Undercover Babies

He couldn’t abandon the quivering mass of flesh and bones who clung to him for support. He just couldn’t—not here, not like this.

“Try to walk,” he told her. “Let’s get out of here.”

With his arm around her, he helped her along, but not back toward the unknown terror of the doctor or the Catholic nun.

But where?

The shelter seemed to be out of the question. Making a snap decision, he said, “I’m taking you to my place for the night. You’ll be safe there. Tomorrow, we’ll think of what we should do.”

Even as these words left his lips, he recognized the foolishness of this decision. He was promising this extremely needy young woman a haven for the night and help the next day; he would keep his word, but the motivation for his offer had as many facets as an octopus has arms.

Oh, well.

Where before she’d followed, now she leaned on him heavily, her slight weight no problem, but her sudden emotional withdrawal unnerving. He tried asking her questions, but she ignored him and seemed to put all her energy into the act of walking. She must have hurt her knee when she fell; he noticed she’d developed a slight limp and a whimper when she stepped hard on her right leg.

Eventually, he got her back to his car. By now, he was as wet and smelly as she was. On the way around to the driver’s door, he found a spanking new parking ticket tucked under his windshield wiper. Jeez, did these guys follow him around and wait for a meter to run out? The citation went into the glove box with all the others. If the cops didn’t knock off all these tickets, he was going to have to go to the D.A. and complain.

It took several minutes to navigate his way across town. During the drive, he tried not to inhale deeply. The two of them smelled like old rubbish stewed in street grime and booze. He’d probably have to fumigate his car.

The girl rubbed her left shoulder and said nothing.

For once, there was a parking spot within a block of his apartment. If anything, the rain had grown icier and more vicious, and, heads down, they made their way to his place. A short flight of stairs seemed like more of a challenge than she was up to; without hesitation, he swept her into his arms and carried her up the stairs.

By the time he unlocked the door, she seemed more zombie than human. He didn’t want her clothes, or his outerwear, either, for that matter, inside the apartment proper. He wasn’t sure how to tell her she had to strip.

Thankfully, the entry floor was tile, as they both dripped a river of rainwater. An opposing door that locked on its own led to the apartment itself, providing a nice barrier for cold winters. Now, it gave him a staging area for getting his guest ready to come inside. He carefully locked the door to the outside, wondering when the girl would realize she was trapped, tense because he knew he was taking a chance and unsure why he’d put himself in this position.

Wouldn’t Chief Barry just love to have him investigated for kidnapping or assault….

Taking off his own coat and hanging it on a hook, he found his testify-in-court suit still relatively dry and clean. His shoes were hopeless. “Take off your clothes down to your underwear,” he told her softly. “I’ll get you a robe.”

She stared down at her clothes as though she’d never seen them before.

“Okay, then,” he said, and unlocked the second door. Turning on all the lights as he went, he made his way quickly to his bedroom, the carpeted floor a welcome cushion under his sock-clad feet. He grabbed the raw silk robe his aunt had brought him back from Hong Kong a decade before and hurried back to the entry.

She was still standing where he’d left her. Her eyes were closed and she looked as if she’d fall down if he blew on her. His first thought was to call a doctor. He quickly dismissed that and comforted himself with the thought that she’d rally after a hot shower and a good night’s sleep.

“I’ll help you,” he told her.

That seemed to rouse her a little. A least she opened her eyes. In the bright light, her irises looked as blue as a summer sky and as guileless as a picnic. Again, he felt a surge of protective ardor that was totally out of place.

He unbuttoned her coat. Jake’s coat. Where did she get this awful garment? Under what circumstances did a burned-out boozehound give up his coat on an icy winter day? For money? This girl didn’t look like she had two coins to rub together. Out of some kind of loyalty or caring? Did Jake know this woman?

He removed his ruined hat from her head, peeled the wet coat from her body and deposited it on the tile floor. She stood facing him in a flannel shirt so dirty it was hard to tell its original color. Her pants were way too big and tied around her waist with a length of rope. The boots on her feet suddenly looked huge, like clown shoes. He knelt down and untied them, but it really wasn’t necessary. They slipped off in his hands and he found she was barefoot underneath. Her tanned feet were damn near frozen to the touch.

