The Baby's Bodyguard (5 page)

But then he remembered her feet and how exhausted she must’ve been to fall asleep on the couch like that. He sighed. “Okay, girl. Looks like it’s just you and me. You’re going to have to bear with me.”

He laid her on the bed and looked around for a diaper. The bag was on the dresser at least ten feet away. He muttered under his breath. “Really? The bag has to be way over there?”

He may not have been a dad for long, but even he knew not to leave a baby Janie’s age on the bed. He picked her back up to get the bag. He was exhausted and he hadn’t even started the real work yet.

When he laid her back on the bed, she had a look on her face as if she were laughing at some private joke that only she knew. “Yeah, yeah, I know. I’m out of practice. Now where are those wipes?”

He unzipped her and nearly gagged. “What kind of crime scene do we have here, little miss? I think we might need the hazmat team.”

Ethan undid the tabs on the diaper and, holding his
breath, cleaned her up as fast as he could. He turned to reach for the dry diaper and nearly lost her as she crawled like lightning toward the edge of the bed. “Whoa there, girl. You can’t go anywhere without your drawers on.”

He got the diaper on with no further drama and stuck her feet back in the footy holes. She tried to crawl out a couple of times, but he distracted her with his cell phone long enough to get her zipped back up and give his hands a quick swipe with one of her baby wipes.

She was ready to go.

He, on the other hand, was pouring sweat. Wrangling a toddler was a workout. “All right, peanut, you’re ready to roll. Want to go downstairs and see what the master chef is cooking for breakfast?”

She bounced again, which he figured was as close to a yes as he was going to get. He walked her downstairs and into the kitchen, where it looked like a small nuclear device had exploded. “Whoa. What happened here?”

Pots were thrown haphazardly into the sink, and flour residue was scattered over every surface in the kitchen. Ethan was pretty sure there was a squirt of maple syrup on the wall.

“I was a little thrown off my game by some middle-of-the-night arrivals and the fact that my wife got called out this morning.” His brother, in a cook’s smock and baseball cap, shot him a look.

“Anything I can do to help?”

Tyler plated a stack of fluffy pancakes, sprinkled it with a flourish of powdered sugar and garnished it with
a fan of sliced strawberry as a teenager with a perky red ponytail came flying through the door to the dining room.

“Pancakes.” Tyler slid them across the work surface to her as she picked up a fresh pot of coffee.

“Oh, you’re good, Mr. Clark.” She backed out of the room. “This is the last one.”

“I know.” Tyler leaned against the counter, grabbed a bottle of water and swigged. “Now, what can I do for you?”

“Got a pancake for the little lady?”

Tyler grinned, chucked Janie under the chin and handed her a triangle of toast, which she immediately began to chew on. “I think that can be arranged. And for you?”

“The same would be good.” Ethan hitched Janie up on his hip and ignored the toast crumbs littering his borrowed shirt as Tyler cracked eggs into a ceramic bowl. “I know we’re trouble, but I need to—”

Tyler stopped midcrack on the fourth egg and turned to give Ethan a hard stare. “You’re kidding me, right? I’ve barely seen you since you moved back here. I’m glad you felt like you could come to me for help.”

The teenager came back through the dining room door, breaking up the moment and Ethan’s opportunity to talk to his brother. She had a short, wooden high chair under one arm and the coffeepot in the other hand. “Figured you could use this. And we need more coffee. Those special ops types can put away some caffeine.”

“No kidding. Coffee coming up. In the meantime,
grab another pitcher of orange juice out of the fridge, and there’s at least one more basket of muffins in the warmer.” Tyler grabbed the whisk from the counter and began to whip the eggs into a frothy mixture.

Ethan poked Janie’s legs through the holes in the high chair and shoved her closer to the kitchen island. She picked a wooden spoon up from the counter and banged it.

“We might have mutiny here if those pancakes take much longer. Don’t you have some Cheerios or something?”

Janie squealed again.

Tyler laughed. “Upper cabinet, left-hand side. I think there’s some left from the last time the human vacuum visited.”

Ethan pulled a yellow box out of the cabinet. “By human vacuum, I assume you mean Marcus?”

“Did we eat that much when we were fourteen?” Tyler dipped pancake batter onto the griddle.

Ethan laid a few round pieces of cereal on the counter in front of Janie. “Oh, yeah, we definitely did. Don’t you remember Mom complaining about how she was going to have to get a second job so she could pay the grocery bill?”

He looked up, wondering how he was going to manage a smile for his brother’s benefit, but Tyler was pouring beans into a fancy coffeepot.

