Lindsay Longford - Dead Calm

Except with Roberts.

Cammie tapped her arm. “Want me to call the Department of Children and Family Services?”

“Yes, please.” Sophie looked away from the empty glass doors. “Until we find out where our little angel belongs, that’s our only choice. I hope the woman who died wasn’t her mother. I hope that somewhere out there is someone who’s looking for this beautiful baby.” Near her breast the tiny mouth moved damply, tugging at something deep inside her. “This little girl doesn’t deserve to be thrown into the system. Be passed around from foster home to foster home.” Sophie found her arms curling possessively around the infant. “She needs parents, Cammie. A mother.”

“All the babies do. It’s not our decision, though.” Cammie looked away. “If her parents or relatives can’t be located…you know how it is, Dr. Brennan. Like you told your cop. That’s where she’ll wind up.”

“I do. It’s a hard world sometimes, Cammie.”

“It is. Nothing we can do about it. It is what it is.”

Sophie shifted the baby to her other shoulder, settling her in snugly. “How long have you worked at Poinciana? Have things changed so much?”

Cammie shrugged.

“Because in the two years I’ve been here, it seems as though we’re seeing a lot more gunshots and beatings. Abused babies and kids. Or is it my imagination? I haven’t checked the hospital statistics.” Sophie tried to smile past the ache in her heart. “I know what you said earlier, but tell me it’s my imagination and the result of too many long hours, Cammie. Please. I need to believe that.”

“Poinciana’s a good town. People are good here. Most of them are. But, sí, things have changed. There’s a different feel to the town these days. All this graffiti springing up everywhere, overnight, it seems. Kids hijacking the Santa kettles. And these fires at places of worship, for heaven’s sake. Sometimes, I am afraid. It doesn’t feel like my town anymore. Not the Poinciana I knew.”

From the corner of her eye Sophie glimpsed stringy hair. She turned, snuggling the baby closer. “What is it, Billy Ray?”

“I wanted to see the baby. They said the baby was here.” He edged around the curtain into the examining room. “Is the baby all right?”

“Yes.”

His face scrunched up in something that she thought might be relief. “Okay, then. I was wondering, that’s all. What’s going to happen to her?”

“She’ll stay here for a day or two for observation. We’ll see if anyone can identify her.” Even saying the words felt so wrong to Sophie that she stumbled over them. “If she’s healthy and we haven’t found her family, then Social Services will come and take her to an out-placement home.”

Billy Ray twisted a strand of his hair. “That’s okay. I guess. She’s safe, isn’t she?”

“Sure she is.” Sophie held up the baby girl so Billy Ray could see her.

Sleepy brown eyes peered over the edge of the light blanket as Billy Ray leaned farther into the room. He chewed his lip. “She looks okay then. Okay. I gotta go finish my shift.”

And as abruptly as he’d appeared, he vanished.

Sophie watched him lurch away. “Did Billy Ray seem more Billy Rayish than usual? Or is that my imagination, too?”

Cammie laughed and reached for the baby. “He’s been Billy Rayish all night long. There’s a full moon. I’ll take the baby up to pediatrics and then alert Social Services. I see Dr. Bornes is finally here. You can head for home now, can’t you?”

An inexplicable reluctance kept Sophie’s arms around the fragile bundle. She stared down at the silky eyebrows and wide-open eyes watching her. “Oh, you decided to wake up and join the party, did you, sweetheart?”

From the safety of her blanket, Baby Doe reached up and caught a curl of Sophie’s hair and gripped for all she was worth, holding on as if she’d never let go, holding on as if she had understood every word Sophie and Cammie said.

Holding on to Sophie as if she were a lifeline.

“Cammie, I’ll take her up to Peds. And hold off on the call to Children and Families, okay?” she said abruptly and headed out the door.

With every step Sophie took down the long hall, she felt that tiny grip grow more powerful.

Felt those tiny fingers close around her heart.

Hours later, as night melted into gray pre-dawn, Finnegan found himself at the beach off the island.

He hadn’t slept.

Earlier, Tyree had dropped him off at the station. Judah had waved him off, fired up his bike and taken off into a world filled with drumming rain. Blending with the roar of rain and wind, the Harley six-cylinder engine throbbed beneath him.

They were off-duty. It was time to go home.

He meant to go home.

He really, really meant to go home.

But he’d thought about the baby. Laying there in the manger for over an hour before they’d taken it to the hospital. He shook his head and slewed rain drops off his helmet. Not it. Her. Taken her to the ER.

To Sophie, who’d cradled that baby to her as if the tiny mite was her own.

Sophie, whose pale skin and big eyes had swallowed her face and whose scent lingered treacherously in his nostrils. A Judas of the senses, that perfume that was only Sophie.

Streaking down back roads and over bayou bridges, he’d lifted his face to the rain, let it wash over him, and he still smelled her, the scent of woman underneath the cinnamon and antiseptic.

Even with the sensory memories flooding him, the memory that sent a shiver of foreboding down him was the one of Sophie holding the baby.

An hour before dawn, with rain blinding him and Sophie’s scent filling him, he’d braked hard, tires screaming against slippery pavement, and headed west over one more bridge.

To the island.

To her house.

To Sophie.

He told himself he could interview her there just as well as at the hospital or the station house. No problem. He was cool. She didn’t have any power over him. He was immune. The interview would be official, nothing more.

A less honest man would have believed it, too.

Even so, even knowing he was being a damn bonehead, he crouched over the Harley and rode its rumbling engine into the storm wind. To Sophie.

The thought of her name brought her face in front of him, mixed the remembered scent of her with the clean rain smell and sent his blood skipping and slipping through his veins.

He didn’t pretend that the pulsing in his groin had anything at all to do with the throbbing of the bike beneath him. He didn’t want to see her again.

He wanted to…

And so he’d whipped the bike around and damned himself for a fool as he flew onto the bridge, coming down with a hard bounce that jolted him to the top of his aching shoulder.

Now, a surly gray sky shrouded gray surf thundering onto the beach. Storm-driven salt spray stung his face, clung to a two-day stubble and dripped down his jacket. Gritty with sand and sleeplessness, his eyes burned as he peered through rain and mist at the surf.

She was out there.

Far out on the horizon where the Gulf of Mexico blurred into the sky, he could see the narrow stripe of black against gray that was Sophie.

She hadn’t slept either.

Hunkered down, nothing more than a shadow in shadows on the beach, he watched as she rose from bended knees. She crouched over the board, riding the power, waiting. Her small hands gripped the side of the board. Then, balanced, steady, she stood upright, arms flung out parallel to the board.

He inhaled.

Breathtaking, that small shape out there in all that darkness, facing nature’s might. He clasped his hands tightly against his knees.

Watched.

And waited with her. Forever, it seemed, in those moments as he watched powerless.