Undercover Baby Rescue, page 1
What if something happened to his nephew?
The double door swung open at the end of the lobby and a flurry of both uniformed and plainclothes officers from the Missing Person’s Unit rushed through.
But Justin only had eyes for one—Corporal Violet Jones. She wore a crisp black blazer, with her bright gold badge hanging on a lanyard. Her gait was steady. Then her remarkable indigo eyes met his through rectangular glasses and she faltered a step.
“Justin!” she called. “What are you doing here?”
Those were the first words he’d heard her say to him since the day he’d called off their engagement.
“Sadie just had a baby.”
Sadness washed over her features and fear clutched his heart.
She nodded to the guard in front of him. “Let him through.”
“Thank you,” Justin called. But she’d already disappeared through another door. He bolted up the stairs to the maternity ward. But it was too late. Uniformed police officers gathered around the door to his sister’s room. Her heartbreaking cries echoed down the hall.
His newborn baby nephew had been kidnapped.
Maggie K. Black is an award-winning journalist and romantic suspense author with an insatiable love of traveling the world. She has lived in the American South, Europe and the Middle East. She now makes her home in Canada with her history-teacher husband, their two beautiful girls and a small but mighty dog. Maggie enjoys connecting with her readers at maggiekblack.com.
Books by Maggie K. Black
Love Inspired Suspense
Undercover Protection
Surviving the Wilderness
Her Forgotten Life
Cold Case Chase
Undercover Baby Rescue
Pacific Northwest K-9 Unit
Undercover Operation
Rocky Mountain K-9 Unit
Explosive Revenge
Protected Identities
Christmas Witness Protection
Runaway Witness
Witness Protection Unraveled
Christmas Witness Conspiracy
Visit the Author Profile page at LoveInspired.com for more titles.
Undercover Baby Rescue
Maggie K. Black
Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness.
—Isaiah 41:10
To everyone at the gym who puts up with the fact I talk to myself during workouts because my characters won’t be quiet long enough to let me finish my burpees.
You bring so much happiness and strength into my life and I’m endlessly thankful for you.
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Dear Reader
Excerpt from Buried Grave Secrets by Darlene L. Turner
ONE
Officer Justin Leacock of the RCMP’s National Cybercrime Unit was no stranger to the feeling that, with every move he made, he held the lives of innocent people in his hands. But as he stood in his half sister’s hospital room in Vancouver, British Columbia, and cradled his newborn baby nephew in his arms, an urgent, deep and unexpected sense of responsibility ached within his chest.
Dear Lord, please help me be a good uncle. Help me protect him with my life.
Heavy January snow buffeted against the outside window. A lump formed in Justin’s throat. His nephew was tiny and perfect. The child’s eyes were scrunched closed in sleep. His little head nestled against Justin’s shoulder, and his toes brushed against his forearm. The kid would never know just how many of Justin’s answered prayers had led to this moment. The baby’s mother, Sadie, was barely nineteen and struggled with addiction and homelessness. The baby’s father was dead.
“But here you are,” Justin whispered. “Healthy, safe and loved.”
Gingerly he eased his phone from his pocket and silently snapped a selfie of them both. Justin glanced at the screen and grimaced. His dark blond hair was scruffy, and he was three days overdue for a shave. Well, he could always crop himself out.
“Justin?” Sadie’s voice came from behind him. “Promise me you’ll never tell anyone who his father was. Ever.”
Justin turned back. His little sister was struggling to sit up against large white pillows that seemed to dwarf her skinny frame. Sadie was ten years younger than him, and he hadn’t even known she existed until Sadie had approached him at his father’s funeral two years ago and asked him for money.
“Hey, you, I didn’t realize you were awake.” He set the baby down in the bassinet beside Sadie’s bed. “Do you want me to help you sit up?”
Sadie nodded, then she leaned against his left arm while he propped the pillows up behind her back with his right.
“The nurse told me I don’t have to put the dad’s name on the birth certificate if I don’t know who he was,” Sadie said. “Only I do know. But he’s dead now. Lee died before I even knew I was pregnant.”
Justin felt his jaw clench. Lee had been a drug dealer and killer who’d taken the lives of several people, including two incredibly brave local police officers, before an officer’s bullet had ended his. Justin had failed to protect Sadie from getting involved with him. But he’d do everything in his power to protect her now.
“I think it’s okay if you leave his name off the birth certificate,” he said. “After all, he didn’t even know about him.”
And the man was dead, right? What harm could possibly come from keeping his identity a secret? Their own late father had been a good-for-nothing cheat who also suffered from addiction, and had been all too happy to let Justin work odd jobs to keep a roof over the family’s head. Sadie’s newborn child needed to be—deserved to be—protected, cared for and sheltered from his family’s problems, in a way that Justin never was.
