His Case, Her Baby

“Did she mention wanting children of her own, maybe not being able to have them?” Sheriff Grayson asked.

“No, nothing like that. I just know she was always very sweet to Lilly. Surely the pizza place will have her address on file.”

“What I need you to do is think of all the conversations you had with her, any tidbit of information that might be helpful as to where she might go and who she might be with,” he replied.

For a moment Peyton was overwhelmed. “Sheriff Grayson, we talked almost every day, about everything and nothing.” She frowned and tried to ignore the headache that pounded in the back of her head, the continuous frantic race of her heart.

“Call me Tom,” he said. “There are four of us Graysons working law enforcement in Black Rock. First names make things easier.”

“Caleb and Benjamin are your brothers?” she asked.

He nodded. “My sister is also a deputy, then I have one other brother who doesn’t work for the town of Black Rock.” He frowned. “Did Kathy mention dating somebody here in town? Perhaps somebody she was interested in?”

“No, in fact just the opposite. I got the impression she was a bit shy and was having trouble meeting people.” She released a sigh of frustration. “God, what did I miss? What didn’t I see or hear in all those conversations, in all the time we spent together?”

“You can’t beat yourself up about that. How could you guess that something like this would happen?” He pulled into a parking space in front of the Canyon Pizzeria and cut the engine, then he turned and looked at her with his dark, intense eyes. “You let me ask the questions. I need to do my job.”

She nodded and unbuckled her seatbelt, butterflies like little kamikaze pilots hitting the sides of her stomach. Please, let us get some answers, she thought as she got out of the car.

It was nearing dinnertime and the air outside the restaurant smelled of tangy tomato sauce and baking crust. The food smells only upset Peyton’s stomach even more. The last thing she was interested in was food.

All she wanted was her sweet Lilly back in her arms. She needed to smell her baby scent, feel Lilly’s wiggly warmth against her chest.

She followed Sheriff Grayson through the front door. Inside, about a dozen people were seated at various tables and booths. Most of them raised a hand in greeting to the sheriff.

He went to the woman standing behind the cash register. “Hey, Linda, is Don in?” he asked.

“He’s in the back. You here to arrest him for spicy sauce?” The blonde gave him a saucy, flirtatious smile.

“I need to talk to him. Can you get him out here?”

Her smile faded as she apparently heard the seriousness in his voice. “Sure, I’ll go get him.”

She disappeared into the kitchen and a moment later a big burly man clad in a tomato-splattered apron walked out.

“Hey, Tom. What’s up?”

“You have a Kathy Simon working here for you?” Tom asked.

Peyton watched in horror as Don shook his head. “I’ve got a Stacy, a Katie and a Linda, but no Kathy,” he replied.

“Are you sure? Maybe she was going by another name,” Peyton said desperately. “She’s tall with red hair?”

“Sorry, nobody like that works for me,” Don replied.

Peyton staggered back outside where dusk was beginning to fall, vaguely aware of the sheriff right behind her. Nothing Kathy had told her had been true. She’d lied about where she worked, where she lived. Why?

She got back into the passenger seat and Tom slid in behind the wheel. “You okay?” he asked as he started the engine.

“Of course I’m not okay.” She reached for anger, knowing that if she didn’t hang on to something she’d lose it altogether. “Nothing she told me was the truth. Why would she lie to me about the most basic things? God, she was good. She had so many details. She told me about a man who had tipped her twenty dollars, about a little girl who wanted pizza crust and cheese but no sauce. She was so good with her lies.”

A sickness welled up inside her as she realized night was falling too quickly and she was no closer to finding Lilly than she’d been when she’d regained consciousness on her bathroom floor.

“Any other ideas?” Tom asked as he backed out of the parking space in front of the pizza place. “Or are you ready to go back to your place?”

“No, we can’t go back,” she exclaimed. She didn’t want to be there without her baby. “Just drive around. Maybe we’ll see something.”

For the next thirty minutes he drove up and down the streets of the small town. Peyton kept her gaze on the sidewalks, on the houses they passed, hoping for a glimpse of the woman she knew as Kathy Simon.

He received only one phone call during the drive. When he hung up he told her that there was no driver’s license matching what they knew about Kathy Simon.