“You might want to take the rest of these wet things off,” he said, raising the robe between them as a privacy shield.

He heard nothing and ventured a peek. She stood there, swaying.

“All-righty then,” he said, and biting the figurative bullet, hoped a sense of modesty didn’t pay her a belated visit. Talking all the while about the virtue of hot water and soap, he unbuttoned her shirt and stripped the wet cloth away. He tried to do this without looking, but that proved impossible, especially after he caught a glimpse of what lay hidden under the shirt.

Black silk. A tiny glittering sea horse sewn on to a wisp of black lace.

It was like peeling an egg and finding a diamond instead of a yolk.

Though he tried not to notice, he was a man, after all, and he couldn’t help but take heed of the size and shape of her breasts. Not as large as Jessica’s, but firm looking and beautifully rounded, this woman’s breasts filled the cups of her bra with what appeared to be damn near perfection.

“Pretty underwear,” he said, hoping the comment might startle her into speech. More likely, it would earn him a slap across the face, a slap he deserved if his increasingly wayward thoughts were to be considered. She didn’t move.

That’s when he noticed her staring at the inside of her left arm. He followed her gaze and saw what so mesmerized her were several needle marks and surrounding bruises.

Damn.

Here he’d just about decided she wasn’t a druggie and, pow, proof. Would she start climbing the walls when her latest hit wore off? “Are you okay?” he demanded. “Talk to me.”

She stared at him and shook her head. Had she gone into some kind of shock induced by cold and stress?

“Say something,” he demanded.

“I’m…I’m cold,” she stammered, hugging herself. Her left shoulder was black and blue.

And then she began plucking at the snarl around her waist, trying to untie the rope, having no luck. She cast him a helpless look and so he tried to come to her aid, but in the end, it proved necessary to take out his pocket knife. Bypassing the knot, he hacked through the rope. The pants immediately slid over her slender hips, puddling on the floor at her feet.

Her panties matched her bra—bedecked with a dazzling sea horse, feminine, expensive, out of place. They, too, covered lovely mounds of flesh, as well as a trim stomach. Both her knees were red, but the right one sported a two-inch gash that looked relatively superficial. Additional bruises marred her thighs and legs.

As she held his hands for support and stepped out of her pants, he wondered again. Who was she? A coed gone astray? A working girl whose favorite john indulged his fantasies by dressing her in fancy lingerie and then pummeling her?

Awkwardly, he pulled the robe over her arms and tied the sash around her waist, studiously trying to ignore the feel of her cold but petal-soft skin. The ripe smell of the alley helped squash amorous thoughts. Supporting half her weight, they shuffled inside the apartment. He closed and locked the door behind them, still babbling like a demented man, covering his own apprehension with the sound of his voice.

“I can’t keep thinking of you as ‘the girl,’” he said. “It’s politically incorrect and after our recent familiarity, a little silly.”

No rise from her. No flicker of an eyebrow or curl of a lip. No indignant sneer, no anger. Nothing.

“How about I call you Grace?”

She stared at him, wrinkling her brow as though trying to think.

“Is that name okay with you?” he said, trying his best to force her to speak, concerned that she still could.

She mumbled something that sounded like yes and he let it be. Within minutes, he had her in the shower, underwear and all. He could almost see the hot spray coax her back to life. When she grabbed the soap from his hand, he knew it was time to step away and leave her alone.

“There’s shampoo on the shelf in there,” he told her.

She answered by handing him her underwear, which she’d wrung out.

As he dropped it in the sink, he heard a strangled cry coming from the shower, then another. Without thinking, he threw back the curtain.

“What is it…Grace? What’s wrong?”

Stark naked, she stared at him with wide eyes. Her mouth formed a perfect little O.

Even as he tried to reassure her that she was okay, that he’d leave the room or call for help, whatever she wanted, he couldn’t help but absorb the details of her body. And wow, what a body she had. Nipples like pink rose buds. Curvaceous waist and hips. Long, shapely legs. Lots of tanned skin, discreet areas of lily white.

