Forged in Ash (11 page)

Round arms, giving sticky hugs. Cupid mouth burbling kisses. “Where’s mama’s kiss, Collie Bear? Mama wants her kiss.”

“Who? You’re crying.” The woman’s voice was a faint buzz behind her. “Do you want me to call someone?”

“Mama’s here, Collin. Mama’s here.” Jillian bent over the stroller. Her hand shook as she stroked a plump, wet cheek.

“Her name’s Emma.” The voice behind her tightened and the stroller inched back. “Look, why don’t you let me call someone for you. You don’t look well.”

Jillian took a step after the retreating stroller, and reached for the straps holding the child in place.

“Whoa.” This time the stroller took a big leap back. “What the hell are you doing?”

The child let loose with another hiccupping sob.

“It’s okay, Collie Bear.” Jillian lurched forward, reaching for him. “Momma’s here.”

“Her name’s
Emma
. And you’re
not
her mother. You need to leave.
Now
.” The woman’s voice rose shrilly as Jillian reached for the child. “I’m serious. If you don’t leave right now, I’m calling the cops.”

“Dance with Mama, Collie Bear. Mama wants to dance.” Swooping down, with tickles and kisses. Lilting burbles of laughter. The shimmering flop of golden curls while the living room twirled around them.

Her arms aching to hold that warm, heavy weight again, Jillian unlatched the buckle connecting the stroller’s straps.

A shrill scream pierced the air and the stroller jerked back hard. “Help. Someone help. She’s crazy. She’s trying to take my baby.”

Jillian’s thin arms strained to hold the stroller in place long enough to lift its precious cargo free.

A tall, slender body shoved her aside and wedged itself between Jillian and the stroller. “She’s not yours! What is wrong with you?”

Hands clamped onto Jillian’s arm and yanked. Already off balance, the tug swung her headfirst into the wall of the restaurant. An ugly crack sounded as her forehead made contact, and then everything went silent—a hushed, marshmallow-thick silence.

She straightened slowly, her body swaying, that odd cotton fuzziness in her head expanding until her entire mind felt stuffed with white fluff. Within that dense numbness a faint buzzing grew, an electronic whine that seemed to come from everywhere at once. A brilliant white light shimmered at the edge of her vision, undulated like waves against the sand.

The buzz grew stronger, but within the steady hum words rose and fell.

“Tried to take my baby. She’s crazy. Somebody call the cops.”

“I’m calling an ambulance, she’s bleeding pretty bad. What the hell’s she wearing? It’s eighty-five degrees out.”

Jillian focused on the steady drone, recognizing more and more words with each passing second.

“You alright, lady?” a male voice rumbled. “Your head’s bleeding. Why don’t I take that wool cape off you? You’re courting heatstroke with that thing.” His voice wavered in and out, growing more distant with each word.

She glanced around vaguely, her body feather light, and realized a small crowd had gathered.

“The police are on their way,” someone said.

Police?

The word flushed the haziness from Jillian’s mind. The police couldn’t be trusted.

The crowd around her shifted and a stroller came into view. Jillian strained to focus on it, only to find the seat empty. A soft, stuttering sob drew her attention to the right, to a slender dark-haired woman rocking the chunky body of a child. A child with tousled gold hair.

Collin.

She took a small step forward, but something tightened around her wrist, holding her in place. The woman twisted, speaking in rushed fragments to someone on her right and the child’s face came into view.

The haze blanketing her mind dissipated. The bright white light surrounding her darkened. The ground went hard and icy beneath her feet and the truth crashed over her in all its ugly, unbreakable agony.

The child was blond. Blue-eyed. Stocky. A wailer.

But it wasn’t Collin.

It wasn’t her baby.

Collin.

His name whirled in her mind.

He was gone. Her sweet Collie Bear all gone. Just like the rest of her babies, never to come home again.

The reality almost drove her to her knees; the agony felt so fresh and raw that blood-drenched night could have taken place only moments before.

She bent at the waist, a low groan breaking from her.

“Hang in there,” the man beside her said, with a quick squeeze to her wrist. “The ambulance should be here any minute.”

“Yeah, so should the police,” someone else said.

It was only then Jillian realized the man beside here was holding her arm—a chain anchoring her in place, ready to hand her over to the police.

The bastard—he couldn’t be trusted.

None of them could be trusted.

One violent yank of her arm and she was free. She fled toward her car, her heart beating so hard it pounded in her ears, drowning out the sounds of pursuit. If she was being pursued. After a moment, when hands didn’t close over her shoulders, she slowed to a walk and half turned, glancing behind her. The small knot of people next to the stroller had thinned, but nobody was following her.

A couple of deep breaths pushed the panic aside and her mind went to work again.

How long had she been lost in that awful haze? She glanced toward the far right of the parking lot, but Marcus Simcosky’s truck was gone.

Damn it. Damn it.
She’d lost her chance.

Another deep breath. Followed by another.

She pushed the frustration aside. She’d have to start over. Waiting along Silver Strand Boulevard for one of those bastards to pass by was still her best bet for tracking them down. Her strategy had worked once; it would work again. She just had to be patient.

She’d head back to her original parking place and wait.

A police cruiser pulled into the mall’s entrance as she pulled out. She held her breath, her hands tight around the wheel, and kept her eyes straight ahead. The cruiser passed by without slowing down and Jillian dared to breathe again.

With luck, everyone had been too far away to get her license plate number, or a description of her car.

She backtracked along the same route Marcus Simcosky had taken her, hoping against hope that she might catch sight of his vehicle again. When a black Ford truck in an apartment parking lot came into view, she slowed. Simcosky had been driving a similar truck. She pulled into the lot, and eased up behind the vehicle. The plate numbers were the same. Sheer disbelief gripped her. Unbelievable. She’d found him again. What were the odds of that?

