A Dangerous Game
“I’m sure—I’m sure you’re good,” Kieran said. She smiled at Sandy Cleveland.
“That means you have to give her the baby,” Craig said, but she thought he understood, too, somehow.
“Yes, yes, of course,” Kieran murmured.
She managed to make herself move, and she handed over the baby.
It was so damned hard to do!
“Miss Cleveland, can you tell me about how old she is?” Kieran asked.
“I think about six weeks based on her motor function. And, please, just call me Sandy,” the woman told her. “Her eyes are following you—and when you speak, that’s a real smile. It’s usually between about six weeks and three months when they really smile, and I think this is a lovely, smart girl. Don’t worry! I’ll get a smile from her, too, I promise.”
The baby did seem to be settling down in Sandy Cleveland’s arms.
Craig set an arm around Kieran’s shoulders.
“Sandy, I’m with the FBI. Craig Frasier. You won’t mind if we check in on this little one?”
“Of course not!” Sandy assured them. She shook her head sadly. “I hear that the woman who handed her to you was murdered. There’s no ID on her. I’m just hoping we can find out who this little one is. She’s in good shape, though. Someone has been caring for her. Yes! You’re so sweet!” She said the last words to the baby, wrinkling her nose and making a face—and drawing a sound that wasn’t quite laughter, but darned close to it. “Hopefully, she has a mom or other relatives somewhere. And if not...” She hesitated, studying Kieran and Craig. “Well, if not—a precious little infant like this? People will be jockeying to adopt her. Anyway, let me get her out of here and away from...from what happened.” She held the baby adeptly while using her left hand to dig into her pocket and produce her business card. “Call me anytime,” she told them. “I may not answer, but I will get back to you if you leave me a message.”
Then she was gone. The cop who had been watching over Kieran went outside.
She and Craig were alone.
Kieran still felt shell-shocked.
“Kieran, hey!” Craig hunkered down by her again as she sank down into one of the comfortably upholstered chairs in the waiting room. He looked at her worriedly. “The cops are good—you know that.”
“Craig, you have to be in on this. That detective—”
“Lance. Lance Kendall. Kieran, really, he’s all right. He’s doing all the right things.”
“Yeah! All the right things—grilling me!”
“Okay, I will speak with Egan about it tomorrow, how’s that?”
She nodded. “Thank you. Get one of your joint task forces going—at least maybe you can participate?”
“Sure.” He hesitated. “I guess...um, well.”
There was a tap at the door. They both looked up. Craig stood.
A man walked in. It wasn’t the first officer who had arrived at the scene—it was the detective who had arrived while others were setting up crime scene tape, handling the rush hour crowd around the body, and urging her to get the baby back up to her offices and out of the street.
Detective Kendall was a well-built African American man. About six feet even, short brown hair, light brown eyes, and features put together pleasantly. He was around forty-five, she thought. He wasn’t warm and cuddly, but neither was he rude.
“Detective,” Craig said. “Have you wrapped up at the scene for the evening?”
“Yes—a few techs are still down there, but there’s nothing more I can accomplish here. Unless you can help, Miss Frasier? You can’t think of anything?”
“I have no idea why this lady chose me,” Kieran said. “None.”
“And you’ve never seen the woman before?” Kendall asked.
“Never.”
“Nor the baby?”
What? Did he think that the infant paid social calls on people, hung out at the pub, or requested help from psychiatrists or a psychologist?
“No,” she managed evenly. “I’ve never seen the infant before. I’ve never seen the woman before.”
“All right, then.” He suddenly softened a little. “You must be really shaken. I understand that, and I’m sorry. For now... I don’t have anything else. But I’m sure you know we may need to question you again.”
“I’m not leaving town,” she said drily.
He wasn’t amused.
Kieran continued. “I’ve spoken with Dr. Fuller and Dr. Miro. I’ve told them all that I could, and they will be trying to ascertain if they can think of any reason—other than who they are and what they do—that the woman might have come here.”
“I’ve spoken with the doctors, too,” Detective Kendall told her grimly. “And I’m sure we’ll speak again.”
