Buch lesen: «Lock, Stock and Secret Baby»
About the Author
Though born and raised in L.A., CASSIE MILES has lived in colorado long enough to be considered a semi-native. The first home she owned was a log cabin in the mountains overlooking Elk creek, with a thirty-mile commute to her work at the Denver Posy.
After raising two daughters and cooking tons of macaroni and cheese for her family, Cassie is trying to be more adventurous in her culinary efforts. Ceviche, anyone? She’s discovered almost anything tastes better with wine. When she’s not plotting Intrigue books, Cassie likes to hang out at the Denver Botanical Gardens near her high-rise home.
Lock, Stock and
Secret Baby
Cassie Miles
MILLS & BOON
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Table of Contents
Cover
About the Author
Title Page
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Copyright
Chapter One
Clutter spilled across the desktop in Ray Jantzen’s home office: unopened junk mail, books, a running shoe with a broken lace, file folders, research notes for a paper he’d published in the American Journal of Psychiatry and … a gun.
Behind a stack of magazines, he located a framed photograph of his late wife, Annie, and their son, Blake. The sight of his beloved Annie’s smile wrenched at his heart. She’d passed away two years ago, a month shy of their fortieth anniversary.
With his thumb, Ray wiped a smudge from the glass and focused on the image of his son. Though Blake was only eight in this picture, his dark brown eyes snapped with impatient intelligence. Gifted wasn’t a sufficient word to describe him. And yet, he hadn’t chosen a career where he could concentrate on his intellect. At age twenty-five, Blake was part of a Special Forces team working undercover in undisclosed locations.
Setting aside the photo, Ray opened his laptop and typed an e-mail.
My dear son, I loved you from the moment you emerged from your mother’s womb with a squall and two clenched fists. Forgive me for what I’m about to disclose …
He was well aware of his pompous phrasing, clearly a defense mechanism to hide his shame. He should have told Blake long ago. After four decades as a psychiatrist, Ray should have been wiser. Unspoken secrets never went away. The lies one told festered beneath the surface and arose in times of stress to bite one’s ass.
His e-mail ended with: Take care of Eve Weathers. She needs you.
He hit Send, closed the laptop and took it to the safe hidden behind the bookshelves. Like the rest of his office, the interior of the safe had accumulated a great deal of paper. But these notes were precious; they would tell the whole truth about the story he hinted at in his e-mail.
After locking the safe and closing the hinged section of bookshelves, he went to the window. The red, yellow and magenta tulips in his garden bobbed in the June breezes. The sun was setting behind the foothills west of Denver. So beautiful. He should have spent more time outdoors.
The door to his office opened. A melodic voice said, “Good evening, Dr. Jantzen.”
“How did you get inside?”
“Your alarm system is rudimentary. Your locks, pathetic.” The extraordinary tonal quality of the intruder’s voice hinted at his immense musical talent. “And this office is a rat’s nest. How do you work?”
“I like it this way.”
“And what does that say about your emotional state? Hmm? Disorganized thinking, perhaps?”
Angered by this mocking analysis, Ray turned away from the window and faced the intruder. His eyes were silver, like the barrel of his Beretta.
Ray lunged for his own weapon. It trembled in his hand. He’d never be able to shoot this young man whom he had known literally since birth.
“You’re not a killer.” The voice was sheer music. “Put down the gun.”
Ray sank into the chair behind his desk and reached for the telephone. Still holding the gun, he hit the speed dial for the security service that monitored his “rudimentary” alarm system. They were guaranteed to respond within ten minutes.
“Hang up the phone, Dr. Jantzen.”
“Or else?”
“Be reasonable.” He aimed the Beretta. “You know what I’m looking for.”
Turning over his records wouldn’t be enough, and Ray knew it. “I won’t remain silent. I can’t.”
“Then you will die.”
Ray squeezed off several shots, aiming high. He hoped to frighten his opponent, though he knew that hope was futile.
Three bullets burned into his chest. Before his eyelids closed, he imprinted his gaze on the photograph of Blake and his beloved Annie.