He flipped the pancakes then turned around, twirling the spatula and snagging it out of the air with another laugh. “Right. And then she decided to do it all over again with Marcus. Mom’s a saint.”

“Yeah, she is.” The voice came from the back door. Gracie walked in, snatched the spatula from her husband and smacked him with it. He grabbed her around the waist and laid a kiss on her that made Ethan want to turn away, give them a minute of privacy.

He noted her black cargo pants, combat boots and T-shirt that said CRT in large letters on the front. “Did the Crisis Response Team have a call-out this morning?”

“Yes.” Gracie smiled. “It wasn’t a big deal. A grocery store manager called because of a suspicious bag. Turned out to be a diaper bag slid halfway under a shelf. We found it on video being dropped from the cart yesterday afternoon. Complete accident.”

When Janie screeched, Ethan dropped a few more Cheerios onto the counter.

Tyler slid a pancake onto a plastic plate for Janie. Ethan opened drawers until he found a knife and began to cut it into small pieces while Tyler put the other three pancakes on a plate for him.

Gracie dusted the pancakes with powdered sugar and placed the plate in front of Janie, then turned to Ethan. “Hungry?”

“Unbelievably hungry.” Janie gave a toothy smile as she fisted the first piece and shoved it in her mouth. “Are you sure you don’t want these, Gracie? Tyler can make more.”

“Tyler can make more,” his brother mimicked. “Like it’s just that easy.”

Ethan and Gracie looked at each other and Gracie
burst out laughing. “It’s okay, hotshot, you’re off the hook. I ate at Sip This with the guys.”

Janie raised her hands up for Ethan to pick her up. “Hang tight, girl, I’m not finished eating.”

“I’ve got this.” Tyler picked her up.

She screamed and reached for Ethan.

“Wow, she doesn’t like you.” Gracie walked over to her. “I’ll get her. Come with Aunt Gracie.”

The screaming dulled to a whimper with Gracie, but Janie leaned toward Ethan, motioning with her hands out. Gracie made a rueful face. “I think she wants you, Ethan.”

“She knows me, that’s all.” He shoved the last bite of pancake into his mouth and took the baby from Gracie. “She has a heart condition so she can’t get upset.”

“Poor baby.” Gracie tickled Janie’s foot, making her grin through her tears.

“Is that my hostage negotiator I hear in the kitchen making a baby cry?” A man dressed in full tactical gear stepped into the room and glanced around.

In that second, Ethan’s mind slowed into that weird time warp when every thought flies at hyperspeed, and yet other people’s motions are slow, like stop-motion video. The man at the door was a cop, or former cop, and he’d known Ethan as a drug dealer, the sidekick of a confidential informant.

The guy’s eyes flickered and went flat as he recognized Ethan, and less than a second later, he’d pulled a weapon.

In a move guaranteed to make any criminal quake, he leveled the gun at Ethan. “Don’t move.”

Gracie gaped. “Brad? What are you—”

Ethan cut her off, holding Janie out to her. “Gracie, take the baby upstairs to Kelsey. She’s going to cry again and she can’t get overexcited, so get her to Kelsey as fast as you can.”

As Gracie took the baby, Ethan raised his hands away from his body.

Tyler turned around from the griddle. “Ethan, you sound so ser—Whoa! Brad, meet my brother, Ethan. I don’t know who you think you’re pointing that Glock at, but I assure you, he’s not who you think he is.”

Brad flicked his eyes to Tyler and back to Ethan again, but didn’t lower the gun. “Brothers?”

“As in the kind where we share a biological mother.” The note of laughter in Tyler’s voice was unmistakable, just as the hint of steel was.

“Brad’s my guest here,” he said to Ethan. Which Ethan knew was also designed to get Brad to mind his manners.

Ethan slowly lowered his hands. “Brad, you knew me as Connor Praytor. I was undercover with Raymond Jenks’s crew in Mobile. The things that you saw me do were in that context. I was a Fed.”

“Undercover?” Brad looked at Tyler for affirmation.

“He’s former FBI. I think somebody had too much coffee this morning. You know, you have to be careful with that Ethiopian blend.” Tyler walked between Ethan and Brad, nonchalantly putting himself in the line of fire. His voice turned cold as he spoke to Brad. “You should know that I wouldn’t let anyone into Recovery
Cove who I didn’t vet completely. Put your weapon away.”

“Tyler, it’s fine.” Ethan didn’t hear screaming, so he figured that Gracie had gotten Janie settled with Kelsey. He took four steps to the coffeepot and poured himself a cup, loose and easy, as if no one was holding a gun on him. “Three, almost four years ago, I was undercover with Jenks for five months.”

