LITMIR.BIZ

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done anything illegal. That meant Addison would need to be questioned thoroughly to make sure everything was aboveboard.

      The door to the examining room opened, and a nurse stuck her head in. “You’ll be able to go soon. Just waiting on the paperwork from the doctor.”

      Soon couldn’t come soon enough for Reed. He needed to put some space between Addison and him, but that wouldn’t happen until he started to get some answers to all those questions he had.

      “Why’d you decide to go ahead and adopt a baby?” Reed asked, figuring it was a simple enough question and a good way to go back to the beginning. “Being a single parent couldn’t have been an easy decision for you.”

      Something flashed through Addison’s eyes. Maybe because this wasn’t exactly a safe subject for them. After all, it’d been at the root of their breakup.

      “I’m thirty-four and decided not to wait any longer for the right fertility treatment,” she finally answered. “Or wait for Mr. Right, for that matter. Haven’t had much luck in that department.”

      She paused just long enough for him to understand he was in the Mr. Wrong category, but Reed hadn’t needed the pause to get that.

      “You know how much I’ve always wanted to be a mom,” she added a moment later.

      He did, and that said it all. Addison had wanted it and had gone for it. But maybe in going for it, she had cut the wrong kinds of corners.

      “If you hired Rooney, you must have suspected something wasn’t right,” Reed tossed out there.

      She got that look in her eyes again, as if this was the last thing on earth she wanted to discuss. Tough. They were discussing it.

      “Not suspected. But I was worried,” she explained, “because of all the things I was hearing.”

      Yeah, he got that, too. The black-market baby rings had been all over the news. Pregnant women had been kidnapped and their babies sold. In some cases, the birth mothers had been murdered, but others had escaped. Maybe Addison had wanted to make sure one of those escapees wasn’t Emily’s real birth mother. If so, that birth mother could step in and take Emily from her long after the adoption had been finalized.

      “Could this be related to something...well, personal?” he asked. “Like maybe a boyfriend or ex who wants to get back at you?”

      She shook her head, seemingly relieved, and looked away. “You’re the only ex I have who hates me.”

      Reed opened his mouth to say he didn’t hate her. That he only hated the demands she’d put on him to become a father.

      However, it was best not to go there.

      “But, no. There’s no recent ex. No recent anything since Emily,” Addison said.

      Maybe, but Reed kept pressing. “What about your job? Are you still working as an accountant?”

      Another nod. “But I’m not working on anything that’d cause kidnappers to come after Emily and me. I’m sure,” she added before he could challenge that.

      “I’ll need a list of all your recent clients anyway,” Reed continued. Addison dealt with people’s bank accounts and such, and it was possible someone hadn’t wanted her to uncover some illegal activity.

      “I’ll give you whatever you need to find those men,” she said, her voice shaky again. Actually, she was shaky, too. The room wasn’t cold, but he figured she was about to deal with an adrenaline crash.

      A sob tore from her mouth, and she leaned her head against him. Reed would have had to be a coldhearted jerk to push her away. But he made things a lot worse by putting his arm around her and pulling her against him.

      “I’m scared,” Addison whispered.

      She had reason to be scared, but Reed didn’t voice that. Nor did he ease her away though the shaking started to ease up a little.

      He settled for saying, “I don’t think these guys were amateurs. They could have killed you the moment they broke into your house. They didn’t. Instead they wanted to know what you’d learned and who you’d told. Maybe about the adoption, maybe about something else. I think that’s why they took your files, laptop and cell phone.”

      “Oh, God.” Addison got to her feet so fast that she startled the baby. “Last night I called Jewell at the county jail.” She frantically shook her head. “I just wanted to tell her about Emily.”

      Of course. Jewell. Yet another source of bad blood between them.

      Jewell McKinnon and Addison were friends despite their age difference, and Jewell was his boss’s estranged mother. Estranged in a very bad way because twenty-three years ago, Jewell had abandoned her sons and husband and left town under a cloud of suspicion that she’d murdered her lover. Well, the suspicion had caught up with her, and now Jewell was in jail waiting on her upcoming murder trial.

      A trial that would put Addison and Reed at odds yet again since Addison believed Jewell was 100 percent innocent. He thought the woman was as guilty as sin. Plus, Reed wasn’t exactly fond of Jewell abandoning people he cared about—like Jewell’s sons.

      “Call the county jail,” she insisted. “Make sure these men don’t go after Jewell.”

      “The jail’s secure,” Reed reminded her, and he tried to make her sit back down. “If those men show up there, they’ll be caught.”

      Of course, Reed doubted they’d get that lucky or the men would be that stupid. It was ironic, but right now Jewell was safer than the rest of them.

      “I also called my attorney, Dominic Harrelson,” Addison quickly added. “You think they’d go after him?”

      Reed couldn’t rule that out so he made a quick call to the sheriff, Cooper McKinnon, and asked him to have someone check on the attorney. “Who else did you contact?” he pressed when he’d finished the call.

      “No one. I’ve been spending all my time with Emily. I haven’t had much time for anything else.”

      For the investigation, that was a good thing. Fewer contacts meant fewer people might be in danger.

      Of course, Reed had no idea how many people were involved in this.

      The door opened again, and Reed automatically moved away from Addison so he could stand in front of her. However, it wasn’t the kidnappers or the nurse. But rather Colt. And Reed hadn’t moved fast enough away from Addison, because Colt had seen the close contact between them.

      Colt frowned, added something that Reed didn’t need to catch to understand. His fellow deputy certainly knew the emotional wringer Reed had been through with Addison and the divorce. Reed was right there with Colt in the disapproval department, and he made a note to keep his hands off Addison.

      Reed soon realized, though, it wasn’t just the close-contact stuff that’d put the look on Colt’s face. Colt and he had been deputies together for over six years, and that was plenty enough time for Reed to know something was wrong.

      “Before the CSI team could get out there and have a look around, someone torched Addison’s house,” Colt explained. He’d said it practically under his breath, but Addison must have heard it, because she gasped and clutched the baby even closer to her.

      “They burned down my aunt’s house?” she asked. And even though Reed had told himself that there’d be no more close contact, he took hold of Addison again because she looked ready to sink to the floor.

      “They did cleanup, too, of the blood in the yard,” Colt added. “Still, they might have left something behind.”

      Addison was mumbling, shaking her head.

      And crying.

      Yes, the tears came, too, but Reed tried to focus on what this turn of events meant. The men were pros, definitely. Someone with lots of money

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