EVE WEATHERS HAD ATTENDED many funerals, mostly in the company of her parents, mostly for people she didn’t know. Being raised on army bases meant death visited her community with a sad and terrible frequency. But she’d never before stood at the graveside of someone who’d been murdered.
The bright sun of an early June afternoon dimmed, as if a shadow hung over them, as if they all shared in the guilt. The police said Dr. Ray Jantzen had been killed by a burglar. They had no suspects. The killer might even be among them.
While the preacher read from Psalms, she checked out the other graveside mourners. Her mother would have called this a good turnout—close to a hundred people. An eclectic bunch, they appeared to be from all walks of life. There were serious-looking older men who were probably Ray’s friends and psychiatrist coworkers, several men in uniform because Ray had worked at the VA hospital, a young man in leather with spiky, black hair and mirrored sunglasses, a couple of teenagers and various family members. Their only common denominator was that Eve didn’t know any of them.
Dr. Ray had been in her life for as long as she could remember, literally since she was born. When her parents had applied for an experimental in vitro fertilization program at the army base where her dad had been stationed, Eve had become part of a lifelong study. Every year, she had filled in a questionnaire and had given Dr. Ray an update on her life, both her physical and emotional condition.
They’d only met in person a couple of times before she had moved to Boulder three years ago to take a mathematical engineering position at Sun Wave Labs. For the past two years, she and Dr. Ray had done their updates over dinner. His wife had passed away, and she assumed he was lonely.
The sound of his coffin being lowered startled her. She blinked. Her gaze lit upon a dark-haired man in a black suit who stood beside the preacher. She recognized him from the photo Dr. Ray had carried in his wallet. His son, Blake Jantzen.
She studied Blake with a mathematician’s eye, taking his measure. His physical proportions were remarkable. Her mind calculated the inches and angles of his shoulders, his torso and the length of his legs. Though he wasn’t splayed out, like Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man, Blake Jantzen was close to ideal.
When his gaze met hers, a tremor rippled through her, and she immediately lowered her eyes. She hadn’t meant to stare, hadn’t intended to intrude on what had to be a terrible day for him. When she looked up again, he was still watching her.
Their eye contact intensified. His dark eyes bored into hers, and that little tremor expanded to a full-blown, pulsating earthquake inside her rib cage. If she didn’t look away, it felt as if her heart would explode. This wasn’t how she usually reacted to men, even if they were practically perfect.
Pretending to pray, she stared down at her feet. Her toes protruded from her hiking sandals which were really too casual for a funeral, even if they were black. Suddenly self-conscious, she decided her black skirt was too short, showing off way too much of her winter white legs. She buttoned her black cotton jacket over her white tank top, stained with a dribble of coffee from this morning.
Whenever she mingled with the general public, her style seemed inadequate. In the lab, she wore comfortable jeans and T-shirts with nerdy slogans. Her chin-length, wheat-blond hair resembled a bird’s nest. None of the guys she worked with cared what she looked like. They were so absorbed in their work that they wouldn’t notice if she showed up naked, except perhaps to comment on the small tattooed symbol for pi above her left breast.
The crowd dispersed, and she lost sight of Blake, which was probably for the best. Her mother would have told her that the proper behavior would be to shake his hand and offer condolences, but she didn’t trust herself to get that close to him without a meltdown. Was she so desperate for male companionship that she’d hit on a guy at his father’s funeral?
She made a beeline for her car. As she clicked the door lock, she heard a voice behind her. “Are you Eve Weathers?”
Without turning around, she knew who that sexy baritone belonged to. “I’m Eve.”
“I’m Blake Jantzen. I need to talk to you.”
Up close, he was even more amazing. Was there a degree beyond perfection? Most people had incongruities in their facial structure: one eye higher than the other, a bump on the nose or a dimple in one cheek and not the other. Blake had none of those anomalies. Even the shadows of exhaustion beneath his eyes were precisely symmetrical.