He turned back to face Brad and took a sip of his coffee. “I can understand why you would be confused. And if you’re here at Recovery Cove, then I can understand why you would be a little jumpy.”

Brad holstered his weapon. “I wasn’t confused and I’m not jumpy. Last time I saw you, you were a criminal.”

“True.” Ethan shrugged. He couldn’t argue with that. “I don’t work in Mobile anymore, and I don’t work undercover anymore.”

He saw the light dawn in Brad’s eyes. “Oh, right. I remember when your—”

“Thanks for not shooting my brother in my kitchen, Brad.” Tyler slid a plate of pancakes onto a tray and added a small pitcher of syrup. “Here, Ethan. Take these up to Kelsey. Tell her I’ll send someone up with something to drink in a few minutes.”

Ethan took the tray and climbed the stairs. Having a gun held on him was old business. A crying baby with a heart condition, not so much. The whole time, he’d been waffling between wondering if Brad was really
going to shoot him and worrying that Janie was upstairs in some kind of crisis.

He guessed his priorities were in the right place.

T
he knock at the door caught Kelsey just as she was easing her feet into the pan of warm water that Gracie had brought in. She hissed out a breath, her eyes tearing up as the water seeped into the cuts on the bottom of her feet. Her feet hurt so badly, she couldn’t walk on them, not the way they were.

“I got it.” Gracie opened the door and Ethan walked in with a tray of food.

He raised his eyebrows at the water. She made a face. “I didn’t even notice last night that they were hurting. Adrenaline, I guess.”

“Some of Tyler’s pancakes ought to make you feel better.” He slid the tray onto her lap and smiled as Janie crawled on all fours to the couch, where she pulled up to investigate. “Hey, peanut, you already had breakfast. Let Kelsey have hers.”

“Ma-Ma.”

Ethan’s eyes shot to hers. “Did you hear that?”

“She definitely said Mama.” Gracie rolled a ball toward Janie, who got momentarily distracted and sat down again. “She’s really getting attached to you.”

Kelsey stopped with the fork halfway to her mouth. “She probably didn’t know what she was saying.
Mama
is one of the first words that babies say.”

Janie threw the ball and it rolled about halfway back to Gracie. Gracie smiled. “You’re right, but either way, I think it’s a good thing that she’s able to attach. It means that she’s been loved. She understands it on the most basic level, at least.”

Kelsey’s insides felt ragged, like the bottoms of her feet. She was already attached, too, and she should have known better. “Thanks. I guess I needed to hear that. I don’t want to hurt her more when she has to leave me.”

Janie pulled up on the sofa again, but before she could get to a standing position, she plopped back down on the ground. Her lips primped up and she started to cry. Ethan picked her up, nuzzling her cheek. “Hey now, what are you making a fuss about?”

Gracie gave Ethan a pointed look. “What about work?”

“I’ve got a couple of days off in a row starting today, but I’ll call and schedule a couple more. What about you, Kelsey? Did you call your office to let them know what was going on?”

“Yes. I told my boss that I needed some personal time for a few days to deal with the baby’s health issues. It really puts them at a disadvantage to be a person down. I feel guilty.” Kelsey put her fork down, her eyes on Janie, who was patting Ethan on the chest. “It’s true that she needs special care, especially now. And she’s really cute.”

Gracie stood, patting the pockets of her cargo pants. “She’s adorable. Less adorable, but still needy, is the team of police commandos downstairs that I’m supposed to teach hostage negotiation. I better get moving.”

“Sorry about Brad,” Ethan said to Gracie. Janie laid her head on his shoulder and then popped it back up to see if he was watching. He patted her on the back as he added, “I didn’t have any idea there would be someone I knew in this group.”

Man, he looked good holding that baby, and he was opening up more every day, thanks to the toddler in his arms. Kelsey didn’t want to think what would’ve happened to them if he hadn’t been there last night.

Gracie paused in the door. “Don’t worry about it. It’s fine. Brad needs to dial it back a few notches. He’s the team leader. It was his request to do team building along with R&R. Personally, I think they needed the R&R more after a rough year. I’m out for a while, but call down if you need anything.”

Gracie left and Ethan eased to a sitting position beside her, letting Janie slide to the floor to play with the toys Gracie had brought in.

He picked up the towel and first-aid kit that Gracie had left beside the pan of water. “You ready to get your feet out of there?”

“I can manage.”

“I’m sure you can, but it will be easier if I help.” He opened the towel.

