Lullabies and Lies (13 page)

“I can’t.” Griff’s intense violet gaze never wavered. “How did he get your cell phone number?”

She stiffened and tried to pull away. “I don’t know.”

Griff let go of her hands. He didn’t want to bruise her. He’d hurt her enough.

She stood and turned around, folding her arms and bowing her slender shoulders. She’d changed her clothes, but her wet hair still hung in waves down past her collar.

Her muffled, anguished sobs ripped at his soul. He’d told her the truth. He’d been at this a long time. He’d comforted parents, reassured families and had borne the brunt of their fearful, helpless anger. But Sunny Loveless was worming herself into his heart in a way no one else ever had.

Something about her touched a sore, raw place deep inside him. A place he’d thought had scabbed over when he was fourteen.

Without considering the consequences, he reached for her. He slid his arm around her shoulders, prepared to offer the same reassurance he’d given time and time again in the past to so many terrified family members.

But as soon as his arm encircled her, the tension in her body melted and she turned toward him, her head bowed.

He pulled her closer, until she laid her cheek against his neck.

Griff bent his head, burying his nose in her wet hair. For a moment he stood quietly, feeling less alone than he’d ever felt. He squeezed his eyes shut.

This was an illusion and he had to get back to reality. “Emily had your cell number somewhere on her, didn’t she? Was it sewn into her clothes? Engraved on one of her toys? Or maybe on a little bracelet?”

Sunny stiffened and pushed against his chest. Her silence confirmed his guess.

“I’m here to help you. I know how these people work.”

She stepped backward, out of his reach, and hugged herself tightly.

“I don’t want your help,” she choked out. “I don’t want the police’s help. Can’t you just leave me alone? Don’t you have to go away if I don’t want you?”

Chapter Six

If I don’t want you.
The words hit Griff surprisingly hard.

“No.” He scowled, pushing away from her. “Kidnapping is a federal offense. It doesn’t matter whether you
want
me or not. I don’t have to go away. I can’t. I’m bound by law to do everything possible to recover your child.” He rubbed his chest. Her pain kept seeping past his defenses.

He cared about every case. He’d wept at the Senator’s son’s funeral. But he’d always managed to maintain a discreet distance from their deepest grief, so it wouldn’t cloud his judgment.

But not this time.

Sunny’s obstinacy and determination to protect her daughter ripped at his battle-scarred heart.

“Ms. Loveless, I know how frightened you are—” he started, his voice gruff.

She whirled, swinging her doubled fists at him. “No you don’t! You can’t possibly know. She said these people are dangerous. They’re capable of
anything!
”

“She?”

She shoved at him. “If you won’t help me, get out of my way!”

In self-defense, Griff reached for her again, pinning her flailing arms to her sides.

“Let go of me!”

She fought his restraint with surprising strength.

“Shh,” he whispered. “Shh. We’ll find her. We’ll save your baby. I swear.”

“No you won’t. You’ll go bumbling in with your guns and sirens and the woman will run. I have to go alone.”

“What woman, Sunny? Who is she? Where is she? Tell me. Let me help you.”

She shook her head, flinging droplets of water from her hair into his face and over his arms.

“I don’t know. All I know is—” She stopped dead still, then jerked away. “Let me go!”

He pulled her closer, his heart pounding at the feel of her supple body in his arms. The connection he’d felt between them the first moment he’d laid eyes on her warred with his sense of duty. He was bound by his badge to find her child, and he knew the best way to do that was to follow procedure, to use the FBI’s tried-and-true methods and sophisticated technology. They worked.

Not always
. Senator Chapman’s ravaged face rose in his mind, and right behind it came the photo on his computer—the last picture he had of his baby sister.

Sunny quit struggling and went limp in his arms. She’d given up. He drew a deep, relieved breath. She was exhausted. She’d had next to no sleep since her baby had disappeared, and Means’s attack had drained the last dregs of her energy.

But the thought of her admitting defeat cloaked him
with unbearable sadness. He knew what she was feeling. The helplessness, the struggle against forces larger and stronger than she.

