Search and Seizure

“I know you’re upset—” Bellamy tried again.

“You think?” The woman braced her hands against a rounded set of hips and prepped for round two of the battle she was fighting. “What does it take to get you people off your butts? What if you’re already too late to help Katie and her baby?”

Katie. Bingo.

Baby. Salvation.

The band of tension squeezing Dwight’s chest eased with the satisfaction of details finally falling into place. At the same time, a layer of guilt lifted from his conscience and he almost—almost—smiled with relief.

Though he’d never have suspected she had a mouth like that, he remembered the woman now. Four years ago, she’d worn a bland, shapeless dress instead of curve-hugging jeans and a sheer-sleeved peasant blouse. She’d been so soft-spoken and stoic on the witness stand that he’d had to ask her to speak up.

There was a fire in her now he hadn’t noticed four years ago. Or maybe it hadn’t been there. Maybe that tight clench of desperation lining her full mouth had ignited the flame inside her.

Dwight didn’t believe in coincidence, but he knew enough about how lives interconnected and twisted around on themselves to know that the Joe Rinaldi case, the baby in the conference room and this woman were all connected. Something was up. Something big. He just had to figure it all out.

And Red was going to help.

“Excuse me a minute, A.J.” Dwight was already moving toward the argument in the main room.

Some men might see a woman in need of a gallant rescue. Others might walk on by, thinking her size and attitude meant she could take care of herself. Dwight saw his chance to do right by Tyler Rinaldi without exposing himself to the emotional risk of caring for the child.

Dwight smoothed his lapels and straightened his collar as he went, donning an air of authority he wore as easily as his tailored suit. Shading his voice with a pinch of arrogance, he addressed the detective while the redhead paced away from the desk. “Is there a problem, Detective?”

Cooper Bellamy was a good three inches taller and more than a decade younger than Dwight. But the bald detective seemed relieved that backup of any sort had arrived. He offered a deferring nod. “Sir.”

“Yes, there’s a problem. I’m—” Red spun around but halted mid-charge, swallowing her words on a quick, stuttered breath “—oh, um, you.”

Though Dwight tried to see her as nothing more than a means to an end, he got caught up in the darkening tint of her deep blue eyes. Two seconds ago, she’d been circling Bellamy’s desk like a lioness in her cage. Now the energy seemed to drain from her like a popped balloon.

Her breasts heaved and a blush of color started beneath the drawstring at her cleavage and crept all the way up her neck. Her hand and Dwight’s gaze went to that same stretch of creamy, rosy skin. Despite his ill-timed fascination with the generous dimensions of her figure, he was more intrigued to see her backbone sliding into place as she overcame whatever had temporarily sidelined her and extended her hand. “Mr. Powers. You probably don’t remember me. I’m Maddie—”

“I know who you are, Mrs. McCallister.” Dwight wrapped his bigger hand around hers, liking the firmness of her grip. “You sat with Katie Rinaldi at her father’s murder trial. Offered key testimony. You stood up to his threats and helped me put him away.”

With her pale, alabaster skin, she couldn’t hide the remnants of her temper. Or was that embarrassment staining her cheeks now?

“Wow, you do remember me.” Her grip trembled before she pulled away. She tucked her hair behind her ears and offered him a wry smile. “Mrs. McCallister was my mother, though. I’m just Ms. I’m Katie’s legal guardian now.”

“Even better.”

Those blue eyes narrowed. “Better than what?”

Instead of giving her the satisfaction of a straight answer, Dwight took her by the elbow and gestured toward the conference room. “Ms. McCallister? I have someone I’d like you to meet.”

WITH A NOD TO A.J., Dwight cleared the conference room and closed the door. He hung back, leaning against the door frame to watch Maddie and Roberta Hays, the DFS caseworker, verbally duke it out. Mrs. Hays—a skinny sixtyish woman who seemed to have gotten up on the wrong side of the bed that morning—had arrived twenty minutes ago. She flashed an ID from family services and announced that she was here to take the baby.

Dwight might have been content to allow the authorities to handle the kid’s placement if he hadn’t already gone to the trouble of introducing Tyler to his great-aunt. But guilt made a mean conscience. And while he wanted nothing to do with that baby, leaving Red to fend for herself against the State of Missouri felt like abandoning a client in the middle of a case.

