A Dangerous Game

Craig loved Kieran; she loved him. There was no question about that.

It still amazed him how intense their connection could be.

Just as it amazed him that they could live together, sleep together, wake together each morning, and still find it so new and exquisite every time they made love.

He thought that she would want to talk as they both came down after a sweet and wicked climax; she did not.

She curled against him, sighed and seemed to fall asleep almost instantly.

He dozed himself, but woke when she moved. He guessed she hadn’t been sleeping at all.

She crawled as silently as she could out of bed, wrapped herself in a terry robe and headed out to the living room.

He followed, and found her looking out the window on what remained of the night.

She didn’t hear him at first.

He sighed softly. “Kieran?”

She started and turned to him. “Craig, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you. It’s Saturday—and you actually have time off. You can sleep as long as you like.”

“I was planning on sleeping past four in the morning,” he assured her. “Come back to bed.”

“I can’t forget that woman, Craig. I just can’t forget her.”

“I know. Come back to bed.”

“Kidnapping. That’d be an FBI matter,” Kieran told Craig.

“We don’t know that it was a kidnapping. Maybe the woman was the baby’s mother—or grandmother. Maybe she just wanted the child to be safe. Kieran—”

“Kidnapping,” Kieran said. “Craig, you know that poor little girl was taken from somewhere.”

“At the moment, the case belongs to the cops. The Bureau might be brought in, but right now, it’s not my call. We work hard to keep our relationships between agencies all nice and copacetic. I’m not running down there and demanding that we take the case. I’d be put in my place in two damned seconds,” he told her.

“But it must be kidnapping. You can talk to Egan, at least, okay?”

“I will speak with Egan—when it’s possible to speak with my director, I promise I will.”

“Really?”

“I just told you that I would.”

“What if he fights you on it? What if he’s dismissive?”

“I’ll fight back.”

“Really?”

“I’ll push and be obnoxious and call in all kinds of favors, okay?”

“Yeah. Okay. I like it.”

He led her back into the bedroom and she slipped into his arms. Resting against his chest, she fell asleep.

He thought about his promise.

He hadn’t seen the woman, had no connection to the case, and in his life, he’d seen too many murders.

But he would keep his promise, and he was damned determined that they’d get to the bottom of what was going on.

The woman had known Kieran’s name, and she had brought the baby straight to her, and that could mean...someone out there would be wondering just what Kieran knew about the woman, the baby—and the killer.

And that meant that Kieran might well be in danger now herself.

* * *

It was her fault, and she knew it. Craig was up early.

She’d finally fallen asleep. But knowing she’d kept him up meant that guilt riddled her. When he got up to leave and head into the office, she got up to start the coffee.

She pulled out her laptop. She had a desktop computer at work but had it networked with her laptop—it was a good setup. It had often enough saved her from having to go back into the office over a small detail—a note that one of the doctors might need, or even something that she wanted to reread herself to help her with a case they were working on.

She often interviewed and provided therapy for abused women—and occasionally men. It was certainly not in the same number, but there were men who suffered from abuse. One of her recent cases, Harold Lenin, was certainly that man—he’d been given black eyes by his wife, broken bones and tons of bruises. He’d kept silent through the years, a sad, cowed, little man. He was learning how to live again, recovering from his gunshot wounds.

He wouldn’t receive any more of them. His wife had shot him while they were up on the roof. She hadn’t been familiar with the gun and the kickback had sent her over the roof—and down thirty-five floors.

A lot of the people on the street that day had needed therapy, too.

Oddly and sadly, there were many such cases. They were also working on one case in particular now in which a man had snapped—and killed his wife. An all too common occurrence. As it turned out in depositions from neighbors and his own children, his wife had physically and mentally abused him for years, striking him constantly in the head. Apparently, for a few decades, he—like poor Harold—had just taken it.

His lawyers were still trying to plea bargain his case. Was it self-defense? He had finally slugged her back. He was a big guy; she’d fallen hard across the room, struck the edge of a credenza and dropped dead.

The reports issued by Kieran’s office would be incredibly important in what kind of punitive measures the man would face. He had killed his wife, and the prosecution was arguing it hadn’t been self-defense, not by the legal definitions that usually set someone free in a courtroom. And women and children were far more often victims of this kind of violence.

Her cases were often very sad, and frustrating. Kieran could usually work really hard and with tremendous empathy and still go home at night. But this thing with the baby...

None of the cases in their office at the moment seemed to have anything to do with an infant.

Ah. What about Melanie and Milton Deering?

At the offices of Fuller and Miro, they were also working with a scary pair—a murderer and his bride. The question was just how much the bride knew about the murder—and if she had participated.

Yes, looking at it all, Kieran felt a bit overwhelmed by the number of bad cases on the books right then.

But nothing that might have to do with a baby.

Her newest case was Besa Goga. Her crime had been biting. She’d bitten the cable man. At the rate cable men actually showed up in the city of New York, it might be unusual that more people didn’t strike out in one way or another.