LITMIR.BIZ

      Chapter One

      “I know it’s late, Emma. But try to help Mommy just a little bit longer. Just one little belch. Please?” Of all the evenings to outgrow her night-owl schedule, Robin Carter’s infant daughter had decided that the one night her mother wanted to stay up late she would be a fussy pants.

      Hiding her frown of frustration, Robin shifted the precious weight in her arms to gaze down into drowsy eyes that were fighting hard not to sleep, despite a full tummy and the midnight hour. From the moment she’d first met her infant daughter, barely two months ago, those blue eyes had been irresistible. Robin glanced over at the clock on her office desk, then back to the baby’s agitated plea. They were still impossible to resist.

      “You’re right. We’ll figure out how to make the books balance in the morning. Right now we’d better get home to our comfy beds.” She put Emma back to her shoulder and patted her soft back until she heard the burp. Robin grinned, reassured and reenergized by the healthy sound. “Dainty and delicate and tough as a Marine, aren’t you?”

      Despite the difficult circumstances surrounding Emma’s birth, and the adoption that had changed both their lives, Emma did everything in a healthy, robust way. Burping. Eating. Crying. Growing silky brown hair. Claiming her new mother’s heart. The four-month-old was all Robin had wanted but feared she would never have.

      Relationships had failed.

      In vitro had failed.

      Robin was closer to forty than to thirty now. She’d put herself through college on scholarships and hard work, built her own floral design business, invested smartly, bought a house with an acreage just outside of Kansas City and landscaped and remodeled it to become her dream home. But her dream could never really be complete if she was all alone.

      With her biological clock ticking like mad and no man she wanted in her life, Robin had listened to the advice of her attorney and gotten on a waiting list to obtain the one thing she hadn’t been able to achieve on her own—a beautiful, healthy baby. Adopting Emma was a miracle that had altered Robin’s lonely, workaholic life in wonderful ways she was discovering each and every day as the two of them became a family.

      Normally, Emma adapted to wherever Robin took her—errands, shopping, visits with friends. She especially liked coming to work at the Robin’s Nest Floral Shop, napping in the bassinet in the corner of Robin’s quiet office or supervising customer satisfaction and employee workloads from the baby sling Robin often wore across her chest. Maybe Emma loved the shop because of the building’s cool, climate-controlled air, or the friendly employees who doted on her. Or maybe Emma simply loved being close to the reliable, down-to-earth practicality and unconditional love that Robin provided.

      But tonight was not normal. And Emma was not a happy camper.

      Neither was Robin.

      The baby’s restlessness could be attributed to something concrete, like the changing barometric pressure as the spring storm gathered strength outside. But it was more likely that Emma had picked up on Robin’s frustration with the numbers on her computer. Perhaps Emma was being fussy because Robin had been fussing over the business’s books ever since the shop had closed three hours earlier. Her accountant had had some questions about discrepancies between receipts and job estimates and stock manifests. Robin had been away from work far too much since Emma’s arrival, and maybe her employees had gotten lazy about keeping track of everything. But spending the night in her office wasn’t going to make the books balance for her. And although Emma normally stayed up past eleven most nights, she didn’t want her daughter thinking the shop and office were her new home, either.

      Robin lay Emma in the bassinet and leaned over to kiss her dimpled cheek, taking a moment to inhale the innocent fragrance that was all powder and baby wash and Emma herself. “Let Mommy make one more check around the place and then we’ll go home.”

      She pulled the cotton blanket over her round little body, hoping that second bottle of formula, a clean diaper and the muffled rhythm of the rain and thunder would soothe her to sleep. But when Emma’s face squinched up, promising another bout of crying, Robin hardened her heart against the urge to take the baby into her arms again. “Give me five minutes and we’ll be out of here.”

      Emma’s tiny fists batted the air. Robin touched one of the perfect little hands and guided the baby’s thumb into her mouth. Emma started sucking and quieted for a few moments, but Robin had pushed them both long enough for one day. The bookkeeping questions could wait for tomorrow. Her daughter came first.

      Turning away before sympathetic tears stung her own eyes, Robin quickly shut down her computer and stuffed the shipping manifests and customer orders into their respective files. Since she’d started carrying the diaper bag, her brief case and purse spent most of their time locked up in her car. She carried the necessities in her pockets or, like these files, tucked them into the flowered backpack that was Emma’s diaper bag. Pulling her keys from the pocket of her jeans, she hurried out into the hallway and closed the door quietly behind her.

      Although she’d always been cautious about her safety whenever she worked late at the shop, Robin had become doubly paranoid lately, and moved through the building to recheck the locks on the back loading bay doors, the windows in the stock and workrooms, the massive walk-in refrigerator where fresh flowers were stored, as well as the doors at the front of the Robin’s Nest Floral Shop. It wasn’t just that bone-deep need to make sure her child was safe, whether she brought Emma to work or stayed at home with her. A friend and employee of Robin’s had been abducted from this very neighborhood eight months earlier. Janie Harrison had been raped and murdered, and her abductor, believed to be the Rose Red Rapist, was still at large.

      Robin hated the nickname the press had given to the serial rapist. They’d latched on to the colorful appellation because his first victim had been abducted outside the Fairy Tale Bridal Shop across the street. Rose Red, like the fairy tale, instead of simply naming him after the flower he left with his victims after each brutal attack. At one point, KCPD had even suspected the creep had gotten the roses at her shop.

      So Robin didn’t stock red roses anymore. If a bride or some other client wanted the red flowers for a wedding or funeral, then she’d special order them. It made her sick to think she’d enabled the creep in even that small way.

      Confident that every lock was secure, Robin peeked through the front windows into the wet night outside. Thick sheets of rain puddled on the pavement and created a translucent curtain that dimmed the street lamps and the occasional headlights from vehicles that drove past. Normally, she loved the rain. It made her lawn green up, and the irises she’d planted last fall around her house and in the window boxes in front of her shop were blooming like crazy. The world outside her business near downtown Kansas City seemed gray and quiet tonight—perfect for sleeping or curling up with a good book or rocking a tired infant to sleep.

      But the women of Kansas City lived in fear on nights like this, wondering what danger might lurk in the shadows. Robin was no exception. The Rose Red Rapist reportedly came out of nowhere, striking his victim from behind and hauling the woman away in a white van to some unknown location where he

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