Lakota Baby. Elle James

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СКАЧАТЬ sat on the couch and closed her eyes, focusing on everyone she’d been in contact with in the past six months. A person who could be malicious enough to steal a baby from his bed. It had to be someone who knew which room her baby slept in and that she would be the only adult in the house.

      Who? Who? Who? She tapped her finger to her forehead. Faces swam in her mind of all the boys and girls she worked with at the youth center. She’d never invited any of them to her house, but one of them could have spied on her just as easily as someone had painted graffiti on her walls while she’d been away. As if her mind was on a continuous loop, she couldn’t slow her thoughts enough to wrap around an individual. None of the teens surfaced as mean enough to steal her baby.

      Was it even one of the teenagers she’d been working with? Could it be someone who knew Paul? If so, she was at a complete loss. For once, she wished she’d been closer to Paul than strangers in a shared house.

      She pushed to her feet and strode to the window. When would Joe get back? He would know where to begin. He’d know who to question, who to call.

      God, she prayed he did.

      After one more circle around the living room, she stopped at the entrance to the hallway. From Dakota’s doorway, light spread in a triangle on the carpet in the hall. As if drawn by an irresistible force, Maggie walked toward the room she’d avoided since the police left. The closer she got, the more her chest squeezed until she was gulping short, shallow breaths. The walls pressed in on either side of her. She didn’t want to go in but she had to know, to see for herself, that her child really was gone.

      This wasn’t a dream.

      The officers had tried to clean up their mess before they left, but she could still see the faint traces of dust from where they’d lifted fingerprints from the walls, window-sill and furniture.

      Baby blankets and sheets had been stripped from the crib and sent to the state crime lab along with the blue cloud curtains that used to hang in the window. She’d made them herself from a piece of fabric she’d found in Rapid City last Christmas.

      With an icy lump of pain lodged in her throat, Maggie struggled to breathe. Yet her eyes remained dry, almost too dry, with that achy, hollow feeling she couldn’t blink away.

      Longing to hold her child had become a physical need, just like breathing. And now that she was completely alone in her house, worry set in with a vengeance.

      Was Dakota warm enough? Was he hungry? Were they changing his diapers and holding him so he wouldn’t be afraid? She prayed whoever had taken her son wouldn’t hurt him.

      A sob rose in her throat and she pressed her fist to her mouth to keep from wailing aloud.

      Then she noticed a powder-blue teddy bear lying forgotten against the wall. The plush, pillow-like toy was Dakota’s favorite. He liked to sleep with it at night.

      Maggie sank to her knees and gathered the plaything to her breast, inhaling the scents of baby powder and milk.

      Why her child? He didn’t like going with strangers, preferring only those he recognized, his mother and his caregiver, Mrs. Little Elk.

      Please Dakota, don’t cry too much. With all the child abuse and neglect she’d witnessed in the year and a half she’d been on the reservation, she hoped whoever had Dakota wasn’t one of the abusers.

      She pressed her face into the teddy bear, squeezed her eyes shut and sent a prayer to God and the Lakota spirits to help Joe find her son. At this point, she didn’t care if he found out he was the father or if he sued for custody. Maggie loved Dakota so much she’d give him up to his father if she could be certain he was alive and taken care of.

      Why hadn’t she heard them when they’d entered her house? A good mother would have woken up at the slightest movement. If only she hadn’t slept soundly. If only she’d woken with the dream. If only she’d left the reservation and gone home to Des Moines when Joe went to war. She should have left while she was still pregnant and Dakota was safe in her womb. Her baby would still be with her if she’d gone to Iowa. None of this would have happened.

      If only.

      She buried her face in the bear’s soft nylon fur, her shoulders shaking, her body racked with dry, silent sobs. Alone in the middle of the prairie, her son was nowhere to be found.

      The phone in her bedroom rang twice before Maggie heard it, so deep was she in her misery.

      She lurched to her feet, the teddy bear still in her hand, and raced for the cordless phone on her nightstand.

      “Hello?” She practically hyperventilated with her hopes and fears tangled in her chest.

      “We’ll trade the baby for what was stolen from us. Coyote Butte. Saturday, midnight. Come alone or we kill the kid.”

      “My baby? Is Dakota all right?” Maggie asked in a strangled whisper. “Please. Is he okay?”

      An infant’s cry could be heard in the background, before the line went dead.

      “Dakota!” Maggie crushed the receiver to her ear, straining to hear her baby. Her hands shook so much she banged the phone against her temple, the pain barely registering. “Dakota! Oh, please, let me have my baby!”

      “Maggie?”

      As her vision blurred, the phone slipped from her ear. They had her baby and he was alive. Blackness curled around her and her knees buckled.

      “Maggie!” Joe was there, gathering her into his arms, holding her up when her legs gave way. He smoothed her hair from her face and muttered soothing words.

      She stood for several moments, reminding herself to breathe, telling her heart to go on beating, absorbing the strength, smell and touch of Joe holding her in his arms.

      Finally, Joe tilted her chin up and stared down at her intently. “What happened, Maggie?”

      “I heard my baby.” Her fingers clutched at the lapels of his shirt. “They have Dakota. He’s alive.”

      THANK THE SPIRITS. Joe held her face against his shoulder. “Shhh, he’ll be okay.” He hoped to hell they found the child before the kidnappers did something stupid. The tribal police were already combing through a list of possible suspects and the state police had issued an Amber Alert throughout South Dakota and the bordering states. The FBI would be there within the next two or three hours. For now, the best he could do was to hold Maggie and help her through the terror of her loss.

      With her body pressed against his and the scent of herbal shampoo stirring his senses, memories flooded in.

      It had been extremely hot the summer he’d first met Maggie. He’d hung around the activity center on the pretext of working out with the young people. What he wanted was information about drug abuse and drug dealing involving the teens. What he found was a pretty white woman playing a lousy game of basketball with the young adults. Sweaty, her hair curling wildly around her flushed face, she’d looked so alive, so vibrant. Joe couldn’t resist hanging around. And she’d been so good with the kids, concerned and caring about everything in their lives.

      Even after he identified the teens involved in the drug trafficking, he still went by the center with one excuse or another to talk to Maggie. His fascination for the auburn-haired social worker СКАЧАТЬ