Jessica Andersen - Secret Witness

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Though she’s tried out professions ranging from cleaning sea lion cages to cloning glaucoma genes, from patent law to training horses, Jessica is happiest when she’s combining all these interests with her first love: writing romances. These days she’s delighted to be writing full-time on a farm in rural Connecticut that she shares with a small menagerie and a hero named Brian. She hopes you’ll visit her at www.JessicaAndersen.com for info on upcoming books, contests and to say hi!

For my critique partner, Liana Dalton, who always knows when to say, “You can do better!” and when to say, “Where’s the rest?”

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

Epilogue

“Jilly? Jilly, where are you?” Stephanie Alberts launched herself up the stairs toward her daughter’s bedroom. The starched white lab coat tangled around her calves. The nerves that had sizzled to life when Maureen had called her home from work clutched at her heart.

Not this, her mind begged. Please not this.

“Are you in here, baby?” she called into the frilly little room, trying to keep it light in case Jilly was only hiding. “Look! Mommy’s home early. Don’t you want to come out and play?”

There were no furtive, laughing eyes peering out from beneath the bed. No thumping of tiny feet running across the thick braided rug.

The little room was full of things—stuffed animals and model horses and the ruffled child-sized bed that Steph and Luis had picked out before Jilly was born. But there were no miniature red sneakers sticking out from beneath the frothy pink curtains. No stifled giggles.

“Jilly? Jilly, answer me or you’re going to be in big trouble!” The sick feeling in Steph’s stomach was getting worse by the minute. Where was her baby?

She felt a touch on her shoulder and whirled, hoping against hope—but it was only her aunt Maureen.

“She’s not in the house. I told you, I looked everywhere. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry!” The older woman’s gray eyes filled. Her soft cheeks trembled. Even so many years ago, when she’d told the eight-year-old Steph that her parents were dead, Maureen hadn’t looked this devastated.

The comparison was terrifying. Steph pushed it aside. “She has to be somewhere! If she’s not in the yard, then she’s in the house.” Her voice rose. She couldn’t help it. “She has to be here! Jilly? Jilly, you come out here right this minute!”

The doorbell rang and Steph glanced out the window. A blue-and-white cruiser was parked on the cobblestones outside the narrow house, looking out of place amidst carefully tended homes whose exteriors had barely changed since Paul Revere’s ride.

“The police are here,” she said on a note of rising hysteria as the bell rang again. “Why are they here? Oh God, what if—?”

Maureen tugged her into the hall, down the stairs, and Steph could feel the other woman’s hand shaking, could hear the quiver in her voice when she said, “I called them right after I called you. I swear to you, Stephanie, that I didn’t take my eyes off Jilly for more than a moment. I think…”

Maureen couldn’t finish.

Steph tried to force words between her numb lips, but they stuck as her aunt opened the door to reveal a pair of uniformed officers standing shoulder to shoulder. The bottom dropped out of her world as reality kicked in.

Jilly was gone.

WHEN HIS cell phone burbled a tinny version of Beethoven’s Fifth, Reid balanced the weights on his chest, glared at the phone and lost count of his repetitions.

“Don’t answer it,” he told himself firmly. It was his first day off in over a month, for heaven’s sake, and he’d planned on doing some serious relaxing.

He deserved it. The Solomon brothers were behind bars awaiting arraignment, and even District Attorney Hedlund had grudgingly agreed that Reid and his partner had built a solid case against the two punks. The owners of the robbed convenience stores had all agreed to testify, and Chinatown was safer by another two criminals. It was a done deal. Da-da-da-DUM. The phone seemed to ring louder the longer he ignored it. He started to get that itchy feeling between his shoulder blades that he usually got just before a takedown went south. Or maybe it was just sweat running down his back and he was a paranoid cop who was always ready to assume the worst. Da-Da-Da-DUM. “Damn it.” He banged the free weights back onto their rack and snatched up the phone. “Peters.”

There was no answer. In the background, he could hear the squawk of a radio and loud, urgent voices.

Reid snapped, “Sturgeon, is that you? What’re you doing at the station? This is our first day off in forever, and—”

“Detective Peters?” The soft, tearful female voice was most definitely not that of Reid’s partner, but it sounded familiar. His heart gained a beat and he angled the phone away from his ear for a belated glance at the display.

“Yes, this is Peters.” His libido gave a big BA-BOOM when he saw the number and the name, but then the radio squealed again in the background and the itch intensified. “Miss Alberts? Stephanie? What’s wrong?”

Loud silence again, then she gulped, clearly fighting a sob. “I’m sorry to bother you on your day off, but you gave me your card…” He was drawing breath to tell her it was fine and please get to the point when she hiccupped and said, “My daughter’s gone.”

Reid’s stomach sank like a stone. He’d never met Stephanie’s daughter, but his mind quickly supplied the image of another child, a broken body lying curled around a rag doll that was no more lifeless than the little girl. God, he hated it when there were kids involved.

“I’ll be right there.”

When he pulled up in front of Stephanie Alberts’s house a few minutes later, Reid thought that the collection of cruisers and uniforms outside the lovely historic home seemed an abomination. Nothing bad should happen in a neighborhood where flags streamed from every front door and the Freedom Trail was a red stripe down the middle of the brick sidewalk on either side of the cobblestone road. Tasteful brass plaques gleamed beside doorways, engraved with the names of builders and dates and important moments in the American Revolution.

This was Patriot District. Nothing bad should happen in Patriot. It was a national landmark, for Chrissakes.

“I’m sorry, sir. You can’t go up there.” A uniform reached out to detain Reid and he yanked out his badge.

“Peters. Chinatown. And don’t get in my way,” he snarled.

Though they both knew he had zero jurisdiction, the rookie nodded him through.

Smart kid.

Peters saw Stephanie’s aunt Maureen first. She grabbed him and ushered him to the back of the narrow house. He heard movement upstairs, and knew the Patriot District cops were doing their thing. The house felt like terror and tears, an all-too-familiar litany in Reid’s world.

“I’m so glad you’re here.” There were stifled sobs in Maureen’s eyes and voice, and the hand on his arm trembled. The two of them had met across Stephanie’s hospital bed a year ago, and the older woman looked no less frantic now than she had when her niece had been brought to the hospital, badly beaten by a man Reid should’ve gotten to first. “I only took my eyes off Jilly for a moment. Not even that. More like a split second, and she was gone.”