He reached down to jiggle the knob, but the cold metal twisted easily in his hand and the door creaked open a couple of inches.
Niall’s suspicion radar went on instant alert. What woman who lived alone in the city didn’t keep her door locked?
“Miss McKane?” he called out. But his only response was the even louder decibel level of the crying baby. He squinted the scratches on the knob into focus and quickly pulled his phone from his pocket to snap a picture. A familiar glint of red glass wedged between the frame and catch for the dead bolt higher up caught his eye. The tiny shattered orb looked like the source of the shard he’d found in the carpet.
Finally. Answers. But he didn’t like them.
There were deeper gouges in the wood trim around it, indicating that both locks had been forced. His brain must have been half-asleep not to have suspected earlier that something was seriously wrong. Niall snapped a second picture. “Miss McKane? Are you all right?”
For a few seconds, the concerns of his Hippocratic oath warred with the procedure drilled into him by his police training. His brother Duff would muscle his way in without hesitation, while Keir would have a judge on speed dial, arranging an entry warrant. Niall weighed his options. The baby was crying and Lucy wasn’t answering. His concern for the occupants’ safety was reason enough to enter a potentially dangerous situation despite risking any kind of legalities. Tonight he’d forgo caution and follow his older brother’s example.
“Hold tight, little one,” he whispered, unstrapping his holster and pulling the service weapon from his belt. Although he was more used to handling a scalpel than a Glock, as a member of the KCPD crime lab, he’d been trained and certified to use the gun.
He held it surely as he nudged open the broken door. “Miss McKane? It’s Niall Watson with the KCPD crime lab. I’m concerned for your safety. I’m coming in.”
The mournful wails of a baby crying itself into exhaustion instantly grew louder on this side of the walls separating their living spaces. He backed against the door, closing it behind him as he cradled the gun between both hands. A dim light in the kitchen provided the only illumination in the condo that mirrored the layout of his own place. Allowing his vision to adjust to the dim outlines of furniture and doorways, Niall waited before advancing into the main room. He checked the closet and powder room near the entryway before moving through the living and dining rooms. Empty. No sign of Lucy McKane anywhere. No blood or signs of an accident or struggle of any sort, either. In fact, the only things that seemed out of place were the bundles of yarn, patterns and knitting needles that had been dumped out of their basket onto the coffee table and strewn across the sofa cushions and area rug.
He found the baby in the kitchen, fastened into a carrier that sat on the peninsula countertop, with nothing more than the glow of an automatic night-light beside the stove to keep him company. A half-formed panel of gray knitted wool hung from the baby’s toes, as if he’d once been covered with it but had thrashed it aside.
Niall flipped on the light switch and circled around the peninsula, plucking the makeshift blanket off and laying it on the counter. “You’re a tiny thing to be making all that noise. You all alone in here? Do you know where your mama is?”
The kid’s red face lolled toward Niall’s hushed voice. It shook and batted its little fists before cranking up to wail again. Niall didn’t need to take a second whiff to ascertain at least one reason why the baby was so unhappy. But a quick visual sweep didn’t reveal any sign of a diaper bag or anything to change it into besides the yellow outfit it wore. Had Lucy McKane left the child alone to go make a supply run?
Niall moved the gun down to his side and touched the baby’s face. Feverish. Was the kid sick? Or was that what this ceaseless crying did to someone who was maybe only a week or so old?
The infant’s cries sputtered into silent gasps as Niall splayed his fingers over its heaving chest. Not unlike his grandfather’s earlier that day, the baby’s heart was racing. A quick check farther down answered another question for him. “You okay, little man?”
How long had he been left unattended like this?
And where was Lucy? There was no sign of her in the kitchen, either, despite the dirty dishes in the sink and what looked like a congealed glob of cookie dough in the stand mixer beside it. It seemed as though she’d left in the middle of baking a dessert. Why hadn’t she completed the task? Where had she gone? What had called her away? And, he thought, with a distinct note of irritation filtering into his thought process, why hadn’t she taken the baby with her?
“Hold on.” Niall’s gaze was drawn to a screwdriver on the counter that didn’t look like any piece of cooking equipment he’d ever seen his late mother or Millie Leighter use.
After a couple of silent sobs vibrated through the infant’s delicate chest, Niall pulled his hand away. Tuning out the recommencing wail, he opened two drawers before he found a plastic bag and used it to pick up the tool. The handle was an absurd shade of pink with shiny baubles glued around each end of the grip. He rolled it in his hand until he found what he suspected he might—an empty space in the circle of fake stones. Niall glanced back through the darkened apartment. The bead stuck in the frame of her door suddenly made sense. But even if his neighbor had lost her key and had to break into her own place, she’d turn on the lights once she got in. There’d be signs of her being here. And she’d damn well take care of the baby.
Unless she wasn’t the one who’d broken in.
“Don’t go anywhere,” he ordered needlessly. Wrapping the screwdriver securely in the bag, Niall slipped it into his pocket and clasped the gun between his hands again. “I’ll be right back.”
A quick inspection through the bedroom and en suite showed no sign of Lucy McKane there, either. He didn’t see her purse anywhere, and her winter coat and accoutrements were missing from the front closet. There was no baby paraphernalia in any of the rooms.
Had she been kidnapped? What kind of kidnapper would leave evidence like the screwdriver behind? Had she been robbed? Nothing here seemed disturbed beyond the topsy-turvy knitting basket, and anything of typical value to a thief—her flat-screen TV, a laptop computer—was still here.
More unanswered questions. Niall’s concern reverted to irritation.
This child had been abandoned. Lucy McKane was gone, and the woman had a lot of explaining to do.
Niall was surprisingly disappointed to learn that she was the type of woman to leave an infant alone to run errands or enjoy a date. She was a free spirit, certainly, with her friendly smile and ease at striking up conversations with neighbors she barely knew and ownership of far too many pairs of panties. But she’d told him she was a social worker, for pity’s sake. He wouldn’t have pegged her to be so self-absorbed and reckless as to leave a child in an unlocked apartment—to leave the child, period. If she’d left by choice.
With the mandate of both his badge and his medical degree, and three generations of protecting those who couldn’t protect themselves bred into him, Niall could not walk out that door and abandon this baby himself. So, understanding as much about children as his medical books could teach, he tucked his gun into its holster, pulled his phone from his pocket and picked up the baby in its carrier. He spared a glance at the soft wood around the deadbolt catch, debating whether or not he should retrieve the decorative bead jammed there or report Lucy as a missing person. Making the crying infant his first priority, Niall closed the door behind him and carried the baby into his apartment before dialing the most knowledgeable parent he knew.
The phone picked up on the third ring. “Niall?”
“Dad.” He set the carrier on the island in his own kitchen and opened a drawer to pull out two clean dish towels. A quick glance at his watch indicated that perhaps he should have thought this through better. “Did I wake you?”
“It’s