“So that’s probably not her real name,” Peyton said flatly. She was numb; in a place where her fear was so great she couldn’t process it any longer.

“Probably not,” he agreed.

“How are we going to find her if we don’t even know her name?” Peyton wanted to scream.

“We’ll figure it all out,” he replied. “Have you had any problems with anyone here in town?”

“No, nobody. Oh, there was a young man who cussed me in the parking lot of the grocery store. I was getting Lilly into her car seat and my shopping cart accidentally rolled into his truck.”

“Did you exchange information?”

“No, nothing like that. It didn’t scratch or dent the truck. He cursed me, then got in his truck and roared off.”

“When did this happen?”

“About a week ago. Surely you don’t think that has anything to do with Lilly’s kidnapping,” she said.

“I’m not taking anything for granted at this point,” he replied. “What did this guy look like? What kind of a truck was he driving?”

“It was a black pickup, but I don’t know the year or model. He was tall with brown hair.” She sighed in frustration. “That doesn’t help much, does it?”

“Sounds like half the men around this area,” he replied.

As he once again drove down Main Street, Peyton knew this probably wasn’t standard operating procedure, that he was just indulging her need to be out looking. She also knew that there was no way she would see Kathy casually walking down the street with Lilly in her arms. She knew in her heart that Kathy had probably run out of town mere minutes after grabbing Lilly.

“I noticed you had a new patio in your backyard.”

Peyton shifted her gaze from the window to him. “It was poured yesterday. What does that have to do with anything?”

“Just curious.”

She stared at him, her heart beating an unsteady rhythm. She had a feeling this man didn’t indulge in idle curiosity. There was a sharp intelligence in his sexy dark eyes that made her believe he was a man who didn’t miss much.

As the realization of what he might be thinking struck her, she gasped. “You can’t really believe that I had the patio poured to hide my baby’s body?”

“It doesn’t matter what I believe. I have to think of all possible scenarios,” he said without apology.

“Pull over,” she exclaimed. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

He whirled the car to the curb and she unbuckled her seat belt, opened the door and stumbled outside. She bent over, feeling the need to throw up. He thought she’d killed her baby. He thought she’d killed her Lilly and buried her beneath the patio.

She dry heaved, her stomach rolling as tears blurred her vision. She was vaguely aware of a big, broad hand on her back, and she shook it off, the need to be sick swallowed by a rage she’d never felt before.

Her rage wasn’t directed at Sheriff Tom Grayson, who was just doing his job, but rather at the woman who had pretended to be her friend and support over the past two months. The woman who had hit her in the head and stolen her baby.

She finally straightened up and stared at the sheriff. “If and when we find her, if she’s hurt Lilly in any way, I’ll kill her.” She didn’t wait for his reply but instead turned and walked back to the car and got into the passenger seat.

It was at that moment, with the fire of rage burning in her eyes, that Tom believed her. He hadn’t been one hundred percent sure what to believe up until that point. There had been far too many cases of murdered children when the mothers concocted a story to cover the fact that they’d either accidentally or purposely hurt or killed their child.

He liked to believe he was good at assessing people, at recognizing liars and criminals. He didn’t believe Peyton was either, and that meant they had a missing baby on their hands.

When they pulled up to her house, a luxury sports car was parked in the driveway. “That’s Rick’s car,” she said, emotion thick in her voice.

As she and Tom got out of his car, the front door of the house opened and a tall, well-dressed blond man stepped out.

Peyton ran toward him, and Tom would have expected Rick to open up his arms, to hug the woman who was the mother of his missing child. But she stopped just short of him and Rick shoved his hands in his expensive slacks pockets. “What exactly happened?” he asked.

Peyton began to cry as she explained to him what had occurred. When she was finished, Rick looked at Tom. “Sheriff, Rick Powell.” He held out his hand to Tom. “What’s being done to find my daughter?”

Tom gave his hand a perfunctory shake, then motioned toward the front door. “Why don’t we all go inside and talk.”

As he followed them inside he found himself wishing that Rick had hugged her. If anyone needed the security of strong arms around her, it was Peyton. The thought hit him from left field and he pushed it aside.

