Apb: Baby

Good. Mystery solved. Niall pulled his keys from his pocket as he approached his door. Sleep might just happen.

Or not.

The flash of something red and shiny in the carpet stopped Niall in the hallway between their two doors. He stooped down to retrieve a minuscule shard of what looked like red glass. Another mystery? Didn’t building maintenance vacuum out here five days a week? This was a recent deposit and too small to identify the source. A broken bottle? Stained glass? The baby wailed through the door off to his right, and Niall turned his head. He hadn’t solved anything at all.

Forget the broken glass. Where and when did Lucy McKane get a baby?

He’d never seen her coming home from a date before, much less in the company of a man with a child. And he was certain he hadn’t noticed a baby bump on her. Although she could have been hiding a pregnancy, either intentionally or not. He generally ran into her in the elevator when she was wearing bulky hand-knit sweaters or her winter coat, or in the gym downstairs, where she sported oversize T-shirts with one silly or motivational message or another. And then there were those late-night visits in the basement laundry room, where there’d been clothes baskets and tables between them to mask her belly. Now that he thought about it, Lucy McKane wore a lot of loose-fitting clothes. Her fashion choices tended to emphasize her generous breasts and camouflage the rest of her figure. He supposed she could have been carrying a baby one of those late nights when they’d discussed fabric softener versus dryer sheets, and he simply hadn’t realized it.

If that was the case, though, why hadn’t he seen the child or heard it crying before tonight? The woman liked to talk. Wouldn’t she have announced the arrival of her child?

Maybe he’d rethink other options. It was the wee hours after Valentine’s Day. She could be watching the child for a friend out on an overnight date. But why hadn’t Lucy gone out for Valentine’s Day? The woman was pretty in an unconventional kind of way, if one liked a cascade of dark curls that were rarely tamed, green eyes that were slightly almond shaped and the apple cheeks and a pert little nose that would make her look eternally young. She made friends easily enough, judging by her ability to draw even someone like him into random conversations. And she was certainly well-spoken—at least when it came to washing clothes and inclement weather, gossip about the building’s residents and the news of the day. So why wasn’t a woman like that taken? Where was her date?

And why was he kneeling here in a stained, wrinkled tuxedo and eyes that burned with fatigue, analyzing the situation at all? He needed sleep, desperately. Otherwise, his mind wouldn’t be wandering like this.

“Let it go, Watson,” he chided himself, pushing to his feet.

Niall turned to the door marked 8C and inserted his key into the lock. At least he could clearly pinpoint the source of the sound now. The noise of the unhappy baby from behind Lucy McKane’s door was jarring to his weary senses. He was used to coming home in shrouded silence when his swing shift at the medical examiner’s office ended. Most of the residents in the building were asleep by then. He respected their need for quiet as much as he craved it himself. He never even turned on the radio or TV. He’d brew a pot of decaf and sit down with a book or his reading device until he could shut down his thoughts from the evening and turn in for a few hours of sleep. Sending a telepathic brain wave to the woman across the hall to calm her child and allow them all some peace, he went inside and closed the door behind him.

After hanging up his coat in the front closet, Niall switched on lamps and headed straight to the wet bar, where he tossed the sliver of glass onto the counter, unhooked the top button of his shirt and poured himself a shot of whiskey. Sparing a glance for the crimson smears that stained his jacket sleeve and shirt cuffs, he raised his glass to the man he’d left sleeping in the ICU at Saint Luke’s Hospital. Only when his younger brother had come in to spell him for a few hours after Keir and Duff had hauled Liv and her new husband, Gabe, off to a fancy hotel where they could spend their wedding night—in lieu of the honeymoon they’d postponed—had Niall left Seamus Watson’s side. “This one’s for you, Grandpa.”

Niall swallowed the pungent liquor in one gulp, savoring the fire burning down his gullet and chasing away the chill of a wintry night and air-conditioned hospital rooms that clung to every cell of his body. It had been beyond a rough day. His grandfather was a tough old bird, and Niall had been able to stanch the bleeding and stabilize him at the church well enough to keep shock from setting in. He’d ridden with the paramedics to the hospital, and they had done their job well, as had the ER staff. But the eighty-year-old man had needed surgery to repair the bleeders from the bullet that had fractured his skull and remove the tiny bone fragments that had come dangerously close to entering his brainpan and killing him.