She stared at it for a second. It had been a long time
since someone took care of her. She laid first one foot and then the other in it.

He patted her feet gently with the towel. Tears came to her eyes, a lump growing in her throat. Not because it hurt. It did, but the pain came from a completely different place. When her mom and dad died, she’d been adopted by another missionary family. They’d been loving parents, but it wasn’t the same. She was ten, and at that age in the mission field, she’d been expected to pull her own weight.

It had been years since anyone had touched her with tenderness, with a touch that was meant to care for her alone. She loved her adopted family, had a slew of adopted brothers and sisters, but there had been no one to dry her tears when she skinned a knee. Or hold her in the night when she was lonely and afraid.

“Are you okay?” Ethan’s voice was soft, the smooth, easy quality roughened by a night of little sleep.

“Yeah, just thinking. I’m fine.” She smiled at him and pushed aside the thoughts, automatically reaching for the toy that Janie handed her. “What was the deal with that guy downstairs?”

He hesitated.

She prodded, “Gracie just said he was a hothead and you didn’t want him to scare Janie.”

“He mistook me for someone else. Someone he knew from the past.”

She nodded, the lump in her throat back as Janie held her arms out to be picked up and Ethan began to dab antibiotic ointment on her cuts.

He shook his head. “It just made me more aware
that my past, my work with the Bureau, all ties into this somehow. There are people out there who wouldn’t hesitate to kill me. Or you, if you got in the way.”

Kelsey drew in a breath. It wasn’t fair for him to shoulder the blame. “You’re not the bad guy here. The people who did this to you and to these children, those are the bad guys, not you.”

He looked down at her feet, holding them in his hands, the gesture strangely intimate. “Maybe, but if I hadn’t been working undercover, Amy and Charlie wouldn’t have been targets. There’s no way to undo that.”

She knew too well the pain of trying to undo the past, of what-iffing everything. If her parents hadn’t been in Rwanda, if her village hadn’t been on that particular highway, if … if … if.

“I know how you feel.” At his sharp look, she said, “I do, Ethan. But all the what-ifs in the world can’t undo what happened. The only thing you can do is move forward and live your life in a way that would make them proud.”

Ethan turned aside, reaching for a bandage, and for a second she thought she’d made a big mistake. But she didn’t know how to be any other way than straightforward.

He looked back, nodding slowly. “This case has dredged up feelings I didn’t remember I had. For two years I’ve been like a dead man walking. But I don’t think—I know—Amy wouldn’t want that. She was too full of life for that.”

“She sounds like a special person.”

He nodded again. “It’s hard to believe it’s been two years.” He looked up then. “I promise I’m going to do everything I can to find my son, and then I’m going to do everything I can to make sure his life is as safe and happy as it can be.”

“I think your wife would be proud of the man you are, Ethan.”

He stared at her toes, and the purple, sparkly toe-nail polish seemed a little foolish now. Of course, it had been picked by an eleven-year-old, a foster child who had won a trip to the nail salon with her by getting all As last quarter. Finally, he said, “I’m working on it.”

Janie threw herself across Kelsey’s feet into Ethan’s lap.

Kelsey smiled, even though the lump in her throat just kept getting bigger. Regardless of whatever else was going on, there were young children whose lives were forever going to be altered by the outcome of this investigation. “If we can’t leave here, how are we going to find out who Janie is? Besides the obvious need to find out her identity, it’s really the only lead we have to find Charlie.”

“I made a call last night. There’s a guy Tyler’s worked with before. He’s a whiz at technology. If there’s anything to be found, Nolan can find it. And he’ll be here this afternoon.” Ethan pulled the paper tabs off the last plastic bandage and taped it into place on the sole of her foot.

His hands were still on her feet, making it hard for her to think about anything else but the contact. She
stared at them. When he didn’t speak again, she slowly raised her eyes. They locked with his.

In the morning light, his eyes were so blue, so sincere.

“Thank you. It’s been a while since anyone’s tended a boo-boo for me.” She grinned.

“You deserve someone to take care of you. You work hard.” He gathered the paper and tube of ointment and tucked them all into the box.

She reached in her pocket for her cherry ChapStick and searched her mind for a change of subject, away from her and what she deserved or didn’t deserve. “So where is Nolan coming in from?”

“Not sure. Not sure anyone knows, actually. He’s pretty private. But he’s the best and if he comes up with a lead, I’ll follow up on it.”

