LITMIR.BIZ

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this case when he finds out how much I’m prepared to pay.”

      Again, Melissa shook her head. “He’s also filthy rich. It takes more zeroes than I earn in three months to pay the taxes on that property of his, let alone afford all the other little perks he enjoys. No, kiddo. To get him to take an interest in your case, you’re going to have to adopt a sneakier method and be very persuasive—if you get my drift!”

      Linda’s stared at her, affronted. “I hope you’re not implying I come on to him?”

      “I wouldn’t have put it quite like that, but since you did, then yes. In a way.”

      “Fat chance! The day has yet to dawn when—”

      “I’m suggesting you stroke his ego, not show up stark naked and offer to give him a full body massage, for heaven’s sake!”

      “No!” Linda was adamant. She’d fended off romantic overtures from infatuated master chefs and five-star restaurateurs with equal dispatch during her years of training abroad, and wasn’t about to compromise her standards now for some small-town ex-police officer with an overblown sense of his own importance. “Apart from the principle of the thing, I can’t afford the time for those kinds of games.”

      “You can’t afford not to! And if appealing to his vanity gets the results you’re after, what’s another couple of days?” Melissa’s tone softened. “Look, Linda, I know better than anyone that this isn’t how you usually operate. You’re the most straightforward person I’ve ever met—to a fault, sometimes. But there’s nothing usual about what’s happened to your family. It’s cruel and heartbreaking and scary beyond any normal person’s wildest imaginings, and if you want to put an end to the misery, the only thing you can afford to focus on is bringing your niece home safely and seeing that Kirk Thayer is brought to justice.”

      Linda chewed on that for a while, then sighed deeply. “Loath though I am to admit it, I’m afraid you might be right,” she said, not much liking it but realistic enough to recognize there was no getting away from the truth of Melissa’s analysis. “If flattery will bring Mac Sullivan on board, I’ll butter him up one side and down the other so thoroughly, he’ll glow. I’ll do whatever it takes, and worry about my methods when that baby is back in her mother’s arms where she belongs.”

      “And I wish you luck. Because, believe me, you’ll need lots of it.”

      Even in mid-August, after weeks of hot, dry weather, the ocean was cold. Enough that Mac wore a wet suit when he rode the Windsurfer, though not enough to keep him from his early-morning swim. He needed that bracing dash into the icy waves to clear the cobwebs from his brain and prepare him for the day’s work. One thousand words minimum before four in the afternoon, fifteen hundred if he was lucky—and that didn’t count the research, or the pages of notes he compiled before he tackled the latest chapter.

      The surf was wilder than usual that day, requiring he keep his attention on what he was doing, which probably explained why he wasn’t aware someone had invaded his section of beach until he practically stepped on her as he waded ashore.

      Still half-blinded by the glare of sun on water, Mac detected the visitor was a woman only by her voice. Clear, bossy, cultured, it accosted him as he hoisted the Windsurfer under one arm and prepared to climb the steps to the house. “Watch what you’re doing with that thing! You just about took my head off!”

      “A danger you could have avoided if you’d paid attention to your whereabouts,” he informed her murky silhouette. “You’re on private property, lady.”

      “How am I supposed to know that?”

      He jerked his head to indicate the signs nailed to the twisted trunks of the scrub pines edging the low-rising dune. “You could try reading—assuming you know how.”

      His vision clearer by then, he watched with grim amusement as she reared back in outrage. “I’d heard you were a bit short on social graces,” she huffed, “but I’d no idea you were such a Neanderthal.”

      “Well, now that you’ve been enlightened, why don’t you go back to wherever you came from and leave me to grunt in peace?”

      “Because,” she said, and faltered into silence.

      She had wide-spaced blue-green eyes almost the color of the sea close-in to shore. Blond hair framing a heart-shaped face in a halo of short curls. Full, stubborn mouth, dimpled chin. Slight build, shapely legs, about five-four in her bare feet, and weighing around a hundred and ten pounds. Fingers braided so tightly together it was a wonder they didn’t dislocate. Twenty-sixish, possibly a bit younger. A very uptight woman.

      He noticed all that not because he gave a damn but because he’d been trained to observe. Eleven years on the police force stayed with a man, even after he turned in his badge.

      “‘Because’ isn’t a reason,” he said.

      She looked down at her knotted fingers. “I’m sorry if I’m trespassing. I really didn’t notice the signs.”

      “I don’t see how you could miss them. They’re in plain enough sight.”

      She took that under consideration for a minute, then drummed up an obsequious smile and said, “But so were you. And I was captivated watching you on the Windsurfer. You’re amazing.”

      “So I’ve been told—by women a lot more subtle than you.”

      She blushed, the color running up under her honey-gold skin and leaving her looking like a kid caught dipping into the cookie jar behind her mother’s back. “I’m not trying to flirt with you.”

      “Sure you are,” he said. “You’re just not doing it very well. So why don’t you spit out whatever it is you’re really after, and get it over with?”

      “I need your help. My sister’s baby has been stolen by the father, and she’s beside herself.”

      Mac repressed a sigh and turned to stare out at the rolling ocean, preferring its eternal tumult to the unending stream of human misery which hounded him no matter how much he tried to distance himself from it. “He’s probably just taken off for the day. He’ll come home again as soon as he realizes it’s time for a diaper change.”

      “No,” she said. “You don’t understand. He’s not my sister’s husband. They don’t live together. He stole the baby right out of the hospital nearly two months ago when she was only one day old, and no one’s heard from him since.”

      Oh, jeez! “Then you should have called in the police long before now.”

      “We did.” The bossy tone had disintegrated into something too close to despair for his peace of mind. “But it’s been seven weeks, Mr. Sullivan, and they haven’t made much progress.”

      “What makes you think I can do any better?”

      “Your reputation speaks for itself.”

      Again he turned away, unable to confront the unwarranted hope in that wide-eyed gaze. Not many things touched him anymore, but a child gone missing, a newborn ripped from its mother’s arms, and by the estranged father no less, touched a sore spot which no amount of time seemed able to heal. Any guy who would pull a stunt like that should be strung up!

      “You haven’t done your homework,” he told her, not a hint of emotion in his voice. “If you had, you’d know I retired from active duty three years ago. But there are any number of private investigators who’ll take your case and I’ll be happy to refer you.”

      “I don’t want them, I want you.”

      “You’re wasting your time. I can’t help you.”

      “Can’t—or won’t?”

      Mac spun around, the ghost of a lost child’s cry echoing through his mind. “Look, Ms…..”

      “Carr,” she supplied. “Linda Carr. And my niece’s name

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