Her Lost and Found Baby Page 3

  Which could be why the police weren’t finding them. Not only were there fewer resources being allocated on a case gone cold, but Mark wasn’t a man who raised any alarms, or drew attention. Johnny parked at the daycare but left the engine running. Tabitha’s son’s father had been a nuclear medicine technician at the children’s hospital where she worked. He’d been wonderful with the kids, she’d told him months ago. The guy had quit shortly after Tabitha had broken up with him. His ailing mother had needed full-time care.

  He’d still lived with her, apparently, although Tabitha hadn’t actually known that until after their breakup.

  Those golden eyes with the flecks of green turned on him and Johnny had to draw a long breath. “What’s Mark going to do when Jackson challenges their mutual dependency? When Jackson wants independence?” she asked, meeting his gaze head-on. “Taking Jackson makes Mark a criminal, but it doesn’t make him violent,” he said, drawing on case studies from law school. “A man who made his living helping sick children... I assume he’d have to have a decent bedside manner to keep his job.”

  She nodded and he continued. “And a guy who nursed his mother so she could die with dignity as she wanted to, at home...”

  Tabitha had given him those details months ago. Thankfully he’d remembered enough to be able to repeat them back to her now, when she needed to hear them.

  She nodded again. “You’re right. He’s gentle and nurturing...” She grabbed the handle of her door.

  She was ready to go in. His job was done. For another few minutes, at least.

  * * *

  The Bouncing Ball could have been any number of other daycares she and Johnny had toured over the past six months in various southern California cities. Still wearing the jeans and matching purple polo shirts they’d worn all day on the truck, they’d seen the two rooms designated for two-year-olds. They also saw a larger three-year-olds’ room, for next year when “Chrissy” was ready to move up. They’d toured the walled-in outdoor playground, accessible only from inside the daycare and outfitted with top-rated equipment, including swings and slides geared for younger children. The lunchroom, was furnished with plastic tables and chairs suited to toddlers.

  They’d seen a multipurpose room, complete with a small stage, and heard the sound equipment in use. They’d even been invited to take turns at the musical instruments in a soundproof room intended for early music lessons. While the orchestral instruments were only used by instructors, there was a keyboard, a drum set and a plastic guitar with real strings made for little fingers. And there were various other noisemakers, from maracas to bells and tambourines, that the kids could use with supervision.

  From room to room, as she saw the high-quality accommodations, Tabitha couldn’t help gushing about how much “Chrissy” would love it there, how happy she, herself, would be as a parent to know that her child was spending her time away from home in such a safe and nurturing place.

  Inside she was shaking—with relief, gratitude and fear—as she looked at the surroundings she was certain had housed her baby boy for the past year. Picturing Jackson there, believing that he’d been in this wonderful place, believing that Mark had at least found the best care for their son, brought the relief. The gratitude. Seeing what she supposed her son must have seen for the past year kept her tears close to the surface.

  And the thought of being there, possibly tipping Mark off that he was soon to be caught, struck fear in her.

  Twice she’d been on the verge of exposing too much of the emotion raging insider her, and both times she’d felt Johnny’s hand on the small of her back. Both times he happened to ask Mallory Harris a question pertinent to their tour. Both times she was grateful he was there.

  And grateful that they’d be going back to their hotel together that night, to share a glass of wine in the living area of the suite Johnny always insisted on getting for them, before parting to go to their separate rooms. As with all the other tours, he’d sit with her, discuss what they’d seen and heard. He’d ask if she’d felt anything, if her mother’s instinct had alerted her to anything. And he’d be supportive. Helping her maintain hope. He was giving her wonderful memories in the midst of the absolute worst time of her life.

  No matter how much she’d been craning to look for any sign of Jackson, she saw nothing that night.

  Nor had Mallory said anything to indicate that something could be amiss. They had questions they asked on every tour. Carefully worded questions about steps daycare personnel take if they ever see or suspect foul play. How they handle bullying. And how they help children without siblings join in group play. Things that could indicate if they’d had any recent suspicions or experience with foul play, or a toddler with no siblings.

  “And over here—” they were finishing the tour with a miniature gymnasium, really only the size of a big bedroom, but complete with gym floor and miniature basketball hoops “—are our trophies,” Mallory said, taking them to a plexiglass-enclosed case that resembled something you might see outside a high school auditorium. Johnny moved forward; she knew he was something of a sports buff who’d played varsity baseball and basketball in high school.

  Tabitha came up behind him to peer over his shoulder. Simply to be polite, not because she had an extra brain cell to allot to sports awards. She glanced at them, her mind on how to finagle a way to see Jackson. For the first time ever, she’d felt something when they’d walked in. Maybe if they enrolled “Chrissy” they could get a roster of the parents of the other two-year-olds for carpooling or fund-raising activities. Not that a roster would give her Jackson, since Mark had obviously changed their names or the police would already have found them. But she could see if there were any two-year-old boys who had only a father listed.

