Baby Trouble. Beth Cornelison
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on her face. It didn’t do a thing to drive back the nausea washing through her. She rinsed her mouth and headed into the bedroom.
“What else did Marta say?” Nick demanded.
“That’s it. Adam and his nanny are gone. There are signs of a struggle in the playroom. Lisbet must have put up a fight. The kidnappers have a six-hour head start and could be anywhere by now.”
She couldn’t stand still and moved around the room searching it frantically for she knew not what. Nick finally caught her in his arms and held her board-stiff body tightly against his until the worst of her panic passed.
“They’ve got my baby,” she wailed. “He must be so scared. If they hurt him—” she broke off on a sob “—oh, God.”
“I’ll kill Meredith if she’s behind this,” Nick gritted out.
Laura was swinging back and forth between terror and rage so fast she could hardly keep up with it. She gazed up at Nick with tears streaming down her cheeks. “What do we do?”
He gripped her shoulders tightly and stared into her stricken gaze, clearly willing her to hold it together. “We fight. We do whatever it takes to find him and get him back safe and sound.”
Under his hands, she squared her shoulders. “You’re right. Nobody’s messing with my baby and getting away with it.” Death dripped in her voice. Super Mommy had just gone over to the dark side. Whoever’d kidnapped Adam was going to pay in blood. She would find her son and get him back.
Perceptive as ever, Ellie started to fuss in the crib in the corner.
Nick suggested, “You take care of Ellie. I’ll make the arrangements to get back home.”
Laura nodded and stumbled to the crib the hotel had sent up while Nick called the airport and hired a private jet to take them back to Washington with all possible haste.
Nick joined her in the bedroom. “A plane will be ready in an hour. We’ve got about twenty minutes before we have to leave for the airport. The concierge will have a taxi waiting for us downstairs.”
Ellie’s tiny body snuggling tightly against hers calmed Laura enough that she could begin to think rationally. When the baby had fallen asleep in her arms, she said quietly, “I’m not entirely sure your wife is behind this. At least not directly.”
“Why’s that?” Nick asked in surprise over his shoulder as he threw his things into his suitcase.
“If she was involved in your original kidnapping, surely she was told when you were rescued. Which means she’s had a year to react to your escape. Why this, why now?”
“If she was involved with my kidnapping, then she’d have known I suffered a memory loss. If I didn’t come forward for a year, she might have figured I was never going to identify myself as Nikolas Spiros.”
“Either way,” Laura reasoned aloud, “she had no reason to believe you were ever coming back. Why would she have planned an elaborate kidnapping of your son? Because believe me—nobody got through my house’s security without some serious planning.”
Nick made a rueful face. “Maybe she found out I’d visited my old attorney and figured I was going to make a run at getting my company back.”
Laura thought aloud. “Okay. She had a motive to grab Adam. But still. Just a few days to hire a kidnapper, get him in place, find your son, figure out how to get past my estate’s formidable security, and execute a kidnapping? That’s just not plausible.”
“Who else could it be?”
She answered grimly, “It’s not like you and I don’t have other enemies. What about AbaCo? Could they be trying to blackmail you into not testifying against them?”
Fury glittered in Nick’s gaze. “They most certainly have experience with kidnapping and the personnel to pull one off on short notice. And they know you and the children are my life. But going after a child? Those bastards …” His voice trailed off as he choked on his fury.
She knew the feeling. “The trial starts next week. If they have Adam, we’re going to have to find him fast.”
“I know just the person to ask if AbaCo has Adam.”
“Who?”
“AbaCo’s CEO.”
“Werner Kloffman?” Laura echoed. “Where on earth would we find him? High-profile people like him tend to move around the globe and don’t exactly advertise their whereabouts.”
“What do you want to bet he’s in Washington pulling strings and trying to get the government to drop its case against his company?”
“Good point. If you’ll step aside and give me access to your laptop, MysteryMom needs to contact a few strategically placed people within the government.”
“MysteryMom?” Nick asked.
“That’s my email handle when I’m doing work for DaddyFinders, Inc. I built up a pretty decent informant network over my years of searching for you.”
He looked at her soberly. “I am eternally grateful you never gave up on me. You and I won’t give up on Adam, either. We’ll find him.”
A sob threatened to erupt from her chest, but she shoved it down. Her baby boy needed Super Mommy firing on all cylinders right now.
Nick must have sensed her momentary weakness because he said encouragingly, “Lisbet’s with him. She’ll protect him as fiercely as you would.”
She nodded gamely, refraining from suggesting that Lisbet might very well be dead and out of the picture by now. She knew all too well how important it was not to dwell on the negative, but instead to focus on hope and determination and keep moving forward.
Nick’s arms came around her. She clung to him tightly. Despite the unresolved problems between them, they were united in purpose when it came to retrieving their son. And that was all that mattered for now.
She disentangled herself from his arms and headed for Nick’s laptop computer.
Nick woke up as gray dawn crept around the jet’s window blinds, surprised that he’d managed to catch a nap. Fear for Adam slammed into him moments after his eyes blinked open, so heavy on his chest that he could hardly breathe. He tossed and turned in the uncomfortable airplane seat, tearing himself apart with guilt over having brought this danger to his son. Thankfully, Laura was asleep stretched out across several seats and Ellie was crashed in a playpen. He slipped out of his seat and tiptoed over to check on Ellie. The poor baby’d had a rough night last night and was sleeping deeply.
This aircraft was equipped with Wi-Fi, and he used it to connect his laptop to the internet and check the morning news. The gossip sites were having a field day over his return to the public eye. Even serious news outlets were commenting freely on the status of the Spiros fortune now that Nikolas Spiros was back. Analysts were speculating gleefully on whether he would attempt to seize control of his company from the German firm that had owned it for the past half-dozen years.
A limousine met them at the airport when they landed and whisked them south to Laura’s estate in Virginia. The mansion was crawling with police and FBI investigators who had frustratingly little information to share about Adam and Lisbet’s disappearance. The FBI kidnapping expert on scene seemed alarmed by the lack of a ransom note.
When Laura pushed the fellow to speculate on who’d taken her son, the FBI man hinted that perhaps whoever’d taken Adam didn’t feel a need to leave a note but felt the message was loud and clear enough without one.
Nick’s jaw tightened grimly. Which was a fancy way of the guy saying he thought AbaCo had Adam and that the kidnapper’s intent was clear—stop the child’s father from testifying against the company.
It didn’t help matters that, by midafternoon, the estate’s front gate was crowded with luridly curious reporters.