“We have an AMBER Alert in place, and several of my deputies are out knocking on doors and seeing if anyone knows this woman who called herself Kathy Simon,” Tom explained once they were all seated at the table. “It would be helpful if we could get a picture or a drawing of this woman to send out across the state.”

“Do you have a picture of her?” Rick asked Peyton.

“No, I never took her picture,” Peyton said miserably.

“My brother Benjamin is a pretty good artist. Why don’t I get him in here to work up a sketch, and Rick and I can go into the living room and talk,” Tom said.

Peyton nodded as he and Rick stood. Within minutes, Benjamin was seated with her at the table, and Rick and Tom went into the living room, where Rick sat on the sofa and looked at Tom expectantly.

“Peyton told me you’re an assistant D.A. in Wichita,” Tom said.

“That’s right.” He leaned forward and ran a hand through his short hair. “I can’t believe this has happened. Peyton’s a terrific mother. She would never intentionally put Lilly at risk.”

“You have no idea who this woman might be? You never met her? “

“No, but I have to confess that since Peyton moved here I’ve only been to visit a couple of times,” Rick replied. “With my work schedule it’s been difficult getting back and forth. In fact, I’m in the middle of a big trial now. I got the judge to call a continuance until day after tomorrow, but I’ve got to be back in Wichita first thing Thursday morning. Hopefully we’ll have Lilly back long before then.”

“Why did Peyton decide to move here?” Tom asked.

Rick leaned back in the chair and unfastened the buttons of his suit coat. “When our relationship fizzled out, she decided she wanted a new start someplace else. She started shooting out résumés, and when Black Rock Elementary School made an offer, she jumped at the opportunity.”

“Your breakup was amicable?”

Rick released a small sigh of impatience. “Look, Sheriff, I know how these things go. I understand that you have to look at all angles, but let me save you a little time. Peyton and I dated for six months. We had a good time together but eventually realized we wanted different things from life. The split was amicable. In fact, it was the night we decided to call it quits that Lilly was conceived. Even though we weren’t going to be together as a couple, we were both excited to be parents. We’ve had no problems, no issues since Lilly’s birth. Peyton is one of the greatest women I’ve ever known. She would never do anything to hurt Lilly, and neither would I.”

Tom fought back a sigh of frustration. He knew Rick was trying to be helpful, but there was nothing worse than investigating somebody who knew the system from the inside out. “You know I have to go through all this,” Tom said.

Rick nodded. “I was just trying to cut to the chase by letting you know that there’s nothing to investigate except the woman who stole my daughter. There’s no point in wasting time speculating about Peyton or myself.”

“I appreciate your help, but you know I’m going to do this investigation my way,” Tom said. He kept his voice friendly but firm.

“Understood,” Rick replied. “I just want my little girl back.” For the first time since he’d arrived, emotion cracked his voice.

“Is it possible this has something to do with a case you’re working on? An enemy you’ve made through your work?” Tom asked.

Rick frowned thoughtfully. “I don’t think so. Very few people knew about Peyton and the baby. I wanted it that way for their own protection.”

At that moment, Benjamin and Peyton came into the room. “We have a sketch,” Benjamin said. He handed the paper to Tom, who looked at it closely.

Benjamin was a talented sketch artist, a talent he’d kept hidden for many years. The sketch showed a woman with a slender face and long hair. Her eyes were slightly deep set and her chin square.

Tom looked up at Peyton. “This looks like Kathy Simon?”

“It could be a photograph of her.” For the first time her eyes shone with a hint of hope. Tom was struck again by her prettiness.

He handed the sketch to Rick. “Have you seen this woman?”

Rick studied the sketch with a frown, then shook his head. “No, I’ve never seen her before.”

Tom looked back at Peyton. “You have a recent picture of Lilly?”

“I do. I just had her pictures taken at that little studio on Main Street a couple of weeks ago.” She went to the desk in the corner of the room and opened a drawer. She withdrew a large envelope and from it pulled a 5×7 photograph.

She gazed at the picture for a long moment, her eyes filling with tears, then she handed it to Tom. Lilly was a doll, one of those exceptionally pretty babies with bright blue eyes and a tuft of curly blond hair.

