Christmas Guardian. Delores Fossen

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СКАЧАТЬ style="font-size:15px;">      “Now can I ask my question?” she wanted to know.

      He settled for saying, “It’s safe.”

      She didn’t waste any time. “Where’s my son?”

      Jordan didn’t waste time, either. “You had to have known the risks of coming to me. So why did you?”

      She didn’t get defensive. Thanks to the security lights in the parking lot, Jordan could see her clearly. The light bathed her troubled face and danced off the red crystals on her dress.

      “I just needed to know he was alive,” she whispered. “That he was okay. I couldn’t live not knowing.” She scraped her thumbnail over the red polish on her right index finger and flaked it off. “I knew there were risks, but I thought I’d minimized them.”

      “Obviously not, if I figured out who you were and what you wanted.”

      She shook her head. “I didn’t think you had him. I only thought you’d have information. Or rather I hoped you would. I wasn’t very optimistic because I’d read that Shelly and you were enemies, that she embezzled from you.”

      Jordan sighed. “That was Shelly’s version of damage control. She didn’t want anyone to be able to link me to the child.”

      Still, that hadn’t stopped SAPD and even a federal investigator from questioning him. It also hadn’t stopped three different P.I.s, who’d been hired by God knows who to find out what’d happened in the last minutes of Shelly’s life. Jordan figured all three P.I.s had probably worked for the same person, but he’d never been able to dig through the layers of security and paperwork to come up with a name. Or a reason why the baby was so important.

      But that was something Kinley could perhaps tell him.

      He used the car’s mirrors to glance around the parking lot. “You’re a cautious woman,” he remarked. “Would you know if someone had followed you?”

      “I thought I would. But I was obviously wrong.”

      “Other than me, would you know if someone had followed you?” He wasn’t being cocky. He was just better than most at that sort of thing.

      “People have followed me in the past, but after I left witness protection this last time, I haven’t noticed anyone.”

      That didn’t mean someone wasn’t there. Jordan had another look at those mirrors.

      “You gave up your company for my son,” she said. Not a question, nor an accusation. Her voice was heavy with emotion.

      He glanced at her and decided to change the subject. “I’m going with two possible theories here. First, that the child’s father is behind all of this danger.”

      She was shaking her head before he even finished. “No. He’s dead. He died trying to murder me and my brother.”

      Okay. That was a story he knew a little about but wanted to hear more of later. “Second theory. Someone wants the baby for leverage. The people after you want information, and they believe if they have your child, they’ll be able to manipulate you into giving them what they want.”

      Kinley stared at him so long he wasn’t sure she would jump on to this subject change, but she finally looked away and returned to chipping off her nail polish. “The research facility where I was employed was working on several projects. One was the chemical weapon antidote that I told you about. Several researchers were working on it, and occasionally, I assisted them.”

      “Assisted?” He latched right on to that and mentally cursed when he spotted something he didn’t like in the mirror.

       Hell.

      “Usually I was just a consult for a particular facet of a project,” she explained. “For instance, I only worked on a portion of the formula for the primary antidote. I never got to see the finished results. None of us did. That was the way the facility maintained security.”

      Jordan calmly started the car, put on his seat belt and kept his eyes on the mirror. “But even though you don’t have the big picture, you have pieces. Others have pieces. And you have the names of those others.”

      “Yes.” That was all she said for several moments. “Brenna Martel was one of the top lab assistants at the research facility. She’s in a federal prison serving a life sentence. But there are others who disappeared after the facility was destroyed and the federal investigation started.” Another pause. “I’ve written notes about the research, and I’ve gone over them a thousand times, but I just don’t know why someone would still be after me.”

      “Notes?” he questioned.

      “They’re encrypted,” she huffed, obviously noting his concern. “I wouldn’t just leave information like that lying around for anyone to see.”

      But someone would look hard for info like that. “And these notes are where exactly?”

      “Hidden in my apartment.”

      Jordan didn’t even have to think about this. “I want to see them.” In fact, he wanted to study them and then interrogate Kinley and put anyone in those notes under surveillance until all of this finally made some sense.

      “I can show you what I have,” she answered. “But I want to see Maddox.”

      He glanced at her, frowned. “Who the hell is Maddox?”

      “My son,” she said as if the answer were obvious. “That’s what I named him. You didn’t know?”

      “No. Shelly didn’t get around to that when she left him on my doorstep.” Jordan had been calling him Gus. “And I couldn’t exactly go digging for his name or paternity, now could I?”

      “No.” Despite the fear and the seriousness of their situation, she smiled softly. “Do you have a picture of him?”

      “Not a chance. And as for you seeing him, that’s not gonna happen until you can convince me that you’re here as a mother and not as someone who wants to use him as a pawn in some sick game.”

      The smile vanished, and her mouth opened in outrage. “I wouldn’t do that. God, what do you think I am?”

      “You’re a woman who left her baby with a bodyguard because it was too dangerous to keep him with you. The danger’s still there.” He glanced in the mirror again.

      “I know that,” she snapped. “Shelly had been my friend since high school. I trusted her. And she died protecting my son. If I could change that I would. But I can’t. And I’ve searched and searched, and I can’t make the danger go away.” The minitirade seemed to drain her, and she groaned and rested her head against the back of the seat.

      Jordan huffed, glanced in the mirror again and tried not to let her emotion get to him. He didn’t want sympathy or pity playing into this. “This isn’t convincing me that you should be mother of the year.”

      That brought her head off the seat. “I don’t want to be mother of the year. I simply want my son.”

      “And СКАЧАТЬ