The Cradle Files Page 3

  First things first.

  He ejected the ammunition from her weapon. The unfired bullets landed on the floor. Using his bare foot, he kicked them several feet away from her.

  She watched the cartridges scatter, and her gaze flew to his again. "You still think I'm here to shoot you?"

  "I don't want you to have the opportunity to even consider it. Confiscating and disarming a weapon are standard police procedures."

  "If I were a suspect."

  He shook his head. "I don't know what you are. Or what's going on. You broke into the home of a cop, which only makes things worse for you. And for me. I just want to follow some kind of rules and regs so I know I'll be doing something right."

  Which was a joke that would have earned him some serious ribbing from his brother, sister and parents—all four of whom were cops or former cops. He'd never really thought of himself as a rule follower. However, in this case, he hoped the rules would ground him, because he needed something to do that.

  "Who stole the baby?" he asked.

  Just like that, the fight in her expression and posture faded. No more hiked up chin. No more adamant if-I-were-a-suspect retorts. "I don't know. As I said, I have gaps in my memory, and unfortunately that's one of them."

  "All right." Those gaps wouldn't make this easier, but it wasn't impossible. "Start with what you do know."

  She waited a moment, apparently considering his suggestion. "I know who I am. More or less. I remember my childhood, growing up on a ranch in east Texas with my father. I remember the day I left to go to college. It's my adulthood that's a little fuzzy. I can't recall working as a bodyguard for William Avery, and I didn't have any idea about his arrest or the trial."

  Those weren't just gaps in her memory. They were huge craters that encompassed months of time. "And you didn't remember me?"

  She drew in her breath, released it slowly. "No."

  Garrett worked his way through the implications of what she was saying. For all practical purposes, he was a gap. "Then why did you come here to my house? How did you guess that we'd even had sex?"

  "In one of the articles there was a photo of us leaving the courthouse. You had your arm curved around my waist and were obviously trying to get me out of the path of the photographers and the press."

  He remembered the picture. In fact, he'd stared at it for hours after Lexie had left. "From that, you decided I'd fathered your baby?"

  "There was something about the way you were holding me." She shrugged. "It was…intimate."

  She looked at him.

  He looked at her.

  And it was still intimate.

  Even now.

  Hell. He could feel the attraction. Evidently that was something even gaps in memory couldn't cool down. Well, he sure as heck would put an end to it. He was not going to lose his badge by giving in to emotions that he should have never felt in the first place.

  "Yeah. Intimate," he repeated. His boss had thought the same thing—so much so that the single photo had spurred some hard questions from Internal Affairs. Questions about Garrett's professionalism. About his dedication to the badge and his assignment.

  Questions that had cut to the core simply because they'd been asked.

  No.

  He wasn't going back there.

  "After you testified that day, you were upset. Rightfully so," Garrett explained, trying to make it sound clinical. "Billy Avery's lawyers had asked some tough questions and tried to rattle you while you were on the stand. They also tried to discredit you and your testimony about the illegal activity that you'd witnessed. But you held your ground. You were able to give details that the defense couldn't refute."

  "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 discov
ering 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.

  "He used a silencer," she heard Garrett say. Somehow. With her pulse pounding she was surprised she'd managed to hear anything.

  But she fully understood that someone had just tried to murder them.

  Lexie's heart kicked into overdrive. She hadn't thought her life could get any more complicated, but she'd obviously thought wrong.

  "There are three of them out there," Garrett announced. "Maybe more."

  Oh, God. It just kept getting worse. "All armed?"

  "I only got a glimpse, but it appears that way."

  The adrenaline and the fear slammed through her. Lexie wasn't helpless, but she certainly wasn't mentally or physically prepared to take on gunmen who would brazenly fire shots into a cop's house.

  "I guess this isn't a good time for me to say I told you so," she mumbled. "You didn't believe me when I said someone was after me."

  "Can we put this argument on hold, huh?" he snarled. "We've got a situation here."

  Yes, a situation they might not survive.

  Garrett scrambled across the room, and even though he'd turned out the lights, there was enough illumination from the moonlight filtering through the French doors that she could see him reach for his gun. In another smooth move he slid her weapon across the floor to her. Lexie took the cue and tried to retrieve the ammunition that he'd expelled minutes earlier. There was just one problem: she couldn't find it.