“I’m sure,” Kieran muttered.
“Good night, Special Agent Frasier—Miss Finnegan,” the detective said. “You’re both, uh, free to go.”
He left them. Craig pulled Kieran around and into his arms, looking down into her eyes. “We are free. There’s nothing else to do tonight. You want to go home?”
“I know that we both really wanted to see the band play tonight,” she told him. “I’m sorry.”
“Kieran, it’s not your fault. I’m sure you didn’t plan for a woman to abandon a baby in your arms and then run downstairs and find herself stabbed to death.”
“It’s driving me crazy, Craig! We don’t know who she was. We don’t have a name for her. We don’t know about the baby. I think she was too old to be the mom, but I’m not really sure. And if not...she was trying to save the baby, not hurt it. But who would hurt a baby?”
“I don’t know. Let’s get going, shall we?”
“We can still go to the pub. Maybe catch the last of the Danny Boys?” she said.
“You know you don’t want to go anywhere.”
Kieran hesitated. “Not true. I do want to go somewhere. I’m starving—and I’m not sure what we’ve got to eat at the apartment.”
“Yep. We’ve been staying at yours—if there is food at mine, I’m certain we don’t want to eat it.”
“Then we’ll go to the pub,” she said quietly.
Kieran hadn’t realized just how late it had grown until she and Craig walked out of the building. New York City policemen were still busy on the street, many of them just managing the crowd. The body was gone, but crime scene workers were still putting the pieces together of what might and might not be a clue on the busy street.
It was Midtown, and giant conglomerates mixed with smaller boutiques and shops. Most of the shops were closed and the hour too late for business, but people still walked quickly along the sidewalks, slowing down to watch the police and curious to see what had happened.
Kieran looked up while Craig spoke with a young policewoman for a moment. Her brother had once warned her that she looked up too often—that she looked like a tourist. But she loved the rooftops, the skyline. Old skyscrapers with ornate moldings at the roof sat alongside new giants that towered above them in glass, chrome and steel. And then again, right in the midst of the twentieth-and twenty-first-century buildings, there would be a charming throwback to the 1800s.
From a nearby Chinese restaurant, a tempting aroma laced the air.
Even over murder.
The cops generally knew Craig; he was polite to all of them. They nodded an acknowledgment to Kieran. She’d worked with the police often enough herself.
“Is Detective McBride going to be on the case?” Kieran asked hopefully. They’d worked with Larry McBride before, not even a year ago, and he had been an amazing ally.
Drs. Fuller and Miro worked with city detectives regularly, and nine times out of ten, they were great. Every once in a while, as in any job, there was a total jerk in the mix. Mainly they were professionals, and good at their work, and Kieran knew it. Some were more personable than others. Homicide detectives could be very cut-and-dried. McBride had told her once that Homicide, while horrible, was also easier than dealing with other crimes. The victims couldn’t complain about the way he was working. Of course, the victims had relatives. That was hard.
She had come to really like McBride.
In this case, a baby was involved. A woman had died trying to save that baby, Kieran was certain. So she felt they needed the best.
Craig looked at her quizzically. “You know that there are thousands of detectives in the city, a decent percentage of that in Homicide—and even a decent percentage in Major Case.”
“Actually, when you break it all down...”
“I don’t know who will be working the case—probably more than one detective. For right now, it is Lance Kendall. And he’s all right, Kieran. He’s good. He was doing all the right things,” he added quietly. He looked as if he was going to say something more. He didn’t.
He took her hand in his. She held on, letting the warmth of his touch comfort her as they walked down the street.
“Hey, remember, I’m an agent, and you work with psychiatrists who spend most of their time on criminal files. It’s the life we’ve chosen, and we’ve talked about it. This will be just another case—whatever level of involvement we have with it. You can’t let it take over, or neither one of us will be sane.”
She nodded. He was right. There were other cases where they found themselves on the fringe, and, frankly, every day of Craig’s life had to do with criminal activity in the city of New York. They’d already worked on cases of cruel and brutal murders. This was another. And there was always something that seemed to make it better—at least for the survivors—when a killer was brought to justice.
