LITMIR.BIZ

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Family’s off-limits. Especially mine.” And most especially the father she had lost at age eight, the father she and her brother had both been raised to revere, with his every artifact an idol in their rancher uncle’s house. Her stomach shrank down to a red-hot coal as Rafe’s Daddy’s girl crack echoed through her memory.

      “Got it.” He stuck out his right hand, offering to shake.

      Ignoring it, she added, “And if you ever dare to bring up Iowa again, I swear to you that one way or another, I will find a way to burn you. You can count on it.”

      To his credit, he didn’t smile or remind her that she was the one in handcuffs but simply nodded. “You’ve got yourself a deal, Brandt.”

      “Good. Then right now, you have my undivided attention. Tell me about this plan of yours.”

      “All right, then.” He moved his bulky duffel bag to the closet alcove next to the small bathroom, then sat in the chair beside hers.

      “Okay,” he said. “The way I figure it, you can come out of this one of two ways. The inept, helpless victim—”

      “Enough with the flattery,” she said with a scowl.

      “Or the hero,” he finished. “The agent who managed to solve a crime and save a child your colleagues couldn’t, all on your own.”

      “I’m liking that part,” she admitted, imaging herself turning the tables in the process and marching the handsome fugitive in at gunpoint. As her fantasy unfolded, her big brother—who would almost certainly have come to Florida by this time—would stand up and lead the round of applause. “How ’bout we dispense with the cuffs and get right to it?”

      His forehead creased in either surprise or amusement. “I’m sure you’d enjoy that. But first, I need your agreement that you mean to help…with the best cause that there is.”

      “Let me guess,” she ventured. “It’s finding Lissa’s baby.”

      As he shook his head, a fierce light gleamed behind his deep green eyes. “Not just finding her daughter. Finding and returning all the stolen babies. All the infants a man named Dominic Powers has ordered torn from their dying mothers and then sold to the highest bidder to fund his personal empire.”

      Chapter Three

      He saw on her face that she didn’t know the name. That in spite of the dozens of investigators working in the five states where women had been murdered, Garrett’s hacker sources, with their willingness to use extralegal means, had uncovered a connection that law enforcement hadn’t found—if the feds even knew they were looking at a serial case. Rafe still wasn’t sure exactly how they’d pinpointed Powers, but his sources had come up with enough corroborating evidence to convince him that the unscrupulous attorney was their man.

      “How many do you think you’re looking at?” she asked, her eyes giving away nothing.

      “There have been five that we know of,” he said. “Five similar murders of last-trimester pregnant women.”

      “We’ve come up with eight,” she said. “Most of them in the Gulf Coastal states, though your sister’s death was the only one as far west as Texas. My partner calls them the Madonna Murders—though we’ve managed to keep that away from the press so far, to avoid mass hysteria.”

      “People have the right to know.” Anger speared through him. Lissa might not have had to die if the feds had been willing to alert the public. “They have the right to protect themselves and their loved ones.”

      “It’s a delicate balance,” Shannon admitted, “but that decision came from way above my pay grade.”

      “That’s no excuse,” he murmured.

      “We’ve learned that men driving stolen white vans marked with the names of fictitious plumbing companies were seen leaving at least three of the scenes. But Dominic Powers—that’s a new name to me. What can you tell me about him?”

      “Forty-six years old, Caucasian. Currently renting a thirteen-point-six-million-dollar villa right down the road in Palm Beach after twenty years in Houston.”

      Her lips parted as her brows rose. “Thirteen-point-six?”

      He nodded to confirm what he and Garrett had discovered from the tax rolls. “Married three times,” Rafe continued. “The most recent spouse filed for divorce and pressed charges for domestic battery. Wife number two vanished a few years prior. Powers claims she ran off with a boyfriend, while her family swears she’d never leave, much less stay away, without a word to them.”

      “How’d number one get off so easy?”

      Rafe shook his head, then shrugged. “We weren’t able to find any trace, so for all we know, she’s stuffed in a barrel somewhere offshore.”

      Shaking her head, Shannon blew out a long breath. “So how’d this charmer end up in the black-market baby business? I don’t suppose it was his compassion for childless families.”

      “His passion for the good life is more like it. He tended to pick wives with money and made sure a good chunk of it stayed with him, even when they didn’t.”

      “Tends to happen that way when the spouse takes off for parts unknown. Or conveniently drops dead.”

      Rafe nodded. “He seems to like the trappings. Flashy women, flashy lifestyle. Speedboats, sports cars, prestige ZIP codes—a hell of a lot more than he could afford on what he made as a family law attorney back in Texas. Maybe it turned out to be even more than he could fund with the occasional disappearing rich wife.”

      “Family law…” In spite of what she’d been through and how she must be feeling, Shannon’s gaze was focused, her expression razor-sharp. “So he would have dealt with adoption cases back in Houston, right?”

      “He had an office on the edge of River Oaks,” Rafe confirmed. “So I imagine he saw plenty of wealthy families desperate for a shortcut to claiming a healthy, white newborn they could call their own. And very, very grateful when he could make their dreams come true, no matter how he did it.”

      “Then at some point a lightbulb comes on…”

      Shannon’s handcuffs jingled as she snapped her fingers “…and Powers decides he’s looking at an unmet, extremely strong consumer demand. And who is he to deny the market?”

      “He’s a dead man, that’s who he is,” Rafe vowed as he thought of Lissa, the pounding of his own pulse a war drum in his ears. The need for vengeance roared past the grief that had ripped him open. His heart had gone missing, along with his capacity for mercy.

      “I thought you were only out to save your niece,” Shannon countered, but the words had no heat in them. And her slight smile said she understood, hinted that she wouldn’t argue with any outcome that left Powers and his men dead—or at least she wouldn’t protest too stringently. “Your niece and those other babies.”

      “If I have to choose between revenge and getting them out,” he said, “I won’t have to think about my decision for a second. But if I get my shot at Powers or those butchers he sent for my sister…”

      “A man could be forgiven for taking whatever measures necessary to free a captive family member, or even other innocents,” Shannon advised him, “but when it comes to a cold-blooded revenge killing, all bets are off, Captain. You know that as well as I do.”

      Rafe drew a deep breath to clear his head, then answered, “I’m not a man looking for forgiveness. I’ve come way too far to give a damn about that. All I care about is making this work. After that, the Army, the FBI, the cops—they can all pick at my bones or whatever else is left of me.”

      She had no answer except to look at him, her gaze as reproachful as it was somber. Could she—the same woman he’d shocked and abducted—be feeling some measure of compassion for him, along with the victims of

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