Newborn Conspiracy. Delores Fossen
the seat and apparently put it in Tanner’s mouth. It must have worked because the baby’s crying stopped. “I’m leaving now. Get out.”
“We’re leaving. I’m not getting out. This isn’t a good time for Tanner and you to be alone.”
Mia didn’t argue. She strapped on her seat belt, threw the car into gear and backed out of the parking space. She didn’t waste any time. Nor did she panic. Mia drove away from the clinic, took the first turn to the right and then made an immediate turn left on the next street. She continued the process for four more blocks, all the while checking the rear-view mirror.
“You’ve done this before,” Logan commented, staring into his side mirror. He didn’t see the gray car but that didn’t mean it wasn’t trying to follow them.
“I told you about the problems I had with exactly this sort of thing.”
Yes, she had. And it was also a matter of police record. Still, there were things that the police records didn’t tell him. “What happened when someone tried to kidnap you?”
“It was…terrifying.” And that’s all she said for several long moments. “Early one morning when I stepped outside to get my newspaper, a van pulled up in my driveway. A person wearing a ski mask and bulky clothes came rushing out of the van and tried to use a stun gun on me. I threw the paper at him. I must have hit him or her in the eye because the person stopped. That’s when I ran back inside. My neighbor saw the whole thing and yelled out for help. The person got back in the van and sped away.”
Logan didn’t want to know how scary that must have been. Pregnant and with someone out to get her. It was even more unsettling when he factored in that Mia had been carrying his child at the time. That meant the moron in the van had put his son at risk.
Logan intended to find that person soon.
“When did all of this start?” he asked. “When did you first notice someone following you?”
“About the time I was inseminated.”
Well, that was interesting. Logan didn’t think the timing was a coincidence.
But what did it mean?
“I have no ex-boyfriends. No enemies. The men who killed my parents died in a shoot-out with the cops.” She made another turn and headed for the main highway. “I thought, after I learned that you were the sperm donor, that it might be connected to you.”
He’d considered that, too, but he wanted to hear how she’d reached that conclusion. “How?”
“Maybe you riled the wrong person. Maybe he or she thinks they can use my baby to get back at you. Blackmail, of sorts.”
“Now who’s sounding paranoid?” he muttered. But he couldn’t dismiss it.
“That’s why I went to your brother’s house in Fall Creek. I read that he was doctor, that he had a normal life. Unlike you. He had an interview on a medical site and he said that you and he were estranged.”
Because that’s what Logan had told his brother, Finn, to say. It was his attempt to keep Finn out of harm’s way in case one of Logan’s missions went wrong and someone wanted to use his brother as leverage to exact revenge against Logan.
“I thought it would be safe to go to your brother and try to figure all of this out,” she concluded. “I was obviously wrong.”
“You were wrong in one way.” His brother probably couldn’t have helped. But if she hadn’t gone to Fall Creek, Logan might have never known that he had a son.
A son who needed protecting.
Of course, there was a flip side to this. His son might need protecting because Logan had helped bring the danger right to him.
Hell.
Was this all his fault?
“I had a job a little more than seven weeks ago,” he explained to her. He chose his words carefully. “A businesswoman was kidnapped in South America. Her family hired me to get her out. I did. The day after I returned to Texas, someone shot me. That’s why I was using a cane in Fall Creek. I’d gone to my brother’s house to recuperate.”
Her breath stilled, but he could see the pulse hammer on her throat.
“I don’t think my shooting is connected to you,” he continued when she didn’t say anything. And he hoped to hell that he was right. “After all, someone has been following you for months. So the questions are—who’s been doing that and why?”
Mia shook her head, plowed one hand into the side of her thick hair to push it away from her face. “I thought maybe someone from the Brighton Birthing Center was following me because they believed I had some evidence of their crimes.”
“Okay. That’s possible.”
“Then why follow me now?” she wanted to know. “The people who did illegal things at Brighton have all been arrested.”
“Maybe not. Maybe there’s a straggler.”
Her eyes widened. “What does that mean?”
“Someone who was doing illegal stuff but wasn’t caught with the rest. Someone who doesn’t want their illegal activity to come to light because it’ll land his or her butt in jail.”
She nodded. “And maybe that’s the person who forged your name on the release documents and moved your file from Cryogen Labs to Brighton.” She took the ramp that merged into Highway 281, a major thoroughfare of the city.
“Exactly.” Logan turned his ear toward the baby to make sure he wasn’t in need of a feeding. But Tanner was apparently resting comfortably.
Unlike Mia.
Logan couldn’t help but notice the dampness on the front of her sweater. Right in the vicinity of her left nipple. She apparently had sprung a leak. He hoped that wasn’t painful.
And then he questioned why he had his mind on that and not their situation.
Remedying that, Logan went to the next question on his mental list. “Did you ever see the person following you?”
“Once. I got just a glimpse. It happened right after I went to the police station to turn in the files I’d taken. The person was in the parking lot.”
Logan hadn’t read that in the police reports. “By any chance was it a dark-gray car?”
She shook her head. “Black. But the tint on the windows was heavy. When I spotted the car and realized that it was someone following me, I stopped. I figured I was safe in the parking lot of the police station so I sat there for five minutes, and then this motorcycle bumped into the black car. The driver let down the window. Just for second. And that’s when I got a glimpse of her right before she sped off.”
Logan latched right on to that. “She?”
“Oh, it was definitely a woman. Auburn hair, fair skin. Heart-shaped face.”
With just that brief description, a really bad thought went through his head. “Describe her hair.”
“It was short, no more than two inches long, and it was sort of spiky. She didn’t look like a criminal. From what I could see of her, she was well dressed. And the car was top of the line and very expensive.”
Logan silently cursed.
“What’s wrong?” Mia asked. “Do you know this woman?”
He didn’t answer. Because in this case a picture was worth a thousand words, he grabbed his BlackBerry from his pocket, entered a security code and began to search through the old files and photos. He finally found what he was looking for. Logan brought up the image on the screen and leaned it toward Mia so that she could see it.
“Is that the woman you saw in the parking lot that day?” he asked.
Her