.”
His words cast her back in time to the Virginia countryside and the modest rented house that had been both prison and sanctuary for her for a little over a year after she’d helped bring down the Moretti crime organization.
“It was,” she replied softly, immediately caught up in memories. She released a deep sigh and fell into them. “Initially I was horrified to realize I was pregnant, especially considering who the father was. I thought about getting an abortion, but I realized I couldn’t do it. The baby might have been half his, but she was also half of me.”
Deep emotion pressed tight against her chest. Initially she’d been so conflicted as to what to do, what was the right choice to make. Once she had finally made up her mind that she would carry the baby to full term, she’d been completely at peace with her decision.
Nick’s eyes held no judgment, only support and encouragement for her to share more with him. And for the first time since Emily’s secret birth, Lara wanted to talk about it.
“In the beginning I couldn’t imagine how I could ever love a baby who was part of him. But the first time I felt the stir of life inside me, I claimed that baby as all mine and mine alone, and from that moment on I had nothing but love in my heart and soul.”
Her hand fell to her flat abdomen, but in her mind she caressed an ever-growing baby bump. The pregnancy had been an easy one. She’d suffered no morning sickness, no strange cravings or unusual tiredness. Rather, she’d been more alive in those nine months than she’d ever been before in her entire life.
“It was the first time since my mother’s murder that I knew what it felt like to love,” she said. “I also knew that I loved the baby enough to know that, once she was born, I’d give her up for adoption.”
“You never considered keeping her?” Nick asked.
She hesitated a moment as a lump formed in the back of her throat. “Maybe in my wildest fantasies,” she finally replied and remembered how she’d dreamed of a baby room decorated with
