The Baby Mission Read online

  They’d already been through this, she and Warrick. Why couldn’t he get this through his thick black Irish head? “He’s not my ‘other’ anything, War.”

  The hell the man wasn’t. He had no idea what the attraction had been, but it was obviously hot enough to get her in this condition. Hot enough for her to want to keep the baby instead of going another route.

  Restless, Warrick got up. “I just think that after he got you pregnant—”

  C.J. took instant offense. From the moment she’d first opened her eyes on the world, despite the fact that she had a warm, loving family, she’d been her own person. She resented the implication, even for a moment, that she wasn’t.

  “Nobody got me anything. We took precautions, they didn’t work. The pregnancy was an accident.” Again her hand went over her belly, as if to block out any hurtful words the baby might hear. “It happens, okay? Now if you don’t mind, Special Agent Warrick, let’s drop the subject.”

  She watched the deep frown take root on his face and tried to tell herself she appreciated where he was coming from. He just cared about her, the way she did about him. Cared the way she had when his wife of two years had left him three years ago because she couldn’t stand the instability of the life he led.

  “Don’t talk to me like that, C.J., as if we’re two characters out of the X-Files, calling to each other by our titles. It’s not natural. And neither,” he added vehemently, “is walking away from a woman you’re supposed to be in love with.”

  He’d never liked Tom Thorndyke, hadn’t liked him from the first moment the man had stared unabashedly at C.J. But he’d made concessions because C.J. obviously cared about the jerk. He hated to see her hurt and abandoned. For two cents proper, he’d make the man eat his perfect teeth. If he could get to him. The man had taken an assignment out of the state right after he’d told C.J. that they were better off going their separate ways.

  Which was right after she’d told him she was pregnant.

  “Forget about Tom Thorndyke and tell me who’s been assigned to the case.” C.J. shrugged. She’d made up her mind to only look ahead and not back. Looking back never got you anywhere, anyway.

  Because he knew they weren’t going to get anywhere waltzing over old ground, Warrick backed off and told her what she wanted to know. “Rodriguez, Culpepper…”

  The two other special agents who had been on the original task force. A flutter of unfounded hope passed through her. “And?”

  “Me.”

  C.J. knew what he was telling her. Disappointment jabbed her with a sharp, extra-long knitting needle. “But not me.”

  He’d gone to bat to get her on the team over the assistant director’s reservations. On the team safely. “Unofficially.” Warrick pointed to the computer. “You can cross-check information for us, go through the files, things like that.”

  It wasn’t what she wanted to hear. “I’ve got too much seniority to be a grunt, Warrick, and I’m not old enough to be stuck behind a computer.”

  He looked at her for a long moment. She should never have gotten involved with that character. For once it seemed as if her keen instincts had completely failed her. “Should have thought of that before you tripped the light fantastic with old shoot-and-scoot.”

  She’d never been long on patience. Pregnancy had cut her lag time in half. She struggled to hold on to her temper. “Don’t you think it’s about time you stopped with the cute references?”

  “I’ll stop when he materializes out of the Bermuda Triangle to live up to his end of it.” He looked at her long and hard. “And there’s nothing ‘cute’ about a man who ducks out on his responsibilities.”

  She’d given the matter a great deal of thought even before she’d told Thorndyke about the baby she was carrying. She’d found herself drawing up a list of the man’s pros and cons. Disgusted, she’d crumpled them up. Love and marriage was not decided by a safe, sane list of pros and cons, but on a gut feeling, a lack of breath and an X-factor that defied description. None of the latter applied to Tom Thorndyke. The relationship, short as it was, had been a mistake. A misjudgment on her part because she’d been lonely, and she took full responsibility for it.

  She just wished Warrick would let it drop. “The worst thing in the world would have been for Thorndyke and me to get married.”

  Part of him felt that way, too. But he wasn’t about to tell her that. “If you felt that way, why did you sleep with him?”

