catching the youth by the wrist and twisting his arm upward. The shot pinged off the exposed steel beams of the warehouse ceiling and landed with a thunk in a crate somewhere.
In a matter of heartbeats, Josh had the kid pinned to the floor. His gun was safely tucked in the back of Josh’s belt. The TAC officer plus two more men had their rifles trained at the boy’s prone figure.
“Back off,” Josh ordered, as if he had the right to give an order to three superior officers.
“Taylor!” Lieutenant Cutler. Josh snapped his cuffs around the boy’s wrists and exhaled a weary breath. He knew what was coming.
“Don’t argue with these men,” Josh whispered in the youth’s ear. “I just saved your life.”
“Don’t do me no favors.”
So much for gratitude. While the TAC team officers carted off the kid, Josh climbed to his feet, holstered his gun and straightened his cap before facing Cutler.
“I told you my men had point on this. Your job was to back up and secure the perimeter.”
“I was protecting the kid.”
The older man planted his hands on his hips and glared up at Josh. “He’s just as guilty as Pittmon. His gun is just as deadly.”
Josh stood a head taller than Cutler. He shook the tension from shoulders that were twice as broad. He felt annoyingly chastised, but the man was right. He had acted on the instinct to protect, rather than the task assigned to him. “Yes, sir.”
“Go easy on him, Lieutenant.” Antonio Josef Rodriguez eased his way into the conversation. He pressed a bloody compress to the wound at his left shoulder. With a nonchalance that betrayed neither pain nor gratitude, he nodded toward Josh. “Taylor here probably saved my life.”
Cutler’s nostrils flared as he considered A.J.’s remark. “I suppose that’s another debt of gratitude we owe the Taylors.”
Josh let his gaze travel from the unemotional support in A.J.’s golden gaze to the flash of sarcasm in Cutler’s baby blues. “Just doing my job, sir.”
It was all he’d ever wanted to do.
Now if the old guard at KCPD, like Lieutenant Cutler, would just back off and let him do it.
Chapter One
Dr. Livesay,
I’m watching.
I want what’s mine.
The baby you’re carrying belongs to me.
Take good care of it.
Daddy
Dr. Rachel Livesay stared at the snow-speckled piece of paper in her hand. Images of each boyfriend she’d dated through high school and college flashed through her brain. Of course, none of them could be the father. She’d married when she was twenty-five, and, unlike her philandering husband, she hadn’t felt the need to betray her vows with a lover. And since the divorce over two years ago, she hadn’t felt the desire to get that close to any man again.
Or maybe it was just her judgment in men she didn’t trust anymore.
At any rate, Daddy’s message was just a cruel joke. There was no father to speak of, no man who could lay claim to the miracle growing inside her.
“Jerk.” Rachel wadded up the typewritten note she’d found stuck under her windshield wiper and stuffed it into her coat pocket. This was probably just a stupid, tasteless prank. Still, she couldn’t help but survey the dull gray grounds and concrete buildings around her to see if anyone actually was watching.
Though the snow had stopped for the time being, the February morning still held the damp chill of a Missouri winter. The students, staff and faculty members hurrying to their ten o’clock classes from the parking lot and public transports huddled with their chins tucked inside their collars, or were bundled up beyond recognition beneath scarves and hats.
No Peeping Tom’s. No unwanted daddies in disguise.
Rachel shook her head at her own foolishness. Someone was just trying to get a rise out of her. A disgruntled student, no doubt. The set of papers she’d returned at her last Community Psychology class had been less than stellar. True, she’d found a few gems, but she’d also given out Ds and Fs. Including one plagiarized paper titled “Psychoses of Inner-City Youth.”
That’s what this was about. Attack the pregnant professor where it hurts the most. Get your jollies at her expense. “That’ll teach me to challenge them to think beyond my lectures.” She inserted her car key into the lock, exhaling a sigh of relief. “What was I thinking? Expecting them to take notes and read the text.” She raised her eyebrows in mock shock and opened the door, addressing the imaginary student. “Ooh, you got me this time.”
With as much grace as a belly-heavy woman could manage, she bent across the seat and retrieved the stack of lecture notes she’d left inside her Buick. She shifted her balance back over her hips and straightened, relocking the car behind her.
She braced her gloved hand on the roof of the car.
I’m watching.
So much for not letting the note get to her.
A sudden shiver that had nothing to do with the temperature cascaded down her spine. She huddled inside her long, cocoa-brown wool maternity coat and turned to look beyond the Holmes Street parking lot toward the heart of downtown Kansas City.
Someone was watching her.
The creepy sensation sparked along her nerve endings and made her spin around an embarrassing 360 degrees.
The bustling energy of a city campus kept everyone moving quickly along the sidewalks and makeshift shortcuts. Sometimes alone. More often in chatty pairs or small groups whose animated conversations created a cloud cover of sorts in the cold air, preventing her from really making eye contact with anyone.
“Get a grip, Rache,” she scolded herself.
She rubbed her distended belly, cradling her hand against the tender muscles where her miracle baby loved to stretch and kick. “Imagine.” Her voice slipped into that breathy pitch reserved for mothers speaking to their unborn child. “Calling you an ‘it.’ That’s probably why Daddy isn’t doing very well in my class.”
Right on cue, the baby kicked against her hand. Rachel smiled, imagining a shared high-five between mother and infant. Her tension eased on a cleansing breath.
There was no daddy in their lives, she reminded herself, slinging her leather tote over her shoulder and heading toward class.
As far as she was concerned, the father of her baby was 93579. A brown-haired Caucasian with an excellent health record, a high I.Q. and interests in classical music and Jayhawk basketball.
The dark hair and intellectual pursuits were to match her own. The clean bill of health was to prevent any future need to contact the donor of the sperm she’d selected from the Washburn Fertility Clinic.
She’d