Although the attending surgeon and neurologist insisted Seamus was now guardedly stable and needed to sleep, the traumatic brain injury had done significant damage. Either due to the wound itself, or a resulting stroke, he’d lost the use of his left arm and leg, had difficulty speaking and limited vision in his left eye. Seamus was comfortable for now, but age and trauma had taken a toll on his body and he had a long road to recovery ahead of him. And as Niall had asked questions of the doctors and hovered around the nurses and orderlies while they worked, he couldn’t help but replay those minutes at the end of the wedding over and over in his head.

Had Seamus Watson been the shooter’s intended target? And since the old man seemed determined to live, would the shooter be coming back to finish the job? Was Grandpa safe? Or was his dear, funny, smarter-than-the-rest-of-them-put-together grandfather a tragic victim of collateral damage?

If so, who had the man with all those bullets really been after? Why plan the attack at the church? Was the Valentine’s Day date significant? Was his goal to disrupt the wedding, make a statement against KCPD, or simply to create chaos and validate his own sense of power? Even though others had been hurt by minor shrapnel wounds, and one man had suffered a mild heart attack triggered by the stress of the situation, the number of professionally trained guests had kept the panic to a minimum. So who was the shooter? Duff said he’d chased the perp up onto the roof, but then the man had disappeared before Duff or any of the other officers in pursuit could reach him. What kind of man planned his escape so thoroughly, yet failed to hit anyone besides the Watson patriarch? And if Seamus was the intended target, what was the point of all the extra damage and drama?

And could Niall have stopped the tragedy completely if he’d spotted the man in the shadows a few seconds sooner? He scratched his fingers through the short hair that already stood up in spikes atop his head after a day of repeating the same unconscious habit. Niall prided himself on noting details. But today he’d missed the most important clue of his life until it was too late.

His brothers would be looking into Seamus’s old case files and tracking down any enemies that their grandfather might have made in his career on the force, despite his retirement fifteen years earlier. Duff and Keir would be following up any clues found by the officers investigating the case that could lead to the shooter’s identity and capture. Frustratingly, Niall’s involvement with finding answers was done—unless one of his brothers came up with some forensic evidence he could process at the lab. And even then, Niall’s expertise was autopsy work. He’d be doing little more than calling in favors to speed the process and following up with his coworkers at the crime lab. Although it galled him to take a backseat in the investigation, logic indicated he’d better serve the family by taking point on his grandfather’s care and recovery so his brothers could focus on tracking down the would-be assassin.

Niall picked up the Bushmills to pour himself a second glass, but the muted cries of the baby across the hall reminded him that he wasn’t the only one dealing with hardship tonight, and he returned the bottle to the cabinet. He wanted to have a clear head in the morning when he returned to the hospital for a follow-up report on his grandfather. He could already feel his body surrendering to the tide of fatigue, and despite his unsettling thoughts, he loathed the idea of dulling his intellect before he found the answers he needed. So he set the glass in the sink and moved into the kitchen to start a small pot of decaf.

While the machine hissed and bubbled, he shrugged out of the soiled black tuxedo jacket and draped it over the back of a chair. After pulling out the rented tie he’d folded up into a pocket and laying it over the coat, he went to work unbuttoning the cherry-red vest he wore. Typically, he didn’t wear his gun unless he was out in the field at a crime scene. But with his family threatened and too many questions left unanswered, he’d had Duff unlock it from the glove compartment of Niall’s SUV and bring it to the hospital, where he’d strapped it on. Niall halted in the middle of unhooking his belt to remove it, opting instead to roll up his sleeves and leave himself armed. Until he understood exactly what was going on, it would be smart to keep that protection close at hand.

Whether it was the gun’s protection, the resumption of his nightly routine or the discordant noise from across the hall receding, Niall braced his hands against the edge of the sink to stretch his back and drop his chin, letting his eyes close as the tension in him gave way to weariness.

