Baby in Jeopardy
Author
Tara Taylor Quinn
Reads
19.1K
Chapters
23
A foundling brings her danger… And a second chance at love. Though she loved her ex-husband, Jenny Sanders couldn't live with Ben's suffocating overprotectiveness. The wary cop saw danger everywhere and it broke up their marriage. But a baby abandoned at Jenny's day care center thrusts her into the crosshairs of a violent attacker. Now she and the baby need Ben's protection. With the violence escalating, the pair realize they must stay together and go into hiding with the baby. Can these dangerous circumstances erase the differences that drove them apart? And can they find a way to save the tiny infant from the people hunting for her?
Chapter 1
Was that a baby crying?
Looking away from the columns of numbers on her computer screen, forty-one-year-old Jenny Sanders muted the soft pop station she’d been streaming and listened. As a child life specialist and long-time director of the secular preschool she’d helped establish on the sprawling church campus, she lived with sounds of children all day every day.
But not babies.
A full minute later, silence and the sound of her own breathing were her only two aural companions.
Shaking her head, she turned the music on and went back to work, switching screens from financial reports to the classroom charting. She required her four teachers to complete charts for every one of the preschool’s one hundred and two students every week. Since her first week on the job ten years before, Tuesday evenings had been her time alone on campus to go over those charts. The only quiet time, and guaranteed uninterrupted time, she ever had at work. The only night the church was free of functions.
Seven of their nine three-year-olds had had some minuses in their behavioral reports over the past week. Minuses weren’t lightly given, meaning their actions had to have been severe enough to disrupt the class. She frowned.
Seven out of nine told her something wasn’t right in that classroom. She’d have a talk with the teacher first thing in the morning, and she decided she’d spend more time in that classroom in the coming days. And she’d be talking to parents within the next day or so, too. Adding all three items to her already full schedule, she read each of the nine charts again, going back a month this time.
Her general philosophy was to let youngsters find their own way, within boundaries that allowed others to do the same. Something she and Ben had clashed on since the first time they’d babysat his young half brother, Simon, together. They’d been teenagers at the time, the summer between their sophomore and junior years of college. Even back then her detective ex-husband had believed in living cautiously. Protecting rather than enjoying. Not allowing Simon to roll on the floor, for fear of what could possibly hurt him, rather than allowing the baby to explore his world. She’d struggled to help him see that children needed boundaries that set them free.
She encouraged individualism in thought, discovery and expression, and also fully believed that toddlers who learned to understand and respect the boundaries that protected their freedoms grew up to be happier and more productive adults. Her idea of boundaries was rooted in physical safety and being respectful of others. Ben had thought her far too lenient. She’d found his protectiveness—mostly where Simon was concerned, but sometimes her, too—almost suffocating. He’d encouraged them in their endeavors. He’d just always had danger warnings—and had worried about them. Had checked in just to make sure they were okay. Far more than Simon had liked.
It was tough being raised by a serious-minded cop.
She and Ben had loved each other. And they’d both loved Simon, who they’d ended up raising, to distraction. They’d been a close family and had always taken time for date nights and special moments, too.
And yet, it had all fallen apart. She’d blamed Ben. He’d blamed her. They’d both tried incessantly, each beseeching the other to understand.
Simon grew up in the clash and decided, in his junior year of high school, to emancipate from them.
Wait. The speakers on her desk silenced again at the touch of her finger. She’d definitely heard something. A squeal? A cry?
Getting up from her desk, she proceeded quickly, but quietly, out to the hallway that was dimly lit by the security lighting that shone all night. A quick glance showed all four classroom doors closed, as they were every night. They’d be locked, too. Jasper Gulley wasn’t a huge city, by any means, but it was big for Northern Arizona and had its share of crime.
The church being a haven for people experiencing homelessness and hardships—people who were sometimes desperate enough to break the law—put her at a slightly higher risk. Most knew to come during the morning hours when the store and kitchen were open for sustenance. But there’d been one or two people over the years who’d sought more than the church had to give...
She pulled out her cell phone. Her finger on the speed dial for 911.
Ben had never quit nagging her to carry the little pistol he’d taught her to shoot before they’d even married. Another bone of contention between them.
But if there was a rabid animal between her and her car...
A thought flashed through her mind, how it might be good to keep the pistol locked in the safe in her office, just in case. But she was interrupted by a definite cry.
Human. Not animal. Young. Newborn young. And in distress.
The sound suddenly unmistakable, Jenny ran toward the wails coming from outside the preschool door, phone to her ear. If the baby was bleeding...
“911, what’s your emergency? Jenny Sanders, is that you?”
Her name would come up, of course. Ben, Jasper Gulley’s lead detective, would have seen to it that dispatch would always be aware of her name and address.
