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      KERI LOCKE MYSTERY SERIES

      A TRACE OF DEATH (Book #1)

      A TRACE OF MURDER (Book #2)

      A TRACE OF VICE (Book #3)

      A TRACE OF CRIME (Book #4)

      A TRACE OF HOPE (Book #5)

      CHAPTER ONE

      Even before the baby arrived, people were calling Kate Wise the Miracle Mother. Upon learning that she was going to be giving birth at the age of fifty-seven, Kate had told no one other than Allen and Melissa. She hadn’t even told anyone at work. Not DeMarco, not Duran…no one. But somehow, word had gotten out. By the time she was five months pregnant, everyone at the bureau knew about it and there were journalists and reporters calling.

      Oddly enough, the first journalist who had called her was on her mind as the doctor checked to see how much she was dilated. She’d found the idea of her pregnancy being newsworthy a little ridiculous. But as her doctors had told her and as some Google research had verified, it was rare for a woman beyond fifty to get pregnant—and even more rare for that woman to carry the baby to full term.

      But here she was, her water having broken eight hours ago, with her doctor telling her she was eight centimeters dilated and it was almost time.

      The first reporter had been a woman from Mother and Baby magazine. Kate had only taken the call out of a need to not be rude. They’d spoken on the phone twice; the second call ended up being more focused on her ability to maintain a second career within the FBI. The reporter had spoken to her as if Kate were some sort of superhero. Kate had never known why, but something about the interview had sat wrong with her for the entirety of her pregnancy.

      Because no one should look to me as an example, Kate thought as another contraction went tearing through her more-than-half-a-century-old body. This is torture.

      She did not remember her pregnancy with Melissa being this hard. Of course, that had been almost thirty years ago. That had been planned, and there had been no reporters. There had been no thirty-second blips on the evening news about her pregnancy, no nicknames like Miracle Mother to live up to.

      “Kate?” the doctor said. His voice tore her out of her thoughts, managing to find a way in through the pain of the latest contraction. “You still with me?”

      “Uh-huh.”

      It was true, though the world was something of a haze. The pregnancy was high risk. There had been issues from the fourth month on. Worries of low birth weight, a scare where the baby’s heartbeat had been far too slow, and now here he was, three weeks early and projected to weigh about a pound and a half under what the doctor considered safe.

      “He’s here, Kate. I need you to push, okay? One more big push and your baby boy will

      be—”

      Kate pushed, and the room spun. She was vaguely aware of Allen by her side. He was holding her hand, his face next to hers as he coached her on and encouraged her. Kate let out a moan, doing everything she could not to scream. The world started growing dim just as she heard the first cries of her newborn baby son.

      Her vision was hazy at best when the doctor placed her son on her chest. She cradled him in her arms and started to cry. She hated the word miracle, as it was tossed around far too often. But feeling the warmth of her baby in her arms, held against her nearly sixty-year-old body, she supposed that’s what this was…a miracle.

      It was a nice thought to hang on to as exhaustion swept over her and her vision went from hazy to a complete and perfect field of black.

      In the coming weeks, Kate was overcome with a huge wave of depression. Now that her son was here—named Michael, after her late husband—she started to obsess over the negatives of being a new mother at the age of fifty-seven. First of all, she had to accept the fact that in the past eighteen months, she had become both a grandmother and a new mother. There was also the fact that by the time this new kid was old enough to go to college, she’d be pushing eighty. And thinking of college opened her eyes to the added expense. She had enough money saved up, but she had made plans for it—namely a lot of traveling after sixty. But now those plans would have to change.

      She also wondered how Allen was going to truly handle it all. Sure, he had been great so far. He had been genuinely excited through most of the pregnancy, but now the baby was actually here and changing their lives…especially Allen’s. First of all, Michael had stayed in the hospital for three weeks. He’d been in NICU while a team of doctors made sure he was going to gain weight. Kate missed most of this, as her own recovery was much harder than she’d expected. The strain of the birth had thrown her back out and her femoral nerves had also been damaged, causing her to occasionally lose feeling in her legs. She was finally officially released from the hospital after eleven days.

      Twenty days after he was born, Michael was allowed to go home. He weighed five pounds seven ounces when Kate rested him in his bassinet for the first time. For the two days that followed, Kate had been an almost obsessive mother. She’d make sure he was breathing at least five times during each of his naps and at night; she hovered over Allen when he held their son, and she would not even let Melissa hold him.

      Those two days had worn her out and that, she supposed, was what brought the depression on. She stayed in bed for eight full days, only getting up to use the bathroom and to shower on three occasions. Allen was essentially a single parent in that time, and during one of her nights of being holed up in her bed, Kate heard him sobbing.

      On that eighth day, it was Melissa of all people who convinced her to get out of bed. There was a knock at the bedroom door. She assumed it was Allen and answered with a groggy “Come in.”

      When she saw that it was Melissa, she wanted to cry but wasn’t sure why. She propped herself up on her left elbow, surprised at how much it hurt to do so. Staying in bed had made her quite sore.

      “Lissa,” she said. “What a surprise.”

      Melissa sat on the edge of the bed and took her mother’s hand. “How you doing, Mom?”

      “I don’t know,” she answered honestly. “Tired. Wiped out. Depressed.”

      “Still having issues with your legs?”

      “No, they seem okay. Haven’t lost feeling in them since I got back home.”

      “Good. Knowing your legs are okay is going to make me seem like less of a bully with what I say next.”

      “What is it?” Kate asked.

      “I love you, Mom. But it’s time to get your ass out of bed.”

      “I want to, I really do. But I—”

      “No, Mom. Allen has been busting his ass this past week. I’ve helped where I can, but he only lets me do so much because he’s afraid of how you’ll react. Look…I get how weird and scary this has to be, but you need to face it. You’re fifty-seven and you just had a baby. And you survived it. Now it’s time to be a mother. And I can tell you from personal experience that you’re pretty good at it.”

      Kate sat up and СКАЧАТЬ