The Cradle Files

“And it was after I left the courthouse that we went to the hotel and…had sex?”

Garrett waited a moment. “You remember anything about that?”

“No.”

That didn’t matter. Because he had enough memories for both of them.

“And I don’t remember leaving,” she continued. “Though there was an article that mentioned I’d disappeared.”

There was no way he could keep this clinical, so he settled for keeping it short. “You did.”

She stared at him. “I don’t know where I went. Where I stayed. What I did. All of that is a blank, and I don’t remember anything until I went into labor.”

Well, at least they had that. “You have no idea who took the child?”

“None. But I remember where it happened. It was at the Brighton Birthing Center.”

The facility instantly rang a bell. There’d been some kind of altercation there recently, but he couldn’t remember the details. “That’s one of those back to nature places just outside the city limits?”

She nodded. “This isn’t a real memory, but more like a vague recollection coupled with a theory. I went there when the labor started. Why, I don’t know. Maybe because I was staying close by, or maybe because I knew someone who worked there. I delivered the baby. And then the doctor gave me that syringe filled with drugs. I think he did that so the other man could take the baby from me.”

Despite her sketchy details, Garrett could almost see it. A sterile, milk-white delivery room. Lexie, weak from giving birth. At that moment, she was about as vulnerable as she could get.

“What happened next?” he asked.

“The doctor left me there in the birthing room. I managed to get off the bed, somehow. I went to look for the baby. But I was dizzy, and I couldn’t see where the man had taken her. Then I heard the doctor telling the security guard to find me and make sure I didn’t get out of there.”

Garrett forced the emotion aside and dealt with the facts. “But you obviously escaped.”

“Through the fire exit. I was still wearing a hospital gown, and I was barefoot. Not to mention I was drugged. I saw the man who took the baby. He put her in a dark blue van and sped away. I knew I wouldn’t be able to stay conscious for long so I, uh, borrowed a car from the parking lot and tried to go after him.”

Garrett ignored the borrowed part. He would deal with the stolen car issue if and when it came up again. “You weren’t successful.”

She shook her head. “No. I only made it a few miles, and I barely managed to get off the road and onto a path deep in the woods before I blacked out. When I came to, it was nearly two days later, and the man, the dark blue van and the baby were nowhere around.”

He could almost see that, too. As a cop. And as a prospective parent. Neither viewpoint pleased him.

Mercy, did he really have a child out there somewhere?

A child who’d been born, and stolen, under the circumstances Lexie had just described? He certainly couldn’t dismiss it, but he couldn’t dismiss the problems in her account, either.

“When you regained consciousness, you didn’t go to the police?” he asked.

“I tried.” She made a soft, throaty sound of disapproval. Probably because it was obvious he was now interrogating her. “I was on my way there when someone ran me off the road. It was a cop.”

Garrett felt his stomach tighten. “A cop?”

“Well, he was wearing a cop’s uniform, anyway. I managed to get away. I drove the car back into the woods so the cop or anyone else on the road wouldn’t be able to see me, but I was so weak that I passed out at the wheel again. Someone found me. A rancher. And he took me to a small county hospital and that’s where I’ve been—in and out of consciousness, for nearly three weeks.”

And with her having no wallet, ID or memory, the medical staff wouldn’t have known whom to contact. Not that she had a next of kin—her parents were dead.

“Why didn’t the doctors at the county hospital call the police?” Garrett asked.

“Because I begged them not to. I told them I was on the run from an abusive ex, that he’d beaten and drugged me. And I told them that my ex was a cop.”

“And they bought all of that?”

She nodded. “They wanted to give me a gynecological exam. They thought maybe I’d been raped, but I assured them that a rape hadn’t occurred, that I was simply having a heavier than usual menstrual cycle. I didn’t want them discovering that I’d recently given birth, because it would have spurred too many questions, and it might have caused them to call the cops, after all. I couldn’t risk that. I couldn’t even stand on my own two feet, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to fight off another attack.”

Garrett considered everything she’d said. “Yet you weren’t so weak that you couldn’t come up with a whole list of apparently believable lies.”

Oh, that earned him a glare. “Be thankful that the lies came easily. If they hadn’t, I probably would be dead by now. And where would that have left the baby, huh?”

He wasn’t ready to think about that just yet. But soon. Very soon. “After you were discharged from the hospital—”

“I wasn’t discharged,” she interrupted. “Once I regained consciousness and some strength, I sneaked out. Because I was afraid someone would try to kill me again.”

Her fear certainly seemed genuine, but like her memory, there were some huge gaps in her story. “And you still didn’t go to the police?” he pressed.

“I didn’t think I could trust the cops. Especially since it may have been a cop who ran me off the road.” She turned away from him, in the direction of his dresser. She didn’t exactly glance at his Glock, but Garrett figured she was well aware that it was there.

“Remember that part about not doing anything to rile me?” he warned.

“Well, you’re riling me,” she retorted. But she wasn’t just kidding around. Anger chilled her voice, and she got right in his face. “Don’t you get it? We have a baby out there, and someone has her. Do you think it’s a good idea to stand around here wasting time with all these questions? We could be using this time to find her.”

“Information and facts will help find her, and you seem to be seriously short on both.”

“Because I can’t remember!” she shouted. The burst of emotion left as quickly as it came. Her shoulders slumped. “Please, just believe me.”

It was the please that got him. That, and the teary look. “And what if I do?”

A glimmer of hope flashed in her eyes. “I need to get back into the Brighton Birthing Center.” She glanced at her gun, which he still held in his hand. “I wasn’t sure I could even shoot straight. And I didn’t know about the martial arts training. I figured if I went barging in there asking questions, I’d just get myself killed. After what happened with the cop trying to run me off the road, I figured I couldn’t go to the police. Present company excluded, of course. I decided that since you were likely the baby’s father, I should tell you.”

So, there it was. In a nutshell. Even if he had doubts about the validity of her memory, he couldn’t doubt that sincere please. But it didn’t mean he’d agree to go off on some renegade chase. This had to be done by the book. He had to get his lieutenant involved.

Garrett opened his mouth to tell her, but that was as far as he got. He saw the movement out of the corner of his eye, behind her. To the right of the double French doors that led to his backyard.

“Get down,” Garrett said. Not a shout; he practically whispered it. But it still came through loud and clear as an order.

Lexie tried to follow his gaze, no doubt to see what had triggered his reaction, but he didn’t give her the chance. Garrett slapped off the light switch, plunging them into darkness. In the same motion, he hooked his arm around her waist and shoved her to the floor.

It was barely in time.

Because a bullet slammed through the one of the French doors, pelting them with a deadly spray of splintered wood and broken glass.

Chapter Four

It took a moment for Lexie to figure out what was happening. One second the French door was there. A second later, there was a gaping hole in it, and Garrett and she were being pelted with glass.