The unexpected heat of desire knocked him on his heels. Good to know his ex-wife’s betrayal hadn’t killed every impulse in his body, but talk about poor timing. He tried to turn away, but the woman—Grace—ran shaky hands across her flat tummy and a new fear crystallized in his head. Was she going to throw up?

And then he finally understood her distress.

Across her belly, vertical lines, so faint they were all but invisible.

The lines a woman’s abdomen acquires as her body stretches to accommodate a pregnancy.

His gaze met hers. Tears streamed down her face.

She was somebody’s mother.

Chapter Two

Grace managed to gather enough wits to wash her hair and towel dry herself. The man didn’t leave the room, though she could feel his intense desire to do so. If he stayed, it must be because she looked as awful as she felt.

A pregnancy. She had a child.

She wiped the tears from her face with shaky fingers.

A baby.

Or not. Maybe the pregnancy hadn’t ended well. Maybe that was the tragedy that had propelled her into a lifestyle that ultimately led her to find herself in a stranger’s bathroom, needle marks on her arm, covered with bruises, her mind little more than a foggy cliff edged with perilous drops into nothingness.

The man handed her a tissue which she took gratefully and blew her nose.

Competing for attention with an exhaustion so acute it ate away at her joints was a growing sense of anxiety. There was someplace she needed to be, someone she needed to see, something she needed to do.

But what?

“Here, put this on,” the man said.

She stared at the blue garment and realized she’d been standing there with the towel clutched to her chest, the rest of her body stark naked. She knew what he offered was a robe, she knew he wanted her to put it on, to cover herself. She even knew, in some remote part of her mind, that he felt disconcerted by her nudity. She reached for the robe, but everything seemed to happen in slow motion. At last, she got it around her. She could feel the man’s relief.

What kind of woman is so unconcerned about a strange man seeing her naked?

She didn’t even want to contemplate the possibilities. She was too tired to ponder such a troubling question.

“Thank you,” she mumbled.

He shrugged broad shoulders still encased in a gray suit jacket now stained with shower water. As she watched, he took off his jacket and draped it over a towel bar, then rolled up the sleeves of a white shirt. He had nice forearms, strong looking, dusted with fine, dark hair.

But what she’d noticed first about him still dominated his looks and those were his eyes. They were green or maybe blue, it was hard to tell, and framed with dark lashes and brows. All sorts of things seemed to swirl in them: compassion, challenge, distaste, self-awareness, humor, trouble, danger. She’d seen all those things and while some had dismayed her, others had warmed her and given her courage.

She stared at the rest of him as he dug in a wall cabinet. He was tall and powerfully built. When he’d carried her up the outside stairs, she’d felt like a feather floating on the wind, like no burden at all. He had a habit of rubbing the back of his head, ruffling the short brown hair, stretching as though there was so much going on inside his head that it put a strain on his neck.

She suspected that she herself was the cause of his current tension.

He produced a box of Band-Aids and a tube of ointment. “Sit down on the edge of the tub,” he told her, and she did as he said. Was she always this wishy-washy, this easy to control?

No. She knew she wasn’t.

Kneeling in front of her, he treated and bandaged her knee. She made herself rally to ask him a few questions. First, his name.

“Travis MacBeth,” he said, gazing up at her. “People call me Mac.”

The nun at the shelter had called him Mac. Now she remembered. The next question was harder. “Who is Jake?”

“An acquaintance.” When she stared, he added, “A homeless boozer.”

“And my clothes…they’re his?”

“I assume so. Seems kind of unlikely there are two identical coats running around the back streets of Billington. Plus, this is the first night in two months that Jake wasn’t waiting for me at the mouth of that alley and the first night you were.” He paused for a second and added, “Grace? Why did you run out of that alley the way you did?”

She wasn’t sure what he was talking about.

“Were you running from something or someone?” he persisted.

She was running. Toward the light? Away from the light. Away from Jake?