Damn it.
He gritted his teeth. Why was it so easy to empathize with her? Why was he having to bite his tongue to keep from throwing logic to the wind and going with her to search for her child? He’d never considered anything like that before.

It had to be the city, and the memories it evoked.

“Emily needs me,” she whispered against his neck, her breath warm, her tears at first hot, then quickly cooling against his sensitized skin.

The soft pressure of her breasts against his chest and the clean wet scent of her hair tickling his cheek sent his blood surging. It was all he could do to keep from pressing a kiss to her temple.

To his dismay and disgust, his body hardened and stirred to life.

What a jerk he was, to react physically to her. She was a victim of a horrendous crime. She deserved his professionalism, his calm assurance and his help. Clenching his jaw, he gripped her upper arms and set her away from him.

She eyed him suspiciously. “Are you letting me go?” Her voice rose hopefully. She edged toward the door.

Meeting her tormented gaze, he felt something deep inside him crack, like a fissure running through an iceberg.

What he’d told Decker in the letter he’d left on his desk was true. He couldn’t do this job anymore. It had become too personal.

He shook his head in defeat. “Sunny, I’ll help you.”

“I can’t take the chance. The police will—”

“Sunny, listen. I mean me.
I’ll
help you. We’ll go together. Alone.”

Her eyes widened, then narrowed. “I don’t understand.”

Neither did he. He’d had one dream ever since his sister’s disappearance. To become an FBI agent. He’d thought helping others would assuage his guilt and grief. And now he was about to step outside his own boundaries to chase a slender thread of hope for a woman he’d only known three days.

Whose hope was he trying to keep alive? Hers—or his own?

It was here, in Nashville, where he’d learned that holding on to hope could consume one’s life. Was he dooming Sunny to the same sad fate? To years of charting the similarities in missing child cases? To sleepless nights devouring every tidbit of the latest abduction on the news channels? All in the forlorn belief that one day, one of those cases might provide a clue to the whereabouts of her child.

“Griff? What are you talking about? What do you mean you’ll go with me?”

He rubbed his jaw and shrugged, working to act as if his decision was nothing more than an assessment of the situation, made through deliberation, not emotion.

“I’ve been thinking about what you said. You’re right. Too much attention could spook the kidnapper. I think in this situation discretion might be better. If you’ll trust me, I’ll help you find Emily.”

Sunny searched his face. For a second, the private sadness she’d seen in his eyes the first time she’d met him was back. Something haunted him. Was it the ghosts of all the children he hadn’t been able to save?

Despite her fear for her baby’s safety, her easy compassion was stirred. He seemed driven by a private grief. Or was she merely transferring her own feelings to him? Maybe for him, it really was just a job—or maybe an obsession. Maybe he was one of those people who could not accept failure.

His reasons didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was whether she could trust him. What if she told him what she knew—gave him the woman’s telephone number? Would he honor his promise? Would he help her? And did his definition of help match hers?

“Sunny? Will you trust me to go with you?”

Emily’s pretty little face rose in her mind, innocent, wide-eyed, trusting. Her throat closed.

Sending up a prayer that she was doing the right thing, she squeezed her eyes shut for an instant, then nodded slowly, solemnly. “I don’t have any choice.”

“WELL NOW, this is interesting.” Hiram couldn’t believe his eyes, or his luck.

He’d spent the evening lurking around the hotel where the FBI agent was staying, hoping he could get a chance to break into the agent’s car. There had to be something in there that would tell him how much the agent knew, especially about Hiram’s own involvement in the Loveless infant case.

But after it had started raining he’d holed up in his car, waiting for the deluge to stop. After about a half hour, he’d been ready to give up for the night. But just as he reached for the ignition switch, the agent had come running out.

At first Hiram had slunk down in his seat, scared silly that the man had spotted him and was coming
after him. But he’d headed straight for his car, jumped in and taken off.

Hiram looked at the clock on his dashboard. It was late. Where was the agent going? After a moment’s hesitation while he debated whether to follow or sneak into his room while he was gone, Hiram’s curiosity won out. He started the car and tailed the agent.

It didn’t take long for Hiram to realize that he was headed toward Sunny Loveless’s house. Hiram’s blood pressure rose, and he could hear his pulse hammering in his ears.