She stammered, “I’m s-sorry for your loss.”
He acknowledged with a crisp nod. “Come back to the house. My aunt arranged a reception.”
“I don’t know where you live.”
“My father’s house,” he clarified.
Though she’d planned to return to her office in Boulder, she couldn’t refuse without being rude. “I’ve never been to Dr. Ray’s home.”
A flicker of surprise registered in his coffee-brown eyes. “I thought you were close to him. He thought highly of you.”
“We met for dinner a couple of times, and he was very kind to me. But it was always at a restaurant. He kept his private life, well, private.” Her parents never could have afforded her postgrad studies if Dr. Ray hadn’t helped her obtain scholarships. “I thought of him as a benefactor.”
“Stay here,” Blake said. “I’ll tell my aunt that I’m riding with you.”
Though she obediently slid behind the steering wheel of her hybrid and waited, his attitude irked her. Blake had the arrogant tone of someone who gave orders that must be followed. A military guy. An alpha male. The kind of man who demanded too much and gave little in return. If she ever fell in love, she hoped it would be with a guy who at least pretended to treat her as an equal.
Though she doubted that she and Blake would get along, Eve checked her reflection in the visor mirror. She’d shed a couple of tears, but the mascara around her blue eyes wasn’t smudged. She pushed her bangs into a semblance of order.
In a matter of minutes, Mr. Perfect returned to her car and climbed into the passenger side. “At the exit from the cemetery, turn right.”
Having issued his order, he leaned back in the seat and closed his eyes.
Eve wished there was something she could do or say to comfort him. Her mother was good in these situations; she knew how to show empathy without being too sentimental. Eve lacked those people skills. She could calculate quadratic equations in the blink of an eye, but the art of conversation baffled her. She pinched her lips and remained silent as she drove.
When Blake opened his eyes and leaned forward, he appeared to be completely in control. “What’s your birthday?”
An odd question. “June twenty-second. I’ll be twenty-six.”
“Mine is June thirtieth. Same year,” he said. “And you were born in New Mexico.”
“At an army base near Roswell.”
“Me, too.”
“I guess we have something in common.”
“More than you know,” he said. “Tell me about your relationship with my dad.”
Apparently, Mr. Perfect wasn’t big on idle chatter. This felt like an interrogation. “I communicated with Dr. Ray once a year, every year. On my birthday, I filled out a status report with forty questions. Some of them were essay questions and took a while to answer.”
“Did you ever wonder why?”
“Of course, I did.” His terse questions provoked an equally abrupt response from her. “I’m not a mindless idiot.”
He gave a short laugh. “I’d bet on the opposite. You’re pretty damn smart.”
“Maybe.”
“Tell me what you know about my dad’s status reports.”
What was he getting at? He must already know this information. “Your father told me I was part of a study group made up of children with similar backgrounds and key genetic markers. He monitored potential and achievement, which was why he helped me get scholarships.”
“Take a right at the next light.”
She could feel his scrutiny as he studied her. Though she wasn’t sure that she even liked this guy, she responded to him with an unwanted excitement that set her heart racing. Her brain fumbled for something to break the silence. “There was a good turnout for the funeral.”
“Did you recognize anybody?”
“Not a soul. I kind of expected to see Dr. Prentice.”
“How do you know Prentice?”
“He was the other half of the study your father worked on,” she said. “As I’m sure you already know.”
“Tell me, anyway.”
“Your dad correlated the psychiatric data. And Prentice did medical examinations every few years or so. He contacted me about six weeks ago.”
“The date?”
She pulled up her mental calendar. “It was April sixteenth, the day after tax day. Prentice said he needed to see me right away. There was an issue about possible exposure to radiation when I was a child.”
“And you were scared.”
“Terrified.” There had been a similar scare five years ago that Dr. Prentice treated with a brief course of mediation. “Radiation poisoning isn’t something to mess around with. Turns out that I’m fine. Prentice gave me a clean bill of health.”
“What do you remember about the testing?”