The distant baby’s cries shortened like staccato notes, as if the child was running out of the breath or energy to maintain the loud wails. Maybe Miss McKane was finally having some success in quieting the infant. Despite how much she liked to talk, she seemed like a capable sort of woman. Sensible, too. She carried her keys on a ring with a small pepper spray canister in her hand each time he saw her walking to or from her car in the parking lot. She wore a red stocking hat on her dark curly hair when the weather was cold and wet to conserve body heat. She sorted her jeans and towels from her whites and colors. Okay, so maybe she wasn’t completely practical. Why did a woman need so many different types of underwear, anyway? Cotton briefs, silky long johns, lacy bras in white and tan and assorted pastels, animal prints...

Niall’s eyes popped open when he realized he was thinking about Lucy McKane’s underwear. And not folded up in her laundry basket or tucked away in a dresser drawer, either.

Good grief. Imagining his neighbor’s pale skin outlined in that tan-and-black leopard-print duo he’d found so curiously distracting tossed on top of her folding pile was hardly appropriate. Exhaustion must be playing tricks on him. Pushing away from the sink, Niall clasped his glasses at either temple and adjusted the frames on his face, as if the action could refocus the wayward detour of his thoughts. It was irritating that he could be so easily distracted by curves and cotton or shards of glass or mystery babies who were none of his business when he wanted to concentrate on studying the events before, during and after the shooting at the wedding. Perhaps he should have skipped the shot of whiskey and gone straight for the steaming decaf he poured into a mug.

He added a glug of half-and-half from the fridge and carried the fragrant brew to the bookshelf in the living room, where he pulled out a medical volume to look up some of the details relating to his grandfather’s condition. He savored the reviving smell of the coffee before taking a drink and settling into the recliner beside the floor lamp.

Niall had barely turned the first page when the infant across the hall found his second wind and bellowed with a high-pitched shriek that nearly startled him into spilling his drink.

Enough. Was the child sick? Had he completely misjudged Lucy McKane’s competence? Niall set his book and mug on the table beside him and pushed to his feet. Maybe the muted noise of a baby crying didn’t bother anybody else. Maybe no one else could hear the child’s distress. He was so used to the building being quiet at this hour that maybe he was particularly sensitive to the muffled sounds. And maybe he’d come so close to losing someone he loved today that he just didn’t have the patience to deal with a neighbor who couldn’t respect his need for a little peace and quiet and time to regroup.

In just a few strides he was out the door and across the hall, knocking on Lucy McKane’s front door. When there was no immediate response, he knocked harder. “Miss McKane? Do you know how late it is? Some of us are trying to sleep.” Well, he hadn’t been. But it wasn’t as though he could if he even wanted to with that plaintive racket filtering through the walls. “Miss McKane?”

Niall propped his hands at his waist, waiting several seconds before knocking again. “Miss McKane?” Why didn’t the woman answer her door? She couldn’t be asleep with the baby crying like that, could she? In a heartbeat, Niall’s irritation morphed into concern at the lack of any response. That could explain the infant’s distress. Maybe Lucy McKane couldn’t help the child. He flattened his palm against the painted steel and pounded again. “Miss McKane? It’s Niall Watson from across the hall. Are you in there? Is everything all right?”

He reached down to jiggle the knob, but the cold metal twisted easily in his hand and the door creaked open a couple of inches.

Niall’s suspicion radar went on instant alert. What woman who lived alone in the city didn’t keep her door locked?

“Miss McKane?” he called out. But his only response was the even louder decibel level of the crying baby. He squinted the scratches on the knob into focus and quickly pulled his phone from his pocket to snap a picture. A familiar glint of red glass wedged between the frame and catch for the dead bolt higher up caught his eye. The tiny shattered orb looked like the source of the shard he’d found in the carpet.

Finally. Answers. But he didn’t like them.

There were deeper gouges in the wood trim around it, indicating that both locks had been forced. His brain must have been half-asleep not to have suspected earlier that something was seriously wrong. Niall snapped a second picture. “Miss McKane? Are you all right?”

For a few seconds, the concerns of his Hippocratic oath warred with the procedure drilled into him by his police training. His brother Duff would muscle his way in without hesitation, while Keir would have a judge on speed dial, arranging an entry warrant. Niall weighed his options. The baby was crying and Lucy wasn’t answering. His concern for the occupants’ safety was reason enough to enter a potentially dangerous situation despite risking any kind of legalities. Tonight he’d forgo caution and follow his older brother’s example.

