Dani Sinclair - My Baby, My Love

“Sydney! Hey, easy. Take it easy.”

“Sorry.” She couldn’t see his face. Her eyes filled with pools of tears despite her best efforts to hold them at bay. “There was so much blood.”

Noah swore softly. “How did we get from clothes to blood? Never mind. It’s okay. It’s just reaction. Everything’s all over.”

She tried to tell him that she knew it was okay. That she didn’t want to cry. But her throat was clogged with unshed tears, pushing for release.

“I should have done something.”

Noah shook his head. “There was nothing you could have done.”

He didn’t understand. He didn’t know how it had been. Jerome telling her how to dress, how to act. Her words bouncing off his anger without impact. Attempts to communicate that failed repeatedly.

She shook her head from side to side. The kaleidoscope of images was becoming all twisted and confused. Noah’s hand rested kindly on her shoulder, but she couldn’t meet his eyes. Couldn’t bear to see his pity.

Jerome was dead, but she was pregnant and someone wanted to hurt her. What was she going to do?

She didn’t remember moving, but she found herself sitting on the bed, her face pressed against Noah’s hard chest while tears matted his clean white shirt. Fear and horror mingled with hopeless regret. They spilled into racking sobs she couldn’t contain.

She cried forever, unable to stop. Only when a teardrop brushed her forehead did she manage to rein in the tide of emotions. Noah was crying, too? The idea that this strong man could shed a tear for his brother finally stemmed her own grief.

How Jerome would have loved this scene.

Sydney brushed at her wet face, unable to look at Noah. He stroked her hair then stood and strode into the bathroom. She’d embarrassed him as well as herself.

Water ran in the basin. When he returned, he handed her a damp washcloth. Gratefully, she wiped her face, aware that her damp hair was plastered around it.

“Excuse me.” She fled into the bathroom without looking at him.

Noah didn’t move as she disappeared. He was as shaken by his own grief as he was by hers.

The hair dryer started and he wondered how she was going to dry her hair with only one hand. Then he decided he didn’t care as long as she didn’t ask him for help.

He’d thought he had complete control of his emotions—until Sydney came apart in his arms. Her helpless anguish had finally released the grief he had buried right along with his parents, and now his only brother. It was as if Sydney had given him a conduit to his own emotions.

Noah had deliberately fostered the distance between himself and his brother when he was younger. He’d been unable and unwilling to accept Jerome, because it meant accepting his father’s infidelity. Noah would live with that regret for the rest of his life.

He couldn’t go back, but he could move forward. And forward meant Sydney and the child she carried. She didn’t seem to realize that the baby was an unbreakable connection between them. A biological link that meant he would never be able to walk away from his brother’s wife.

Part of him was selfishly glad.

Noah expelled a sigh and repacked his bag. He checked the room for loose articles and called the front desk to check out. All he needed was his shaving gear and he’d be ready to go.

The telephone rang.

Noah eyed the instrument with suspicion. “Hello?”

“Major Inglewood? Agent Wickowski. I’m sorry to bother you, but we need to come up and talk with Sydney right away.”

“This isn’t a go—”

“They fished a man out of the Potomac River a little while ago.”

“So?”

“Long hair? Beard? Mustache? Ring a few bells, Major?”

Noah sucked in his breath.

“He was wearing hospital scrubs and carrying Sydney’s wallet. Someone shot him in the head at point-blank range.”

Noah gripped the receiver. “Sydney’s in the bathroom drying her hair. Why don’t we come downstairs? Give us about five—better make it ten minutes.”

“Let’s make it five, Major.”

Noah disconnected and found Sydney watching him warily from the doorway.

“I gather Agent Wickowski wants to ask more questions.”

“It’s a little more complicated than that.”

Her chin lifted. “How much more complicated?”

Noah explained.

Her mouth opened, then closed silently.

“Are you okay?”

“Wonderful.” She walked back into the bathroom and the hair dryer started up again. He shouldn’t have told her so bluntly. She’d had one shock after another for the past several days. But then, so had he, and she seemed to be handling things just fine.

She came out a few minutes later reinserting her arm into its sling. Her soft brown hair was still damp, but swinging neatly around her shoulders.

Noah stepped past her and added his shaving gear to his duffel bag.

“Better bring the plant,” he told her.

“We’re leaving?”

“Changing hotels. With the FBI and the police downstairs, I don’t think we’re going to be anonymous anymore.” He didn’t add that he’d planned to make the switch even before they arrived. He was operating on instinct here. And his instincts were on full alert. Someone was coming after Sydney.

SITTING INSIDE an empty conference room the hotel had lent them, Agent Wickowski showed them a picture of a man whom Sydney immediately identified as the orderly.

“Could he have been one of the men inside that bank, Mrs. Inglewood?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. I just don’t know. I’m sorry.”

“He had this in his pocket.” Wickowski smoothed out a crumpled, torn copy of her wedding picture. Jerome’s half had been ripped away, leaving only the smiling bride.

Noah made a noise that sounded like a growl.

“Your fake orderly has a long police record, but unless he recently moved into the big time, bank robbery and murder are out of his league. He’s always stuck with petty larceny until now.”

“Then he was only in my room to steal?” Sydney asked.

“We’re operating on the assumption he was hired to identify your location,” Wickowski said. “Several of the local hospitals, including yours, have had a rash of small thefts in the past few days. We recovered most of the stolen items from his apartment, but this picture makes us think you were a specific target. Unless you were carrying this in your purse and he took it for some reason?”

Sydney shook her head, trying to control the fear welling inside her.

“That’s what we thought. Since the medical examiner puts his time of death around one this morning, he wasn’t your attacker. But he could have been killed right after he met with your attacker, who then went to the hospital.”

“Pleasant thought,” she said, trying to sound cool and in control. She felt pathetically grateful when Noah touched her arm in silent support.

“You said he was shot?” she asked.

Wickowski inclined his head apologetically. “At close range. Ballistics will tell us if it was one of the guns used in the bank robbery, but I’d say the odds are pretty good. We’d like to take you to a safe house, Mrs. Inglewood.”

Sydney had seen a television program about people who had been in police protection and she quickly shook her head. “No. I don’t want to be locked up somewhere surrounded by strangers.” They would keep her a virtual prisoner.

“We’ll assign a female operative—”

“Police protection didn’t do me any good at the hospital.”

“This time we’ll use FBI personnel.”

“No.” Sydney shook her head, thinking hard. “You said you think my attacker paid this man to find out where I was and then shot him. But my attacker didn’t have a gun.”