Dead Calm

Judah held her gaze, willing her to blink.

She didn’t.

The infinitesimal lift of her chin was the only sign that she saw him.

No, he thought. Not helpless at all. Not Sophie.

“Hola, tall, dark and battered. Back so soon? It’s only been three hours. Got something else you want sutured?”

“No thanks. And it’s been four hours.” He glared down at the woman tapping him impatiently on the arm. The picture ID clipped to the pocket of her blue scrubs gave him her name. Cammie Esposito. The same short, round-faced nurse who’d rushed Sophie out of the examining room earlier.

“What in the world do you have there? Not somebody’s pet poodle, I hope? We don’t do pets. Even for good-looking hombres like you, amigo.”

He pushed his parcel toward her. Once more a miniature fist pushed free of the blanket and banged his hand, a soft graze of skin against skin.

She lifted the edge of the blanket. “Oh, my.” All teasing gone, She took the baby from him and turned abruptly toward Sophie and the man still with her. “Dr. Brennan, you’ll want to see this.”

Sophie’s clear voice rode lightly over the relative quiet of the ER. “Sure, Cammie. Be right there. What’s the problem?”

“A baby.”

“A baby?”

He watched as Sophie pushed off from the wall, watched as she straightened her shoulders, and he recognized the effort. Like the last embers flaring in a gust of wind before dying out, she suddenly glowed. Even her hair gleamed now with that touch of firelight he’d noticed before sparking in the dark curls.

Her hands were still jammed in her pockets, though.

He noticed that, too, and wondered about that bit of body language and what it might mean.

Details.

His preacher daddy had been a humorless man with meanness bred bone deep. All his passion had been spent in an adoration of God that left no room for love of humankind. But he’d said one good thing to Judah. Judah didn’t believe in anything else his daddy had said, but he’d never forgotten the old man’s beautiful voice, sonorous, one of those hypnotic magic voices that could fill the pews of their small church, pronouncing, “God is in the details, Judah,” he pronounced. “Don’t you be forgetting that. You pay attention, hear?”

Then the preacher man had slapped him twice, once on each side of his face. Hard enough to leave a bruise. “Hear me?”

Judah heard.

And he’d remembered.

In his experience he’d concluded it was more likely the devil he discovered in the details. Still, he’d found that bit of instruction to be one of the few useful bits of his father’s legacy.

If Tyree knew it was Judah’s pa who’d taught him the basic rule of being a detective, Jonas suspected Tyree would hoot about that, too.

George had known.

With a quick tap on his arm, the nurse interrupted the melancholy flow of his memories. “What a doll. Girl?”

He nodded.

“Oye, muy bonita. Pobrecita. What’s the story?”

“It’s…she’s…” he corrected himself, “she’s been outside a while. Don’t know how long, though.” He rubbed his hands along the side of his slicker and water sluiced off, dripping to the floor and splashing against his jeans. “It’s a rough night. Don’t know anything about babies, but she seems okay. A bit warm, maybe. Quiet.”

“Sí, this baby’s come to the right place.”

Judah shifted as Sophie reached him.

“Detective.” Her expression dismissed him.

The hairs along his arms rose lightly as her scent reached him. “Doctor,” he replied politely.

Her gray-blue eyes glittered momentarily, then flickered to the bundle. “What brings you back this evening?” Her tone was cool and crisp.

“Morning, actually,” he said, matching her coolness.

“So it is. Do you need our attention again? Or have you managed to keep yourself out of harm’s way for a few hours?”

“I’m not your patient this time.” He pointed to the nurse’s blanket.

Sophie leaned toward the bundle, peered inside the blanket, and that scent that wasn’t perfume, wasn’t exactly soap, wasn’t anything except her filled his nostrils.

Funny, he thought, amused by his body’s awareness of her. An awareness he didn’t want, but there it was. That old devil sex could rear up and trip a man when he least wanted it.

Or expected it.

He’d thought this past year had made him immune to the very particular appeal of Dr. Brennan.

On edge, he gestured toward the baby. “Well. She’s all yours. I’m out of here.”

Sophie’s warm hands brushed against him as she lifted the baby out of the nurse’s arms and cradled her. Sophie’s face went soft, as soft as the curves of her breasts where the baby lay, and he thought he saw sadness in her eyes as she touched the baby gently and said, “Ah, you’re a little love, aren’t you? Let’s go see how you’re doing, sweetie-pie.” Her hands moved lightly over the baby, automatically evaluating, examining.

Finnegan turned around, ready to make tracks for the outside as fast as his size elevens would take him.

“Not so fast this time, Finnegan. We need some information first.”

Damn. “Whatever you say, doctor.” He gritted his teeth and swung back to her.

“What can you tell me about this baby?”

