Not Without Her Child, page 1
“What’s going on, Brian? Where are you going?”
“To Perrysville.”
Jessica’s glance intensified. “Why?”
He told her about extending the cell-tower search. That he’d found a match for the messages that had been sent to her. “Bonnie Lichen is in Perrysville.”
Tears sprang to her eyes. “You think...Bonnie has Brooke?”
“I’m not jumping to any conclusions at this point. I just think the tower evidence is worth a conversation.”
“In person.”
“I want her to look me in the eye, yes.”
“You want to take her by surprise and see if my daughter is there with her. I’m coming with you.”
He had no idea what he’d be walking into. “Jess...”
“I’m coming.”
She was paying him. Could fire him on the spot, and go alone.
She would do it. He had no doubt about that. No matter what danger she could find herself in. If Bonnie was more involved rather than less. If she had a gun, too...
With a single nod of his head, he waited for her to get her purse and join him.
Dear Reader,
There comes a time in life when you just have to listen to your own heart, your own instincts. When, in spite of what others might say, you have to be true to what you know. This book is one of those times. The story came to me, and while it didn’t fit what I was currently doing, it wouldn’t leave. Jessica wouldn’t leave. Her story had to be told.
Jessica is a woman who follows her own path, in spite of everyone around her advising her differently. And doing so gives her strength. It’s not about whether she’s right or wrong. It’s about trusting herself. And being the person she feels herself to be.
And it’s a story about Brian. A man who follows his own course, who uses his skills to the best of his ability to find the truth. Good or bad.
I had no idea going in where this story was going to lead me. I had to take it on faith that it would work. I’m moved by the final result and I hope you are, too!
Tara Taylor Quinn
NOT WITHOUT HER CHILD
Tara Taylor Quinn
A USA TODAY bestselling author of over 105 novels in twenty languages, Tara Taylor Quinn has sold more than seven million copies. Known for her intense emotional fiction, Ms. Quinn’s novels have received critical acclaim in the UK and most recently from Harvard. She is the recipient of the Readers’ Choice Award and has appeared often on local and national TV, including CBS Sunday Morning.
For TTQ offers, news and contests, visit www.tarataylorquinn.com!
Books by Tara Taylor Quinn
Harlequin Romantic Suspense
Sierra’s Web
Tracking His Secret Child
Cold Case Sheriff
The Bounty Hunter’s Baby Search
On the Run with His Bodyguard
Not Without Her Child
The Coltons of Colorado
Colton Countdown
Where Secrets are Safe
Her Detective’s Secret Intent
Shielded in the Shadows
Falling for His Suspect
The Coltons of New York
Protecting Colton’s Baby
Visit the Author Profile page at
Harlequin.com for more titles.
For Rachel Reames Stoddard—you are my Brooke. I love you more than life.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Excerpt from Colton’s Deadly Affair by Jennifer D. Bokal
Chapter 1
There were balloons. Two small, helium-filled ones on sticks in a bud vase. The vase sat next to a big, happy, pink-sprinkled cupcake with two candles.
They’d made Jessica feel good as she’d purchased them, brought them home, placed them on the table. She’d been actively engaged in being a mother celebrating her two-year-old daughter’s birthday.
But when she’d walked past them a few minutes later...she’d avoided looking at them. Hadn’t been in the kitchen since.
Her stomach growled. Dinnertime had come and gone.
There’d been no party.
How she’d thought, even for a second, that she’d pull it off, she didn’t know. Couldn’t remember why she’d wanted to try.
Some idea that by celebrating Brooke’s birthday, she was putting out to the universe her belief that her daughter was still alive. That there was a birthday to celebrate. Holding fate, or whatever power might be out there, responsible for her toddler’s life. For ensuring that there remained a child for her to find.
And maybe she’d been showing Clint, too. Her ex-husband had succeeded in stealing her little girl, but he would not break her. He wouldn’t take away the milestones. The joy in celebrating Brooke’s birth. Her existence. He would not steal an ounce of the strength she needed to continue what had already been an eighteen-month search.
Presenting herself at the table, she sat right in front of the little celebration she’d laid out, peeled the paper sides from the single-serving frosted concoction. Took a bite.
One.
Nearly choked, trying to get it past the tightness in her throat.
Blinked back tears at her sad little party. The lack of brightly colored packages and bows.
Until emotion gave way to the determination that fed her soul, and she knew the gift that she had to give her daughter.
She’d read a state news piece that morning about a firm of experts in fields like psychiatry, criminal investigation, IT, finance and law. Headquartered in Phoenix, they solved crimes, puzzles and family dilemmas.
