“Sure you are,” he said. “You’re just not doing it very well. So why don’t you spit out whatever it is you’re really after, and get it over with?”
“I need your help. My sister’s baby has been stolen by the father, and she’s beside herself.”
Mac repressed a sigh and turned to stare out at the rolling ocean, preferring its eternal tumult to the unending stream of human misery which hounded him no matter how much he tried to distance himself from it. “He’s probably just taken off for the day. He’ll come home again as soon as he realizes it’s time for a diaper change.”
“No,” she said. “You don’t understand. He’s not my sister’s husband. They don’t live together. He stole the baby right out of the hospital nearly two months ago when she was only one day old, and no one’s heard from him since.”
Oh, jeez! “Then you should have called in the police long before now.”
“We did.” The bossy tone had disintegrated into something too close to despair for his peace of mind. “But it’s been seven weeks, Mr. Sullivan, and they haven’t made much progress.”
“What makes you think I can do any better?”
“Your reputation speaks for itself.”
Again he turned away, unable to confront the unwarranted hope in that wide-eyed gaze. Not many things touched him anymore, but a child gone missing, a newborn ripped from its mother’s arms, and by the estranged father no less, touched a sore spot which no amount of time seemed able to heal. Any guy who would pull a stunt like that should be strung up!
“You haven’t done your homework,” he told her, not a hint of emotion in his voice. “If you had, you’d know I retired from active duty three years ago. But there are any number of private investigators who’ll take your case and I’ll be happy to refer you.”
“I don’t want them, I want you.”
“You’re wasting your time. I can’t help you.”
“Can’t—or won’t?”
Mac spun around, the ghost of a lost child’s cry echoing through his mind. “Look, Ms…..”
“Carr,” she supplied. “Linda Carr. And my niece’s name is Angela. She weighed six pounds, eleven ounces at birth and was nineteen inches long. But all that will have changed in seven weeks. She probably looks nothing like the photo taken only hours after she was born. Her mother doesn’t know if she’s thriving, if she’s well cared for, if she’s gaining weight the way she’s supposed to. She doesn’t even know that she’s still alive.”
“If the father’s the kidnapper, the baby’s probably fine. What reason has he to harm her?”
“What reason had he to steal her?”
“Presumably because there was trouble between him and the mother.”
She nodded. “Yes. Their relationship fell apart a couple of months before Angela was born.”
“Is she your sister’s first child?”
“Yes, but Kirk’s second. He has a son from a previous marriage whom he rarely sees because the boy lives with the ex-wife who returned to Australia after the divorce.”
“That probably explains it, then. The guy probably feared he’d be denied access to this child, too.”
“I really don’t care what he feared, Mr. Sullivan,” she said, the bossiness returning full force to her tone and setting his teeth on edge. “I care about my sister who’s on the verge of complete mental collapse. And I care about a baby being left to the uncertain mercies of a man who’s clearly unbalanced. I should think, if you have a grain of compassion in your soul, that you’d care, too.”
“I can’t take on the world’s problems and make them my own, Ms. Carr,” he said wearily. “I’ve got enough to do fighting my own demons. The best I can do for you is recommend that you hire someone who specializes in locating missing persons, and if this man’s been gone nearly two months already, then the sooner you get on it, the better.”
Mac didn’t wait to hear all her reasons for ignoring his advice, nor did he tell her that with every passing day the chances of the baby being recovered grew slimmer, because he wasn’t getting any more involved. Period.
To underline the fact, he cleared the dunes and marched up the steps, surfboard and all, and left her to figure out another game plan, confident he’d closed the door on any possibility that it would include him.
Well, so much for subterfuge and sweet talk! Totally deflated, Linda stared at his departing back.
Why hadn’t Melissa warned her?
Why hadn’t she mentioned that Mac Sullivan was no ordinary man, that he had the face of a fallen angel and the body of a god? Why hadn’t she seen fit to point out that his voice flowed over a woman like molasses, dark and rich and bittersweet?
Disgusted with herself, with her inappropriate susceptibility, Linda buried her face in her hands. Melissa wasn’t to blame, she herself was, for having been fool enough to pin labels on him, sight unseen.
She’d read too many novels about hard-bitten, granite-jawed, flinty-voiced detectives, that was her trouble. Seen too many movies of officers with thick middles and double chins slurping coffee and demolishing doughnuts in between reading people their rights. Spent too many hours talking to the RCMP and local police who were hamstrung by protocol.
She’d come here believing she was prepared—and found she was prepared for nothing: not the endless drive lasting nearly two days; not the interminable congestion of the I-5, which had her clutching the steering wheel in a white-knuckled grip all the way from north of Seattle to Olympia; not the snaking coastal road crowded with tourists in Oregon. And definitely not Mac Sullivan.
Even her final destination was alien. She’d grown up in Vancouver, Canada’s third largest city. She’d apprenticed in New York and New Orleans, in Paris and Rome. And felt more at home in any one of those cities than she did on this empty stretch of beach bordered on one side by the wild ocean and the other by sand dunes rising twenty feet or more in places.
For all her world travel and supposed sophistication, she was truly a stranger in a strange land. And no closer to finding June’s baby now than she had been on her native turf.
Exhaustion swept over her, softening the edges of her disgust with the threat of tears. She’d been so sure, so determined she’d succeed where the police had failed. All during the drive south, she’d rehearsed how she’d approach Mac Sullivan, what she’d say. And been blindsided before she’d even opened her mouth. Spellbound by his commanding presence, commanding looks, commanding everything!
An image of June staring sightlessly out of her hospital room window, and another of a newborn’s sweetly sleeping face, were shamefully eclipsed by the more recent memory of a man emerging from the rolling surf and striding up the beach. Of him shaking the saltwater from his dark hair and sending the drops flying around his head in a shimmering halo. Of a pair of magnificent shoulders and long, powerful legs. Of eyes glowing smoky blue-gray in his darkly tanned face.
Oh, fatigue
