LITMIR.BIZ

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Danny Boys were playing at Finnegan’s. To Craig, it was still a normal night—and a Friday night! A nice, normal Friday night—something that would be very nice to enjoy, given their chosen professions.

      “Hey, Kieran,” Craig said. “Are you already at the pub?”

      She apparently wasn’t good at rocking and soothing and trying to talk on the phone all at the same time. The baby was still crying. Loudly.

      “No, I—”

      “Whose kid is that? I can’t hear a word you’re saying!”

      “I’m still at work. Can you come over here, now, please?”

      “Uh—yeah, sure.”

      Kieran hung up the phone. She didn’t know what Ralph was doing; she didn’t know where the police were. She glanced down at the baby as she hurried from the office, ready to hit the streets herself. How old was the tiny creature? It was so small!

      Yet—nice lungs!

      Was the woman in black the mother?

      She had looked older. Perhaps fifty. Too old for an infant.

      Ralph wasn’t at the desk; Kieran heard sirens, but as yet no police had arrived.

      Bursting out onto the New York City rush hour sidewalk, she looked right and left. There, far down the block, she thought she saw the woman.

      “Hey!” Kieran shouted.

      Despite the pulsing throng of humanity between them, the woman heard her. She turned.

      There was something different about her now.

      The way she moved. The way she looked, and the expression on her face.

      She didn’t try to run. She just stared at Kieran, and then seemed to stagger toward her.

      Kieran clutched the screaming infant close to her breast and thrust her way through the people; luckily, she was a New Yorker, and she knew how to push through a rush hour crowd when necessary.

      The woman was still staggering forward. Kieran was closing the gap.

      “Listen, I’ll help you, I’ll help the baby! It’s all right...”

      It wasn’t in any way all right.

      The woman lurched forward, as if she would fall into Kieran’s arms, if Kieran had just been close enough.

      She wasn’t.

      The woman fell face-first down onto the sidewalk.

      That’s when Kieran saw the knife protruding from the woman’s back and the rivulets of blood suddenly forming all around her and joining together to create a crimson pool.

      * * *

      Babies tended to be adorable—and this baby was especially so. In fact, Kieran wasn’t sure she’d ever seen an ugly baby, but she had been assured by friends that they did exist.

      This little girl, though, had a headful of auburn ringlets and huge blue eyes. Kieran had heard that all babies had blue eyes, but she didn’t know if that was true or not. Sadly, she just didn’t know a lot about babies; she was one in a family of four children herself, yes, but she and her twin brother, Kevin, were only a couple of years behind their older brother and one year older than their younger brother.

      Actually, this beautiful baby looked as if she could fit right in with their family. Each of the Finnegan siblings had a form of red hair and blue or green or blue-green eyes. Kieran’s own were blue, and her hair was a deep red.

      “They say it’s the Irish,” she said softly to the little one in her arms. “But I don’t think that you’re Irish!”

      Talking to the baby made sense at the moment; FBI Special Agent Craig Frasier, the love of her life and often partner in crime—solving crime, not committing it!—had arrived shortly after the police. The medical examiner had come for the body of the murdered woman. While waiting for Child Services, Kieran was holding the baby, back up in the office.

      Drs. Fuller and Miro worked with the police or other law enforcement. While not with the FBI, they were regular profilers and consultants for the NYC office. The Bureau’s behavioral science teams were down in DC, and while they could be called in, the city police and FBI often used local help in trying to get a step ahead of a criminal, or in working with criminals and witnesses when psychological assessments were needed, or, sometimes, when a child or a distressed person just needed to be able to speak to someone to ask the right questions and put them at ease. Kieran did a number of those assessments before reporting to the doctors, and she worked with victims of domestic abuse and both parents and children when they wound up within the child welfare system—such as a teenager who had been assaulted by her own father, or a senior citizen who was recovering from gunshot wounds inflicted by his wife. Or Kieran’s last patient today, Besa Goga. Besa was a sad case, abused for years when she’d first immigrated to the country, and now quick to strike out. Besa Goga was in court-ordered therapy because she’d bitten a man from her cable company. Kieran had only been seeing her a few weeks.

      But the office didn’t always work through the police department, FBI or other such agencies. They also handled other cases that fell their way through happenstance or other circumstances—as in the recovering alcoholic who was also a politician and doing very well with Dr. Fuller.

      Kieran had called her bosses to let them know what had happened. Both had said they’d come in immediately.

      She had assured them that they shouldn’t; the police were dealing with the murder, and Child Services was coming for the baby.

      Dr. Fuller—who had looks as dreamy as any TV physician—was at an event with his equally beautiful wife and their six-year-old. Dr. Miro was giving a keynote speech at a conference in Southern Jersey.

      Kieran had convinced them both that she was fine, that it was just strange and scary.

      The poor murdered woman hadn’t been scary; she had touched Kieran’s heart. She had needed help so badly. But she had called Kieran by name. And that made Kieran wonder.

      She sat out in the waiting area of the offices—right where the woman had come up to her, right where the baby had been thrust into her arms. She thought that the baby was bound to cry again soon. That’s what babies did. They were hungry or wet or had gas or...who knew? She just really didn’t have much experience. And she had no clue as to the child’s age. But with little else to do—and probably in a bit of shock herself, despite the fact that she’d now thrown herself into the crime-fighting ring for a few years and had seen some shocking things—she talked to the baby. She made soothing noises, discussed her own uncertainty with a cheerful voice, and made a few faces here and there.

      She could swear that the baby smiled.

      Did babies smile this young?

      She knew that those who knew—experienced parents, grandparents, and so on—claimed babies did not smile until a certain age.

      This one, she was certain, smiled. She waved her little fists in the air and grinned toothlessly. She even cooed.

      “Hey!” Craig had come back up to the offices after checking out the scene on the street.

      He nodded to the policeman at the door. Since Kieran had no idea what was going on, and since a woman who had been looking for her had just been stabbed to death, having a policeman standing guard was very reassuring, and Kieran was grateful.

      She looked up at Craig, hopeful. Though, of course, she doubted that he or the police or anyone—other than the killer—knew who had stabbed the woman, or why.

      “You okay?” he asked her.

      “I’m fine. I was handed the baby. I don’t think anyone was after me for any reason at all, but...oh, Lord. Craig, you don’t think it’s my fault, do you? I mean, if I hadn’t chased after her—”

      “Kieran,” he said, hunkering down by

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