Colton 911: Baby's Bodyguard. Lisa Childs
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known each other for a long time, but Thompson didn’t need any more sympathy. He needed answers—about his sister’s murder and about these bodies that had recently turned up. He uttered a ragged sigh as he pushed himself up from the rocking chair in which he’d been sitting. He didn’t move as fast as he once had, his bones aching now with age and overuse. He didn’t stand quite as straight and tall as he once had either.
Neither did Hays, though, who had spent too many of his seventy-some years in the saddle, working his ranch. “My son will find out who really killed your sister,” Hays assured him.
Thompson wanted to believe the killer was Elliot Corgan, because then he would have the satisfaction of knowing the sick bastard had died in prison. But Elliot had denied killing his sister, and there was no way he could have killed that woman whose body had been discovered in the Lone Star Pharma parking lot.
There was another killer in Whisperwood.
And until he was caught, the chief had a feeling that bodies would keep turning up.
Cries emanated from the house, drawing Forrest’s attention back to the one-story ranch structure and to her. A shadow passed behind the windows as if she was pacing in her kitchen. She had a baby.
Somebody had probably mentioned it to Forrest, but he didn’t remember. He’d been preoccupied with the hurricane damage and now with the murder investigation. He surveyed the crime scene. Techs worked on bagging those corroded coins or buttons he’d uncovered, while the coroner worked on removing the body from the hole. They knew what they were doing; they didn’t need his supervising their every move. In fact they’d probably resent it if he did.
So he headed back to the house. He raised his fist to the frame around the glass in the back door but hesitated before knocking. The cries were louder now, so he wasn’t at risk of waking the baby.
The little guy was already awake and squalling. Seeing through the glass that Rae had her hands full with the baby, Forrest reached instead for the knob, turned it and let himself back into the house.
She gasped at his bold intrusion, but then she didn’t seem to like anything he did. The invitation to dance had definitely been extended out of obligation or pity. Probably obligation...because she didn’t seem to like him enough to pity him.
She glared at him over the baby’s head. “Why did they have to come here with the sirens blaring?” she asked. “It doesn’t look like an emergency.”
“No,” he agreed. The body was far beyond help. Rae Lemmon looked as if she needed help, though, as she rocked the baby’s stiff little body in her arms.
Dark circles rimmed her brown eyes, but instead of detracting from her beauty, they highlighted it. She looked both vulnerable with her delicate features and sexy as hell with the old T-shirt molded to her generous curves.
“He had just finally gone to sleep,” she murmured with a little catch in her voice, “when the sirens woke him up.”
A pang of regret struck Forrest. The officers hadn’t needed to put on the sirens. It would have been better to draw less attention to the scene than more.
Fortunately no reporters had followed them. Forrest had never enjoyed dealing with the press. So he definitely should have advised the police not to use the sirens when he’d called in what he’d found. He opened his mouth to apologize, but before he could, chimes rang out.
Was that the sound of her doorbell?
Maybe a reporter had picked up on the call after all. He grimaced—just as Rae held out the baby toward him.
“That’s my phone,” she said, as she handed him the crying infant.
Because he had no experience with babies, he didn’t know how to hold him. But he reacted instinctively, closing his hands around the baby’s midsection. Was he supposed to cup his head or something? He moved one hand to the baby’s neck, and the little guy’s head swiveled toward him.
The face that had been scrunched up with cries froze with shock, and his dark eyes widened as he stared up at Forrest. Was he scared?
His crying stopped, though, so that was a good thing. Forrest could hear himself think again. He could also hear the soft murmur of Rae’s voice as she spoke to someone—maybe the baby’s father. She must have left the phone in another room, since in order to answer it she’d left him alone with her baby.
Forrest was as frozen with fear as the little guy was. What if he was holding him wrong? Or he dropped him?
Rae would hate him even more then.
And Forrest would hate himself. But the kid was light and easy to hold. Maybe he could do this. And if he figured it out, he would actually be able to hold Donovan and Bellamy’s baby once it came, and not harm his little niece and nephew.
He crooked his arm and eased the baby into that, so the kid could stare up at him more comfortably. And he kept staring like he had no idea what the hell Forrest was, let alone whom. Keeping his deep voice to a low rumble, he murmured, “I’m Detective Colton.”
Not that the baby could actually understand him. But he stared up at Forrest’s face as if he was listening.
Maybe Forrest reminded him of his father. Where was the guy? Forrest didn’t remember seeing anyone hanging around Rae at the wedding. But then, as one of the maids of honor, she’d been busy. Not too busy to ask him to dance, though.
But that must have been just part of her duty as a maid of honor—to look after the guests. Maybe that was why the baby’s father had made himself scarce. Or maybe he’d stayed home to watch the baby, since he probably would have been newly born at the time of the wedding.
She hadn’t looked like she’d recently given birth then, though—not with how well her navy blue maid of honor’s dress had fit her.
Forrest had so many questions about Rae Lemmon, so much curiosity. It was that curiosity that had drawn him to her house this morning and to the body in her backyard. That—more than anything—should have proved to him that she was going to be trouble.
He had to restrict his curiosity to professional only, since his broken engagement had convinced him that personal relationships were not for him. The only personal relationships he was going to allow himself was with his family.
Being around this little guy might help him prepare for the new baby so that he would be able to help Donovan and Bellamy when they needed it. So that he could be a good uncle to the little cowgirl or cowboy that the newlyweds would have.
“What about you?” Forrest asked the baby. “Are you going to be a cowboy? You want to learn to ride?”
Despite having no experience with kids, he realized this one was too young to answer any of his questions, but the baby seemed fascinated by his voice. Those already wide brown eyes widened even more. With those enormous eyes, delicate features and brown hair, the baby looked so much like his beautiful mother.
A little bubble floated out of the baby’s lips as he gurgled. And Forrest tensed with concern. Was something wrong?
And where had the baby’s mother gone?
Forrest had felt more comfortable finding that mummified body in her backyard than he did standing in her kitchen, holding her child. That body was beyond saving; the only thing he needed to do for her was find her killer.
But the baby...
He could screw up. He could cause him harm, and that was the last thing he wanted to do.
* * *
Why had the crying stopped?
What had Forrest Colton done to her baby?
Rae peered