  "I-told-you-so's aside, who's out there?" Garrett asked. He hurriedly locked the bedroom door. The simple gesture was a sickening reminder that the gunmen might not stay outside. They'd likely come in after them. "What are we up against?"

  She waited a moment, praying the answer would come to her. It didn't. "I don't know."

  And she didn't. Unfortunately, there were a lot of things she wasn't sure of, but she was certain of one thing—this attack was meant for her. Maybe it was the doctor. Or the man who'd actually stolen her baby. Maybe it was both. At this point it didn't matter. The only thing that mattered was staying alive so they could find their daughter.

  "Call for backup," Garrett ordered, crawling across the room to the window. Using his bare foot, he kicked the ammunition and sent it rolling her way. "The phone's next to the bed. Stay low."

  Lexie scooped up the bullets and reloaded as she scurried to the phone. She yanked it from its cradle, her index finger already poised to dial 911, but there was no dial tone.

  "It's not working," she relayed to Garrett. "I think they cut the line."

  He cursed. "You don't happen to have a cell phone on you?"

  "No."

  He mumbled something she couldn't distinguish. "Mine is in the kitchen."

  "Enough said," she mumbled back. Because she knew the kitchen had lots and lots of windows, plus a glass patio door. Going in there would be suicide. Besides, it was probably the area the gunmen would no doubt choose to break and enter. It'd certainly been her first choice to gain access to the place.

  Garrett lifted his head for a quick look out the French doors. It was necessary, she knew. He needed to assess the situation.

  But she also knew he'd just risked being shot.

  He'd put his life on the line, not necessarily for her, though. He was, after all, a cop through and through. And Lexie was counting heavily on that. Because she needed all his cop skills, all his resolve—everything—to get out of this and find the baby.

  "Are they still out there?" she asked, and was almost afraid to hear the answer.

  "I don't see them." He paused. "That doesn't mean they aren't there."

  Lexie silently agreed. She seriously doubted the gunmen would just leave. Which meant that Garrett and she needed a plan. There was just one problem. Three gunmen, maybe more, and she couldn't even remember if she knew how to shoot straight.

  "I know how to use this gun, right?" she whispered.

  "You know how." He glanced at her and made eye contact from across the room. "That doesn't mean you're going to get the opportunity to prove it."

  "You have a better idea?"

  "A better idea than shooting our way out of here? Yeah, I think I do. Follow me."

  Crawling across the glass-littered floor, he went to the door that led into the hall, and pressed his ear against it.

  She made her way toward him. To his side. And listened as well. She heard the mechanical rhyt
hm of the air conditioner, but nothing else.

  Garrett reached for the doorknob.

  Lexie reached for him, latching on to his wrist. "We're going out there?"

  "We don't have a choice." His voice was strained and had little sound. "We have no way to call for backup, and with those silencers we can't count on the neighbors hearing anything and calling the cops."

  It all made sense. Unfortunately. They couldn't just stay put. There was nothing to stop the gunmen from crashing through those French doors.

  "You're just going to have to trust me on this," Garrett said.

  He didn't give her time to respond. He took her hand from his wrist and opened the door. Just a fraction. He glanced out into the hallway and must have approved of what he saw, or rather what he didn't see, because he whispered, "Let's go."

  Crouching, Garrett opened the door wide and had another quick look before he started out of the room. He moved in bursts, his vigilant gaze darting around the hall.

  Lexie followed. Staying low. And keeping a firm grip on her gun.

  They went toward the kitchen—the last place on earth she'd thought he would go. And that put a substantial dent in her resolve to trust him. Still, she continued to follow him, and she continued to pray. They had to make it out of this. Failure was not an option.

  Lexie forced herself to remember her baby's cry. It was the only thing she could remember about the child she'd given birth to. But that cry was enough to sustain her, and Lexie held on to it as they inched their way across the kitchen floor.

  The room was dark. Not by accident. She'd turned out the lights before she'd gone into the hall to confront Garrett. Maybe, just maybe, the darkness would shield them so they could go wherever Garrett was taking them.

  She heard a sound. Not the baby's cry that she'd fixed in her head, but a snap. As if someone had stepped on a twig. The sound was close. Too close. It had likely come from the backyard, mere feet away.

  Garrett paused. Lifted his head, listening. Another snap, closer this time. The doorknob on the kitchen door moved. Someone was testing to see if it was locked. Thankfully, it was. But that testing caused Garrett to look over his shoulder at her.