She’d been told over and over—by colleagues, a counselor, friends, the detective she’d first spoken to who checked in regularly, the FBI agent on the case, the stepmother who’d raised her—to let law enforcement do their jobs. That they had the best of the best working round the clock to find Brooke.
But that firm of experts—Sierra’s Web, they were called—had become nationally known, and one reviewer claimed they could do what the police and FBI couldn’t do.
What that was, she didn’t know, and how much money she could potentially waste hiring them—she didn’t know that either.
Neither did she care.
She was a mom and she was going to buy her two-year-old daughter the best birthday present ever. A way home.
* * *
She’d said she’d pick him up at the airport. Brian Powers hadn’t expected his new client to be waiting at the security checkpoint so early on a Friday morning as he walked from the gate to baggage claim.
Even if he hadn’t recognized the attractive oval face with the big blue eyes, the searching expression she wore—one edged with a hint of desperation—would have given her away to him. The sign she held, bearing his name in bold black letters, was only confirmation.
The loose, long blond ponytail, the slim gray pants, heels and short-sleeved silky business shirt all fit with the images he’d studied during the flight—images that were all part of the portfolio he’d compiled the night before. With help from a Sierra’s Web IT expert.
At first glance, Jessica Johnson, thirty-one-year-old accountant and financial trader, looked as impressive in person as she did on paper.
And how would she look if Brian couldn’t bring her the answers she needed? He’d find her daughter. Or at least find evidence to give her closure, if the latter were an impossibility. Eighteen months had passed since she’d last seen her little girl. Bodies decomposed.
In terms of an alive-and-well discovery...statistics just were not in their favor.
All of which he kept to himself as, garment bag and satchel straps over one shoulder, he approached and met the determined mother’s gaze. “Jessica?”
“Mr. Powers?” she returned, sounding every bit the businesswoman she was and, when he nodded, added, “Thank you so much for coming.”
She met his gaze head-on. Chin up. He saw the moisture in her eyes, made a mental note, but didn’t acknowledge it between them. He wasn’t there to get all up in her personal drama.
Doing so could cause him to let her down. Emotions tended to cloud judgment, and he couldn’t afford to miss whatever minute clue had been eluding law enforcement for so many months.
And so, when she started giving him the laydown about Fayetteville, Arkansas, the second largest town in the state and home to the University of Arkansas, he listened, noting the layout of the regional airport as they went. He’d researched the area as best he could in the limited time he’d had, but every word out of Jessica Johnson’s mout
“Thank you for getting here so quickly,” she said as she led him from baggage claim out to the parking lot. “I rented a place for you through the end of next weekend, thinking we’d reassess after that. If you aren’t comfortable there, or we get an idea of maybe wanting to rent for a month, or...”
Her words trailed off and he felt the void of silence with a heaviness he shoved away. He couldn’t tell her that this could all be over within that first week, but he was fairly sure that the thought had been what she’d left off the end of her sentence.
“And the vehicle you’ll be driving...it was Clint’s. I’ve started it a few times, but, other than to leave it at the apartment I rented for you, it hasn’t been driven since he went to prison...”
For kidnapping their baby girl. He’d been in prison for fifteen of the eighteen months Jessica—and the Fayetteville police, the Arkansas state police, the county’s sheriff’s department, US Marshals Service Missing Child Program, and the FBI—had been searching for her daughter. And he still had a minimum of another twenty-one months to serve.
Twenty-one months times four—roughly eighty-four more weeks to torture his ex-wife with false leads, give or take a five-week month.
She’d sent Brian a list of the sixty-four leads Clint Johnson had already given her—one a week since he went to prison—leads he’d only give if she visited with him every week. With at least one visit a month in person, and the rest by video.
“It’s actually a truck, a sports model with a back seat, short bed, blue.” She’d led them through a front parking area directly outside the terminal and was heading toward another lot further back. Pulling his bag—not his regular go-bag, but the larger one that held a week’s worth of clothes in addition to his other necessities—Brian just listened.
To the tone of her voice. The cadence and rapidness with which she spoke. Learning all he could as quickly as he could.
Needing to know her as Clint knew her—even as he silently acknowledged that he never would. Clint had been married to Jessica for almost a decade. Had had a child with her...
“The truck was still in my name—after the divorce was final, my ex-husband had been given a month to get a loan of his own to buy it from me at cost.” She chatted, walked briskly without any breathiness, never glanced toward him.
