JOSH (9 page)

Chapter Ten

“Miranda?” Josh repeated, though he knew it was useless. The call had ended, and he didn’t know if the woman had done that herself or if someone else was responsible for the disconnection.

Josh immediately phoned back the dispatcher. “What’s the number Miranda Culley was calling from?”

“It’s from a prepaid cell phone.”

Josh groaned. There was no way to trace that, but it did make him wonder where she’d gotten the burner. Maybe like Sierra, she’d stolen it from one of the guards.

“If she calls back, put her straight through to me,” Josh instructed.

“You know her?” Josh asked Jaycee when he ended the call with the dispatcher.

“No.” Jaycee shook her head and moved to Grayson’s laptop. “I’ll check NCIC.”

The National Crime Information Center was a database for missing persons. It was a good start, but it’d be even better if Miranda called back and told them where the heck she was.

And if she gave them the name of the person responsible.

They needed that info from Miranda so they could make an arrest and put an end to not just the baby farms but the attacks, as well.

“She’s missing, all right,” Jaycee confirmed several moments later. “Miranda Ann Culley is twenty-eight, single and worked as a waitress in Kerrville. No immediate family, but her boss reported her missing two months ago.”

“No mention of the father of her baby?”

Another head shake and more clicks on the computer keyboard. “She does have a record, though. Busted for drugs six years ago. Nothing since.”

So she’d cleaned herself up. Maybe. Or maybe she just hadn’t gotten caught. And that led Josh to something else he had to consider. “This could be a setup to lure us out into the open.”

Jaycee met his gaze from over the top of the computer. “Sierra wasn’t a setup.” She paused, groaned softly. “I don’t want it to be a setup. If she was held captive like I was, then I want her rescued.”

Survivor’s guilt. Something Josh recognized because he felt it himself. His partner, Ben, had died, and he hadn’t. It didn’t matter that he’d had no say in the matter as to who had lived and who had died. Jaycee hadn’t had a say in her captivity and rescue, either.

But the guilt was still there.

“I want all of them rescued,” Jaycee added. Her voice trembled, and she cursed. “Damn hormones.”

He suspected the hormones weren’t nearly as much to blame as the guilt and Jaycee’s need to get justice for all the women who’d been taken. Josh went to her, knowing it was a mistake to get this close when the emotions were sky-high. It was also a mistake to put his arms around her.

But he did it anyway.

“When you’re nice to me, it only makes it harder,” Jaycee mumbled.

He eased back, looked at her and his eyebrow lifted, questioning that.

“If you’re angry with me,” she said, her voice barely a whisper now, “then I can forget about that night we spent together.”

His eyebrow lifted higher.

“All right, so maybe I can’t forget it entirely,” Jaycee amended. “But I can focus on the anger and nothing else.”

Nothing else
as in the heat.

It’d been the overwhelming need for each other that had sent them racing to bed five months earlier. No finesse. No foreplay. Just the fire that had given them no choice. Well, no choice that they’d wanted to take anyway. At the time, Josh hadn’t thought there’d be huge consequences, like a pregnancy.

He had definitely been wrong about that.

“You want me to yell at you?” he joked. And it surprised him that he could make light of something like that. Two days ago, he would have shut her out with his anger and his words.

The kisses had changed everything.

And he added to the change by kissing her again.

Oh, man. He was in big trouble here.

There was no way he should feel what he was feeling. It wasn’t right. Logical. Or any other label he could put on it. But did that stop him?

Nope.

He just kissed her as if the world around them wasn’t a giant powder keg that could explode at any moment. Josh might have kept kissing Jaycee for hours if he hadn’t felt the movement. The soft thuds against his stomach.

“The baby’s kicking,” Jaycee whispered, her mouth still on his.

Josh slid his hand between them and over the kicks. It felt like a rodeo going on in there, and he chuckled before he realized he was even going to do it.

Jaycee pulled back, looking a little stunned. “I’ve never heard you laugh before.”

Josh was about to say that was impossible, but it had been a while since he’d let himself feel anything close to laughter.

More survivor’s guilt.

His dead partner, Ben, couldn’t laugh anymore. Couldn’t live. So Josh had shut down, too. The problem was that he didn’t know how to start back up again. How to forget that Jaycee had been responsible for that attack.

