Kade (2 page)

“I called Grayson as soon as she was found,” the doctor went on. “There were no Amber Alerts, no reports of missing newborns. There wasn’t a note in her carrier, only a bottle that had no prints, no fibers or anything else to distinguish it.”

Kade lifted his hands palm up. “That’s a lot of
noes.
What do you know about her?” Because he was sure this was leading somewhere.

Dr. Mickelson glanced at the baby. “We know she’s about three or four days old, which means she was abandoned either the day she was born or shortly after. She’s slightly underweight, barely five pounds, but there was no hospital bracelet. We had no other way to identify her so we ran a DNA test two days ago when she arrived and just got back the results.” His explanation stopped cold, and his attention came back to Kade.

So did Grayson’s. “Kade, she’s yours.”

Kade leaned in because he was certain he’d misheard what his brother said. “Excuse me?”

“The baby is your daughter,” Grayson clarified.

Because that was the last thing Kade expected to come from his brother’s mouth, it took several seconds to sink in. Okay, more than several, and when it finally registered in his brain, it didn’t sink in well.

All the air vanished from the room.

“That’s impossible,” Kade practically shouted.

The baby began to squirm from the noise. Kade’s reaction was just as abrupt. What the devil was going on here? He wasn’t a father. Heck, he hadn’t been in a real relationship in nearly two years.

Grayson groaned and tipped his eyes to the ceiling. “Not impossible according to the DNA.”

Kade did some groaning, as well, and would have spit out a denial or two, but the baby started to cry. Grayson looked at Kade as if he expected him to do something, but Kade was too stunned to move. Grayson huffed, reached down, gently scooped her up and began to rock her.

“The DNA test has to be wrong,” Kade concluded.

But he stared at that tiny crying face. She did have dark hair, like the Rylands. The shape of her face was familiar, too, similar to his own niece, but all babies looked pretty much the same to him.

“I had the lab run two genetic samples to make sure,” the doctor interjected. “And then Grayson put the
results through a bunch of databases. Your DNA was already in there.”

Yeah. Kade knew his DNA was in the system. Most federal employees were. But that didn’t mean the match had been correct.

“Who’s the baby’s mother?” Kade demanded.

Because whoever she was, all of this wasn’t adding up. A baby who just happened to match an FBI agent’s DNA.

His DNA.

A bottle with no fingerprints. And the baby had been abandoned at the hospital in his hometown, where his family owned a very successful ranch.

All of that couldn’t be a coincidence.

“We don’t know the identity of the child’s mother,” the doctor answered. “We didn’t get a database match on the maternal DNA.”

And that did even more to convince Kade that this was some kind of setup. But then he rethought that. Most people didn’t have their DNA recorded in a law enforcement system unless they’d done something to get it there.

Like break the law.

“Since you haven’t mentioned a girlfriend,” Grayson continued, “you’re probably looking at the result of a one-night stand. Don’t bother to tell me you haven’t had a few of those.”

He had. Kade couldn’t deny there had been one or two, but he’d always taken precautions.
Always.
The same as he had in his longer relationships.

“Think back eight to nine months ago,” Grayson prompted. “I already checked the calendar you keep on the computer at the ranch, and I know you were on assignments both months.”

Kade forced himself to think and do the math. He could dispel this entire notion of the baby being his if he could figure out where he’d been during that critical time. It took some doing, but he picked through the smeared recollections of assignments, reports and briefings.

The nine-month point didn’t fit because he’d done surveillance in a van. Alone. But eight and a half months ago he’d been in San Antonio, days into an undercover assignment that involved the Fulbright Fertility Clinic, a facility that was into all sorts of nasty things, including genetic experiments on embryos, questionable surrogates and illegal adoptions.

Kade froze.

“What?” Grayson demanded. “You remembered something?”

Oh, yeah. He remembered
something.

Kade squeezed his eyes shut a moment. “I teamed up with a female deep-cover agent. A Jane we call them. She already had established ties with someone who worked in the clinic so we partnered up. We posed as a married couple with fertility issues so we could infiltrate the clinic. We were literally locked in the place for four days.”