Divorced or not...
Oh, Dearest God in Heaven, who’d leave a helpless little...?
“Yesss,” she said slowly, as she saw the bundle of blanket lying in an opened suitcase in the courtyard just outside the front door of the preschool. The brighter, outdoor security lights illuminated a small, scrunched up, reddened face. “I have a baby...” she said. “I’m at the Community Church and this baby is outside the door...”
Without waiting to hear a response, she dropped the phone on the ground as she knelt by the squalling infant.
Unwrapping the lightweight summer blanket to reveal a thin pink cotton long-sleeved sleeper, she glanced quickly around the deserted area and then watched as both legs and arms directly in front of her squirmed, seemingly healthy. She couldn’t see any blood. And, slowly sliding her arms under the small body, she lifted the baby to her shoulder, carefully holding a neck and head that clearly wasn’t mature enough to support itself.
The baby could only be days old. And judging by the weight against her, was a mere six or seven pounds.
Facts registered, including the sound of sirens coming her way and footsteps sounding off to the left of her, in the shadows. She shielded the squirming bundle in her arms, holding the baby close.
The crying stopped almost immediately, as though the infant recognized that she was in caring arms—and as Jenny’s heart pounded in fear, it also burst wide open.
It seemed as though, in the space of seconds, she’d fallen in love.
Detective Ben Sanders was at home in the little two-bedroom cottage he’d purchased after his divorce, listening to his scanner while he grilled up a cheese sandwich for dinner, when he heard the call come through.
A woman reporting a possibly abandoned baby at Jasper Gulley Community Church. He already had the stove off, pan with a half-baked sandwich on the back burner, and keys in hand when his cell rang, telling him that Jenny, Jen to him, had found the baby—and asking him if he wanted the case.
He knew his ex-wife’s routine—had known she’d made the call the second he’d heard the dispatch come through—and was out the door and in his sedan before he’d hung up the phone.
Of course he wanted the case. The question had been rhetorical.
Still in the light-colored pants he’d worn to work with a short-sleeved brown shirt and brown and beige tie, with its half-neat knot, he put out his bubble light and sped the five miles to church. He arrived just behind an ambulance and a cruiser that had already been on the road and close to the church when the call came in.
From the time Jen had taken the job at the church—and had insisted on her time there alone each week to focus on paperwork aspects of her job—he’d been concerned about her being there alone at night, the same night, at the same time, every week.
He’d worried for ten years about having a Tuesday night call to the church. Had known it would come someday.
Never once had he imagined it would involve a baby.
He recognized Jen’s butt immediately as he pulled onto the lot and saw her climbing into the back of the ambulance. She wore jeans to work on Tuesdays, because her times alone at the preschool often involved rearranging as well as paperwork, and she’d left her long curly dark hair down. He’d always liked it best that way.
By the time he was stopped and out of his car, the doors had shut and the ambulance was pulling away. Leaving instructions for the officers on scene to do a canvass and keep him posted, he was back in his car within five minutes and heading to Jasper Gulley Hospital—a four-story facility that served most of the small towns in Northern Arizona.
Jen had discovered the baby. She was his key witness. In addition to the child, of course. Any identifiers the doctors could give him would help him possibly locate the person who’d abandoned the infant. Experience told him that if he didn’t get out there looking quickly, the chances of him bringing the case to a rapid and successful close lessened.
With Arizona safe haven laws, leaving a baby less than thirty days old at a church wasn’t a crime. Leaving any child without handing it to a person or placing it in a safe haven drawer at the hospital—that was most definitely a criminal act.
The bubble on top of his car spun as he broke the speed limit by twenty. He was rounding the curve at the base of a mountain, just before the hospital, his mind on his big-hearted ex-wife who failed to take danger seriously enough, when a loud bang sounded and the car lurched. Hands tightening on the wheel, his entire body stiffening, Ben tried to maintain control of his vehicle. He spun out, around, threw the steering wheel into a counter turn, but the car wasn’t responding to his efforts at all. He saw the base of the mountain in his headlights. Slammed both feet on the brake.
And then, as four thousand pounds of metal slid into solid rock, he just held on.
Wiping blood from a small cut beneath his chin, from where he’d gouged it with his thumbnail as the impact shot his head forward, Ben was out of his car while the air was still filled with dust from the crash. He called for a car to come get him as he took his first glance at the scene.
He’d managed to slow his vehicle enough that the airbag hadn’t deployed, but the front end was mangled around a wall of rock at the side of the mountain. No way he was going to be able to back out of there and get to Jen and the baby.