Maybe her face reflected the unease the hazy memory of that alley engendered because Mac patted her arm and said, “Don’t worry about it.”

“Do you think…do you suppose…I hurt Jake? To get his coat, I mean. Was that why I was running?”

He stared at her and then smiled. Was it the first time he’d done that or had he smiled before and she’d forgotten? At any rate, he had a good smile, the kind a person could find themselves working to see again. The kind that took years and cares off a man’s face and gave a glimpse of what lay hidden in his heart. He said, “No. I don’t think so. We looked for Jake, remember?”

They’d walked through the alley. She could recall the clanging of empty bottles and the look of disgust in Mac’s eyes as he asked if they were hers. “How old do you think I am?” she asked.

Again he stared at her. “Early twenties, maybe.”

“And I’ve had a baby.”

“You’ve apparently had a pregnancy. And a husband.”

That jolted her. “A husband?”

He touched the ring finger on her left hand. “There’s a tan line here. There are tan lines on your body, as well.”

Sure enough, there was a discernible white line on her finger. She stared at it until her eyes burned. It didn’t help. No memory of a loving husband surfaced. No memory of an awful husband surfaced, either. She felt a new spurt of anxiety and wondered if it was related to the husband whose ring she’d apparently forsaken.

Or hocked. Or lost.

Or to a baby she held in her arms, nursed at her breast, and now couldn’t remember.

It was all too much.

“Which brings to mind all sorts of questions,” Mac said.

She gazed at him and waited, but when he finally spoke, she found she couldn’t comprehend what he said. She just couldn’t. His words stretched out and away and began to seem like musical notes in some bizarre song.

Could she sing along?

What were the words?

She felt his hands on her shoulders and realized her eyes had drifted closed. When she opened them, she found Mac supporting her, his gaze filled with alarm. He lifted her off the edge of the tub and she melted against his solid chest, circling his neck with grateful arms and closing her eyes again. Wrapped in his arms, she felt safer than she had since this ordeal began.

And then she felt a creepy sensation steal over her body. Flat black eyes stared at her behind a glistening silver curtain. Red hot hands grabbed her.

Screaming, she pushed her attacker away. The jolt when she hit the floor forced another scream from her throat.

“Grace, Grace, it’s okay,” Mac said.

She was on the floor. Mac bent over her. Gathering her in his arms, he held her for a moment while the fear subsided and the tears died in her throat. He helped her to her feet and onto the bed. She looked around for her assailant. No one else was in the room.

Somewhere in her head, she knew there never had been.

Mac tucked her between snow-white sheets. She caught his hand and held it for a moment, loath to give up the connection. She wanted to thank him for helping her, but the words were swallowed by fatigue and she drifted off to oblivion…or death.

What was the difference?

MAC SAT at his desk. He downed a stiff drink in two swallows.

The desk had been his father’s. Mac had grown up doing his homework on its polished surface, shoving aside the blotter and suffering his father’s wrath when the older man caught him doing it. Mac now ran his finger over the myriad of shallow indentations that still existed, ghosts of long-ago essays and algebra equations.

He stared down the hall at the bedroom door that he’d left slightly ajar and wondered what he was going to do with this woman come morning. He reviewed the impulses that had led him to bringing her into his home. Her confusion. Her distress. Her minor injury. Her robotic behavior.

Her vulnerability.

Her fragile beauty.

The memory of his mother…

That’s how she’d gotten here.

Now he was confronted with the realization that she was, or had been, married. She’d been pregnant, possibly still had a living child waiting for her return. Had she run away from her husband and her child?

Like his mother had.

Tempted to pour himself another drink, he stayed seated instead.

She was an addict. Drugs, liquor…something. If the marks on her arm weren’t witness enough, that fit she’d had while he carried her to bed was. She’d gone berserk, sleeping like an angel one moment and screaming like a banshee the next. He would spend the night in this chair to keep an eye on her, and then the next morning, he would take her to Sister Theresa’s or back to her alley, whichever she wanted.

And what about her child?

Burying his head in his hands, he found it almost impossible not to feel that child’s loss. He understood all too well the ache for a mother who has vanished, the ache that never goes away.