“It was a thorough physical.” She wasn’t about to go into details about the pelvic exam or the part where she’d been under anesthetic. “I went to a clinic after work on a Friday, and I didn’t get home until after ten o’clock. Dr. Prentice’s assistant drove me and made sure I got into bed.”
“Any ill effects?”
Come to think of it she hadn’t been feeling like herself lately. Her stomach had been queasy. A couple of times, she’d vomited. “Do you know anything about the testing?”
“Yes,” he said curtly.
Her fear returned with a vengeance. What did Blake know? Had he pulled her aside because he had bad news? She might have been poisoned by a childhood exposure, might have some awful disease. Her cells could be turning against her at this very moment. “Why did you say that you needed to talk to me?”
“Pull over.”
This had to be bad news. “Why?”
He touched her arm, and she recoiled as if he’d poked her with a cattle prod. She wanted nothing more to do with Mr. Perfect. He was toying with her, asking inane questions and hinting at dire circumstances.
She yanked the steering wheel and made a hard right onto a side street with wood-frame houses, skimpy trees and sidewalks that blended into the curb. Halfway down the block, she parked and turned off the engine. Eve preferred facts to innuendo. She wanted the truth, no matter how horrible.
“All right, Blake, I’m parked. If you have something to tell me, get on with it.”
His eyes flicked as if he was searching her face, trying to gauge her reaction. “It might be better if I gave you more information. Set the framework.”
“Just spit it out.” She braced herself. “Am I dying?”
He cleared his throat. “Eve, I have reason to believe that you’re pregnant.”
“That’s impossible.”
She was a virgin.
Chapter Two
Blake watched her reaction, looking for a sign that Eve Weathers had been complicit in Prentice’s scheme. He saw nothing of the kind.
His information had shocked her. She gasped, loudly and repeatedly. Her eyes opened wide. Pupils dilated. She was on the verge of hyperventilation. Her chest heaved against the seat belt. “I can’t be pregnant.”
“I said it was a possibility.”
“Why would you say such a thing? And how the hell would you know?”
“Before he was murdered, my father sent me an e-mail.” At the moment the e-mail was sent, Blake had been in a debriefing meeting at the Pentagon. He didn’t read the message until two hours later. By then, it was too late. His father was dead.
“What did it say?”
Too much for him to explain right now. Blake cut to the pertinent facts. “My father received information that Dr. Prentice had implanted you with an embryo.”
“During the examination? While I was unconscious?” She dragged her fingers through her pale blond hair. “That’s sickening. Disgusting.”
When she grasped the key in the ignition, he stayed her hand. Gently, he said, “Maybe you should let me drive.”
She yanked away from him. “My car. I drive.”
“You don’t look so good,” he said.
“Thanks so much.”
“Not an insult.” He liked her looks. “I meant that you appear to be in shock. I don’t want you to pass out.”
“Oh, I’m way too angry to faint.” She started the car. “You want out?”
“No.” He couldn’t let her drive off by herself. In his e-mail, Dad had told Blake to take care of Eve Weathers. That last request could not be ignored.
She punched the accelerator and squealed away from the curb. Halfway down the street, she whipped a U-turn, barely missing a van parked at the curb.
His right foot pushed down on an invisible brake on the passenger-side floorboard. “If you let me drive, we can be at my father’s house in ten minutes.”
“That’s not where we’re going.”
At the corner, she made an aggressive merge into traffic. Her tension showed in her white-knuckle grip on the steering wheel, but she wasn’t reckless. She checked her mirrors before changing lanes and stayed within the speed limit. With a sudden swerve, she drove into the parking lot outside a convenience store.
Without a word, she threw off her seat belt and left the car. He trailed behind her. Inside the store, he asked, “You mind telling me what we’re doing here?”
“Maybe I wanted a donut.”
Her sarcasm was preferable to the moment of shock when he’d mentioned pregnancy. He should have been more careful, should have expected her reaction, but he wasn’t operating at peak efficiency. Eve’s problems weren’t his primary concern.