Kade had been on more than a dozen assignments since the Fulbright case, the details of them all bleeding together, but there was one Texas-size detail about that assignment that stood out.

Bree.

The tough-as-nails petite brunette with the olive-green eyes. During those four days they’d worked together, she’d been closemouthed about her personal life. Heck, he knew hardly anything about her, and what he did know could have been part of the facade of a deep-cover agent.

“We didn’t have sex,” Kade mumbled. Though he had thought about it a time or two. Posing as a married couple, they’d been forced to sleep in the same bed and put on a show of how much they
loved
each other.

“There must be someone else, then,” Grayson insisted.

“Alice Marks,” Kade admitted. “But the timing is wrong. Besides, I saw Alice just a couple of months ago, and she definitely wasn’t pregnant…”

Everything inside Kade went still when something else came to him. It couldn’t be
that.

Could it?

“The Jane agent and I posed as a couple with fertility problems, and the doctors at the Fulbright clinic had me provide some semen,” Kade explained.

“Could the doctors have used it to impregnate the mother?” Grayson asked.

“I’m not sure. Maybe,” Kade conceded. “The investigation didn’t go as planned. Something went wrong. Someone at the clinic drugged us, and we had to fight our way out of there. But maybe during that time we were drugged, they used the semen to make her pregnant.”

The doctor shook his head. “If the birth mother was an agent, then why wasn’t her DNA in the system?”

It was Grayson who answered. “If she was in deep-cover ops, a Jane, they don’t enter those agents’ DNA into the normal law enforcement databases. The Bureau doesn’t want anyone to know they work for the FBI.”

His brother was right. The odds were slim to none that Special Agent Bree Winston’s DNA would be in any database other than the classified one at FBI Headquarters in Quantico, Virginia.

Kade forced his eyes open, and his gaze immediately landed on the baby that Grayson was holding. The newborn was awake now, and she had turned her head in his direction. She was looking at him.

Kade swallowed hard.

He felt the punch, and it nearly robbed him of his breath. The doctor was right. He should have sat down for this.

The love was there. Instant and strong. Deep in his heart and his gut, he knew the test had been right.

This was his baby.

His little girl.

Even though he’d had no immediate plans for fatherhood, that all changed in an instant. He knew he loved her, would do whatever it took to be a good father to her. But he also knew she’d been abandoned. That left Kade with one big question.

Where was her mother?

Where was Bree?

And by God, if something had gone on at the clinic, why hadn’t she told him? Why had she kept something like this a secret?

Kade pulled in his breath, hoping it would clear his head. It didn’t, but he couldn’t take the time to adjust to the bombshell that had just slammed right into him.

He leaned down and brushed a kiss on his baby girl’s cheek. She blinked, and she stared at him as if trying to figure out who the heck he was.

“Take care of her for me,” Kade said to his brother. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

Grayson nodded and stared at him, too. “You know where the mother is?”

He shook his head. Kade had no idea, since he hadn’t heard anything from her since that assignment eight and a half months ago at the Fulbright clinic. Right now, he was sure of only one thing. If the baby was here and Bree wasn’t, that meant she was either dead or in big trouble.

Kade had to find Bree
fast.

Chapter Two

Bree heard the pitiful sound, a hoarse moan, and it took her a moment to realize that the sound had come from her own throat.

She opened her eyes and looked around for anything familiar. Anything that felt right.

Nothing did.

She was in some kind of room. A hotel maybe. A cheap one judging from the looks of things. The ceiling had moldy water stains, and those stains moved in and out of focus. Ditto for the dingy, paint-blistered walls. The place smelled like urine and other things she didn’t want to identify.

What she did want to identify was where she was and why she was there. Bree was certain there was a good reason for it, but she couldn’t remember what that reason was. It was hard to remember anything with a tornado going on inside her head.