She started to protest, but remembered the sleepy baby in her arms. Someone had to be Janie’s protector from right here. Last time she checked, she’d been the one elected. It was her job. It was also her passion. She wasn’t going to let any child be alone in the world without someone to stand with them, for them.

A tap came from the doorway. She looked up to see Ethan’s brother. He held a tray with a couple of pots and some mugs. “I wasn’t sure if you’d like coffee or tea.”

“Tea.”

“Coffee.”

She and Ethan spoke at the same time.

Tyler laughed and slid the tray onto a side table.
“Luckily I brought both. And a fresh cup of milk for the little lady.”

“Milk.” Janie perked up.

“Another word. Either she’s picking them up really quickly, or the stress she felt at changing environments and caregivers is easing enough for her to start talking.” Kelsey took the sippy cup from Tyler and held it out for Janie.

“I’ll take her while you drink your tea.” Ethan took Janie and settled her on his lap. She leaned against his chest and bounced her feet, sipping out of her cup.

Kelsey’s eyes were stinging again. She must be more tired than she thought. Or it could be that the sight of the big lawman taking such gentle care of Janie made her heart ache. “I need to get the medication that the doctors prescribed for her to keep her heart rate stable. Be right back.”

“Your feet—” Ethan started to get up, but Kelsey hobbled away, disappearing through the door into the bedroom.

“She might be stubborn enough to handle you.” His brother Tyler kicked back in his chair with a superior look on his face.

“Now look, just because you’re all cozy and happy with Gracie doesn’t mean you have to start in on me.” Ethan caught Janie’s eyes drooping. Evidently, she did, too, because her little head popped up and she slid off his lap onto the floor.

“I’m not starting in on you, just joking around. You can be a little testy.” Tyler poured a cup of coffee and
handed it to Ethan. “This might help. Though you might want to reconsider the caffeine.”

“I’ve been held at gunpoint twice in two days, shot at one of those times. Forgive me for being a little ‘testy.’” He glanced at his brother. He knew Tyler was teasing but the jabs hit a little close to home. Kelsey was the first person Ethan had gotten close to in a long time, but there was a reason for that. He wasn’t looking for love. How could he be?

“Ethan, in all seriousness, why are you doing this? I understand helping her escape last night. I’m all for helping out people in need or obviously we wouldn’t have Restoration Cove, but it seems like—”

“You think I feel like this is my shot at redemption for losing Charlie and Amy.”

“Do you?”

Ethan stood and stuck his hand in his pocket, noting Janie’s guarded expression as he did. He pulled out the picture of Charlie that he’d printed after he found all the baby pictures and tossed it into Tyler’s lap.

His brother picked it up and studied it. “I don’t understand. What is this?”

“It’s a picture taken of Charlie two weeks after the night he supposedly died.”

“Supposedly …”

“Yes. He was kidnapped, Tyler.”

His brother stared at the photo. “I don’t even know what to say to this. You’re sure?”

“As sure as I can be without seeing him face-to-face. I don’t know how, but this little baby is my connection to finding him.” Ethan stared at the picture for
a moment. “And if I had any doubts, they disappeared when I got a call this morning from one of the men I was investigating for human trafficking. Tyler, I haven’t heard the slightest thing about this case until Janie, and now suddenly I’m getting a call from Tony Cantori?”

“I don’t know what to say.” Tyler studied Janie as she played quietly on the floor. “I can’t even process this.”

Ethan stared out the window toward the blue water of the bay. “Believe me, I know. I found Charlie’s photo in with a file of hundreds of pictures of other children. There is something much larger going on than kidnapping the child of one FBI agent for revenge.” He held Janie’s cup out to her as she crawled to him and pulled up on the edge of the sofa.

“Clearly there’s a lot that we don’t know.” Tyler stood and paced to the edge of the room, and Janie went still on the floor, watching him.

Ethan picked her up. “I think Janie was held somewhere until someone left her for me to find, knowing that I would take care of her because I would do anything in my power to find my son.”

“And finding Charlie does what? Takes down the operation? Saves other children from the same fate?”

Ethan shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t see myself as some savior. I just want my son back.”

“You certainly saved one little girl.” Kelsey’s voice from the door startled Ethan. “She adores you.”

He looked down at Janie. When he first found her, he had seen her as someone to rescue. And yeah, he had to admit, there was a small part of him that had seen
his son in her—that thought if his son had been alone and in need, he would want someone to help.

Slowly, though, he was coming to know Janie’s little personality. He knew he would do anything for the little angel playing on the floor beside him, a fact that scared him to death. Because he knew that love made a man more vulnerable—and he didn’t ever want to be that vulnerable again.