  Very simply because she hadn’t thought about any consequences arising from the liaison. For once in her life, impulse had guided her. But once she’d discovered she was pregnant, changes in her outlook followed. She saw Tom’s true colors. And maternal instincts came out of nowhere. She never once doubted that she wanted this baby. But even so, she refused to allow herself the luxury of making plans. Plans had a way of falling through, dragging disappointment in their wake.

  She looked at Warrick. “Since when do I owe you any explanations?”

  Holding the folder in one hand, he opened his arms wide and shrugged. “You don’t.” With that, he turned away.

  Annoyed at him and herself, C.J. called after him. “You can have a serving of ice cream without wanting to marry the ice cream vat.” Warrick stopped and looked at her over his shoulder. She shrugged. “Besides, it was just one of those things that happened. It would be a mistake to have three people pay for one night of passion.” And a birth control method that had failed, she added silently.

  He crossed back to her slowly. “I guess that makes sense.”

  She’d known all along that Warrick hadn’t liked Tom. Maybe, in some perverse way, that might have even spurred her on, although she couldn’t have actually explained why. In any event, as far as she was concerned that was all behind her.

  “Okay, enough atonement, Father Warrick.” She put her hand out for the folder. “Give me the information. Do we know who the victim is?”

  He nodded. There’d been no mystery here. “Same as always.” Warrick handed her the folder. “There was a wallet. He doesn’t get his jollies challenging us.”

  As far as serial killers went, the Sleeping Beauty Killer wasn’t unduly cruel. He’d always made a point of making sure that the victim could be readily identified, that her next of kin, if there were any, could easily be contacted and informed of the person’s death. The only secrecy was his identity. And why he killed in the first place.

  C.J. glanced at the information. She felt heartsick for the family. No one should have to put up with this kind of thing happening.

  “A serial killer with heart. How lovely. Damn it, Warrick.” She slapped the folder down on her desk. “I want this guy in the worst way.” Emotions weren’t going to catch the killer. Only cold, hard, deliberate investigation would do it. And a great deal of luck. “What do you think made him stop for so long?”

  He perched on her desk again. She was wearing a different perfume, he noted. It was sexier. He couldn’t help wondering if she was trying to compensate for her present state. At a different time…

  He caught his thoughts before they could slip off to somewhere they shouldn’t.

  “Maybe he didn’t. Maybe he just shifted his base of operations,” he theorized. “Maybe our guy discovered that the world is a hell of a lot larger than just Orange County in California.”

  It was a theory, but not one she subscribed to. Not after all the hours she’d logged in, looking for the Sleeping Beauty Killer’s pattern and coming up empty. “I don’t think so. No other murders matched this particular, meticulous MO. No, something made him stop. How do you crawl into the head of someone like this?” she wondered out loud.

  He looked at her. There was a danger in that. “Careful that once you crawl in, you don’t forget how to crawl out again.”

  She laughed, knowing exactly what he was referring to. “Been watching Al Pacino in Cruising again?” Though he denied it, the award-winning actor was clearly one of Warrick’s favorites.

  “Hey, thing
s like that happen,” he protested. “You become one with the criminal and forget where you end off and he starts.”

  She shivered. “Never happen. There’s no way I would ever mentally bond with this character. He gives me the creeps.” Just touching the folder made her skin crawl. He had to get these women to trust him, played on their vulnerability and then struck. He was a loathsome creature of the lowest order.

  Warrick was more concerned about her right now than the Sleeping Beauty Killer. “Why don’t you knock it off for a while?” He glanced at his watch. It was close to two. If he didn’t miss his guess, she hadn’t left her desk, except for bathroom runs, since she’d come in this morning. “Want to pick up some late lunch?”

  She tilted her head, studying his face, suppressing a grin. “You buying?”

  “No way.” Warrick laughed shortly. “I’ve seen the way you eat lately. We’ll go Dutch.” He moved behind her. “I will, however, help you out of your chair.”