“Diddly squat. We found her at the Second Baptist Church, in the manger, under its roof. Nobody else was there. She doesn’t look abused, she doesn’t look like a newborn, but of course I’m not the doctor—” he let the word take a bit of ice “—and that’s all the information I have.”

Sophie’s gaze flickered from the baby to the nurse. “You know what I’m thinking?”

“Makes sense,” the nurse responded as she stared at the baby and then down the hall. “Might explain what the woman kept crying out, I guess.”

“Awful big coincidence otherwise.”

“Still, it could be coincidence. It’s not as though she’s the first Asian patient here in Poinciana.”

“And not the first beating victim, either. We’re getting a lot of them lately.” Anger rippled over her face. “And not just our Asian population. Boy, this is lousy. What in heaven’s name is happening to Poinciana?” Her eyes were huge, dominating the soft roundness of her face.

Judah shook his head, fighting for clarity. He was finally free of the baby, but something she’d said had struck him as important. He shook his head again. Got it. “Coincidence? What coincidence?”

Sophie’s mouth tightened as she glanced from the baby to him. “A patient we had earlier.”

He forced his brain to focus. “A patient?”

“A woman. Beaten.”

“What happened?”

“She died.”

“I see.” He scratched the bristles on his chin. “You think this is her baby?”

“I don’t know, Finnegan.” Her sigh echoed his own fatigue. Her gaze returned to the baby. “It’s all such craziness.”

“You’ll get no argument from me on that score.”

“Really? How remarkable.” Her quick glance mocked him. Taking the warmed blanket from the nurse, she passed him the one in which he and Tyree had cocooned the baby.

“This little girl looks all right. We’ll give her a thorough work-up and then—” She frowned. “Children and Families will take over. You know how the system works. It’s the way it is.”

“Yeah. I reckon.” Every inch of his skin twitched with the need to go home, collapse on his bed and sleep for a day. Or a week. How many hours had he been on duty? When was the last time he’d slept? Last night? The day before?

Every cell in his battered body craved relief from the fizzing running through him when he was around Sophie. He didn’t know which he wanted more—sleep, or just a release from the tension she created in him.

Every instinct he owned urged him toward her.

It had been like that from the first moment he’d seen her, jogging down Palmetto Avenue, her hair clumped together by a green clip on top of her head, beads of sweat pooling in the small triangle at the bottom of her throat. Beneath fire-engine-red frayed shorts, her thighs and calf muscles pumped and thrust.

And heat had licked through him like a flash fire.

He hadn’t even thought about what he was doing. He’d simply nudged the squad car over to the curb, letting it roll forward with her for a few minutes until she finally glanced his way.

She’d sent him a smart-alecky grin, saluted with a quick hand to her forehead, and shot off, her legs like slim pistons flickering in the late August heat as she disappeared into the path that curved along Poinciana River.

That was how it had started.

Dangerous, being this tired and this pissed off. Remembering. Remembering never led anywhere good.

A faint stirring of adrenaline roughened his voice. “Do I have permission to leave now, Doctor?”

Even as he spoke, she was already walking away toward one of the examining rooms, her head bent to the baby.

The nurse, Cammie, he made himself remember, sent him a quick smile and a thumbs-up.

And once more he found himself treated to the fine sight of Sophie Brennan’s butt, its curves shaping the jacket to her, the jacket moving with each hip sway. He swallowed. His mouth was dust-dry, the night’s fatigue vanished momentarily in a rush of blood.

“Look, but don’t touch, right?” Tyree’s smooth amusement snapped his head around. “Caught you, didn’t I?”

“What?”

“My, my, aren’t we grouchy? Guess doing without will make a man…irritable.”

“I was thinking, Tyree.”

“Sure you were, Judah. And I’ll bet you a nice, green hundred-dollar bill I know exactly what you were thinking.” His grin widened, crinkling his whole face. “Looks like it wasn’t the first time, too.”

Judah scowled at him. “Button it, Tyree.”

“Can’t blame you. The doc sure is one fine-looking woman.” He laughed. “But don’t tell Yvonna I said that, or I won’t be getting so much as a sweet kiss for a month.”

“Serve you right.”

“Nah, you don’t know Yvonna. She can be one tough lady when she puts her mind to it. She can make my life real…interesting when she wants to.”

“Yeah?” Judah listened with one ear, his attention still on Sophie.

“Anyway, c’mon. Another call came in while you were in here.”

“Right.” Judah’s gaze stayed on Sophie as she hovered over the baby, her every movement visible through the still-open curtain.

He couldn’t get over her—foggy-headed, he couldn’t find the word he wanted. Protectiveness. Yeah. He rubbed his head again. That was the word. She seemed so protective of the tiny scrap of life he’d brought to her.

Not cold at all.

Not at all the way she’d been with George.

And none of the prickliness she showed him.

