ASHFORD (Gray Wolf Security #5) (3 page)

At the Compound

David watched as the women fussed over the sleeping baby and the men tried to pretend they weren’t just as fascinated. He couldn’t imagine his brother delivering this baby all on his own, but it was good to know he was capable of such a thing. Not that he ever would have doubted it. Ash had always been extremely cool under pressure.

Donovan, a bandage still on his forehead from the car accident he’d been involved in last week, stood behind his wife, his hand on her shoulder, watching her watch the baby. David knew what was going through his mind. They’d been married eight months now. Their thoughts were beginning to move toward creating their own little family.

Ricki, David’s wife, was having the same sort of thoughts, though she was a little more reluctant than he imagined Kate to be. Ricki was an independent sort of person, one who was used to thinking only of herself. It’d been an adjustment, these last five months since their wedding, for her to change her way of thinking. But she was coming around. He was pretty sure that seeing this baby would be an inspiration, and he wasn’t quite sure how he felt about that.

Kirkland seemed more interested in the baby than David would have expected. But again, since he found Mabel, his entire personality had seemed to soften. He was standing behind her now, his arms wrapped around her. He whispered against her ear, as David watched, and she twisted around a little, laughing as she reached up to offer him a kiss.

Joss was settled on the couch, her incredibly inflated belly resting on her lap. She was watching Rose cradle the baby, a sort of longing mixed with fear in her eyes. David wondered if she was thinking about her son, Isaac. He died from injuries sustained in the car accident that killed his father, only eighteen months old, too young to understand what’d happened to him. It was an event that haunted Joss for a long time. Up until this moment, she’d seemed to embrace her new beginning, but David found himself wondering if maybe it was all too fast.

Ash came back downstairs just as the baby woke and began to fuss.

“Do you want to hold him?” Rose asked, as he rejoined the crowd.

He shook his head. “I’m sure you’ve got things under control.”

Of course she did. Rose had three boys of her own, the last of which had moved out just two weeks ago to attend a summer session that was designed to give him a head start on his college career. Rose was the only one of the group gathered, besides Joss, who had any experience with an infant. And she seemed quite at home with the baby in her arms even as his wails grew in pitch for several minutes before dying down again.

Ash slipped off to the kitchen in search of the horrible coffee he was constantly drinking. David followed.

“What did Emily find out about her?”

Ash shook his head. “She had no ID, and her fingerprints didn’t come back with anything.”

“So we know nothing about her?”

Ash met his brother’s eyes, a determination in them that David knew well.

“She’s a homeless woman who needs help. What else do we need to know about her?”

“How much trouble she brings with her.”

“Have you been doing this work too long, David?” Ash asked. “Do you see conspiracy everywhere you turn now?”

“No. But bringing some stranger into the house without having the slightest clue about who she is seems stupid.”

“She picked me at random. She couldn’t have known who I was, or that I’d even been there. I go that bar, what, once a year?” Ash shook his head. “She’d have to be pretty diabolical to have planned all of this out, especially going into labor at just the right moment.”

“Maybe,” David said, not really sure she’d have to be that diabolical. Just smart. And with the article that had just come out in Mabel’s magazine, able to read. “But we do have enemies.”

“We do. But she’s not on that list.” Ash poured his cup of coffee and picked the mug up, wrapping his hands around it. “She’s an innocent. And when we stop helping the innocent, we should probably get out of this business.”

Ash brushed past David on his way back to the impromptu party going on across the room. Kate had the baby now, and she offered him to Ash, but he again declined, seeming content to watch the ladies pass him around.

As David joined the group again, Mabel asked, “What’s his name?”

Ash seemed a little embarrassed, as he hesitated in his answer. “Ford,” he finally said. “Short for Ashford.”

This stranger had named her baby after Ash.

Ash

It was late. Everyone had gone home, leaving the house eerily quiet. It was still a little hard to get used to David having somewhere to go at night, no longer spending hours and hours sitting at his workstation studying the video feeds coming in from the homes and businesses of our clients, or working to improve the software he’d created to alert everyone should something unusual happen. He didn’t even live on the property anymore in one of the cottages I’d had designed and constructed for the members of my team. He and his new bride, Ricki, had a house a few miles away in the city of Santa Monica. Donovan, too, lived in town with his wife, Kate, leaving his cottage empty as well. Kirkland still lived in his cottage, with Mabel often there by his side. She had an apartment in town, but I got the impression she was moving in a little bit at a time. And Joss. She was here less and less, preferring to spend her time with her lover, Carrington Matthews, and his daughter, McKelty.

They were all moving on. Yet, I felt like I was still in a rut, still in the same place I was three years ago when my life imploded. Limbo. That’s what it was. Until I knew for sure that Alexi was dead or alive, I couldn’t go forward and I couldn’t go back. I was just stuck.

I settled in the window seat and looked out over my property. I no longer felt the satisfaction I’d once gotten from knowing I could provide for myself and whoever came along. I’d had dreams, the things Alexi and I would do together. I thought they were dreams that we shared. Maybe we had. Maybe we hadn’t. I was beginning to doubt everything I thought I knew about the woman I loved, and I hated that. I had never doubted Alexi before. But so much time had passed. If she was still alive, wouldn’t she have tried to find me by now?

That bothered me. It had bothered me for a while. And then David’s file, the things it showed, suggested things about Alexi that I never would have imagined her capable of. It couldn’t be true. How could David find these things so easily when it took me so long just to find a few little hints about where she might have gone after Afghanistan? The file was wrong. Those pictures…they weren’t my Alexi. I didn’t care what it said, what it showed. It wasn’t my Alexi.

I fully believed I would learn the truth someday. But there was a part of me that was beginning to accept that the dreams we’d had together would never become reality.

Limbo.