  Another crack, however veiled, about her weight. She could do without that, even though she’d gained a good twenty-eight pounds in the past two months. Before then, she’d stayed rail thin, actually losing weight because of an extra-long bout of morning sickness.

  “Forever the gentleman. Thanks,” she waved him away, “but I’ll pass.” She opened the folder and spread it out on her desk. “I want to go through this file.”

  Serial killers were not something a woman about to give birth should be concentrating on. Maybe that made him old-fashioned, he mused.

  “You know, you could start thinking about decorating that spare bedroom of yours.” He knew from her brothers that she still hadn’t bought a single thing to reflect her pending motherhood.

  C.J. looked at him sharply. Not him, too. He was the last one she would have thought would bother her about this. “Bad luck.”

  He shook his head. “I never took you to be the superstitious type.”

  Her shoulders rose and fell in a vague gesture. “We’re all superstitious in our own way.” It had taken her time to come to terms with this phase of her life, but now she wanted this baby, wanted it badly. And was afraid of wanting it. “I don’t like counting on anything unless it’s right there in front of me.”

  Her comment surprised him. It wasn’t like her. “I thought I was supposed to be the cynical one.”

  Her smile went straight to his inner core. It never failed to amaze him how connected he and this woman were. Even more so than he and his wife had been. As a rule he wasn’t given to close relationships, always keeping a part of himself in reserve. But there was something about C.J. that transcended that rule.

  “Spend six years with someone,” she told him, “some bad habits are bound to rub off. But if you must know, you didn’t have anything to do with this one. My mother’s four aunts did a number on me once the cat was out of the bag.” Aided and abetted by her enduring trim figure, it had taken her five months to tell her family about her condition. They’d been wonderfully supportive, and ever so slightly annoyingly intrusive. “They had a dozen stories about miscarriages to tell me. Each.”

  He leaned over the desk. A strand of her hair hung in her face, and he tucked it behind her ear. In typical obstinate behavior, she shook her head, causing it to come loose again. He wondered why he found that so damn attractive. He shouldn’t.

  “You’re eight months along and the doctor gave you a clean bill of health. I don’t think you have to worry about miscarrying. Just about how to make the spineless wonder pay his fair share.”

  Warrick was definitely too close—and making odd things happen inside her. C.J. pushed herself away from the desk—and her partner. “Warrick, I know that in your own twisted little way, you care about me. But get this through that thick head of yours. I don’t want anything from Tom Thorndyke. As far as I am concerned, this is my baby and only my baby.”

  He crossed his arms before his chest. “Another case of the immaculate conception?”

  Her temper was dangerously close to going over to the dark side. “Byron—”

  He winced at the sound of his first name. One of these days, when he got a chance to get around to it, he was going to have it legally changed. Lord Byron had been his mother’s favorite poet while she was carrying him, but there was no reason that he had to suffer because of that.

  “Okay, I’ll back off.”

  “Thank you.”

  He started to head for the door. “Want me to bring you back anything?”

  She glanced at the folder on her desk. “Just the Sleeping Beauty Killer’s head on a platter.”

  He laughed, shaking his head. “Afraid that’s not the special of the day.” Warrick paused for a moment longer, looking at her. There was affection in his eyes, as well as concern. “Take some personal time.”

  She just waved him off, then watched appreciatively as he walked away. The man had one hell of a tight butt.

  “Damn hormones,” she muttered to herself as she began to pore over the folder he had given her.

  Her hands braced on the arms of her office chair, C.J. pushed herself up to her feet. It was late, but she wasn’t finished yet. Time for her hourly sojourn to the bathroom.

  She hated this lumbering girth that had become hers. In top condition since the age of ten when she’d picked up her first free weight to brain her older brother, Brian—an occurrence her father had prevented at the last moment—C.J. hated physical restrictions of any kind. The last two months of her pregnancy had forced her to assume a lifestyle she disliked intensely.

