Clandestine Baby
Автор
Nicole Helm
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Chapter One
The dog wouldn’t stop barking.
Cal Thompson frowned, walking closer and closer to the incessant yelps. Considering he didn’t have a dog, his best guess was that a stray had maybe been hit on the old country road on the ranch border and no one had stopped to help the poor creature out.
Now it would be his problem. A common occurrence in his life. Cal Young’s entire life had been cleaning up other people’s messes...before he’d been declared dead, had left the military and moved to this out-of-the-way ranch in the middle of nowhere, Wyoming.
This version of himself, Cal Thompson, was supposed to be your everyday rancher, running the old Hart place with his brothers.
The men he ran the ranch with were his brothers, if not biologically. They’d fought together for years, had been a team that had taken down terrorist organizations all over the Middle East. Until a clerical error of all things had made their identities known, and they’d needed to be erased.
In Cal’s estimation, not much had changed. Sure, he was a rancher now, and he had a different last name, but he still cleaned up problems. They just didn’t tend to be in war zones. He still considered himself a sort of de facto leader of their group—which now wasn’t just his five brothers, but their various significant others, and one twelve-year-old belonging to one such significant other.
Every group/family/whatever needed a leader, and everyone tended to look to him to be it. Habit or because he was just good at it? It didn’t matter. When shots needed to be called, he was usually the one calling them.
He preferred it that way.
Cal finally saw the dog. It was over the fence and in the ditch next to the highway. But it appeared to be fine as it ran toward him, then back to the ditch, over and over, as if trying to signal Cal to come closer.
Cal got the very distinct feeling he wouldn’t like what the dog wanted him to see. And while he always listened to his gut, he rarely worried about what he wanted. He tended to focus on what needed to be done.
So he moved forward and hopped the fence, watching the big, hairy beast warily. He liked dogs well enough, but there was no telling what kind of stray this was—especially when he was practically the size of one of their horses.
But then he forgot all about the dog, because the dog was leading him to a body.
Cal hurried forward. A woman’s body was lying in the ditch, motionless. Dark hair matted with dirt and, potentially, blood draped around some kind of bundle. There was a slight rise and fall of the chest, so the woman wasn’t dead.
He supposed that was something.
The dog pranced around the woman, still barking. But it didn’t growl as Cal moved closer and carefully crouched next to the woman.
“Good dog,” he murmured, then very carefully rolled the woman over. Her head lolled, she didn’t open her eyes, but none of that mattered.
Everything stopped. The barking. The wind. His heart.
It couldn’t be.
And then the little bundle the woman’s body had been shielding began to wriggle. Then wail. The dog whimpered. The breeze picked up again, and Cal’s long forgotten heart began to thud against his chest once again.
It was a baby.
My baby?
He pushed that thought away, because it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. Except getting them safe. And to do that he had to somehow shove all of the emotions whirling around in his head away—far away.
He pulled his cell out of his pocket and called Henry, who he knew was out in the truck. He ignored the fact that his hands shook. “Henry, I need the truck about a mile west of the east entrance. Near the ditch of the highway.” Was that his voice? Tinny and weak?
“What’s up?”
“I found someone in the ditch. She’s hurt. I need your help. Get Dunne if he’s close. Hurry.” He pressed End on the call. He shoved his phone back into his pocket and then, struggling to keep his arms from shaking, reached out and picked up the crying baby.
The bundle was still warm, whether because they hadn’t been here long or because... He looked at the woman.
Norah.
Maybe it was some kind of...twin situation. Like Jessie and Quinn, who’d grown up not knowing about each other despite being identical twins. Maybe...
But he knew... He knew it was Norah, and this baby...
He looked down as the baby wailed. “Shh,” he murmured, holding the child close to his chest. He reached out and put his fingers at Norah’s pulse. Steady, but she was completely unconscious. There was a bloody gash on her forehead, which didn’t look as new as he might have liked. How long had she been out here? Bleeding and unconscious?
He looked at the dog and tried to make sense of any of this, but there was no sense to be had.
Norah was supposed to be dead. Not a mother. Not here.
There were so many emotions battering him—hope, fear, confusion and the desperate desire to understand how—that the time actually passed quickly and Henry’s truck appeared on the rise.
Reluctantly, Cal stood to wave him down, baby in his arms. The child had quieted a little, but still made odd noises that made Cal’s stomach feel like leaden knots.
Henry parked and both he and Dunne hopped out.
Henry swore, Dunne said nothing. Par for the course. “Someone dump a...”
Then they both looked down at Cal’s feet. Dunne immediately went into combat medic mode to assess the situation, but he paused for a moment to look up at Cal. Eyes mirroring all the shock that had slammed into Cal.
“But...”
Cal shook his head. “I don’t know.”
Henry swore again. “Get her in the truck?”
Dunne nodded. They worked together to pick up Norah’s limp body and move her.