Aunt Maddie, as she’d called herself when picking up the boy, was a natural talent in the maternal department. She’d cried when he first told her Tyler was Katie’s son. Tears of overwhelming emotions that couldn’t be contained. Tears that turned her eyes a deep shade of midnight-blue and made him squirm with the urge to say or do something to make her pain go away.

When she’d finally smiled, caught up in her grandnephew’s bright gaze, that tight fist of discomfort inside him released its grip. Then she’d cried some more before wiping her tears and getting down to the business of tending to the infant. She’d fed him a bottle, changed his diaper and soothed the little one to sleep with a gentle, husky tune that had pricked Dwight’s nerves into an uneasy state of awareness.

Sturdy was not, perhaps, the kindest—or most apt—word Dwight could have used to describe Maddie McCallister. This more mature, more vibrant version of the plain, quiet woman he remembered filled out the curves of her jeans and gauzy blouse. Yet she wasn’t poured into them, trying to pretend she was something she wasn’t. His eyes lingered longer than they should have on the plump breast where she cradled the infant as she answered the caseworker’s questions and asked a few succinct queries of her own.

“Who else would he be?” Maddie argued. “I don’t understand why I can’t take him home with me.”

Roberta Hays tucked her spiky salt-and-pepper hair behind her ears and shrugged an apology. “It’s a matter of proper identification. DFS needs irrefutable proof that this baby is Katie Rinaldi’s son before we can turn him over to a family member.”

Maddie adjusted Tyler onto her shoulder and patted his bottom. “What kind of proof?”

“Blood tests. DNA. A birth certificate would be nice.” Mrs. Hays packed the items Dwight had purchased into the diaper bag she’d brought with her. “You’d be surprised at how desperate some people are to have a child, Ms. McCallister.”

“So I’ve heard.”

“They’ll bypass legal-adoption channels and claim abandoned babies as their own.” She continued on when Maddie would have protested the veiled accusation. “Ever since that Baby Jane Doe’s body was found in the city dump last year, the demand for babies in the Kansas City area has skyrocketed. Everybody wants to save a child.”

“Baby Jane Doe was murdered,” Maddie pointed out through clenched teeth. Was she afraid that would be Tyler’s fate, too, if she let him out of her arms? “I would think you’d be glad that people are stepping forward to accept responsibility to keep our children safe.”

“Not if it means separating a child from his real family.”

“I am Tyler’s real family.”

Roberta shrugged. “Your last name’s different, your niece isn’t here to verify—”

“Because she’s in trouble.”

“You have to admit, dear. You look suspicious.”

“What?”

Roberta shook her head, then grimaced as if even that small movement made her weary. “You’re an unmarried professional woman. Childless. A little past your prime, if you’ll pardon the expression. Your biological clock must be ticking off the wall.”

“Excuse me?” Shock and frustration colored Maddie’s skin and Dwight shifted squarely onto his feet, half obeying the urge to join the fight.

“I’m just saying you fit the profile of someone who raises a red flag when it comes to custody and adoption. It’s not a flat-out no, but our policy is to do some extra research into the prospective caregiver in a situation like this. We don’t want the legal parents to show up and have to tell them their child is gone.” Raising her hands in a placating manner did nothing to soothe Maddie’s defensive expression.

“If Katie could be here, I’d give her Tyler in a heartbeat. In the meantime, I would hope that she’d be a little less worried about whatever she’s going through if she knew her son was safe with me.”

“I’m sorry, ma’am, but my hands are tied. You might get a judge to rule in your favor but not until the courts open on Monday. And then you have to get scheduled on the docket and get tests done and paperwork filed. In the meantime, Tyler’s in the custody of DFS. I have to place him in temporary foster care.”

“He’s already lost his mother—for the time being,” Maddie emphasized. “He shouldn’t lose the only other family he has.”

Maddie McCallister was a fighter. But she was losing an uphill battle.

Dwight stepped forward and interrupted the debate. If his conscience dictated that he be here, he might as well be doing something useful.

“Mrs. Hays.” The older woman faced him, her hangdog expression and fatalistic tone indicating a need for lunch, sleep or, perhaps, early retirement. Dwight offered her an easy way out of having to maintain her tough stance. “As Katie’s legal guardian, Ms. McCallister has the credentials to be a qualified foster parent.”

“Of course.” Maddie’s blue eyes perked up. “I was Katie’s foster mom before the court awarded me full custody after the trial.”