How to forgive.

And it was that reminder that had him pulling away from her. “Sorry.”

He could have added more—exactly what, he didn’t know—but his phone rang again. Josh snatched it up, hoping to see the 911 operator with Miranda’s return call, but it was Grayson.

“We’ve got a problem,” Grayson said the second that Josh answered.

Josh groaned and put the call on speaker so he wouldn’t have to repeat the bad news to Jaycee.

“Sierra sneaked out of the hospital,” Grayson added. “She told us she had to go to the bathroom, but she’s gone. She left a note on the mirror saying that she wasn’t sure she could trust us, that she thought one of us would hand her back over to the kidnappers.”

Josh cursed. This wasn’t just frustrating, it was downright dangerous for Sierra and her baby. Didn’t Sierra realize that?

“I doubt she’ll come to the sheriff’s office,” Josh said. “You have someone out looking for her?”

“Yeah, and I’m about to join them. Just thought you should know that Valerie and Bryson are headed your way.”

Really?
He didn’t need this now. “Why?”

“I contacted Bryson just as Sierra wanted, and he said he was on the way. Just called him back though to say she’d left, but Valerie and he were already en route. Bryson insisted on going to the sheriff’s office to wait for any news about Sierra.”

Of course he would. He wanted to get his hands on that baby, and Sierra was due any time now.

“If Jaycee’s holding up all right,” Grayson said, “then you two stay put awhile longer with Gage and Bree.”

“Will do.” But the words had no sooner left Josh’s mouth when he heard the jangle of the front doorbell. He also heard Valerie’s and Bryson’s voices before he even glanced out of the office and into the reception area.

“How could you possibly let her get away?” Bryson demanded of Gage, who’d been standing guard.

“You’re looking at the wrong guy,” Gage drawled, and then proceeded to frisk them, despite protests from the two. “They aren’t armed,” he relayed to Josh.

With his gun still drawn, Gage stepped just outside the door and looked around. No doubt to see if the pair had been followed or if they had brought any hired guns with them.

“No one
let
Sierra get away,” Josh informed Bryson. “She lied to the sheriff so she could slip out of the hospital.” Something he was sure Grayson had already told the man.

“Someone let her sneak out,” Bryson argued. “She should have been watched the entire time.”

“She wasn’t under arrest,” Josh fired back. But clearly she’d been a flight risk, something none of them had picked up on. Everything Sierra had said led Josh to believe that she wanted to be rescued. And maybe she still did. She just didn’t trust them to do the rescuing.

“Oh, God,” Bryson mumbled. He touched his fingers to his mouth. “What if those kidnappers took her again and made it look as if she’d left on her own?”

Josh couldn’t totally discount that, but it wasn’t adding up to another kidnapping. Grayson would have told him if there’d been any sign of a struggle or if Sierra had called out for help. Neither of those things had happened.

Valerie frowned. “My sister’s clever, and if she’d wanted to leave, no one would have stopped her. She would have found a way.” Valerie’s attention went to Jaycee when she stepped into the hall. “Good, I’m glad you’re here. It saves me from tracking you down.”

“What do you want?” Jaycee asked, and her tone matched both Valerie’s and Bryson’s—unfriendly.

“You must remember something about your time as a captive. A name, a face. A place. Anything that would help us get to the bottom of this and find out who might have taken my sister.”

Jaycee shook her head. “I’ve told Josh and the sheriff everything I remember, and it’s nothing that would help find Sierra.” She looked at Josh, lowered her voice to a whisper. “I think it’s time to ask him about what the tech found on the laptop.”

Josh stayed quiet a moment, then nodded. “Care to explain why your name was found on a computer recovered from the baby farm?” Josh came right out and asked the man.

“Probably because Sierra told them he was the rich father of her baby,” Valerie said before Bryson could answer. “And she would have done that so they could force Bryson to pay up after she delivered.”

Bryson huffed. What he didn’t do was look surprised at the revelation that he had a connection to the baby farm. He came out of the reception area and into the hall, but he stopped several yards away. “I just want to find Sierra before she has the baby and does something stupid like try to sell it.”