His focus was on his father’s murder. The cops were satisfied with the lame explanation that a burglar did the crime. Like hell. This killing wasn’t a random act of violence. Blake was determined to find the son of a bitch who pulled the trigger and the men who sent him.
He stood behind Eve as she stared at shelves packed with an array of over-the-counter medicines. When she spied the pregnancy tests, she grabbed three of them. “Damn, I left my purse in the car.”
“I’ll pay,” he said.
At the counter, the clerk gave them a knowing smirk as he rang up the purchase.
Eve added a pack of gum. “And two jerky sticks and one of these pecan things.”
“There’s food at the house,” he said.
“I have a craving. Isn’t that what pregnant women do?”
When she plucked a magazine off the rack below the counter, she set down her car keys. He snatched them. “I’m driving. It’s easier than giving you directions.”
“Fine,” she growled. “You drive.”
Back in the car, he adjusted the driver’s seat for his long legs and headed toward his father’s house while Eve tore open the packaging on the pregnancy tests and read the instructions. “When we get to the house,” she said, “I’d appreciate being shown to the nearest bathroom.”
He nodded.
“I won’t make a scene,” she assured him. “I respect your father’s memory.”
Several other vehicles were already parked on the street outside the long ranch-style house that his mother had loved so much. When they had first moved here fifteen years ago, there had been few other houses in the area. Development had crept closer, but his father’s house still commanded an outstanding view. To the south, Pikes Peak was visible on a clear day like today.
No matter where in the world he was stationed, he treasured the memory of home—of translucent, Colorado skies and distant, snowcapped peaks. This vision was his solace and the basis for his daily meditation.
As they went up the sidewalk to the house, he pocketed her keys, not wanting her to have easy access to an escape until she calmed down.
Inside, he skirted the living room where people had gathered and escorted her down a long hallway that bisected the left half of the house. At the end of the hall, he opened the door to his dad’s office. Unlike the rest of this well-maintained residence, this room looked like the aftermath of a tornado. In addition to the papers and magazines, a fine coating of fingerprint dust from the police investigation covered many of the surfaces. The supposedly secret safe in the bookshelves hung open in its hinges. His father’s blood stained the Persian carpet behind the desk.
When he closed the door, Eve stood very still. “Is this where it happened?”
“Yes.”
“You haven’t cleaned up.”
“Not yet.” Valuable information could be hidden somewhere in this room. He’d already searched, but he would search again and again and again, until he found the killer.
IN THE PRIVACY OF THE bathroom, Eve almost yielded to the overwhelming pressure of anger and fear. If ever there had been a time in her life when she wanted to curl up in a ball and cry, this was it. She didn’t want to be pregnant. Not now, possibly not ever. Having a baby wasn’t on her agenda.
She knew that she’d skipped her last period but hadn’t worried because Dr. Prentice told her she might be irregular after her testing. Prentice, that bastard. Why had she believed him? With good reason, damn it. She had twenty-five years of good faith; Prentice and Dr. Ray had been part of her life since birth.
Setting her purse on the counter, she took out the kits from the convenience store: three different brands. Two of the kits had two tests inside the box, and she set the extras aside.
She followed the simple instructions and arrayed the three test sticks on the counter beside the sink. Then, she waited, counting the seconds.
Each test had a different indicator. One showed a plus sign in the window to indicate a positive. Another showed a pink line. The third would turn blue.
Though counting didn’t make time go faster, reciting numerical progressions had always soothed her. As a child, she learned to count prime numbers all the way up to 3,571—the first five hundred primes. Five hundred unique numbers, divisible only by themselves and one.
The last time she had seen Dr. Ray over dinner, she’d talked about prime. He had suggested—in his kindly way—that she might want to pursue deeper interpersonal relationships. Make friends, join groups, go on dates, blah, blah, blah.
She had told him that she was happy just as she was. Some people needed others to make them complete, but she was unique. Like a prime number, she was divisible only by herself. Singular.
If she was pregnant, she’d never be alone again.