  The only thing that made it bearable was knowing that she was doing it for her baby’s good. But it was rough being noble, especially as she watched Warrick team up with other people, handling cases she wanted to be handling. She’d never been one to sit on the sidelines and it was killing her.

  “Ah, I see you’re ready to go.”

  Turning around, C.J. saw Diane Jones coming toward her. She didn’t remember making any arrangements to meet her mother at the office. “What are you doing here?”

  “Is that any way to greet your mother?” Diane pressed a quick kiss to her daughter’s temple. “Ethan had a deposition to take not far from here. He dropped me off.” She tapped her wristwatch. “Chris, your Lamaze class starts in half an hour. At this time of day, it might take us that long to get there. Let’s go.”

  She’d only gotten halfway through the details in the reports. Besides, she wasn’t in the mood to stretch and lie on the floor. Class wasn’t as much fun now that Sherry and Joanna were gone, each having given birth.

  “I was thinking of not going,” she told her mother.

  Protests had never gotten in Diane’s way. She hooked her arm through her daughter’s, tugging her in the direction of the door.

  “Fine. And you can continue thinking about it on the way there.” She used her “mom” voice, the one that had allowed her to govern four energetic boys and a daughter whose energy level went off the charts. “Let’s go, Chris. Don’t make me get Warrick in here to convince you.”

  Funny how much a part of her family her partner had become. “He’s out in the field.”

  Diane picked up on her daughter’s tone. “You’ll be out there, giving me heart failure, soon enough.” She gave C.J.’s arm another tug. “Now let’s go.”

  Resigned, C.J., sighed and got her purse from the bottom desk drawer. “Yes, Mother.”

  Diane nodded, pleased at the capitulation. “Well, it could be a little more cheerful, but I’ll take what I can get.”

  So saying, she gently pushed her daughter out the door.

  “We have to stop at the bathroom,” C.J. told her.

  Diane’s smile didn’t fade. “I never doubted it for a minute.”

  Chapter 2

  “I’ve got a surprise for you,” Lamaze instructor Lori O’Neill whispered to C.J. as the class began breaking up.

  Handing her pillow to her mother, C.J. looked at the perky, rather pregnant blond instructor. The session had run a
little long tonight. All C.J. wanted to do was drop her mother off at her house and go home herself.

  She’d been preoccupied throughout the entire session, her mind constantly reverting to some stray piece of information about one or another of the Sleeping Beauty Killer’s victims. Twice her mother’d had to tap her on her shoulder to get her to pay attention to what was going on in class.

  This was a far cry from the way the classes normally used to go, Lori thought. It wasn’t all that long ago that she, Lori, Sherry Campbell and Joanna Prescott would go out together after class to a local, old-fashioned ice cream parlor where they would indulge their insatiable craving for sweets. But Sherry and Joanna were no longer part of the class, or the inner clique Lori had pulled together and whimsically dubbed the Mom Squad. Sherry and Joanna had each given birth and with new men in their lives as well, were on their way to no longer being single mothers.

  C.J. shook her head. “I don’t think—”

  On a mission of mercy, Lori was not about to take no for an answer. “You’ve been looking a little down these last two sessions, so I called up Sherry and Joanna and invited them out for the evening. They’re waiting for us at the ice cream parlor.”

  She really didn’t need the extra calories. Even so, C.J. could feel her taste buds getting into gear. Still, she felt she needed to review the personal notes she’d kept at home dealing with the serial killer’s various victims. There just had to be something she was missing.

  C.J. grasped at a plausible excuse. “But I’ve got to drop off my mother—”

  The excuse died quickly. “Not another word about it,” Diane protested. She was already digging her cell phone out of her purse. “I’ll just call your father and he can come to pick me up.” Her blue eyes sparkled lustily as she grinned at her only daughter. “Did I ever tell you about the first time he picked me up?” She sighed dramatically. “Your father was the handsomest thing on two legs, and I would have followed him to the ends of the earth.” She winked at Lori. “Luckily, I didn’t have to. His apartment was right around the corner.”