“From everything you’ve told me about her, Sierra will offer the baby to you first,” Josh reminded him. “I don’t think you have to worry about her going to a stranger.” Unless Bryson didn’t pay up, that is. Or maybe Bryson was concerned that someone would pay more than he was willing to.

“What if these guards don’t give her a choice?” Bryson pressed.

“Then I’m sure you’ll hear about it.” Because he was pretty sure the bottom line here was still all about the money. “What I don’t understand is why the computer record showed that someone from the baby farm had sent you money.”

Now Bryson had a reaction. “Impossible!” he howled. “There’s no way I’d accept money from snakes like that. Besides, I don’t need money.”

On the surface, that was true. “Maybe it was a way of taking care of Sierra. The person running the baby farm could have paid you when you turned Sierra over to them. That way she couldn’t run, and if the baby turned out to be yours, then you could always buy it and not have to deal with Sierra.”

“That’s despicable.” Bryson’s eyes narrowed. “And if you repeat idiotic lies like that, you’ll be facing a lawsuit for defamation.”

Valerie caught on to her client to keep him from going closer to Josh. “I’m sure we’ll get all of this sorted out once we find my sister.”

Josh wasn’t so sure of that. Sierra hadn’t been able to give them much info that would lead them back to the person running the baby farm.

Both Bryson and Valerie started throwing questions at him again. Questions about how he intended to find Sierra and what he’d do with her once she was back in protective custody. Josh had no intention of giving them info like that, and besides, he wanted both of them out of there.

“My advice is for both of you to go back to your homes in case Sierra turns up at one of them.”

Valerie and Bryson stopped their string of questions, and Valerie whispered something to Bryson that Josh didn’t catch because his phone rang again.

Finally.
It was the emergency dispatcher.

“I have to take this call,” Josh said to their visitors.

He didn’t wait for the two to respond. Jaycee and he stepped back into Grayson’s office and Josh closed the door before he hit the answer button.

“It’s that woman, Miranda Culley, again,” the dispatcher said, and put the call through.

“Are you all right?” Josh immediately asked with the call on speaker.

“I had to hang up because I thought I heard footsteps coming toward me. I had to move. I’d stolen one of the guard’s phones, and I was worried they’d be able to trace it somehow.”

Again, she’d dodged his question. That didn’t make Josh trust her, but he was still hoping she had critical information that could make Jaycee and countless others finally feel safe.

“You need to tell me where you are and who’s responsible for the baby farm,” Josh demanded.

“I will, but first I want to speak to Agent Jaycee Finney.”

Everything inside Josh went still. Jaycee had already said she didn’t know the woman, so why did Miranda know her name?

“Why her?” Josh pressed when Miranda didn’t continue.

“Because I heard the guards talking about her, too. They want her baby, but she escaped. I think that means I can trust her, that she isn’t working for those guards.”

“You can trust me,” Jaycee said despite Josh shaking his head for her to stay quiet. He didn’t want her involved in this any more than she already was.

“The guards hate you,” Miranda said a moment later. “They hate Deputy Ryland, too. That’s why I called him. Please tell me that you won’t try to kill me when we meet.”

Josh had to fight to make sure he didn’t snap at her, but the woman was testing his patience. “I have no intention of killing you. I want to help. Just tell me where you are.”

Silence.

For a long time.

So long that Josh checked and made sure the call hadn’t been disconnected. It hadn’t been.

“All right,” Miranda finally said. It sounded as if she’d just had a long debate with herself. “There’s an old cemetery on Martin Road. You know the place?”

“Yeah.” It wasn’t that far from the Ryland ranch. “Are you there now?”

“No, but I’ll meet you and Jaycee there in two hours.”

“Jaycee isn’t coming,” Josh said before the woman even finished.

Thankfully, Jaycee didn’t argue with him, though that was an arguing look she had in her eyes.

“If Jaycee doesn’t come, there’ll be no meeting,” Miranda insisted.

“You’d better come up with a different plan, then,” Josh fired back.

There was another snail-crawling silence, and Josh hoped at the end of this one, Miranda would show some common sense. It wouldn’t be smart for Jaycee to be out there meeting a captive when the guards were looking to kidnap or do heaven knows what to her again.