Jacqueline Diamond - The Baby's Bodyguard

“Don’t be so sure,” Jack retorted. “A predator doesn’t need the kind of motive you or I might recognize. And there are other motives that might not be obvious. A grudge, for instance. What about former tenants? Did your mother report any problems?”

“No. Everybody’s lived here for at least two years.”

“Are any of them unstable? I presume your mom ran a credit check, right?”

She nodded. “I hope you’re not planning to give them the third degree! They’re not just renters, they’re friends.”

“I’d like a list of their names,” he said calmly. “I’ll start interviewing them first thing tomorrow. Trust me, I know how to debrief witnesses without antagonizing them.”

“Tomorrow’s Sunday.” Casey supposed she shouldn’t be throwing roadblocks in his path, but Jack’s hard-nosed attitude put her back up. Besides, her attacker had to be a stranger.

“Tomorrow afternoon then,” he countered. “Don’t tell me they spend the entire day in prayer and seclusion.”

“This isn’t a monastery!”

“That much would be obvious to anyone looking at you.” Grinning crookedly, he reached out and took her hands. Casey saw his gaze fall on the wedding ring she wore.

Did he think she still considered herself married? She only wore the ring because of her condition, but let him think whatever he liked.

Besides, a glow was spreading through her as his thumbs stroked the backs of her hands. He smelled of masculine aftershave lotion, which reminded Casey of how she used to enjoy burying her face in his thick hair and trailing her mouth down to the corner of his jaw. It had always made him catch his breath and lean toward her…

…Just as he was doing now, so close their foreheads nearly touched. She ought to draw back. She didn’t want to give him the wrong impression. She didn’t want to give herself the wrong impression, either.

Her shift of position must have put pressure on her abdomen, because Diane kicked. Startled, Casey pulled back. “Ow!”

Worry deepened the faint lines around Jack’s mouth. “Is something wrong?”

She shook her head. “The baby let me know she doesn’t like being squeezed. It didn’t hurt. She just startled me.”

He frowned. “You said ‘she.’ Does that mean you had one of those tests?”

Casey nodded. “It’s a girl. I’m naming her Diane.”

“That’s a nice name.” Releasing her hands, he flexed his shoulders. “I think I’ll eat that food now. Then I’ll take a stroll around the premises. I’d like to see how things look in the dark.”

She decided not to argue, although the question of whether Jack was staying here and for how long remained unresolved. Right now, she felt too relaxed.

After he went out, instructing her to lock the door behind him, Casey remembered what he’d said about this possibly being someone she knew. She preferred to speculate that it might be a transient camping out on vacant land in the area. If so, she hoped Jack would find him soon.

Maybe this visit hadn’t been such a bad idea, as long as they kept it short. Like it or not, he was Diane’s biological father. Someday their daughter would want to meet him and establish a relationship.

When that day came, maybe he’d remember sitting here learning about her for the first time. It might make him a little more welcoming.

For their daughter’s sake, Casey hoped so.

* * *

JACK’S PATROL DIDN’T turn up anything suspicious. It did reveal how exposed the cabins were, however.

The few exterior lighting fixtures left plenty of shadows, and no lampposts brightened the twilit footpaths. Prowling through the darkness, he could see right into most of the four units through their flimsy curtains. They didn’t even have fences to stop someone from crossing through the yards.

If it weren’t so expensive, he’d recommend installing surveillance cameras. But that, he admitted silently, might be overkill.

While he tried to keep his mind on the job, his impressions from the past hour kept drifting back. He still couldn’t fully grasp the fact that he’d gotten Casey pregnant eight months ago. All this time, his child had been growing inside her, and he’d had no clue.

His child. A little girl. Diane.

He couldn’t figure out how to integrate the idea of her into his worldview. Certainly he bore the tyke no hard feelings, even though she’d sprung into being against his wishes. And he knew he had moral and legal obligations to her. But what exactly was he supposed to do?

It wasn’t as if he had any role models to draw on. His own father had loved only one thing: alcohol.

He’d lost job after job because of it, and beaten his wife and little boy in a rage when he was drunk. Jack had learned early how to stay out of Pop’s way. He hadn’t been big enough to defend his mom and she’d never mustered the strength to stand up for herself. When she became sick, Pop had disappeared. Later, he’d landed in prison.

The last time Jack had heard from his father, while he was in college, it had been with a request for cash. Knowing what the money would be spent on, he’d refused. A few years later, his father had died from alcohol poisoning.

Maybe he should have suffered regrets. The only thing he’d regretted had been his father’s complete failure in relation to his family.

Jack knew he wasn’t like his old man. He rarely drank, and he would die before he’d hurt Casey or her child. Just thinking about how defenseless they were made his fists clench in a protective gesture.

The problem was, although he knew theoretically what a father was supposed to be like, he didn’t have it in him. Maybe the instincts lay buried, but the prospect of digging them out got him tangled up with frustration and pain, old emotions he tried hard to put behind him.

He could still hear the sarcasm darkening Pop’s voice when his irritation level began to rise. He remembered the explosions and his mother’s fear, along with his own terror and misplaced sense of guilt. The old wounds had never fully healed. Jack didn’t intend to rip them open again.

Grimly, he finished tracing the perimeter of the cleared part of Casey’s property and turned back. From the rental car, he collected his suitcase and laptop and let himself inside with a key he’d borrowed from Casey.

When he entered, the living room lay quiet. Instead of loud music or the blare of a TV, only a soft humming from the direction of the bedrooms broke the peace.

“Casey?” he called. “In here.”

Pushing past his reluctance, Jack walked through a short hall and entered the nursery. Casey stood ratcheting a teddy-bear mobile onto the crib. When she saw him, she pushed a button on the device, setting off a music-box version of “The Teddy Bears’ Picnic.”

His wife smiled as tinkling music filled the room. Tiny teddy bears revolved, their furry paws outstretched as if eager for Diane’s arrival. You couldn’t have shot a better commercial for home and happiness, Jack thought with an ache.

At the first foster home he’d gone to, when he was eleven, he’d walked into a nursery where the parents’ own six-month-old sat cooing and playing with a clown mobile. He didn’t remember the tune, but it had made him long for his mother.

The foster parents had rushed in and ordered him out as if he posed a threat to their precious offspring. He was never to go in there again, the man had snapped. They’d set up a cot for him in the sewing room; that was his place.

He’d learned later that that couple had never cared for foster children before and had taken him in because they needed money. They hadn’t been prepared for the moodiness of a preadolescent, for his flashes of anger or even for his poor table manners.