Page 5 of Ransom for His Secret Son

The flashbacks came. Along with the relentless guilt that was eating her alive. Remi hadn’t considered Tarrant would go after his ex. And because she hadn’t considered it, a woman was now dead.

Correction: another woman.

She already had Miranda’s death on her conscience, so now she had to live with knowing she could have possibly saved two people, the ADA and Brody’s wife, if she’d just made better decisions. It hurt even more that Miranda had been Remi’s close friend.

“A few months later, there was another case,” Remi continued after she took a moment to steady herself. “Not mine but one that a cop friend was working on. A newborn girl born from a stolen embryo was used to blackmail a witness into changing her testimony.”

She paused again. Had to. “Now…now I think this might be another stolen embryo,” Remi whispered. “One that belonged to you and Miranda.”

The silence that followed was thick and suffocating. Remi could feel Brody’s anger building even more, simmering just beneath the surface and ready to come to a raging boil.

“You think someone took our embryo? Mine and Miranda’s?” he finally snapped out, his words as sharp as a blade.

“Possibly. I know how it sounds,” she was quick to add, “but whoever’s behind those other two cases targets people with stored embryos. People who wouldn’t even know it was happening until it was too late.”

Brody let out a hard breath, dragging a hand through his hair. “So, what? They’re just handing out babies now? Dropping them off like some twisted delivery service?”

“No,” she said, her voice low. “They’re using the babies as pawns. Tools for leverage. And if I’m right, this isn’t solely about the baby. Whoever’s behind this has a bigger plan. I just don’t know what that plan is. Yet.”

Remi watched his jaw tighten, his hands curling into fists again. She knew what he was thinking—about Miranda, about the life they’d lost, about the fact that she was the one standing here telling him all of this.

Something flashed through Brody’s eyes, and he took out his phone. “One way to find out if you’re telling the truth. I’ll call the station and get a deputy on this.” He tapped in a number. “Harlan,” he said after Remi figured that Deputy Harlan McCall had answered. “Contact the Sanderson Fertility Clinic, and find out if there’s been some kind of breach or robbery. Specifically, find out if anything my wife and I had stored there is missing. I need that info now.”

Remi could only imagine how shocked the deputy was after hearing that, but maybe he’d get quick answers. If the embryos were still there, then maybe that meant this baby wasn’t Brody’s.

She shifted her focus to the baby, who let out a soft whimper as the EMT pressed a stethoscope to his or her chest. His she silently amended when she saw that Hal had pulled back the side of the diaper.

A boy.

Maybe Brody’s son.

“No signs that he’s been hurt in any way,” Hal relayed to them.

While that didn’t give them answers as to who was responsible for this, the tight muscles inside her unclenched a little. Remi was beyond relieved that he hadn’t been hurt.

“He’s recently been fed,” Hal went on. “There’s still some formula around the corners of his mouth. And he’s recently been changed, too.”

So someone had taken care of him. That fit with the other two cases. Those babies had been well tended while they’d been used as pawns.

And that caused Remi to mentally stop.

Those other two babies hadn’t been left for someone to find before a demand had even been made. In her case, she had found the child and rescued him before Tarrant could get his ex to tamper with evidence. In the other, the newborn girl had been left for the parents to find after the mother had fulfilled the demand and had recanted her statement for an upcoming trial.

But there’d been no demand for this little boy.

Did that mean she’d been wrong? That this wasn’t Brody’s child after all and this was about something else? Sweet heaven. It was possible, and she didn’t even know what to hope for. Because if the baby wasn’t Brody’s, then he belonged to someone else. Who? And why had the baby been left like this?

“My guess is he’s about a week old,” Hal went on a moment later as he secured the baby into an infant restraint seat. “Still has his umbilical cord, but it’s about to come off. We’ll transport him to the hospital, though I’m not seeing anything wrong—”

“I want him thoroughly examined,” Brody interrupted, climbing into the back of the ambulance. Obviously, he didn’t plan on letting the baby out of his sight.

Neither did Remi.

Because it occurred to her that someone like John Smith might try to kidnap the child. In fact, his intentions might not have been for her and Brody to find the baby at all. He could have left him there with the plan to go back and retrieve him once he had that flash drive.

But why had the man brought the baby to the cemetery in the first place?

Remi didn’t have an answer for that either.