hadn’t been for Roy McKinnon. Roy had taken him in when Reed was fourteen and raised him as his own, but by then the damage had been done, and Reed had wanted nothing to do with parenthood.
Damage that Addison had always thought she could undo and convince him that he would indeed make a wonderful father.
She’d failed big-time.
“Go ahead,” Addison insisted. “Yell at me. Tell me how wrong I was to do this to you.”
She braced herself for him to carry through on her offer, and maybe he strongly considered doing just that, but he glanced down at his badge. The thing that’d always anchored him.
“You hired a surrogate,” Reed said. The emotion was still in his voice, but at least he wasn’t yelling. “From this Dearborn Agency. I don’t remember them coming up in the baby farm investigations, but it’s possible they did.”
That sent another chill through her even though it was something Addison had to consider. Those kidnappers had come after her for a reason, and the reason might have something to do with Dearborn or even the surrogate herself.
“I need to contact Cissy Blanco, the surrogate,” Addison said. “To see if she knows anything about this.”
“I’ll contact her.” Reed didn’t leave any room for argument, either. He was taking charge of getting to the bottom of this. “Is it possible the surrogate developed a strong attachment to the baby and she didn’t want to give Emily up?”
Addison was about to jump to say no, but then she remembered something. “I don’t think she developed an attachment, but about midway through the pregnancy, something about Cissy changed. She was moody. Maybe even scared.”
“Scared? About what?”
“There was a question about some mix-up with embryos, and the doctor at Dearborn gave Cissy an amnio test to make sure the baby she was carrying was ours. It was. But I think having the test was the start of her being upset.”
“The start? There was more?” Reed snapped.
Addison nodded. “She’d mentioned being worried about her sister, who was also a surrogate at Dearborn, but when I brought it up again at our next visit, Cissy said everything was okay, that I should forget she even said anything about it. I blew it off, thinking she was just going through pregnancy hormones.”
But Addison couldn’t be sure of that now.
“Maybe not all of Dearborn’s surrogates were legal,” Reed said. “Maybe some of them were involved with the baby farms.”
That put Addison’s heart in her throat. Was that true? If so, it would perhaps explain why the attack had happened.
“We should do a DNA swab on Emily just in case the question of her paternity comes up,” Reed suggested.
It wasn’t even something she wanted to consider, and Addison had been there with Cissy for the in vitro procedure. She was positive Emily was Reed’s and her baby. Still, Reed was right. They needed to have proof in case there were arrests made at Dearborn.
“When’s the last time you had contact with Cissy?” he asked.
“Not since Emily was born seven weeks ago. I was in the delivery room with her, and a few hours afterward I went in to thank her again, but Cissy was already gone. She checked herself out of the hospital.”
That got Reed’s attention. “And you didn’t think anything was wrong with that?”
Sadly, Addison had to shake her head again. “I wasn’t thinking of anything but the baby. I sent the last of Cissy’s payments to Dearborn and figured that was the end of it.”
Of course, Addison hadn’t even attempted to get in touch with the woman. In a way, she’d wanted to put the whole surrogacy behind her and get on with her new life. That could have turned out to be a mistake.
“What do I do now?” she asked, kissing Emily’s forehead.
That got his muscles working hard again. “The baby and you will need protective custody until I can find out why those men came after you, and...” But his explanation ground to a halt. “I need a minute,” he said, and reached for the door.
Addison figured it’d take a lot more than a minute for Reed to come to terms with what he’d just learned. Heck, maybe a lifetime wouldn’t be enough. However, he hadn’t even made it out of the room before his phone rang.
He glanced down at the screen, and when he pulled back his shoulders, Addison got up so she could see what’d caused that reaction.
Unknown caller.
“It could be just a telemarketer or wrong number,” Reed reminded her.
Maybe, but after the hellish morning they’d had, Addison doubted it. Reed hit the answer button and put the call on speaker.
“Don’t bother to trace this, cowboy,” the caller said. “I’m using a burner cell.” It wasn’t a normal voice but had been disguised with a scrambler.
One of the kidnappers, no doubt.
“You need to tell your ex that this isn’t over,” the caller continued.
“Who are you and what do you want?” Reed demanded.
“Addison knows what we want. The names of everyone she told.”
“Told what?” Addison said, rushing closer to get to the phone.
“You know. If you want to see what’ll happen to you, then look at the surprise we left for you at your house.”
“What surprise?” Reed and she asked together.
“You’ll see,” the voice taunted. “You’re a dead woman, Addison, and this time that cowboy won’t be able to save you.”
There was so much going on in Reed’s head that he thought he might explode. How the devil had things gotten this crazy in such a short time?
He was a father.
Him!
Reed bit back another groan and tried to force himself to think. Not about Emily. Or Addison. Hard not to think about them, though, when the two were right in front of him, seated at his desk at the sheriff’s office. Every time he looked at the baby’s face, he was reminded that Addison had gone behind his back and done the very thing he hadn’t wanted her to do. Still, his ex’s betrayal had to go on the back burner for now.
Because of the threat.
“You’re a dead woman, Addison, and this time that cowboy won’t be able to save you.”
That in itself was bad enough, but there was the kidnapper’s other comment about the surprise at Addison’s house. Or rather what was left of her place. According