One of the tests required only one minute to show results. She could look down right now and see. But the others needed five minutes, and she didn’t want to peek until all the results were in and could be verified against each other.
But she couldn’t wait. She looked down. The first test showed a positive.
Could she trust a kit from a convenience store? It hardly seemed scientific in spite of the claim on the box of ninety-nine percent accuracy in detecting a pregnancy hormone, hCG, released into the body by the placenta.
The second test repeated the positive. And the third.
She was pregnant, pregnant and pregnant.
Tentatively, she touched her lower abdomen. Hello, in there. Can you hear me? An absurd question. At this point in development, the fetus wouldn’t have ears. But they shared the same body, the same blood. The food she ate nurtured the tiny being that grew within her. The miracle of life. Amazing. Infuriating.
Damn it, this couldn’t be happening! She dug into her purse and found her cell phone. Dr. Prentice’s private cell phone number was in the memory.
He answered after the fourth ring. “I’ve been expecting to hear from you, Eve.”
“How could you do this to me?”
“I assume you’re aware of—”
“I’m aware, damn you. I just took a pregnancy test.”
“You’re upset.”
A mild description of her outrage. “You might as well have raped me.”
“Not at all the same thing. Rape is an act of violence. You received the highest quality medical care. My intentions were for your own good. I could have hired a surrogate, you know.”
“A what?”
“A surrogate mother. Some women rent out their wombs like cheap motels.”
“I know what a surrogate is.”
Her voice was louder than she intended. Blake knocked on the bathroom door. “Eve? Are you all right?”
She didn’t want to deal with him. This wasn’t his problem. Lowering her voice, she demanded, “Why, Dr. Prentice? Why would you do this?”
“Ray’s research indicated the optimum condition for development comes when the biological mother carries the fetus and bonds with the infant.”
Biological mother? Bonding? None of what he’d just said made sense. “I ought to hire a lawyer and sue you.”
“Don’t bother. When you came for your examination, you signed a consent form.”
With a jolt, she remembered being handed several documents on a clipboard. “You told me it was a routine medical procedure.”
“If you like, I can fax you a copy.”
He knew her too well, knew that she wouldn’t bother to read the fine print. She had trusted him. “I have to know why.”
“To create the second generation.”
“Second generation of what?”
From outside the bathroom door, she heard Blake. “Who are you talking to, Eve?”
“I’m fine,” she told him.
“Unlock the damn door,” Blake said.
“In a minute.”
She moved to the farthest wall of the bathroom beside the toilet. A magazine stand held back issues of Psychology Today. Guest towels with a teal-blue border hung from a pewter rack. She spoke into the phone. “Signed consent form or not, this was wrong.”
“What’s done is done,” he said.
“I’m not ready to be a mother.” Everything in her life would have to change. She’d have to find a way to juggle work and child care. There was so much to learn, an overwhelming amount of research. How could she manage? “Maybe I should give the baby up for adoption.”
“That would be a mistake.”
“It’s not your call, Dr. Prentice.”
“Let me give you something else to consider. Do you remember five years ago when I had you on medication?”
The earlier scare about possible radiation poisoning. “Another lie?”
“I’m a scientist,” he said archly. “I don’t deal in ethics. Five years ago, the medication I gave you was actually a fertility drug that encouraged ovulation. You produced several eggs which I then harvested during your physical exam. I used those eggs to create embryos.”
“My egg?” The impact of this new information hit her hard. “You implanted me with my own egg?”
“The fetus you’re carrying is biologically your own.”
My baby. Her hand rested protectively on her stomach. She felt a deep, immediate connection. This is my baby.
“This entire process would have been far less complicated,” Dr. Prentice said, “if Ray had agreed to facilitate. He had a decent grasp on your psychological development and could have convinced you that having this baby was a good idea. Brilliant, in fact. You’re lucky to take part in—”
The room started to spin. Eve never fainted. But her knees went weak. I’m having a baby. She collapsed with a thud. The phone fell from her limp hand onto the tiled bathroom floor.
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