The baby fussed softly, but not like he was upset. More like he was new to having a voice and trying to figure out how to use it. Justin looked down at his nephew. His eyes were open and blue like Justin’s and Sadie’s.
“Have you decided on a name for him yet?” Justin asked.
“Not yet,” Sadie said. “I still can’t really believe that he’s real.”
“I get that.” Justin’s eyes were still on his nephew. “There are a lot of great names in the world and plenty of time to decide.”
The baby looked at his new uncle thoughtfully.
“But there’s something else.” Sadie took a deep breath, as if summoning her courage. “I want you and Violet to adopt him.”
“What?” Justin turned back, his breath leaving his lungs in a sudden rush.
Him parent this precious child? Raise him as his own?
Lord, You know how much I want to be a father. But I’m not ready. This kid deserves better than what I can give him.
“You’re such a great person, and that one time I met your fiancée she seemed so nice.”
“Violet and I broke up. Months ago. We called it off a few days before the wedding back in May.”
He’d called it off. He’d been the one to break her heart.
Corporal Violet Jones of the RCMP’s Missing Persons Unit was the most beautiful and extraordinary person he’d ever met. Somehow Justin had convinced her to marry him. And then he’d bailed, like a coward, less than a week before the wedding, because he’d been overwhelmed. There’d been major chaos on his new team at work and multiple crises within his extended family. He’d been running around like a chicken with its head cut off, trying to put out too many fires at once—as mixed as that metaphor might be—and realized he had no right to bring a woman as extraordinary as Violet into his mess.
Or the kids they’d both wanted to have.
“It’s okay if you forgot. You’ve been going through a lot. And I’m really, incredibly flattered that you want me to adopt your baby, but—”
“Don’t keep saying it’s okay!” Sadie cut him off. Did he? Her voice was pleading. “You’re always saying things are okay when they’re not. I can’t take care of him. I’m not ready to be a mom. But you’ll be an amazing dad. I just know you will be. You’re the best person I know. You’re so good at taking care of everyone, all the time. I know you’ll teach him how to tie his shoes and ride a bike and—”
“Hey.” Justin laid a gentle hand on his sister’s arm. “You just caught me by surprise. But I’ll think about it. I promise. And no matter what happens I’m going to do my best to take care of both him and you. All right?”
Sadie nodded, but he could tell by the way the light dimmed in her eyes that she was worried about what his answer would be.
“Now I need to get back to work.” Not to mention take some time to think and pray about the bombshell his half sister had just dropped in his lap. “But I’ll pop in later tonight and see you both then. I promise.”
He gave her what he hoped was a reassuring smile. She gave him a watery one in return, then she leaned her head back against the pillows and closed her eyes. Justin looked down at his nephew. The baby had fallen asleep. Justin ran his finger down the infant’s soft cheek. Then he stepped out into the hallway and closed the door behind him.
He’d made it all the way down to the end of the maternity floor hallway when an elderly nurse with a clipboard stopped him.
“Are you Miss Sadie Roach’s social worker?”
“No. I’m family.”
The nurse frowned. “She has no family listed on file.”
“It’s complicated.”
His mother refused to acknowledge his illegitimate half sister’s existence. There was no legal record he and Sadie were related, and the fact Justin had stepped up and done his best to be Sadie’s big brother had caused even more tension in their already splintered family. His mother was constantly in crisis. His brother was in and out of rehab. He couldn’t imagine how they’d react if he adopted Sadie’s son.
“Well, you might want to advise her to call her lawyer,” the nurse said. “She was asking for drugs when she first came in and didn’t even seem to realize she was in labor. Social services are planning on making a wellness check before she’s released.”
He listened and nodded as the nurse explained that hospitals had an obligation to contact social services when parents came in exhibiting certain symptoms. None of it was a surprise. Until recently social workers were even allowed to show up in the delivery room and take children from mothers like Sadie immediately, without even giving them an opportunity to bond with them. In some places, they still were. He glanced past the nurse and watched as a wiry male nurse in scrubs, with dark curly hair and an indent at the bridge of his nose, wheeled his nephew out of Sadie’s room. He’d barely left her five minutes ago and already someone was taking the baby to the nursery.
“Thank you,” Justin told the nurse with the clipboard. “I appreciate all this.”
Justin continued down the hallway. His footsteps felt even heavier than before. A small family stood waiting for the elevator, so he took the stairs. It was the first week of January, but remnants of holiday decorations still lingered on office doors and hung from the ceiling.
Justin found himself heading for the chapel. Silence fell as he pushed through the large wooden doors, and they swung shut behind him. He slid into the back row. Stained glass windows—with brightly colored depictions of flying rain, flowers, wheat sheaths and snow, representing the four seasons—surrounded him.
He dropped to his knees and closed his eyes.
Help me, Lord. What do I do?
