Chapter One

      A baby on the doorstep was a cliché. Wasn’t it?

      Creed Carter shook the early morning cobwebs from his head. He should have had one more cup of coffee. Maybe two.

      No one abandoned babies on doorsteps anymore. Especially in a town as small as Whisper Falls.

      But this wasn’t a doorstep. This was the altar of Whisper Falls Community Church. A small church that was always as quiet as a tomb on Tuesday mornings and every other morning he came in to pray before starting his day in the air above the Ozark Mountains.

      Creed blinked and crept closer, tiptoeing, hoping his vision would clear or he would awaken and laugh off the silly dream.

      Maybe a child had left a doll behind. Maybe the Christmas committee had gotten the baby Jesus doll out of storage for some reason.

      But this was spring. Christmas was months away.

      Suddenly, the small wrapped bundle stirred. Creed’s heart jumped, kicking up to a hundred knots. A man who’d flown helicopters over Iraq wasn’t scared of anything. Except very small human beings who cried a lot and couldn’t talk. Or walk. Or feed themselves.

      A pair of tiny fists rose from the odd-looking bundle. Right behind them came the mewling cry.

      His heart slammed against his chest wall as if he’d lost power over Whisper Falls with the chopper filled with sightseers. Creed rushed to the altar and fell on his knees beside the bundle. A tiny baby, face wrinkled and red, eyes still puffy and slanted as if she or he was brand-new, quivered and kicked. The tiny rosebud mouth opened with a loud, distressed wail.

      Creed glanced wildly around. Surely this child had a mother around here somewhere. Reverend Wally Schmidt opened the church every morning at five before making his trek over the mountains to his day job in Fayetteville. If Creed arrived early enough, sometimes they prayed together. But not this morning. The church was empty. Not even Wally’s four-wheel drive was parked outside. There wasn’t another soul around except him and this little bitty, squalling baby.

      Heart revving faster by the minute, Creed offered up a quick prayer and then whipped out his cell phone and did what any sensible man would do. He called 9-1-1.

      * * *

      The sound of JoEtta Farnsworth’s moped had barely died when the Whisper Falls police chief slammed through the double doors into the sanctuary. Short and stocky and tough as shoe leather, the middle-aged blonde looked like a scooter-riding version of Amelia Earhart.

      “What’s going on in here?” she demanded in voice like a foghorn.

      “I found this baby,” Creed said, realizing how sad that sounded. People found pennies, not babies.

      It was weird. He, an only child whose experience with babies was limited to diaper commercials on TV, was downright heartsick to think anyone would leave a baby alone. Even if the little thing had been left in a church, he or she was alone. Abandoned. Helpless.

      “What do you mean you found her?” Chief Farnsworth eyed him as if he was a teenaged driver caught spinning doughnuts on Main Street.

      “I came in a few minutes ago, and there she was.” He hitched his chin toward the long, oak altar.

      “On the altar?”

      The baby stirred. “Wrapped up in this thing. It’s a tablecloth, I think.”

      “Uh-huh. The kind you carry on picnics.” The chief stepped closer. “Flannel on the inside. Vinyl on the outside.”

      “She quieted down when I picked her up.”

      He’d rocked her, too, and sung “Jesus Loves Me” in the rough, pathetic voice that could make dogs howl and soldiers throw things. She’d seemed to go for it.

      Creed didn’t mention the singing and rocking to the chief.

      “Anyone else around?”

      “No one I saw.”

      “Did you look? Check in the office or the bathroom?”

      “Never thought about it. She was crying.” A man would be heartless to walk away from a cry like that.

      JoEtta peeled back the vinyl to peek at the sleeping face. “You say she’s a girl? What about the umbilical cord? Is it still attached?”

      Creed blinked, horrified. “I didn’t look. I just thought she seemed pink and round like a little girl.”

      “Oh, for pity’s sake. Let me see its belly.” The no-nonsense policewoman pushed aside the cloth and peered down at the naked baby. “It’s a girl, all right,” she said. “New as the dew.”

      The baby started crying again.

      “Well, pardon me, missy,” JoEtta said with a snort.

      Creed rewrapped the baby and snuggled her close to his shirt. She stopped crying.

      “I think she likes you, Creed.”

      Creed figured the little thing was simply happy to be held. Either that, or desperate to escape Chief Farnsworth’s rock-grinder voice. But the idea that she liked him tickled his chest, anyway. “What are you going to do with her?”

      “Call Social Services.” JoEtta pointed at the altar. “Sit down there and do whatever it is you’ve been doing to keep her happy while I search the church and make sure there’s not a mama lurking around.”

      “You think someone walked in here and had a baby, then left her?”

      “Stranger things have happened.”

      “Not in Whisper Falls.”

      The chief made a rude noise in the back of her throat. “I beg to differ. A woman had twins one year on the Ferris wheel at Pumpkin Fest because that idiot Buster Grubenheimer thought she was screaming from fright and wouldn’t shut down the ride.”