But what could he do?

Find him or her?

Find Grace’s husband?

How did someone do any of that when the person he was helping didn’t seem to have the slightest clue as to who they were?

Swearing at all the ambiguities, he opened the drawer and took out a dozen pages of facts and figures. Maybe he could lose himself in his work.

Once upon a time, way back when, Mac had had a best friend named Rob Confit, an army buddy who died as a result of injuries suffered in a helicopter crash. Since Rob’s death, Mac had become close to Rob’s father, and now the elder Confit was challenging the current mayor in next fall’s mayoral race.

It was Bill Confit’s contention that the city government’s mishandling of homelessness within Billington had resulted in skyrocketing inner-city crime. Appointing a privately funded task force to investigate this situation, Confit had asked Mac to act as chairman. Who better, he’d asked, than a former cop who’d risked his career to unveil corruption within the police force?

There was no way in the world Mac would think of denying Confit’s request. At first, he’d approached it readily, able to put his own past in perspective. But gradually, he’d come to see his mother’s face superimposed on every derelict he came across and the old wounds resurfaced.

Hence the need he felt to get out on the streets and see how the people who had next to nothing managed to survive. Did they prey on one another and the public at large? Were they responsible for rising crime rates and dying inner cities, or were they the victims of apathy and budget crunches?

Mac didn’t know the answers yet, but he was becoming increasingly determined to make sure that the homeless and the defenseless didn’t take the brunt of the censure unless they deserved it.

So far, he didn’t think most of them did.

The current mayor disagreed.

The police disagreed.

Most of the committee disagreed.

And to top it off, Mac couldn’t swear his own agenda didn’t sway his conclusions. Most people thought facts and figures were foolproof, that there was only one way to translate dry, hard data. As an ex-cop, Mac knew nothing could be further from the truth. There was always room for interpretation.

But tonight he couldn’t make his eyes focus on the papers. He kept seeing flashes of the woman he’d dubbed Grace. Naked in the shower, her skin and features breathtaking; crying; dripping wet in the alley, looking at him from under the brim of his hat. Her tan lines suggesting recent sunbathing, marriage and happy times.

Her image seemed to fill his mind and even a little corner of his heart. He knew it was foolish and he knew it was dangerous. Not only for him, but for her. He just didn’t know what to do about it.

Rubbing his forehead, he shuffled the papers back into the drawer and thought to walk down the hall to check on Grace. He had every intention of doing this.

Sometime later, he awoke with a start. For a second, he felt confused, wondering why he’d fallen asleep at his desk, his head on his arms.

And then he sat up. The noise that had awakened him finally registered, and he tore off down the hall toward his bedroom.

Breaking glass. That’s what he’d heard. His guest had woken up, panicked and tried to escape. She’d hurt herself if she tried jumping to the sidewalk….

Light from the hall flooded the bedroom as he threw open the door. It twinkled off the shards of glass that littered the floor beneath the only window in the room, one that opened onto the street half a floor up from the sidewalk. A jagged brick lay amid the glass.

Grace had apparently slept right through the mayhem. Sidestepping the worst of the mess, he peered out the window. Sometime during the night, the rain had turned to snow, but not the greeting card variety. Instead of making the city glow, this snow just colored the world in shades of gray.

With a lingering look at Grace’s peaceful form cuddled beneath his down comforter, Mac grabbed a heavy wool sweater from his closet and a flashlight from his bedside drawer. The entryway was as he’d left it, filled with soggy, smelly clothes and puddles of water. He hurried down the steps and along the sidewalk until he was under the window that glowed faintly above his head.

Examining the snow proved pointless. It was sludge at best. There was no hope of discerning a footprint and peering up and down the street, he could see no moving form at all. Mac stared at the distance between himself and the window and gauged how hard it would be for someone to toss a brick through the window. Not that hard.

But why? Without wings or a ladder, no one could use the broken window to get inside. Once again, he scanned the street. Zip.

That left intimidation as a motive and it didn’t take much of an intuitive leap to figure out who might want to intimidate him.