Tom turned to his brother Caleb, who had returned to the house moments earlier after interviewing more of the people who lived in and around the apartment complex. “Take these to the office and get them over the wires,” he said as he handed the photo and sketch to him. “Make up flyers and get them distributed around town.”

When Caleb went out the front door, Tom turned back to Peyton. “Somebody will see them. Somebody will know where she is,” he said in encouragement.

“I hope so,” Peyton exclaimed.

The next couple of hours passed in agonizing slowness. Peyton sat on the sofa looking as if a loud noise might shatter her. Rick sat next to her, but at no time did the two touch in any way.

Tom found their relationship rather intriguing. Was their lack of physical touch an indication that their relationship hadn’t had the mutual easy ending that both of them had implied? And what, if anything, might that have to do with the case?

Throughout the evening, Tom coordinated efforts to find the baby, speaking to his deputies by cell phone to keep updated. As night fell, Tom didn’t expect anything to happen. People were in their homes, getting ready for bed, and wouldn’t see the flyers until morning.

Rick must have recognized the same thing. At ten-thirty he stood. “I checked into the hotel downtown when I arrived. I think I’ll head over there for the rest of the night. I’m in room 112. Somebody will let me know if anything happens?”

“Of course,” Tom replied, vaguely surprised by his decision to leave.

Rick reached down and grabbed Peyton’s hand. “Stay strong,” he said. “I’m sure we’ll have her back tomorrow.” He dropped her hand and with a nod to Tom left the house.

Almost immediately, Peyton got up from the sofa and went to the front window. She stared out with her back to Tom, and he was struck by how alone, how achingly fragile, she looked.

“Do you have children, Tom?” She didn’t turn to face him but remained staring out the window into the darkness of the night.

“No wife, no kids,” he replied. He stepped closer to her, close enough that he could smell the pleasant scent of her perfume.

“So you can’t know what this feels like.” She turned to face him and raw pain radiated from her eyes.

“No, I can’t know exactly what it feels like,” he said softly.

“I feel like Kathy reached inside my chest and ripped my heart out.” Tears slid down her cheeks. “Nothing matters except Lilly. I need her back, Tom. I need her back in my arms.” A deep sob exploded out of her and she nearly crumpled to the floor.

Before she could, Tom reached out for her and pulled her tight against his chest. She sagged against him and buried her face in the front of his shirt while she cried.

He wrapped his arms around her and held tight, knowing it was the only comfort he could offer her at the moment. As he held her he went over it all in his mind, satisfying himself that everything that could be done was being done.

Now it became a waiting game. Hopefully somebody knew this woman who had called herself Kathy Simon, somebody who would call with information that would lead them to her and the baby.

But the last time Tom had held a weeping woman in his arms, everything had ended badly. Tragedy had pulled her away from him, and he’d nearly been destroyed.

He hoped at the end of all this that Peyton would have her baby safely back in her arms. He hadn’t been strong enough to help one woman deal with grief, and he prayed he wouldn’t have to help Peyton.

Chapter 3

Peyton didn’t realize how much she’d needed to be held until Tom’s strong arms surrounded her. The fact that it was a relative stranger’s arms that brought her some comfort wasn’t lost on her. But his arms were solid and warm and the clean, slightly spicy scent of him was comforting, making her reluctant to leave his embrace.

She finally raised her face to look up at him. “Thank you. I needed somebody to hold me for just a minute or two.” Reluctantly she dropped her hands from around his neck and stepped back from him. “As you probably noticed, Rick isn’t very good in the hug department.”

“Yeah, I noticed that. Why don’t you make some coffee for us?” he asked as he took her by the elbow and led her back into the kitchen. “You should probably try to eat something, too,” he said as he leaned against the counter.

She shook her head. “I can’t even think about food right now, but if you’re hungry I have some sandwich stuff.”

“Sure, I’d take a sandwich,” he replied.

As the coffee began to fill the air with its fragrance and Peyton got out the lunch meat and cheese to build a sandwich, she realized he was keeping her busy, trying to keep her mind off the reason he was here, the reason Lilly wasn’t in her bouncy chair on the table.