I sighed, standing and stripping my shirt off, determined to attempt to get some sleep—even though a good night’s sleep had been something of a distant memory since all this began. I had dreams that woke me every few hours, and I often did all I could to avoid them. But it’d been a long few days, and I was actually pretty tired. Maybe exhaustion would keep the dreams away.

I exchanged jeans for shorts and was just climbing under the covers when I heard the first wails coming from Mina’s room. I waited, listening. A few minutes passed and the baby continued to cry, the cries growing in volume. I hesitated, not wanting to intrude on Mina, but she didn’t seem to be responding to the baby. I slowly climbed out of bed and crossed the hall, pausing at her slightly ajar bedroom door. I could see her curled up in the bed, her dark hair even darker against the white pillows.

I hesitated again, standing in the doorway and watching her chest move rhythmically as the baby cried. Finally, I pushed my way in and went to the basinet, not sure what to do. I knew nothing about babies. I was afraid to touch him and was actually shocked that I hadn’t hurt him, holding him too close as I drove to the hospital. When I lifted him out of the basinet, his head flopped backward and his cries intensified. I slipped a hand under his head, a little awed by the fact that my palm was nearly twice the size of his tiny head.

I lifted him to my chest and cradled him there. He stopped crying, resting his cheek against my bare skin. He was dressed in a little undershirt that snapped between his legs and wrapped in a light blanket. I ran my hand down his back, patting his diapered bottom. I wondered if he needed a new diaper, but I didn’t know how to go about changing it if he did. But then he moved his head, pressing his little mouth against me, clearly hunting for something I couldn’t offer him.

“Did he wake you?”

I turned, surprised to find Mina sitting up and watching me.

“I think he’s hungry.”

She held out her hands. “Bring him to me.”

I did, awkwardly handing the baby over as she adjusted her position. She started to lift the t-shirt she was wearing, so I turned, trying to give her privacy.

“Don’t go,” she said softly.

I didn’t know what to do and that seemed to be the rule rather than the exception these days. I wasn’t used to being at a loss. I always knew how to act and always did exactly what needed to be done, but with this domestic thing…I was completely lost.

I sat on the edge of the bed, facing the window rather than Mina. I could hear the baby taking his meal, the small gulps strong and impressive for one so small. I glanced at them, curious despite everything. I had to admit it was one of the most beautiful things I’d ever seen. The baby, nestled against his mother’s bare breast, her face tilted to watch him, one of her fingers brushing against the side of his face. There was love there, no doubt about it.

“I’m sorry about the circus when you arrived.”

She looked up, a dreamy, if sleepy, expression in her eyes. “Don’t worry about it.”

“They were just curious about you.”

“I’m sure they were. I don’t suppose it’s every day you deliver a baby and then bring the homeless, pathetic woman home with you.”

“I wouldn’t say pathetic.”

She smiled. “But homeless.”

“How long had you been on the streets?”

She looked back down at the baby, touching his cheek again. “Almost a week.”

“Before that?”

“I was living with the baby’s father. But things went sour between us.”

“Does he know? About Ford, I mean?”

“Not yet. I’m a little afraid to contact him.” She was quiet for a moment, then she groaned, looking up with tears in her eyes. “He’s not a nice man.”

I could see the truth in her eyes. He’d been violent. I’d met women who were abused before. Gray Wolf handled all kinds of security cases, some included female professionals who were trying to get away from a violent lover. They all had the same look in their eyes, the same sort of weariness. Fearful caution.

I touched her knee lightly. “You’re safe here.”

Her eyes fell to the baby again. “You must think I’m pretty pathetic.”

“I don’t.”

“But I am. I ran away from home when I was nineteen because my father…we never got along. He was…a difficult man. And then I found myself in Los Angeles, thinking I could become famous and change everything that’d gone bad in my life.” She laughed, a bitter sound. “No one ever tells you how hard it is to get a job, let alone catch the attention of some producer or director. I never even set foot on a sound stage. After six months, I pretty much knew I had no talent. But then I couldn’t go home.”

It wasn’t an unfamiliar story. Emily was full of stories like this one, all these girls she often came up against in her work with the LAPD. She’d even tried to help a few, roping me in with requests for funds to pay for hotel rooms while she arranged to get a girl into rehab or a plane ticket home. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it didn’t. But Emily wasn’t the type to give up.

“I was desperate, and desperate people do stupid things.”

“You don’t have to tell me anything else,” I said, laying my hand on her knee again. “I’m not your judge. I don’t really care where you come from. I just want to see my namesake well cared for.”

She looked down at the baby again. “I never would have been able to give him the things he needed if not for you.”

“It’s the least I could do.”

Her eyes were filled with tears again, as she lifted the baby to her shoulder, patting his back lightly. Her breast, the nipple moist from the baby’s mouth, was completely exposed. I felt like a dirty old man looking at her. But it wasn’t a sexual sort of thing that drew my eyes to her. It was the natural beauty of motherhood that got me. It made me think of Alexi and wonder if she would have nursed our babies at her breast.

“I should go and let you get some sleep.”

She grabbed my hand before I could stand.

“I’ll pay you back for all you’ve done. I promise.”

“Just take care of yourself and that beautiful baby. That’s all I want.”

She shook her head, as tears began to spill down her cheeks. “You are such a good man.”

I didn’t feel like a good man as I walked back across the hall and climbed into bed. I felt like a man whose life had taken a sudden, bizarre turn for reasons I didn’t understand. I felt like a man who was taking advantage of a young woman who was in trouble. I felt like David and Emily were right. I knew nothing about this girl. It was irresponsible to invite her into my home. But I also felt as though this might be a chance to redeem myself for all the horrible things I’d done in my life. Just a little. And maybe it would knock me out of this rut. Maybe this was my way of leaving limbo and actually getting on with my life.