Loving Baby

Suzy glanced at James. He still looked as confused as she felt.

“Whose blood is it?” she had to ask.

The man’s gaze stuck to his hand.

James crouched down so he was at eye level with the other man. “Queso, whose blood is it?” Suzy didn’t have a chance to question the name. She was holding her breath for an answer. “Queso?”

James reached out and grabbed his shoulder. It did the trick in focusing him.

“It’s Sully’s,” Queso finally answered, voice low. “I don’t even know if he’s still alive. He made me run when the shooting started. He told me that getting you that address was too important.” He let out an exhalation. It deflated him. “Padre, he said you’re already running out of time.”

“Okay, I’ve heard enough.”

Suzy placed her hands up in defeat. She wasn’t about to let this show go on any more. The story was lost on her, everyone’s motivations just as hazy. She’d made a promise to herself not to willingly walk into situations exactly like the one she’d just walked into. Having a powwow with a man who had just confessed the blood he was covered in was not his own? A man who had limped from the dark of night to James Callahan’s estate instead of to the police?

It was too much.

“I’m calling this in.”

“You can’t,” Queso said hurriedly. His haze had been replaced with sheer panic in seconds. It hit every syllable in his words. “If anyone knows I talked to the cops, I’m done for.” He shook his head and turned to James. “And you’ll be out of even more time. Please, Padre, don’t let her call them in.”

Suzy grabbed her discarded high heel and tried to cool her mounting anger before it came to a head.

“I am the law,” she reminded him. “And no amount of money is going to erase that fact. Now, can you walk to the house or do we need to carry you?”

Queso flapped his mouth open and closed. James answered for him.

But not with what she wanted to hear.

“Maybe we should go inside and take a moment to think this through, Suzanne.”

If there was one thing Suzy disliked more than a man trying to tell her how to do her job—or when not to do it—it was a man calling her Suzanne.

“Either call me Suzy or Chief Deputy Simmons,” she snapped. “And there’s nothing to talk through. Something is going on, you’re in the middle of it and I’m going to get answers this time around. Honest ones.”

She grabbed Queso’s wrist and pulled up. James helped but kept talking.

“I need to go see what’s at this address. Now, not later,” he tried. “You heard him. I’m running out of time.”

Suzy whirled around as the side door banged open. The man James had been talking to before he’d gone upstairs had a towel in his hand.

“Listen, Suzy, this is my head of security, Douglas. Let him watch Queso until we know what’s here.” He shook the paper with the address on it. “Then we can do whatever you feel we need to do. Please.”

All three men looked up at her.

“You’re out of your mind,” she exclaimed. “A bloody guy limps to your party and gives you an address, and then you want to go off without anything else to go on? Even if I wasn’t law enforcement, I would think that’s crazy.”

Then James did something that surprised her. He almost closed the space between them, his blue, blue eyes never leaving hers.

“I know you don’t trust me,” he said, voice low. “You don’t believe that I just happened to be out there that day...and you’re right.”

Suzy felt her eyes widen.

“Then why were you?” she had to ask.

Would it be this simple to get her answer?

James angled his body slightly, as if he didn’t want Douglas to hear what he had to say next. Suzy couldn’t help herself. She leaned in a fraction.

“Because Gardner Todd, my brother, asked me to meet him there.” Before Suzy could react, he continued. “He said he needed to tell me something important. I never learned what that was, never even had a clue, either. Until this.” Suzy glanced at the paper in his hand. “Listen, I’m not like my brother, but I am like you. I want answers, too. So let’s go get some before it really is too late.”

There was so much to process that Suzy couldn’t land on any one point or question. In part, that was because of the pure urgency behind his plea. It bled through his words and into her. So sincere. So real.

James wasn’t the only one surprised when she nodded.

“Okay, I’ll go with you,” she agreed. “But I’m going to need answers on the way. And, Mr. Callahan, if you lie to me again, no one will be able to help you. Not your money, not your lawyer, not even the entire town of Bates Hill. Got it?”

He nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”

Chapter Four (#u74f89d21-a7a7-576e-bf3d-447dc5830b05)

Suzy shook her head. She might have followed the millionaire to and into his truck, but she was still having a hard time believing what he’d said.

“Gardner Todd had no family,” she said. “At least, nothing in his files ever said that at any point he had a brother. Let alone that you’re him.”

The truck hit a series of bumps that rocketed Suzy off the seat. James threw his hand out to steady her. His palm pressed against her rib cage. Through the thin material of the dress, she could feel the heat of his skin. It momentarily distracted her.

“Like you guessed, some people will do anything for the right price,” he said, unaware that his contact had put a hiccup in her thoughts. “And my father was all about knowing what somebody’s right price was. It was easy to keep Gardner out of the spotlight. Easier, too, when Gardner ran away at sixteen.”

“But why?” Suzy interjected. James pulled his hand back, setting it on the steering wheel. The dark night kept flying by the windows. “Why would he erase Gardner like that?”

A small smile pulled at the corner of James’s lips. In the dark of the cab, Suzy couldn’t tell if it was a happy one. Given the subject matter, she doubted it.

“Gardner wasn’t a crazy kid, if that’s what you’re after. But he drove our dad crazy. And it went both ways. My dad wasn’t the easiest man to get along with, and for whatever reason, Gardner got the short end of the stick with him. They never had one big fight, just a hundred little ones. It was like everything he did rubbed Dad the wrong way.” He shrugged. “And there’s only so much anger and disappointment and resentment you can shell out on a kid before they eventually either become the person you made them out to be or a completely different person, despite what you tried to make them.”

“You’re talking about Gardner Todd here,” Suzy said, still in disbelief that he was related to the man next to her. “The Alabama Boogeyman. The fixer who gets hired by the highest bidder. Notorious across the state for his role as being basically the best criminal handyman.”

James shrugged again. “I never said he was perfect.”

The truck slowed enough to hook a right. Beneath the tires was nothing but dirt and rock. They were in backcountry and only getting farther into it.

“If he really was your brother, father issues aside, why run away and give up a fortune? Especially if he could have inherited it.”

The smile—and whatever it meant—disappeared from James’s lips.

“I never got to ask. I was thirteen when he left. He sent birthday cards, but the last time I talked to him in person was a few days after Dad passed.”

“But you were going to meet him at the warehouse.”