“I’m going to sell it,” she continued, and Brian couldn’t determine if she was going on about the minutia because to do more was so difficult, because she was uncomfortable with him and uneasy about having hired him, or if she was just one of those people who talked all the time, sharing whatever came to mind.
“Just...until she’s found... Forensics is through with it. It was returned to me after the trial. But that backseat is her last-known whereabouts and...”
And that’s why they’d been talking about his mode of transportation. Her motive became clear. She hadn’t been jabbering. She’d been giving him exactly what he needed from her.
The inside scoop.
She was right on task. Not avoiding painful conversation, not feeling uncomfortable about hiring him...she’d already gone to work.
First thing on his agenda that early May morning was to go over every inch of that truck with his own forensic kit.
They’d reached a full-sized black SUV, a couple of years old he could tell by the taillights on her particular model. The unlock system activated as they approached and she lifted the tailgate, stepping back as he moved forward to load his suitcase.
He caught a whiff of lavender—from the vehicle, or from her, he couldn’t be sure. He wasn’t opposed to it.
The rear-facing car seat in the second row hit him with a less than pleasant punch. Reminding him of the daunting task ahead.
He’d find the child. One way or another, he’d find her.
But that didn’t necessarily put a little girl back in that seat.
The only way to do that was to find little Brooke Johnson alive. An end result that was completely out of his control...
And if he didn’t fill that car seat?
He’d carry around Jessica Johnson’s heartache for the rest of his life.
Came with the job—that trunk of pain. But the other side of that—giving people closure so that they could get on with their lives...
At the moment, giving this grieving mother the answers that would free her from the unending nightmare of fruitless search...
That was his reason for being alive.
Chapter 2
“I’m taking you straight to the apartment,” Jessica said as she pulled out of the airport. “I’ve paid to have the kitchen stocked with basics—eggs, milk, bread, condiments, coffee, tea, that kind of thing. And the truck is already there as well.” She’d driven it over just after dawn, and walked back to her place before heading to the airport. Reaching into the plastic storage bin on the side of her door, she pulled out a large clasped envelope. “You’ll find keys to the apartment and to the truck in there. As well as prepaid gas and grocery cards. I’ll refill the cards as needed.”
No “Good to meet you. How was your flight?” Or even “Welcome to Fayetteville.” The second she’d seen the confident stride in the dark-haired man come toward her, read the compassion in his striking hazel gaze, she’d lost the ability for pleasantries.
He touched something inside her, a part of her she’d thought dead, and that wasn’t a good thing. She didn’t have the time, or energy, to...feel.
Not on a personal level.
The man was not her savior.
In the first place, she didn’t need one. Wouldn’t accept one even if it landed from space on her doorstep.
And if he was Brooke’s savior, she didn’t need to be slowing down the process by making anything about his presence in their lives about herself.
“You’ve got a one-bedroom place, but there’s a nice-sized living area, separate kitchen and private balcony. The complex doesn’t normally rent by the week, but the owner is a client of mine. The furnishings are from one of the model units.”
He’d opened the envelope. Had pulled out the simple O-ring upon which she’d loaded both truck and apartment keys. She could feel the second he glanced over at her.
Her peripheral vision told her he wasn’t looking away.
She couldn’t have that. “What?” she asked. “If there’s something not to your liking, just speak up...” She’d do whatever she could to get him everything he needed.
Hell, she’d make his meals, do all of his shopping, even shine his shoes if they were things he required to be at his best.
“You’re very thorough.” He sounded impressed.
She didn’t want him to be impressed. She wanted him to use his expert skills to pull tricks she didn’t know about out of a bag she hadn’t seen and find Brooke.
“I’m determined,” she countered. Determined enough that she was cashing in stock to pay Sierra’s Web’s hefty fee on an off chance that they were as good as the article, and plethora of testimonials, had claimed them to be.
She’d just hired him—or rather, the Sierra’s Web firm—the day before. “And I don’t sleep much.”
He nodded, went back to the envelope, but didn’t pull out anything else.
“There’s a complex card in there that gives you access to the outdoor gated pool area and into the fitness room.”
“I would have been fine with a hotel room.”
“I’m getting the apartment at half the cost of a decent hotel room where I’d have to pay by the night.”
Because the real estate investor who owned the complex, and rentals all over Fayetteville, had made a lot of money due to Jessica’s handling of his finances.
And maybe because he and his wife felt sorry for her.
She couldn’t do anything about that.
“My place is a mile away,” she told him. “The address is also in there. I’m available to you anytime, day or night, to answer questions or provide information. Since my home is the site of the abduction, I’m assuming you’ll want to take a look at things at some point.”