She couldn’t obsess. She knew it.
But this one felt personal!
“Yep.” She spoke blithely and smiled.
“You’re cool?” She could tell he didn’t believe her; it seemed he didn’t know whether to push it or not.
But he was right about one thing. There was nothing for them to do right now except try to get their minds around what had happened—and let it go enough to get on with life.
Even figure out how to step back in order to step forward again.
“Yep. I’m fine. Let’s get food,” Kieran said.
“Sounds good. Thankfully, we always know where to go!”
CHAPTER TWO
Finnegan’s on Broadway had been a tavern, inn or den of Irish hospitality since before the Civil War. It was just after the war that the Finnegan family had taken over. Some of the family members were Americans; some were cousins who arrived from Ireland at various times in the pub’s history. Whoever wound up in charge knew that they were always purveyors of camaraderie. It was a true center of community, where you brought friends, and if you had none, you found some. To many in the neighborhood it had become a personal place, and they felt as comfortable and welcome there as in their own living room. The taps were extensive and kept spotlessly clean; the kitchen created a flow of Irish, American, and Irish American food that could be rivaled by few pubs—even in a city like New York.
While all of the four Finnegan siblings—Declan, Kieran, Kevin and Daniel—had inherited the pub, it was run by Declan. Kieran had her work, and Kevin was an actor. Danny—after a few false starts due to the death of their mother—had become an exceptional tour guide. Then again, though they all loved their dad, each sibling had acted out in a way when they had lost their mom. Not one member of the family had the least problem waiting tables or tending bar when help was needed, and Kieran still did a lot of the bookkeeping while her brothers kept up with stock and repairs.
Craig and Kieran were greeted by serving staff as soon as they walked in. At the bar—which had a clear view of the front door—Declan saw them enter, and he nodded and raised a hand and looked curiously at Craig.
Kieran had called Declan a few hours ago, to fill him in, but they hadn’t really believed at the time they would miss the entire evening. But they had, of course. The band was no longer playing.
It was quiet; the last of the crowd seemed to be paying their tabs, ready to head out.
“Kieran, dear, are you all right?”
Mary Kathleen—Declan’s fiancée, who was from Dublin but had been in the States for a few years—rushed up to Kieran.
“Yes, I’m fine, thank you,” Kieran said.
“I’m going to say hi to Declan,” Craig murmured, sliding past the two women. He reached the bar and leaned against it. Declan wiped his hands on a bar rag, shaking his head as he looked at Craig.
“You’re a wee bit late. You missed the Danny Boys,” Declan said. “They were great.”
“Yeah, we missed them. Thanks.”
“Ouch. Sorry,” Declan said. “That was really rude of me.” His jaw was set at an awkward angle. “Kieran is all right? I’m glad she called—knowing we’d freak out if we saw something that close to her place of business and we didn’t hear from her. It’s been on the news, you know. This time, the media hasn’t been using her name—they don’t have it, apparently.”
“Yes. The police kept pretty good control of the crime scene in the street and got Kieran out of the limelight before the reporters honed in. They know a woman was murdered. They know she gave a child to someone else, and Child Services will be caring for the baby, who will also be under police protection,” Craig said. “I guess they want a warning out there that no one should come for the child—unless, of course, they’re the rightful parents or guardians. Hopefully, they’d be searching for their baby through the police.”
“And here I thought you had the night off. Like it was one of those kinds of normal days for you when you were only going to work ten or twelve hours.”
“This one had nothing to do with me.”
“Hmm. If they don’t have some sick scum of the earth for you to be finding, Kieran will come up with something.” He was silent for a minute. “Actually, come to think about it, with what you’ve got on your hands already, you probably shouldn’t have gotten involved with a crazy Irish lass like my sister.”
“Yeah. Probably not,” Craig agreed.
“A bit too late.”
“Yeah, I think so.”
“So someone shoved a baby into her arms, and then ran out and got stabbed. That the gist of it?”
“That’s the gist of it.”
“And it’s your case?”
“Not at the moment.”