To avoid being seen, Hiram parked several houses away.

After watching for a while, he figured out that the agent had surprised an intruder at Ms. Loveless’s house. Then the police showed up with their sirens blaring, and lights popped on up and down the street. Hiram nearly fled, but all attention was concentrated on Sunny Loveless’s house. Nobody noticed his old car.

If he had to guess, he’d bet that the man the police hauled away was Burt Means, the baby’s biological father.

Then, the police took off, but the FBI agent didn’t.

Afraid to move any closer, Hiram waited, squinting through the rain and wiping the fogged window glass with his handkerchief. He could barely make out shadowy movements behind the home’s sheer curtains. Movements that indicated that the two people in the house were close—very close.

Hiram settled in and smiled. The tall, good-looking FBI agent was going to stay all night with the lovely, grieving mother. Hiram licked his lips and hoped there were sheer curtains in Ms. Loveless’s bedroom.

But after a few minutes, to his amazement, the agent and Ms. Loveless came out, got into the agent’s car and drove off.

Wondering if they were headed back to the agent’s hotel, Hiram pulled out and followed them.

GRIFF RUBBED HIS NECK and yawned, trying his best to stay awake. He could barely keep his eyes open. He glanced at the dashboard clock. Almost three o’clock in the morning. He’d been up for twenty-four hours straight. He wasn’t going to make it much farther without sleep.

The rain had stopped an hour or so before, but dense fog hung over the interstate, making misty haloes out of headlights and increasing the tendency toward road hypnotism.

He itched to call Natasha again, to see if she’d come up with anything on the two phone numbers Sunny had given him—the number the mysterious woman had used to call Sunny, and the number she’d been instructed to call once she got to Philadelphia. But he knew when Nat had information, she’d call him.

He glanced over at Sunny. She’d done her best to stay awake, but it was obvious how tired she was.

She had eyed him suspiciously until they’d driven out of the city on Interstate 40, fighting to keep her drooping eyelids open until she’d finally given in.

He couldn’t blame her for having trouble believing that he was really skipping town with her in the middle of the night. He hardly believed it himself.

Watching her sleep replaced the seductive pull of road hypnotism with an uncomfortable if pleasurable
ache of longing, so for four hours he’d been dividing his attention between the rain-soaked road and her. She dozed fitfully, her body stiff with tension, her beautiful face marred by sadness.

She’d changed into snug-fitting jeans and running shoes, but she’d refused to take the time to dry her hair. Instead, she’d tucked it up on top of her head with some kind of barrette, and a few graceful waves had escaped to frame her face.

He reached over and brushed one long honeyed strand out of her eye, the tips of his fingers sliding over her petal-soft cheek.

The blare of a car horn jolted him, sending his heart slamming against his chest wall. He jerked the wheel, cursing under his breath. He’d almost drifted into the other lane.

Sunny sat up with a gasp. “What happened?” Her voice was low and husky.

“Nothing,” he said shortly, willing his heartbeat to slow to normal as he rubbed his eyes. That was too careless. He had to have a couple hours’ sleep.

“You’re falling asleep at the wheel, aren’t you? I’ll drive.”

As the pallid lights of Bristol, Tennessee, came into view, Griff suppressed another yawn and stretched.

“No.” Despite his denial, he took the next interstate exit, and pulled into the nearest motel, a midpriced chain with few frills. The parking lot was full.

“What are you doing? Where are we?” Her voice sharpened.

“Bristol. I’ve got to get some sleep.”

Sunny rubbed her eyes and yawned. “Bristol? We
haven’t even gone three hundred miles yet? No. We can’t stop. You sleep while I drive.”

He laughed shortly and shook his head. “Yeah, I don’t think so. I haven’t slept in twenty-four hours. How long has it been for you?”

“About fifteen seconds.”

“You know what I mean. Lil said you haven’t slept since Tuesday night.”

“Lil worries about me.”

“Somebody should.”

“You can’t stop. We’ve got to get to Philadelphia. Every minute counts.”

“And we will, after I get a couple hours’ sleep. Now, I’m going to register. I’ll be right back.”