  A little face had been staring back at her from a photo on one side of the case as her mind wandered...and then Tabitha was grabbing Johnny’s shoulders, leaning against his back, thinking she might actually be going down.

  He turned, his arm sliding around her, and although she was still leaning heavily on him, the dizziness passed as quickly as it had come.

  “That photo of the kids who were on the winning team in the Easter egg hunt...”

  “As I said, we find ways to get everyone into the showcase,” Mallory said. “We have to be a bit creative with the littles, but at The Bouncing Ball, every single one of our children is a winner.”

  Mallory’s voice faded in and out. Tabitha didn’t turn around, didn’t look at the photo again. Didn’t need to. She had a cropped copy of it in the purse she’d left in the car. It was the photo the mother had posted on the internet of her little girl at school this Easter.

  “...not everyone wins all the time,” Mallory Harris was saying. “And there are some who think that teaching kids that everyone’s a winner is not preparing them for real life. But I believe that every single person on earth has the potential to win at something, whether it’s at being a parent or being good in a sport, at a job, good at cooking or growing flowers. Or good at smiling and making others feel happy. We all have something special to offer the world, and I like to think that after spending their first four years with us, our kids are better prepared to look for whatever that something special is—in themselves and others.”

  Tabitha was nodding vigorously. She could feel tears pressing at the backs of her eyes. Jackson’s team had won an Easter egg hunt. The picture on the internet had just shown the top halves of the children’s bodies, not the entire scene out in the daycare yard.

  “That little boy in the front of the photo... He’s holding the basket...”

  “Jason, yes. He was the team captain and got to carry the basket,” Mallory was saying. She didn’t give a last name. Didn’t reveal any information. But...

  Jason. Close to the Jackson the one-year-old had known as his name. Jason. Now they had a name to offer the police in Mission Viejo, who would get in touch
with the San Diego department. She’d learned how it would work if she ever got any information regarding her son’s case. Not that she’d told anyone besides Johnny and the investigator he’d hired what she was doing.

  The FBI had been called in when Jackson first went missing; they had a special team that had been particularly helpful during the critical first hours—but local police had also stayed involved.

  Jackson was still on file as a missing person, but law enforcement had seen many other cases come and go since his disappearance. There was only so much they could do without more to go on. There’d been virtually no new leads.

  Until she’d found one.

  Jason.

  “His parents must’ve been really proud of him,” she said, still leaning on Johnny although most of her strength had returned, for the moment, anyway, as she addressed the other woman.

  “His dad was,” Mallory said casually as she led them back to the daycare’s entry. “Jason’s mom passed away, died of liver disease a year after his birth.”

  Jason’s dad had been a single father for the past year. Jackson had been stolen away from her by his father a year ago. Jason’s mother had supposedly died a year after his birth. Jackson had been stolen from her a year after his birth.

  Johnny held her up. They were at the door and she couldn’t make her feet move to get her out of there. Jason’s supposed mother had died of liver disease the year before. Mark’s mother had died of liver disease a year ago. It was something he’d be able to talk about in detail, having nursed her to the end of her life. That would have given credibility to his lies.

  Jason was Jackson. She’d known. She’d hoped she was right. She’d thought she was.

  Now she knew she’d known.

  After twelve long, excruciating months, she’d found her son.

  Chapter Three

  Johnny understood life, particularly his role in it. He worked hard enough to be the best at whatever he did. He took satisfaction from that. He did what was expected of him, expected by himself and others. He went with the flow.

  Strong urges, other than the normal sexual ones a guy got, didn’t play a significant role in his life. He wasn’t driven. Had no great passion. He was a mind guy all the way.

  Which was why that Monday night in July, the evening of his daycare visit with Tabitha, would remain with him forever. He didn’t understand why he couldn’t walk away from her—the steps it would take to get him to his room in their suite. His mind told him to leave. Something unfamiliar held him rooted to the spot.

  “Go have your shower,” he told her. “I’ll order some dinner and open a bottle of wine.” They’d picked up a couple of bottles down by the beach the evening before from a shop selling local wines. They’d bought a limited-production white that had won an award at San Diego’s Toast of the Coast Wine Competition.

  They’d talked about having a glass. He’d been thinking about it on and off all day. A glass of wine with Tabitha. But she’d been quiet on the ride back from the daycare. The kind of quiet that meant she needed some time alone. Some space.

  Usually they talked after a visit, but when she got quiet like that, he was supposed to leave her alone in her world, knowing she’d be back when she was ready.

  He was supposed to go to his room.

  That was their way, and it had been established from the very beginning—by deed more than conversation—and neither of them had ever deviated from it.

  So what the hell was he doing? More crucially, why?

  It wasn’t the first time she’d thought she found her son. He was quite certain it wouldn’t be the last. He only wished he was as certain that she would find the child someday. And that this boy, Jason, was her Jackson...

  He’d rinsed off quickly, dressed in a newish pair of tan shorts and a black polo shirt, and was pouring the wine by the time Tabitha’s bedroom door opened. He hadn’t been sure she’d come back out.