“It’ll be too much jostling to try to get her inside. Let’s lay her out in the back. Cal?”
Cal was already moving to grab a blanket out of the back of the truck. He spread it out in the bed, doing his best work one handed, with a baby cradled in the other arm.
Dunne and Henry worked in silence to place Norah carefully in the bed of the truck.
“Should we take her to the hospital?” Henry asked as Dunne crouched over her, taking her pulse, examining her the same way he’d examine any fallen soldier in a war zone.
“Someone tried to kill her,” Cal said. He didn’t know that for sure, but based on everything he’d seen, what other conclusion could he draw? There’d been blood. A struggle. Maybe not in that ditch, but somewhere.
Dunne looked over at him, knowing what that meant—keep her away from places she could be traced. “I can take care of the wounds at the ranch, but the lack of consciousness worries me, and I don’t know a damn thing about babies, Cal.”
“Jessie does.”
Dunne sighed, but then nodded. “Quickly.”
Henry hurried to the driver’s seat. Cal didn’t have to whistle for the dog. It seemed intent on following the woman and the baby, and hopped right in behind them.
Dunne kept Norah stable, and Cal sat in the bed of the truck, a whimpering baby in his arms and a similarly whimpering dog snuggling up next to him as Henry drove them back to the ranch house.
Norah made a noise. She didn’t move. It was just a kind of groan. Dunne kept his hand on her shoulder, but looked up at Cal. “I guess it might not be her. We’ve got identical triplets and twins running around. It could be...”
But Cal shook his head. He wished he could believe it. A twin would make more sense, but he knew. “It’s Norah.” He stared down at the little baby in his arms. A girl, if the pink blanket and hat were anything to go by. Mine? he wondered again.
He didn’t know.
“She’s supposed to be dead,” Cal said, not sure what else to say. Not sure...of anything in the moment.
“Yeah,” Dunne agreed. “But so are we.”
SHE AWOKE FROM the pain of black and fear to...peace. Warmth. Something smelled vaguely familiar but she couldn’t place it. She blinked her eyes open, and the pain started creeping in. Everything hurt—her body, breathing, opening her eyes. Screaming agony everywhere, but she knew she needed to wake up because...
The baby. She had to... She had to protect the baby. She managed to look around. She was lying in a bed in a spacious room. Sunlight streamed through the windows. It was spartan, but not...scary.
Still, she didn’t recognize anything. She couldn’t... “My baby.” Her throat hurt, and her words were garbled. She couldn’t remember anything...anything...except her baby. Safe. Her baby...
Why couldn’t she think of a name? Her baby’s name? Her name? Anything that had happened?
A woman appeared in her vision, a little bundle tucked into her arm. The baby. Her baby. She tried to reach out, but couldn’t get her arms to move enough. Everything hurt and she had to close her eyes again.
“Your baby is just fine,” the woman said. “Why don’t I hold on to her until you’re feeling a little stronger?”
Stronger. She definitely didn’t feel strong. She wasn’t sure what she felt. She tried to open her eyes again. She had to figure something out.
“Where am...” Her gaze tracked the room and stopped on a man who stood at the doorway, and she felt...something. He looked grim and forbidding, but his eyes were... Were they familiar? Did she know him?
She thought she should know him. She thought... She couldn’t come up with anything. Anything besides keeping the baby safe.
Was he the man who’d done this to her? Should she...
“Norah,” he said, and his voice was dark and low and she thought dimly she should be scared, but she was desperate for him to say more.
She thought that must be the name of the woman holding the baby, but he was looking at her. Was that her name?
She couldn’t remember.
“I don’t understand.” Anything. Anything.
The woman sat in a chair next to the bed, giving her a good view of the baby. “I’m Jessie,” she said, calmly and soothingly. “What’s your little one’s name?”
She looked into the baby’s blue eyes, and the baby smiled at her. Her heart filled with a joy she didn’t understand. But no name came to mind. “I don’t know,” she whispered.
The Jessie woman flicked a glance to the man at the door. He nodded and disappeared.
“I don’t know anything. Her name. My name.” Tears began to fill her eyes. She didn’t know...
“You’ve been hurt,” Jessie said, laying a hand on her cheek. It didn’t soothe out all the panic, but it settled her some. A warm, calm anchor.
“Very hurt,” the woman continued. “But you’re safe now. I can promise you that.”
She swallowed. The pain was a raw, throbbing thing, but she had to speak. “That man... He called me Norah.”
Jessie looked at the empty doorway, some indecision on her face. “He did. He thinks you’re a woman he used to know.”
“Used to?”
The woman shifted in the chair to give her a better look at the baby. “Why don’t we call you Norah for now? What would you like us to call the baby? It doesn’t have to be right.”
Norah looked at the baby—hers, somehow she knew the girl was hers—but no names, nicknames or otherwise would form in her head.
“I don’t know. I just don’t know.” And then she began to cry.
