On the Doorstep. Dana Corbit

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СКАЧАТЬ there was one thing he could do, and he refused to stop until he’d finished the job. He was going to find little Gabriel’s mother.

      Chapter Three

      Kelly closed the door to her office and slumped behind the desk, able to breathe for the first time since she’d driven up the street toward work. Nothing like seeing an ambulance in front of her office, its lights flashing and siren blaring, to get the old blood pumping. What now? she’d wondered then. Now she just wondered why so many rotten things had to happen at one place.

      Her biggest mistake wasn’t in assuming that the situation at work couldn’t get any worse. It was getting out of bed today at all.

      “Why here?”

      But even as she spoke the question aloud to her office’s four walls, she knew the answer. She worked at an adoption agency after all. Many people probably assumed that a private adoption agency could take in a foundling and find him a good home. Few knew that the duty fell to the Department of Children and Families.

      Kelly cringed over the publicity that was sure to come. Local reporter Jared Kierney probably would jump on this in a minute. Even if he took the human-interest angle, the agency couldn’t bear more attention, especially anything associated with a crime.

      Tiny Blessings had seen enough print the last several weeks to last a lifetime. First, there was the story Jared had broken about the falsified birth records she, Pilar and Anne Smith had found behind that false wall in the office.

      Kelly gritted her teeth and wished again that she had fired the office cleaning lady, Florence Villi, months before she’d had the chance to leak that information to the press. But the front-page article about the arson fire that destroyed most of those records topped even that.

      She could just imagine this newest headline: Baby Found. Discovery Adds to Agency’s Woes. She might as well kiss new donations goodbye after all this, and as a nonprofit organization, Tiny Blessings couldn’t afford to lose a single gift. Who could blame the Richmond Gazette for publishing the articles, though? Scandal made for good copy, and it sold newspapers.

      Still, it broke her heart to think of the huge black mark Barnaby Harcourt had painted on the agency’s reputation. For the right price, he’d helped wealthy families make their daughters’ problems go away through illegal adoptions. She still couldn’t understand how the money was worth violating the public trust. Tiny Blessings had done so much good over the years, placing children in wonderful, loving families. She ought to know—she was one of the first children placed by the agency.

      Someone knocked on the door just as a shaky feeling settled inside her and goose bumps appeared on her arms. She needed to get control of her emotions. Allowing this situation to become personal would be a mistake, and she couldn’t let that happen. She had a job to do, and she would do it, no questions asked.

      “Yes?” She pulled the sweater off the back of her office chair and draped it across her shoulders.

      Pilar entered the office. “Hey.” She stepped inside and closed the door behind her.

      Neither needed to point out the subtle workplace difference that morning. On ordinary days, Kelly’s office door was open unless she was meeting with adoptive parents or a mother considering adoption as an alternative. This would be no ordinary day for anyone at the office.

      “Sorry, I didn’t get the coffee made,” Pilar said as she slipped into the chair opposite her boss’s desk.

      Kelly laughed, appreciating Pilar, who was always trying to make those around her feel better. “Well, could you get on it?”

      “Right away, boss.” But Pilar stayed seated.

      Neither of them needed caffeine to wake up this morning, anyway. With her rolling stomach, Kelly doubted she would be able to choke down even half a cup.

      “Some morning, huh?” Pilar said finally.

      “That’s the understatement of the year.” Kelly took in the way Pilar was wringing her hands. “You okay?”

      “Yeah, I’m fine. A little shaken is all.”

      Shell-shocked was more like it, but Kelly didn’t call her on it. “I’ll write up a press release this morning. I’m also going to have to give Jared that interview he’s been begging for.” She shook her head. “And to think that last year we were dying for publicity.”

      Again, the room grew silent as each curled into her own thoughts. But Pilar leaned forward and rested her forearms on Kelly’s desk.

      “What about you? Are you okay?”

      “Why wouldn’t I be? I wasn’t the one who just found a baby—”

      “You know what I mean. Did it make you wonder about your birth mother?”

      Kelly shook her head, but straightened in her chair. “Of course not.”

      For the umpteenth time, she wished she’d been alone when she’d come across her own altered birth records, and her friend Ben Cavanaugh’s, among the dozens in the hidden box. It was information she’d never needed nor wanted to know, and she wished her employees didn’t know it, either.

      Marcus and Carol Young were her parents, and that was that. She’d had the most perfect childhood a person could ever ask for, and she never would have betrayed their memory by digging up the past. Unfortunately, that past had resurfaced without any help from her.

      “I just hope baby Gabriel’s okay.”

      Pilar might as well have slugged Kelly, as effectively as her words knocked the wind out of her. How could she have only been thinking about their agency and her personal mess when that baby had lost his mother that morning?

      She concentrated on Pilar, who was staring out the office window toward Main Street, though from that seated position she couldn’t have seen anything outside. For someone with olive skin, she appeared pale. She gripped and ungripped her hands.

      “You’re more than a little shaken, aren’t you?”

      At least Pilar didn’t bother to deny it this time. The corners of her mouth turned up in what could barely be called a smile.

      Kelly reached across the desk and squeezed both of her hands. “He’ll be fine. How can he not be? He was already fortunate enough to have been left on the steps for an early riser like you.”

      Pulling her hands away, Pilar rubbed her upper arms as if she’d become chilled. “I just can’t stop imagining what might have happened to him if I hadn’t gotten there. If he’d been out there, exposed to the elements, where just anyone could have taken him.”

      “But it didn’t happen that way. He’s safe now and in capable hands. Detective Fletcher will have the case under control in no time.”

      Pilar stiffened, her hands becoming still on her arms. After several seconds, she glanced across the desk, her expression too casual. “You think so?”

      Kelly thought something, all right. She’d had a fleeting suspicion earlier, but now she was convinced. Why had Pilar been wearing Zach’s jacket in the first place? And why had she been uncomfortable returning it with Kelly there?

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