“I know you,” Declan said, “and so I also know that I don’t really need to be saying this, but...watch out for my sister, huh? Even if she’s quiet and acts tough, you know she’s got to be really shaken tonight.”
“I do. And,” he added softly, “you know I love your sister.”
“I do,” Declan said with a slight smile. “I’ll go back and see the cook.”
“Sounds great.”
“Shepherd’s pie?”
“Always good.”
Declan started to head to the back. “Oh, sorry—you guys want something to drink?”
“I’ll get it,” Craig said, leaning over the bar for a couple of glasses. As he did so, Kieran came to his side.
“Shepherd’s pie. And—”
“Soda water, please,” Kieran said softly.
“You okay?”
“I’m fine. Honestly,” she assured him.
They sat at the bar. Declan came back with dinner for the two of them; Finnegan’s was famous for its shepherd’s pie. It was a standard, almost always available.
Declan and Mary Kathleen both came behind the bar as the place began to wind down in earnest. Only a few patrons, just finishing up and paying their checks, remained.
“Anything new?” Mary Kathleen asked Craig.
He arched a brow. “Not since I walked in here.”
“Sorry,” she murmured. She looked at Kieran. “What was this woman like? Did she say anything at all that would give you a clue about who she was, where she came from—or about why she would leave a baby?”
Kieran frowned. “No. She didn’t speak that much. She said my name, and not much more.”
“She knew your name?”
“Well, surely no one would choose a random person in any old office and just toss them a baby!” Kieran said.
“But, she didn’t ask for Dr. Fuller or Miro, right? She asked for you?” Declan asked, frowning. He glanced at Craig.
Inwardly, Craig groaned.
Now everyone was worried about Kieran.
Naturally, he was worried, too.
“Did you let the doctors know what happened?” Declan asked.
“Of course,” Kieran said. “I called them...they had to know. The woman came to their office.”
“The whole city knows by now, I’m sure,” Craig said. “The street was crawling with reporters by the time we headed here. Hopefully, that will be a good thing. Someone out there might know who the woman was—and where to find the baby’s mother.”
“I hope so,” Mary Kathleen whispered.
“Okay, let’s clean up and call it a night,” Kieran said. She stood and started picking plates up from recently vacated tables.
Declan looked at Craig with a shrug.
Craig knew all the Finnegan siblings well—he was pretty sure that he knew what they all might be thinking: better get involved; make it your case. This is haunting Kieran, and therefore, she will definitely be haunting you!
Twenty minutes later, they were at Kieran’s apartment, which he had mostly been calling home as well for at least the last year. They still used his place now and then. Somehow—though he couldn’t remember the last time they’d slept apart—they were still maintaining two apartments. They really needed to get rid of one of them. His apartment was larger—they both actually liked it better. But Kieran’s was in the Village, and often more convenient when they’d been out for a night, and they had gotten into the habit of staying there.
More of his things were even at her place, rather than his own.
Not even the sushi bar/karaoke place on the ground floor of Kieran’s apartment building was still going, and the streets surrounding St. Mark’s Place were quiet, as well.
Kieran seemed really tired as they trudged up the stairs past the silent bar and to her apartment level. Of course, she was tired. She’d worked some grim cases with him—little could have been much worse than some of what they’d already seen, endured and survived—but it had to have been traumatic for her, having a baby thrust into her arms.
And seeing the woman who had entrusted that baby to her staggering down the street with a knife in her back...
He intended to give Kieran whatever space she needed; respecting that might be a need to curl up in bed with her own thoughts, praying for sleep.
He was startled when she turned to him with a grin. “Race you to the shower!” she said, and she was gone.
Racing to the shower.
He’d thought she’d be so exhausted.
Apparently not.
He followed her.
There were, of course, all kinds of ways to deal with strange happenings.
She was already naked, beneath the spray of water. He hesitated at the door, then left his Glock in the bedroom and shed his clothing.
He stepped into the tub. She was instantly in his arms.
Sometimes, people just needed to be held.
And sometimes, they needed more.
Her lips moved over his throat and chest, while her fingers danced down his torso. Her touch...the water...