She forced herself into a sitting position on the narrow bed. Beneath her the lumpy mattress creaked and shifted. She automatically reached for her gun and cell phone that should have been on the nightstand.

But they weren’t there.

Something was wrong.

Everything inside her screamed for her to get out right away. She had to get to a phone. She had to call…somebody. But she couldn’t remember who. Still, if she could just get to a phone, Bree was certain she’d remember.

She put her feet on the threadbare carpet and glanced down at her clothes. She had on a loose dress that was navy blue with tiny white flowers. She was wearing a pair of black flat leather shoes.

The clothing seemed as foreign to her as the hotel room and the absence of her gun and phone. She wasn’t a dress person, and she didn’t have to remember all the details of her life to realize that. No. She was a jeans and shirt kind of woman unless she was on the job, and then she wore whatever the assignment dictated.

Was she on some kind of assignment here?

She didn’t have the answer to that, either. But the odds were, yes, this was the job. Too bad she couldn’t remember exactly what this job was all about.

Bree took a deep breath and managed to stand. Not easily. She had to slap her hand on the wall just to stay upright, and she started for the door.

Just as the doorknob moved.

Oh, God. Someone was trying to get in the room, and with her questionable circumstances, she doubted this would be a friendly encounter. Not good. She could barely stand so she certainly wasn’t in any shape to fight off anyone with her bare hands. Still, she might not have a choice.

“Think,” she mumbled to herself. What undercover role was she playing here? What was she supposed to say or do to the person trying to get in? She might need those answers to stay alive.

“Bree?” someone called out. It was followed by a heavy knock on the rickety door.

She didn’t answer. Couldn’t. The dizziness hit her hard again, and she had no choice but to sink back down onto the bed.
Great.
At this rate, she’d be dead in a minute. Maybe less.

“Bree?” the person called out again. It was a man, and his voice sounded a little familiar. “It’s me, Kade Ryland. Open up.”

Kade Ryland? The dizzy spell made it almost impossible to think, but his name, like his voice, was familiar. Too bad she couldn’t piece that hint of familiarity with some facts. Especially one fact…

Could she trust him?

“Don’t trust anyone,” she heard herself mumble, and that was the most familiar thing she’d experienced since she’d first awakened in this god-awful room.

She braced herself for the man to knock again or call out her name. But there was a sharp bashing sound, and the door flew open as he kicked it in.

Bree tried to scramble away from him while she fumbled to take off her shoe and use it as a weapon. She didn’t succeed at either.

The man who’d called himself Kade Ryland came bursting into the room, along with a blast of hot, humid air from the outside.

The first thing she saw was his gun, a Glock. Since there was no way she could dodge a bullet in the tiny space or run into the adjoining bathroom, Bree just sat there and waited for him to come closer. That way, she could try to grab his gun if it became necessary.

However, he didn’t shoot.

And he didn’t come closer.

He just stood there and took in the room with a sweeping glance. A cop’s glance that she recognized because it’s what she would have done. And then he turned that intense cop’s look on her.

Bree fought the dizziness so she could study his face, his expression. He was in his early thirties. Dark brown hair peeking out from a Stetson that was the same color, gray eyes, about six-two and a hundred and eighty pounds. He didn’t exactly look FBI with his slightly too-long hair, day-old stubble, well-worn jeans, black T-shirt and leather jacket, but she had some vague memory that he was an agent like her.

Was that memory right?

Or was he the big bad threat that her body seemed to think he was?

“Bree?” he repeated. His gaze locked with hers, and as he eased closer, his cowboy boots thudded on the floor. “What happened to you?”

She failed at her first attempt to speak and had to clear her throat. “I, uh, was hoping you could tell me.” Mercy, she sounded drunk. “I’m having trouble remembering how I got here. Or why.” She glanced around the seedy room again. “Where is
here
exactly?”

He cursed. It was ripe and filled with concern. She was right there on the same page with him—but that didn’t mean she trusted him.

“You’re in a motel in one of the worst parts of San Antonio,” he told her. “It isn’t safe for you to be here.”