One more puzzle piece.

But he couldn’t make sense of any of it until he’d had a couple of hours of sleep.

“Hey, Judah. Heads up. We’re needed over on 15th and Oak.” Tyree tugged at him, and with one last glance, Judah left, the glass doors snicking shut behind him.

“Detective Hunkster has left the house.” Cammie poked Sophie in the ribs.

“What?” Sophie lifted her stethoscope and patted the baby, her palm lingering and warming the tiny chest.

Cammie pointed to the exit. “The detective with the hormones and the ’tude.”

“Oh.” Lifting the baby, Sophie curled her over one shoulder, close to her neck. She looked toward the exit. The baby mewed softly and nuzzled closer. “What a sweetheart you are.” Reflexively she cupped the baby’s bottom, swaying slowly from side to side, rocking the infant.

She could barely make out the faces of Finnegan and his partner. A gust of wind puffed out Finnegan’s yellow slicker. Rain striped down his faded jeans, and he yanked the slicker closer to him, rolled his shoulder and vanished into the darkness.

His shoulder had to be hurting him. Anybody with any sense would have stayed and taken the pain scripts. But the stubborn idiot had chosen to assert himself and leave her ER instead of doing the sensible thing.

For all she cared, he could fall down in a heap if that’s what he wanted.

Absently she crooned to the warm baby.

Still, Judah had looked like the burnt end of a match when she’d walked up to him and Cammie. Stubble shadowed his cheeks, and black circles pouched the skin under his eyes. He’d looked like a hundred miles of bad road, as she’d heard one of the local doctors say.

Faded jeans, a look of weary dissipation, and that attitude. Attitude to burn.

But sexy.

It was in the eyes, she decided. He had that look about him that women talked about in hushed tones. The kind of man who would be hell on wheels in bed. The kind of man who could leave a woman smiling in the morning. Oh, no question. She knew exactly what Cammie meant about hormones. Judah Finnegan fairly reeked of pheromones and sex.

Dirty, lowdown, wonderful sex.

She’d felt the flutter of her pulse every time she’d thought of him during this past year.

He was exactly the wrong kind of man for a woman like her.

Even without their history.

Sergeant George Roberts might be dead, but even a year later his presence was a powerful ghost.

The night Roberts had killed himself he’d also killed the tenuous something building between her and Detective Finnegan.

Maybe if they’d had more time together first…

Maybe if they’d slept together…

No, she didn’t think so.

If they’d slept together? Impossible.

She’d known from the beginning that Judah was a man who kept his emotions under tight control. That had been part of the attraction. He was so different from her that it was tempting to see what it would take to make him lose that reserve. A buzz-cut, reined-in kind of guy, he wasn’t a man easily given to showing his emotions. Or handing out forgiveness.

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.

Chapter 3

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.

Behind her the wave hung for a long time. Dark at the base, black in this light, its crest all white foam and shivering green glass.

He thought she hesitated as the wave came up under her. She was in the backwash. She bent her knees again, curved forward, and the wave took her, enveloped her like a careless lover. Threw her forward, sent her board spiraling up into the sky and covered her with boiling white water that splashed high into the sky.

Lunging to his feet, Finnegan scanned the distance and couldn’t see her, couldn’t find that sleek head bobbing in the water. He covered the three yards to the water without realizing he’d moved.

Surf roiled around his knees, clawed at his chest.

Far beyond him her board floated on the surge of a small wave and vanished into a trough.

He couldn’t see her anywhere in the pounding waves.

He yanked his shoes off and hurled them toward the shore behind him, struck out toward the deep. There, right between two waves, he could see her board again, could see now the wet white of her face as she crawled onto the board and slumped. Strands of heavy wet hair hid her face.

Unseen, treading water, he rose and fell on the waves, their bodies joined in the great rhythm of the gulf.

She struggled to hold onto the board, her arms trembling with effort.

Or he imagined the effort. He wasn’t sure.

Finally she brought her knees under her.

And waited again.

His eyes never leaving her, Finnegan sank beneath the water and moved slowly toward the shore behind him until his feet scraped against cold sand.

He hauled himself up the incline of the shore. Turning back, he saw her stand.

Behind her, bigger than the wave that had taken her under, a wall of water raced toward him. His throat tightened and in the roar of the waves that filled him, everything went silent. He wondered if her heart was thumping as hard as his. He yelled at her to let the damned wave pass, to wait for a smaller one, not to try this freakish thing leaping out of the Gulf.

The wind caught his shout, shredded it into nonsense.

Half crouched, arms balancing her, Sophie caught the edge of the monster and hung there, for hours it seemed, in the pre-dawn sky. Against the cold sand, his toes buzzed with the power of the wave. He could sense the thrust of the wave as it grew, its glassy green stretching, stretching, filling the horizon with shivering power.