After his call, it took him about thirty seconds, with the help of the flashlight on his phone, to see that his back two tires had been cut, clean, as if with the blade of a knife. A small knife that hadn’t penetrated all the way through the radial tire, allowing him to drive away from the church, but still causing one of the tires to blow as he drove. Any bump could have done it.
And both back tires, not one back and one front. As though whoever had slashed them had known that when a back tire blew, the driver lost all control of the car.
He’d been at the church no more than five minutes. With police swarming around. And someone had managed to slash his tires?
Someone who hadn’t wanted him to be able to go...where?
And why?
Too much of a coincidence for him to think that the slashing had been random. And yet...what on earth did an abandoned baby have to do with someone wanting him out of commission? Maybe permanently?
Depending on where that tire had blown—and on his ability to hit the brake in time—he could have been killed. Instead of just shaken from impact.
He could be dead instead of just pissed.
Jen.
What if whoever had slashed his tires had continued to the hospital...to lie in wait?
What if the perp was already in the emergency room? Grabbing his phone, he made a terse call to hospital security, alerting them to keep an eye on Jen and the baby. And then, ignoring the throbbing in his ribs, he dialed dispatch, checking on the ETA of the car he’d called. Stayed with them until the cruiser pulled up, calling for another crew to deal with his car, as he jumped inside the police vehicle and barked an order for the uniformed officer to get him to the hospital immediately.
“You okay, sir?” the young man asked as Ben told him to go even before his door was fully closed.
“Fine. Just go,” he said, thinking only of Jen. Of the baby. His shaken nerves could just get over themselves.
Striding through the emergency room door, Ben sought out someone with enough clout to get him to where he needed to be.
He wasn’t even fully in the back area before he saw a silhouette of Jen’s form standing behind a pulled curtain. He’d been head over heels in love with the woman since he was fifteen. He’d know that shape anywhere.
“Can I help you?” A nurse, in his thirties or so, approached him, and Ben flashed his badge. Told the man why he was there and was immediately led to the curtain he’d already homed in on.
Taking a deep breath, he slipped behind the curtain the nurse held for him.
The first glance he saw of his ex-wife’s face in more than three months was breathtaking. The glow of her expression as she gazed at the baby she held...
It sent him back twenty-three years, almost to the day. Simon had been born in the same hospital. Also in July. And the first time Jen had held him, that look on her face...that’s when he’d first seen her as a mother. And had known he’d wanted no one but her to mother his children.
When she’d told him that was what she wanted, too, Ben had thought every hope he’d ever had had just come true. Thought he’d be spending the rest of his life living his dreams.
They’d been eighteen and nineteen at the time.
By the time Jen glanced up and saw who’d entered the cubicle, he’d come back to reality enough to school his face.
His only dream these days was to keep a distant watch on his half-brother as Simon threw away his life. No matter what he learned, Ben kept tabs, with the idea that he’d be able to come to Simon’s rescue if he was ever in trouble with the law.
It was all he could do, since Simon had threatened Ben with a restraining order. He wasn’t going to risk being legally prohibited from watching out for him.
And as for Jen... “Ben? What happened? Your chin’s bleeding...”
A surface cut. He swiped at it with his sleeve. “I scratched it with my thumb.” He gave her the one fact—and nothing more.
She didn’t ask questions. Turned to the baby, instead.
“The doctor met us at the door and has already said her vitals are good and, overall, she looks well cared for. We’re waiting on someone to come in to draw blood. She’s only six pounds and seems a little underfed, though not malnourished, and she’s still got her umbilical cord. Based on its state of dryness he figures she’s at most a week old. He also says the cord cut looks professional, so she was likely delivered with medical supervision.”
She’d glanced at him a couple of times, but only briefly, her focus fully on the baby she held. As he’d expect. As his had to be.
On finding the baby’s family, in case the child had been abducted. Or had biological family members who wanted it. Finding who’d illegally abandoned the baby. And why someone had tried to hurt him within minutes of the baby having been left.
He couldn’t help feeling a pang in his gut that he’d thought he was past as he watched Jen nurturing the child. She’d been born to have a houseful of children. Yet when the time had come, after they’d spent a year adjusting to having custody of Simon as soon as they’d graduated college, she’d demurred.
“Is she wearing what she came in with? I’ll need to take it to the lab,” he said. “And was there anything else with her? Blankets? I’ll need it all. Maybe we’ll get lucky and find some fingerprints...”
Lucky was such a transient word. Yeah, how lucky to be able to easily identify the abandoned child. And yet, if fingerprints came up that easily, it would most likely mean whoever had had the child also had a criminal record.
Lucky that Jen had fallen as hard in love with Ben as he had with her. Yeah, and yet...their marriage had brought far too much heartache to both of them.
And to Simon, too, he was sure.