  She’d put on the tie-dyed, spaghetti-strap, calf-length sun dress she wore at home a lot on her days off. It had reds and browns in it, offset by gold. The casual red Italian sandals she wore with it struck him as odd, since they weren’t going anywhere. He was barefoot. Just as he always was around the house these days.

  He kept looking at the curves of her calves, finding them erotically attractive—calves. Tabitha’s calves.

  One look at her face, though, and erotic thoughts fled. This was Tabitha. And the unfamiliar light in her eyes, as though she was bursting with secrets and ready to fly off her rocker in some kind of desperation, or so his imagination told him, called to him in an entirely different way.

  He handed her a glass of wine. Held his up and waited for her to tip hers to it, as they always did.

  “To our goals,” he said. She clinked her glass against his, but didn’t repeat the toast. She sipped instead. Then she curled up on the sofa, her feet tucked into that cute butt.

  He sat on the other end of the couch, glass in hand.

  “It’s him, Johnny.”

  She sounded...different then she had before. The whole desperation thing?

  Again, what did he do with that!? His job was to encourage her, to keep her spirits up so they didn’t pull her permanently under. To let her know she wasn’t alone.

  And to be Chrissy’s dad sometimes.

  Hers was to help him make a success of Angel’s food truck.

  He had another three months of sabbatical. There was no reason for her to panic, yet. To think her time was running out.

  “A lot can happen in three months,” he said.

  Her nod was a relief. Until she said, “We need a plan, though. Time’s not the issue. Neither is the truck, since we’re doing better than either of us imagined and sold more here in one day than we have anywhere else. We can come down every week on my days off. It’ll save having to get permits in other counties, finding new spots... You’ll be able to build a real following.”

  The food truck was his last concern at the moment. But he liked the practical way her mind was working, so he nodded. “Fine with me.”

  Her smile warmed him as he took his next sip, and he told himself it was really the wine that had affected him. But he wasn’t exactly buying the explanation. Two days in a row now, he’d been getting the hots for Tabitha.

  Stranger things had happened than a perfectly healthy guy being attracted to an absolutely gorgeous woman. Except that he’d been traveling with her, living next door to her, sharing dinners and suites with her, for months without thinking about taking her to bed.

  “We need a plan,” she said again, her expression needy, confident and expectant all at the same time.

  A plan for sleeping together and remaining friends until their exit date? He’d set aside a year of his life to honor Angel. He couldn’t sleep with another woman.

  Trashing his first “plan” thought, he took a moment to come up with another.

  Tabitha had been different ever since she’d seen that online picture of the boy at The Bouncing Ball the previous week. She’d run over to his house, coming in without knocking—which they did when they were expecting each other. But this time there’d been no warning. He could’ve been standing in the kitchen naked instead of in his pajama bottoms...

  He might have said something, too, if he hadn’t noticed the tears in her eyes, the trembling of her hands as she held out the picture she’d just printed.

  Yeah, she’d been different ever since.

  And so had he.

  This whole thing of his...it was her fault. Her barging in on him in his pajamas.

  “What kind of plan?” he finally asked when nothing useful was forthcoming.

  “Detective Bentley won’t be able to compel a DNA test based on what we’ve got. We need to find a way to get more. Alistair can follow up on the name Jason, but without a last name...”

 
Alistair Montgomery was the PI Johnny had hired. The guy was willing to do whatever Johnny asked as long as he got paid for it. But following up on a common first name? In San Diego?

  Not liking where this was going, he felt everything slow down as he watched her. “What exactly have we got?”

  “Jason—Jackson. Single dad. A year. Liver disease. A picture that matches the age-progression photo.”

  She listed everything as though going over facts that were a given, as though hoping they’d see what might be missing. He wondered how long it would be before she figured out he was missing from this collection of hers. Or rather, his buy-in... The picture might closely resemble the age-progression, but he wouldn’t call it a match.

  “Liver disease?”

  “Mark’s mother died of it,” she said, and he remembered her having told him that. After he’d first met her and she’d been telling him her story. That last visit, Mark’s mother had just died, but she hadn’t known that when she dropped Jackson off at the home Mark shared with his mother. They passed off in the driveway...

  He nodded. “That’s right...” He drew the word out, as if he was getting it now, while frantically trying to figure out how to support her, be a friend, encourage her, without lying.

  “So, any ideas?”

  He wanted to empty his glass in one long gulp. He held on to it, instead, saying nothing.

  “Come on, Johnny, you’re always the one with the plans. What can we do, legally? What rights do I have?”

  She was serious. Stone-cold, go-to-your-grave serious.

  Brain in full gear, he ran the facts through his mind. A little boy, Jason. A missing one, the same age, with a similar name, Jackson. One appearing in San Diego about the time the other disappeared from Mission Viejo. Single dads. A mother and a wife dying from the same disease at the same time.

  It was enough to give false hope to a desperate woman—he could see that. But it was circumstantial at best. And not even enough of that to compel law enforcement to do anything.