A grim smile bloomed.

Did he live in the apartment complex? Or was he visiting someone?

Not that it mattered. All she had to do was park where he wouldn’t notice her and wait. Sooner or later he had to come out.

Robert Biesel’s hand tightened around the Coke bottle until the plastic crackled, as he watched Jillian Michaels’s monstrosity of a car pull into the parking lot of one of the ritzier apartment complexes in town.

What the hell was the damn woman up to now?

Earlier, she’d tried to kidnap a baby. A baby, for Pete’s sake, as if that would go unnoticed. To top the insane behavior off, she’d tried to snatch the infant in front of the child’s mother, or nanny, or whoever was pushing the stroller.

Really? Was she that much of a bimbo? His cell rang as he pulled over and parked along the side of the boulevard to keep an eye on her. He glanced at the caller ID and scowled. Phillip. His tag partner must have finally realized Simcosky wasn’t going to show. Time to put on his dancing shoes. He hit the talk button.

“Hey,” he said casually. “You put our baby to bed?”

A snort sounded on the other end. “I wish. Where did you drop him?”

“Third and Orange, he was headed your way.” He sharpened his tone. “You lost him?”

“I didn’t lose him.” Phillip’s voice tightened defensively. “He never showed.”

“Son of a bitch.” Robert let the words hang there. “We better start a grid. You take Orange east. I’ll take west.”

Sending him on a fruitless search east of Orange Avenue would keep Phillip both busy, and distant.

“How much longer are we supposed to keep up with this waste of time?” Phillip asked, his voice still defensive, but annoyance had crept in as well. “We’ve been at it for months. It’s clear the poor bastard’s life revolves around doctors’ appointments and physical therapy. He’s not meeting deep throat in the middle of the night. If any of these poor bastards had an inkling of what the bosses have in the works, we’d know by now. There’s a ton of money being wasted on these clowns.”

Robert would have agreed with him thirty minutes ago, before Jillian Michaels had attempted to hook up with one of the SEALs they’d been assigned to monitor.

“Not our money, not our worry,” Robert said. “Besides, the job’s putting your kids through college, so what are you complaining about?”

“It’s getting old, that’s—”

“Tell you what,” Robert snapped. “You explain that to the bosses, and see what their take is.”

Dead silence greeted the suggestion.

“Yeah, I thought so. Call if you spot him.” Robert ended the call as Jillian stopped behind a black truck and idled there.

He couldn’t see the make or model of the pickup truck from his vantage point, but the color and frame looked too much like Marcus Simcosky’s to be a coincidence.

What the hell this meant was another big black question mark. Phillip was right, they’d been watching the guy for months and this was the first time he’d visited this place. And then there was Jillian.

She pulled forward and disappeared behind a cluster of parked cars. He eased back into the street to get a better look. As he drove past the entrance to the parking lot, he caught a glimpse of her backing into one of the last parking places at the very end of the lot. He slowed his sedan to a crawl, watching intensely. Her car didn’t move.

He glanced at the black truck and frowned. It looked like she was staking the truck out, which meant she’d hang around until Simcosky appeared. He scanned the entrance to the apartment building; lots of people were going in and out, but none of them were Simcosky.

The number of people hanging around the parking lot made it impossible to grab Jillian and force her into his car…but then again…he didn’t need to.

He could use her car instead.

She’d set up her stakeout next to the tennis courts. But the parking lot curved around to the left and behind the apartment complex. A side street flanked the building ahead. There was a good chance that side street had access to the parking lot as well. If he pulled around the block, he could park back there, and use the trees next to the tennis courts for cover as he made his way to Jillian’s sedan.

All the windows in Jillian’s monstrosity were rolled down, so it would be easy to access her car. It made more sense to slip into the
passenger seat beside Jillian, stick a gun in her ribs, and force her to drive away—rather than drag her, kicking and screaming, out of her car and into his, while every eye in the neighborhood watched.

He accelerated, scanning the building’s entrance as he drove past. Still no sign of Simcosky.

Considering how slow the man moved these days, Robert would be in Jillian’s car and well on his way to clearing this mess up before Simcosky made it back to his truck.

There was still the question of why the two were meeting. But he could cut that explanation from Jillian before he took the last of her lives.

It took maybe a minute to drive around the corner and pull into the driveway behind the parking lot. He grabbed his weapon from the glove box, and shoved it behind his belt, draping his T-shirt over it. No sense in alarming the natives.

Exiting his car, he crossed the parking lot to the tennis courts and casually headed south along the winding sidewalk toward Jillian’s car. With luck she’d be focused on the apartment entrance instead of the park and wouldn’t even realize he was on scene until it was too late.

He was twenty feet from Jillian’s parking space when he realized the car was empty.

Where the hell was she? He stopped, did a slow scan of the area, and found her sitting on a bench along the side of the building.

Damn it, this new development totally blew any shot his plan had of working. She’d see him the minute she headed back to the car. What the hell was she doing over there anyway? But he realized the significance of her positioning, moments later, when a young couple strolled into view, crossed the parking lot, and climbed into a souped-up sports car.

Anyone who left the apartment complex for either the park or their car was likely to pass her. If they were headed to the park, she’d be right there waiting. He glanced toward the black pickup. However, if they were headed to the parking lot, they’d also pass her.

If this wasn’t a friendly meeting—which judging from Lt. Simcosky’s face earlier and her positioning now, it wasn’t—than her position was key. If she waited in her car, she’d be directly in his line of sight. However, if she waited on that bench around the corner, when he passed her, his back would be to her, which gave her a slight advantage.