Kids didn’t just emancipate for no reason. Most often, as he knew full well from more than twenty years of police work, their home environments played a factor.
A pang hit his chest. He put it down to his recent visit with the side of the mountain.
“The outfit she was in is in that bag,” Jenny said, pointing to a plastic zip-sealed bag on the back counter of the room. “The nurse who removed it wore gloves, but I held her, so my prints will be there.”
He nodded. Moved to take possession of the bag. Taking responsibility for chain of evidence. No matter who’d left that child, doing so without placing her in the hands of a person was a crime. She could have lain there all night. Been attacked by coyotes...
“And she was lying in, like, a small carry-on suitcase, black, with a blanket tucked around her. I picked her up and didn’t look at the suitcase again. I have no idea if there was anything inside except the blanket. I’m assuming an officer on the scene has it.”
She’d been a cop’s wife for two decades. Knew what he’d be looking to know.
There were other questions he could ask. Would ask. And yet, he just kept watching her with that baby. Jen was safe. The baby was safe. Emotions swamped him. He pushed them back. Walled them off as best he could.
Something he’d perfected over the years.
Coughing, he ran a hand through hair that was still as thick as always but starting to show a bit of grey at the temples, too. Wondering if he’d ever feel whole again.
“Did you... Can you tell me what you heard? What alerted you to the fact that she was there? Or did you find her when you were leaving?” He had to find out who’d dropped the child.
Then they’d figure out where she was going to spend the night. Social services would have been alerted, but this late...
Of course, the doctor might admit the child overnight.
Jenny told him she’d been listening to music and thought she heard a baby cry.
“What time was that?”
“A little after seven. I know because I logged in to charting right after that and it always gives a time stamp.”
“And how long were you there before that?” His mind was working again.
“About an hour.”
Yep, she’d always gone in at six. For years, Tuesdays had been his and Simon’s guy night. Until Simon had decided to hang with friends, instead. Because Ben had angered him too much.
“As far as you know, were you alone on campus the entire time leading up to that?”
She nodded. Glanced at him, then away, as the sore subject reared right there between them in a room far too small to contain it.
He’d hated her on campus alone after dark. Saw the inherent danger. She insisted that she was locked in. That her car was right outside the side door. And that she was at a church. If it was her time, it was time. Otherwise, she’d be safe.
It was a testament to the state of his mind and emotions that he managed to keep his mouth shut on the issue. There was too much else taking up his immediate focus.
Like the fact that the love of his life was holding a baby and the sight was doing things to him that he’d thought had been killed right along with their marriage. Fate definitely had a sense of humor.
“I thought I heard footsteps, after I picked her up, but...” She shook her head. “I thought they were running toward me, but the sirens got louder, drowning out the sound and no one appeared...”
The baby was sleeping. “I wonder if she’s been given a name.” Jen’s soft voice—the tone—he hadn’t heard it in so long. Far too long.
Another lifetime.
One that had to stay out of his present.
“For now, we’re calling her Ella. Ella Doe,” Jen continued, as though footsteps didn’t matter at all.
Ella. The name she’d talked about when they’d first talked about having kids someday. Before Simon’s shocking advent into their lives.
The name choice couldn’t be a coincidence. And didn’t bode well for Jen getting out of the situation unscathed.
Why on earth did she have to be the one who found the baby?
“If you want me to wait until social services gets here, I’ll take her,” he said then, moving farther into the room. He had to take control. To do what he could to make the situation better. That was what was mucking him up. He’d never been good on the sidelines.
He was the doer. The fixer. The one who’d run into a burning building to save a life without a second’s thought.
The one who’d faced bullets to protect people he didn’t know.
And who’d failed to hold his own family together.
“I’ve already talked to them,” Jen said. “A woman was here at the hospital when I came in. Since I’m a licensed child caregiver, they’re letting me keep her tonight.”
“That’s not a good idea, Jen. My tires were slashed at the church. I was in an accident on my way here...”
Eyes wide with concern, she gave him a once-over. “You’re okay?” she asked, meeting his gaze, but only for a moment before she looked away again.
“Obviously.”
“So...surely you don’t think slashing the tires of a car with a bubble on top at a scene has anything to do with this baby,” she said. “Cop cars are vandalized sometimes. Even I know that.”
And he knew that though there had to be a connection, Jen was conditioned, by his own overprotectiveness, to blow him off anytime he tried to impress danger on her. He’d cried wolf too many times.
Ben had to get out of there.
To do his job.
Daylight would come again before he knew it.
And if he was going to keep Jen safe, keep that baby safe, he had to get busy.
And maybe, just maybe he could get his ex-wife to smile at him again.
Or at least be able to look him in the eye for more than a second.