When she finished making the sandwich she set it on the table in front of Tom. She poured them each a cup of coffee and joined him there.

She still wanted to weep and wail, to walk the streets and rip open each and every door she came to in order to find Lilly, but she knew in all likelihood that Kathy was long gone. She also knew Tom had set in place the means that would hopefully find her baby.

“It’s going to be a long night,” she said aloud as her gaze drifted toward the window where the darkness was profound. “I can’t believe she’s out there somewhere and not here with me.”

“Tell me about your relationship with Rick,” he said.

She looked back at him and knew he was once again trying to take her mind off Lilly—as if that were possible. Still, she wanted conversation. She wanted to talk about everything and anything so that she wouldn’t hear the screaming voice inside her head that said her baby was gone.

She wrapped her cold fingers around the warmth of her coffee cup and frowned. “There isn’t a whole lot to tell. I met Rick in a coffee shop where I was working near the courthouse in Wichita. He was handsome and charming, and when he asked me out I was thrilled. We got close really fast, but it didn’t take me long to realize I would never be first in Rick’s life. I’d always be a distant third behind his work and his colleagues. For a while I was okay with that. But toward the end I realized that for once in my life I wanted to be the first priority in somebody’s life, and it wasn’t going to happen with Rick.”

She paused and took a sip of her coffee. “Anyway, we both agreed that we weren’t right for each other and had one last fling that resulted in Lilly.”

“A surprise?”

“Definitely,” she replied. “But, the minute I saw the test result and knew that I was pregnant, I also knew I wanted the baby more than I’d ever wanted anything in my life.”

“And what about Rick? How did he feel about it?”

She frowned thoughtfully. “Initially I think he was a little bit upset. Any man would be. Neither of us had planned to become parents so soon, but he quickly came around. He was one hundred percent supportive through the pregnancy and was right there with me when Lilly was born.”

“What about support and visitation rights? Did you work those out legally?” His chocolate-brown eyes seemed to see everything that was inside her soul.

“No. I know Rick will do the right thing where Lilly is concerned, and if he doesn’t then I’ll be fine on my own.” For the first time since this horror had begun, she noticed that Sheriff Tom Grayson was a very handsome man. The warmth of his dark brown eyes tempered the stern, stark lines of his face.

She leaned back in her chair, slightly disconcerted by her spark of feminine interest. “Anyway, I figured if Rick wants to be a part of Lilly’s life he’ll make that happen. I didn’t want some legal form to bind him to us if he didn’t want that.”

“You said for once in your life you wanted to be somebody’s priority. What about your parents?” He took a bite of his sandwich and looked at her expectantly.

“I never knew my father, and I was always a distant third in my mother’s life, right behind her drugs and her newest boyfriend.” She couldn’t hide the touch of bitterness that crept into her voice.

“Doesn’t sound like the makings of a great childhood,” he said softly.

“It wasn’t.” She stared back out the window, tossed back into painful memories she tried never to access. “It was nothing but fear and uncertainty and one cheap, filthy motel room after another.” She looked back at him. “I promised myself then that if I survived eventually I’d have a place of my own that would never be dirty, a place where nobody could kick me out onto the streets.”

He took another bite of his sandwich and looked around. “Looks like you’ve succeeded.”

She nodded. “It’s taken a long time to get here, but I’m happy where I’m at,” she replied. “But now that somebody has taken my Lilly—”

Emotion clawed up the back of her throat, and she felt as if the darkness outside the window were seeping into her blood, taking over her heart. Just as she thought she’d be swallowed whole, Tom reached across the table and grabbed her hand tight in his.

“We’re doing everything that can be done to find them,” he said. “You have to stay strong. You said you didn’t think Kathy would hurt Lilly. You have to believe that, hang on to that.”

She squeezed his hand and nodded. “I do believe that. She was good with Lilly.” She released a sigh. “Maybe she can’t have children of her own. Maybe she only befriended me because she wanted Lilly.”

He released her hand and leaned back in his chair. “If that’s the case, then somebody in her life will realize she suddenly has a baby. She can’t stay underground forever. Somewhere somebody is going to see her and Lilly and make a phone call.”