Unexpectedly, a question his youth pastor had asked him once, half a lifetime ago, filled his mind: “What do you want to do, Justin?”
What did he want to do?
Justin didn’t have a good answer to that question. The person manning the lifeboat didn’t get to chart a course or choose what direction he was headed. Yes, he’d wanted to be a father just as strongly as he’d wanted to be a husband. When Violet’s doctor had advised them that due to medical complications it might take some time for her to get pregnant, they’d agreed to start trying for a family as soon as they got married and also look into adoption.
But a child deserved better than a dad like Justin who kept hopping out of bed at three in the morning to take his brother to rehab or look for his sister when she wandered out of a halfway house, especially after Justin had already taken on a double shift in the National Cybercrime Unit to cover for one colleague or another who needed a hand. Violet had deserved better from a husband, too.
Sadie had told him he was good at taking care of everyone. But she was wrong. Truth was, he thought he was pretty lousy at it. But he couldn’t exactly let himself stop and think about the kind of life he wanted to have when people around him were drowning.
Suddenly, a siren pierced the stillness. It was high-pitched and unrelenting. Justin leaped to his feet. It was what they called a Code Amber—the specific alert they used when a child had been kidnapped from the premises. The hospital was going into lockdown.
He pushed through the door and ran down the hall, back toward the staircase that would lead him to his sister’s floor, only to be blocked by a towering security guard in a dark blue uniform as he reached the main lobby. At five foot eight, Justin was used to most men being taller than he was. But this guard was like a mountain.
“I’m sorry, sir,” the guard said. “Everyone’s staying put for now.”
“But I’m a police officer,” Justin protested.
The guard’s eyebrow rose. “Can I see some ID?”
Justin shook his head. He didn’t carry his badge with him when he wasn’t on duty, and the rules around child abductions were so strict he knew the guard wouldn’t be authorized to make an exception. There’d been a spate of newborn abductions from hospitals across the country in recent months. None in British Columbia, but six weeks ago a child had been snatched from across the border in Alberta. Rumor within the RCMP Major Crimes Unit, which both Justin and Violet’s departments fell under, was that some foreign criminal organization—called the L.B. Syndicate—was stealing newborns from vulnerable parents and then selling them off to wealthy couples.
Why had he left Sadie’s side? What if something happened to his nephew?
Agonizing minutes ticked by, leaving him stuck behind the makeshift security checkpoint, waiting and praying as an uneasy stillness filled the empty hospital hallways, punctuated by frantic bursts of activity. Then double doors swung open at the end of the lobby, and a flurry of both uniformed and ununiformed officers he recognized from the Missing Persons Unit rushed through.
But he only had eyes for one—Corporal Violet Jones. She wore a crisp black blazer over a white blouse, with her bright gold badge hanging on a lanyard. Her gait was steady. Steely focus filled her gaze. Then her remarkable indigo eyes met his through rectangular glasses, and she faltered a step.
“Justin! What are you doing here?”
It was the first words she’d said to him since the day he’d called off their engagement.
“Sadie just had a baby.”
Her eyes widened. Then a deep sadness washed over her features. Fear clutched his heart.
She nodded to the guard in front of him. “Let him through.”
“Thank you,” Justin called. But she’d already disappeared through another door. He bolted up the stairs to the maternity ward. But it was too late. Uniformed police officers had gathered around the door to Sadie’s room. Her heartbreaking cries echoed down the hall.
His newborn baby nephew had been kidnapped.
* * *
The early morning world was cold, damp and gray as Violet stepped out a side door of the RCMP headquarters in Vancouver and jogged down the sidewalk in the hopes of finding her favorite coffee shop open. A dull ache sat heavy in her chest. The mood in the Missing Persons Unit was tense. It had been two and a half weeks since Justin’s nephew had been snatched, just the latest in a string of six similar kidnappings across the country. Each one had been from a poor mother, with addiction and homelessness problems, no family, no money and no father listed on the birth certificate. The exact kind of person society tended not to care about.
But Sadie’s child had been different. He’d had Justin. Sadie had checked out of the hospital and disappeared back into the seedier side of the streets, within hours of her baby’s disappearance. Most of the mothers of the kidnapped babies had, maybe due to fear of involving police in their lives or the belief that no one would think they were worth helping. But Violet’s former fiancé had been relentlessly pursuing the case. Justin had called her team six times in the past twenty-four hours alone. Her colleagues had followed up with him, but apparently whatever Justin’s theory was none of them thought it held any water. And now it was only a matter of time before another child was ripped from their mother’s arms.
Violet’s boots trudged through ankle-deep slush. It was eight thirty on a Thursday, and storefronts to her left and right were closed. The city’s snowplows hadn’t cleared the streets and sidewalks yet. The sky had dumped almost two fresh feet of snow the night before, where it had quickly mixed with the dirty gray sludge and ice left over from the last snowfall.