He was instantly aroused.
They kissed and teased in the water. They lathered one another, intimately.
Then she laughed and moved away, escaping from the shower.
They’d long ago realized that for a man Craig’s size, making love in the shower wasn’t particularly erotic. It could be awkward, and slippery in the wrong way.
But heading out of the shower could be completely wonderful, catching up with another with clean flesh, sliding into a damp embrace with token pats from towels, and then falling down into the bed, the coolness of the sheets against the heat of their flesh.
Foreplay quickly became something urgent, something needed, something more and more passionate with each brush of their lips, with the intimacy with which they caressed and kissed one another, with which their eyes met, and they came together at last.
Craig loved Kieran; she loved him. There was no question about that.
It still amazed him how intense their connection could be.
Just as it amazed him that they could live together, sleep together, wake together each morning, and still find it so new and exquisite every time they made love.
He thought that she would want to talk as they both came down after a sweet and wicked climax; she did not.
She curled against him, sighed and seemed to fall asleep almost instantly.
He dozed himself, but woke when she moved. He guessed she hadn’t been sleeping at all.
She crawled as silently as she could out of bed, wrapped herself in a terry robe and headed out to the living room.
He followed, and found her looking out the window on what remained of the night.
She didn’t hear him at first.
He sighed softly. “Kieran?”
She started and turned to him. “Craig, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you. It’s Saturday—and you actually have time off. You can sleep as long as you like.”
“I was planning on sleeping past four in the morning,” he assured her. “Come back to bed.”
“I can’t forget that woman, Craig. I just can’t forget her.”
“I know. Come back to bed.”
“Kidnapping. That’d be an FBI matter,” Kieran told Craig.
“We don’t know that it was a kidnapping. Maybe the woman was the baby’s mother—or grandmother. Maybe she just wanted the child to be safe. Kieran—”
“Kidnapping,” Kieran said. “Craig, you know that poor little girl was taken from somewhere.”
“At the moment, the case belongs to the cops. The Bureau might be brought in, but right now, it’s not my call. We work hard to keep our relationships between agencies all nice and copacetic. I’m not running down there and demanding that we take the case. I’d be put in my place in two damned seconds,” he told her.
“But it must be kidnapping. You can talk to Egan, at least, okay?”
“I will speak with Egan—when it’s possible to speak with my director, I promise I will.”
“Really?”
“I just told you that I would.”
“What if he fights you on it? What if he’s dismissive?”
“I’ll fight back.”
“Really?”
“I’ll push and be obnoxious and call in all kinds of favors, okay?”
“Yeah. Okay. I like it.”
He led her back into the bedroom and she slipped into his arms. Resting against his chest, she fell asleep.
He thought about his promise.
He hadn’t seen the woman, had no connection to the case, and in his life, he’d seen too many murders.
But he would keep his promise, and he was damned determined that they’d get to the bottom of what was going on.
The woman had known Kieran’s name, and she had brought the baby straight to her, and that could mean...someone out there would be wondering just what Kieran knew about the woman, the baby—and the killer.
And that meant that Kieran might well be in danger now herself.
* * *
It was her fault, and she knew it. Craig was up early.
She’d finally fallen asleep. But knowing she’d kept him up meant that guilt riddled her. When he got up to leave and head into the office, she got up to start the coffee.
She pulled out her laptop. She had a desktop computer at work but had it networked with her laptop—it was a good setup. It had often enough saved her from having to go back into the office over a small detail—a note that one of the doctors might need, or even something that she wanted to reread herself to help her with a case they were working on.
She often interviewed and provided therapy for abused women—and occasionally men. It was certainly not in the same number, but there were men who suffered from abuse. One of her recent cases, Harold Lenin, was certainly that man—he’d been given black eyes by his wife, broken bones and tons of bruises. He’d kept silent through the years, a sad, cowed, little man. He was learning how to live again, recovering from his gunshot wounds.
He wouldn’t receive any more of them. His wife had shot him while they were up on the roof. She hadn’t been familiar with the gun and the kickback had sent her over the roof—and down thirty-five floors.