“Hold tight, little one,” he whispered, unstrapping his holster and pulling the service weapon from his belt. Although he was more used to handling a scalpel than a Glock, as a member of the KCPD crime lab, he’d been trained and certified to use the gun.

He held it surely as he nudged open the broken door. “Miss McKane? It’s Niall Watson with the KCPD crime lab. I’m concerned for your safety. I’m coming in.”

The mournful wails of a baby crying itself into exhaustion instantly grew louder on this side of the walls separating their living spaces. He backed against the door, closing it behind him as he cradled the gun between both hands. A dim light in the kitchen provided the only illumination in the condo that mirrored the layout of his own place. Allowing his vision to adjust to the dim outlines of furniture and doorways, Niall waited before advancing into the main room. He checked the closet and powder room near the entryway before moving through the living and dining rooms. Empty. No sign of Lucy McKane anywhere. No blood or signs of an accident or struggle of any sort, either. In fact, the only things that seemed out of place were the bundles of yarn, patterns and knitting needles that had been dumped out of their basket onto the coffee table and strewn across the sofa cushions and area rug.

He found the baby in the kitchen, fastened into a carrier that sat on the peninsula countertop, with nothing more than the glow of an automatic night-light beside the stove to keep him company. A half-formed panel of gray knitted wool hung from the baby’s toes, as if he’d once been covered with it but had thrashed it aside.

Niall flipped on the light switch and circled around the peninsula, plucking the makeshift blanket off and laying it on the counter. “You’re a tiny thing to be making all that noise. You all alone in here? Do you know where your mama is?”

The kid’s red face lolled toward Niall’s hushed voice. It shook and batted its little fists before cranking up to wail again. Niall didn’t need to take a second whiff to ascertain at least one reason why the baby was so unhappy. But a quick visual sweep didn’t reveal any sign of a diaper bag or anything to change it into besides the yellow outfit it wore. Had Lucy McKane left the child alone to go make a supply run?

Niall moved the gun down to his side and touched the baby’s face. Feverish. Was the kid sick? Or was that what this ceaseless crying did to someone who was maybe only a week or so old?

The infant’s cries sputtered into silent gasps as Niall splayed his fingers over its heaving chest. Not unlike his grandfather’s earlier that day, the baby’s heart was racing. A quick check farther down answered another question for him. “You okay, little man?”

How long had he been left unattended like this?

And where was Lucy? There was no sign of her in the kitchen, either, despite the dirty dishes in the sink and what looked like a congealed glob of cookie dough in the stand mixer beside it. It seemed as though she’d left in the middle of baking a dessert. Why hadn’t she completed the task? Where had she gone? What had called her away? And, he thought, with a distinct note of irritation filtering into his thought process, why hadn’t she taken the baby with her?

“Hold on.” Niall’s gaze was drawn to a screwdriver on the counter that didn’t look like any piece of cooking equipment he’d ever seen his late mother or Millie Leighter use.

After a couple of silent sobs vibrated through the infant’s delicate chest, Niall pulled his hand away. Tuning out the recommencing wail, he opened two drawers before he found a plastic bag and used it to pick up the tool. The handle was an absurd shade of pink with shiny baubles glued around each end of the grip. He rolled it in his hand until he found what he suspected he might—an empty space in the circle of fake stones. Niall glanced back through the darkened apartment. The bead stuck in the frame of her door suddenly made sense. But even if his neighbor had lost her key and had to break into her own place, she’d turn on the lights once she got in. There’d be signs of her being here. And she’d damn well take care of the baby.

Unless she wasn’t the one who’d broken in.

“Don’t go anywhere,” he ordered needlessly. Wrapping the screwdriver securely in the bag, Niall slipped it into his pocket and clasped the gun between his hands again. “I’ll be right back.”

A quick inspection through the bedroom and en suite showed no sign of Lucy McKane there, either. He didn’t see her purse anywhere, and her winter coat and accoutrements were missing from the front closet. There was no baby paraphernalia in any of the rooms.

Had she been kidnapped? What kind of kidnapper would leave evidence like the screwdriver behind? Had she been robbed? Nothing here seemed disturbed beyond the topsy-turvy knitting basket, and anything of typical value to a thief—her flat-screen TV, a laptop computer—was still here.