LITMIR.BIZ

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the wooden deck and standing to take her arm to turn her toward him. “You do anything like that on my account, and Claire will never forgive me. Beamer will track you for us. Before you make any move like that, I’ll find someplace else until everything is decided on and settled.”

      Settled, she thought. As she thanked him and wished him a good night’s sleep, she realized she wasn’t ever going to feel settled again until she proved she’d never been pregnant.

      3

      In her office, Tara turned on the lights and hurried to the PC she used to track down other people’s kids. Finally, some time to herself. She needed answers, and she needed them now. After all, she was a researcher, a finder, a tracker of people. It was nearly midnight, but she’d never sleep if she didn’t look into Dr. Holbrook’s crazy claims.

      Her Finders Keepers office was in the large, extra bedroom. In addition to her desk and one armchair, the office had two PCs, one of them always online, a fax/copier/scanner, and four file cabinets—fireproof ones with locks. Since Alex had taken the report on Clay from Tara’s files, she was paranoid about keeping things under lock and key.

      One file held her case-data sheets and time logs for payment. Also, this was where she kept her precious list of IBs—information brokers—who were always her last resort. They were expensive, obsessive, underground kinds of people she’d never want to meet in person. One of them, Marv Seymour, had been trying to hit on her via e-mail and fax, as if she’d consulted some lookin’-for-love source instead of purchasing locate info from him. Unfortunately, he did not live far away, in Centennial, south of Denver. She’d told him not to contact her for personal reasons again, after he’d claimed he “knew more than the TV and newspapers had covered about her lonely life.” That was the pot calling the kettle black, since he sounded like a real loner. However much she needed a good local IB, Seymour came across like a weirdo who lived in the shadows. Colorado was one of few states that had no statewide licensing or oversight of private detective agencies, and IBs were never called to account for their actions either.

      On the wall above Tara’s big pine desk hung two large corkboards with a splattering of random notes, maps and reminders pinned to them. To her left was a large, white erasable marker board next to a huge calendar on which she kept track of what reports were due when. Because she juggled several cases at once, she had learned to multitask and prioritize. Once she found she could do that again, she’d known she had no lasting mental concerns from her coma. Hard rehab work had brought her through her physical weaknesses. Rather, she thought, the residual damage was all emotional.

      Tara’s office telephone system had three lines, one dedicated to the fax. Only one had a listed number. Tape recorders were attached to two of the three phones, because she often recorded witness interviews. Taping was legal because she always stated and then repeated that the conversation was being recorded. Her clients received a copy of the tape along with the final report—a report she would have given to Alex after Clay was in custody and Claire was on her way back to her mother.

      Now, in Tara’s zeal to learn if a comatose woman could deliver a child—maybe even a living child—she caught a glimpse of why Alex had rushed after Claire the moment she had learned her location. Like Tara tonight with Nick and Claire, Alex had chatted normally on that fateful day. She had controlled her desperation in order to hide the fact she intended to find Claire at any cost, even if it meant stealing the progress report from her friend and lying to her about where she was going.

      Though Tara had told no one but her psychiatrist at the Lohan Clinic, deep down she blamed Alex for putting herself in a position to be murdered. Tara also blamed Alex for indirectly placing her in a dangerous situation that led to Clay robbing her of a year of her life. It was a miracle that Alex’s rash actions hadn’t pushed Clay into harming Claire, as well. Tara hated feeling so conflicted about her best friend, but she couldn’t help feeling anger as well as anguish over her loss.

      Tara sat down in her desk chair and double-clicked her mouse. The big, flat screen woke up, displaying the latest wallpaper on her home page. She had taken a photo of the mountains and valley from the highest safe access point above the house, an outcrop called Big Rock. But over the breathtaking view she had superimposed the headline from the Denver Post reporting her recovery from her coma: Comatose Conifer Woman Gets Back Life But Not Her Past. Was it possible her coma had taken something else from her?

      The article had told about her memory loss, starting the day Clay had slammed her over the head with the butt of the same gun he’d used to kill Alex. It had also revealed that her husband, well-known locally through his wealthy, influential family, had left her and moved to the West Coast during her long coma. That had surely made Laird look cold and selfish, Tara thought, and the Lohans hated bad PR. They always wanted to be seen as altruistic and generous. Laird must have wanted to get away from her badly. Veronica, his mother, was the only Lohan who had seemed to sympathize with Tara in the dissolution of the marriage, but of course, Lohan blue blood didn’t flow through Veronica’s veins. She’d married into the clan, just like Tara.

      Tara kept the headline on her screen because, in facing its brutal truth, she tried harder to live each day better and stronger. That which does not kill us makes us stronger, the Nietzsche quote went. Now those words might even carry a new meaning.

      She quickly located an item on comatose woman + childbirth on the CBS News site. There was also an article from the Cincinnati Enquirer about the same case:

      Doctors in Cincinnati say it’s an extremely rare case—a twenty-four-year-old woman who was in a coma for nearly her entire pregnancy has given birth to a healthy, full-term baby…Chastity Cooper of Warsaw, Kentucky, has been comatose since she suffered severe head injuries in an auto accident in November, two weeks after she conceived. The pregnancy was discovered after the accident. Obstetricians said it was extremely rare that a woman could deliver a baby full-term when she was in a coma and bedridden through the pregnancy…Doctors said they used labor-inducing medications, but no strong pain relievers in the vaginal delivery…

      Tara just stared at the screen. Doctors said…Obstetricians said… Her mind bounced back to what her own doctor had claimed today. He was theorizing, of course, that she’d had a child before her coma, possibly years ago. A comatose delivery might have been “extremely rare” but, obviously, it was not impossible. And vaginal delivery. Why did those words especially disturb her?

      Her hands clasped so hard in her lap that her fingers went numb, she reread the article, word for word. “But this girl obviously wasn’t on birth control pills,” she whispered aloud as she tried to convince herself that one rare case proved nothing.

      She searched further and came across a Fox TV Web site with a brief mention of a similar case. At first, because it took place in Kentucky, Tara thought it referred to the same rare instance, but it was much more current, from exactly three months ago.

      We have an update tonight on a story Fox 7 first told you about in January. A comatose Webster County, Kentucky, woman has given birth to a healthy baby girl. Ashley Chaney was allegedly beaten by her ex-boyfriend and remains unresponsive in a nursing home. Chaney delivered the five-pound baby girl in late May. Thomas Matthew Yancy is charged with beating Chaney and putting her in a coma…

      Tara shuddered. Despite the fact she had no memory of her own assault, she pictured herself being hit on the head by Alex’s ex-husband. After she had come out of her coma, when she’d interviewed the Central City law officer who had found her, he’d described how she was sprawled lifeless on the wet ground. Could she have been harboring a new life within her?

      After shooting Alex and attacking Tara, Clay had fled again, taking Claire with him. But he’d made the mistake of speeding and had been pulled over near Grand Junction. Ballistics later proved his rifle, found in the cab of his truck, killed Alex; it still had Tara’s hair and blood on its butt.

      The law officer’s exact words echoed in Tara’s mind: “You were sprawled lifeless on the ground.” She lay lifeless there—and for long months after that, first in a rescue helicopter, then a Denver E.R., then intensive care, and finally, at the Lohan Clinic. How could she have produced

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