Delores Fossen - Reining in Justice

After all, Reed had shot one of them, so there’d be blood in the backyard. If the guy was in the system, then they could get a match, and in Reed’s experience, once they had a name, they could start figuring out what had gone on. People generally didn’t commit assorted felonies, including attempted kidnapping and murder, for no reason.

“Thank you,” Addison told Reed when the medic walked away. “You saved our lives.”

True, but only because they’d gotten lucky by being in the right place at the right time. Reed hated it’d taken something as fragile as luck to make that happen.

Luck might not be on their side again.

After the SUV sped away, his lawman’s instincts had been for him to turn his truck around and go in pursuit, but it would have been too big a risk. Those gunmen could have started shooting again. Reed wanted to catch the dirtbags, but he hadn’t wanted to do that by putting Addison, the baby and even Colt in further danger.

Even though the adrenaline was still pumping through him, Reed forced himself to sit down next to Addison in the E.R. examining stall. Over the past year he’d completely avoided any contact with his ex, and she’d done the same with him. But this wasn’t personal now.

He repeated that to himself.

Funny, but it always felt personal with Addison, and that wasn’t personal in a good way. Too many old, bad memories were in the mix, too.

Before the split, they’d been married for nearly three years, had dated five years before that, but their long relationship had soured big-time when Addison pressed and pressed him to have kids.

And they’d tried despite his reservations about fatherhood and the strain that pregnancy would put on her body.

However, her infertility had only added to their differences. One failed in vitro procedure after another, and they’d finally pulled the plug a year ago on both the baby plans and the marriage, and he had filed for a divorce. Addison had moved to San Antonio, and Reed had thought he might never see her again.

Clearly, he’d been wrong about that, because here she was and apparently in a boatload of trouble.

“I was only going to be here a few weeks,” Addison volunteered. “Just enough time to get the place ready to sell. If they’d come after me while I was at my apartment in San Antonio, they might have succeeded in taking her.”

It was true, but Reed didn’t bother confirming it. Addison was already shaken up enough. “Did the P.I., Blake Rooney, visit you at your apartment?”

She nodded. “He came earlier this week.”

Reed didn’t like the timing of that. “Did you tell him you were coming to your late aunt’s place here in Sweetwater Springs?”

Addison shook her head, at first, but then the alarm went through her eyes. “He saw my suitcases and baby things and asked if I was going on a trip. I told him I’d inherited a house and was going to sell it. You think Rooney had something to do with those kidnappers?”

“Maybe. Colt’s trying to contact him now,” Reed explained. “We’ll make sure he’s okay and bring him in for questioning.”

It was possible Rooney had indeed suspected something illegal about Emily’s adoption or had even been a part of it. That was Reed’s top theory now. But it must have been many steps past being bad for someone to send three armed men to steal whatever the P.I. had discovered.

Or to learn what Addison might have done.

If she had indeed participated in an illegal adoption, then someone might have wanted to cover it up. The problem was she might not even have known she’d done anything illegal. That meant Addison would need to be questioned thoroughly to make sure everything was aboveboard.

The door to the examining room opened, and a nurse stuck her head in. “You’ll be able to go soon. Just waiting on the paperwork from the doctor.”

Soon couldn’t come soon enough for Reed. He needed to put some space between Addison and him, but that wouldn’t happen until he started to get some answers to all those questions he had.

“Why’d you decide to go ahead and adopt a baby?” Reed asked, figuring it was a simple enough question and a good way to go back to the beginning. “Being a single parent couldn’t have been an easy decision for you.”

Something flashed through Addison’s eyes. Maybe because this wasn’t exactly a safe subject for them. After all, it’d been at the root of their breakup.

“I’m thirty-four and decided not to wait any longer for the right fertility treatment,” she finally answered. “Or wait for Mr. Right, for that matter. Haven’t had much luck in that department.”

She paused just long enough for him to understand he was in the Mr. Wrong category, but Reed hadn’t needed the pause to get that.

“You know how much I’ve always wanted to be a mom,” she added a moment later.

He did, and that said it all. Addison had wanted it and had gone for it. But maybe in going for it, she had cut the wrong kinds of corners.

“If you hired Rooney, you must have suspected something wasn’t right,” Reed tossed out there.

She got that look in her eyes again, as if this was the last thing on earth she wanted to discuss. Tough. They were discussing it.

“Not suspected. But I was worried,” she explained, “because of all the things I was hearing.”

Yeah, he got that, too. The black-market baby rings had been all over the news. Pregnant women had been kidnapped and their babies sold. In some cases, the birth mothers had been murdered, but others had escaped. Maybe Addison had wanted to make sure one of those escapees wasn’t Emily’s real birth mother. If so, that birth mother could step in and take Emily from her long after the adoption had been finalized.

“Could this be related to something...well, personal?” he asked. “Like maybe a boyfriend or ex who wants to get back at you?”

She shook her head, seemingly relieved, and looked away. “You’re the only ex I have who hates me.”

Reed opened his mouth to say he didn’t hate her. That he only hated the demands she’d put on him to become a father.

However, it was best not to go there.

“But, no. There’s no recent ex. No recent anything since Emily,” Addison said.

Maybe, but Reed kept pressing. “What about your job? Are you still working as an accountant?”

Another nod. “But I’m not working on anything that’d cause kidnappers to come after Emily and me. I’m sure,” she added before he could challenge that.

“I’ll need a list of all your recent clients anyway,” Reed continued. Addison dealt with people’s bank accounts and such, and it was possible someone hadn’t wanted her to uncover some illegal activity.

“I’ll give you whatever you need to find those men,” she said, her voice shaky again. Actually, she was shaky, too. The room wasn’t cold, but he figured she was about to deal with an adrenaline crash.

A sob tore from her mouth, and she leaned her head against him. Reed would have had to be a coldhearted jerk to push her away. But he made things a lot worse by putting his arm around her and pulling her against him.

“I’m scared,” Addison whispered.

She had reason to be scared, but Reed didn’t voice that. Nor did he ease her away though the shaking started to ease up a little.

He settled for saying, “I don’t think these guys were amateurs. They could have killed you the moment they broke into your house. They didn’t. Instead they wanted to know what you’d learned and who you’d told. Maybe about the adoption, maybe about something else. I think that’s why they took your files, laptop and cell phone.”

“Oh, God.” Addison got to her feet so fast that she startled the baby. “Last night I called Jewell at the county jail.” She frantically shook her head. “I just wanted to tell her about Emily.”