Thankfully, Tanner gave a quick burp and Mia strapped him back into his carrier seat.
“Collena will meet us at your house,” Logan relayed when she got back behind the wheel. He glanced back at Tanner’s seat again and slipped his phone into his jacket pocket.
“You really think Collena Drake has any information about Genevieve?” Mia asked.
“We’ll see. She’s been studying the records taken from Brighton. There was a legal set of files, but the illegal activity was encrypted in various codes in a separate set of files. Collena’s managed to break some of those codes—that’s why she’s head of the task force—but in some cases she has information but no names to connect to it. It’s like taking dozens of puzzles, mixing up the pieces and then trying to put them back together.”
Mia understood the frustration. “Do any of those pieces actually point to Genevieve?”
“Unfortunately, yes. Her father, George Devereux, was one of Brighton’s main investors. He’s in jail already for an unrelated crime. He claims he didn’t know the clinic was shady when he put up the money.”
“You believe him?”
“No. But there’s no hard evidence to prove otherwise. Once I have you and Tanner settled and safe, I’ll see if I can arrange a visit with my ex’s father.”
Mia could definitely see the benefit of that, but it sounded like yet another involvement that she didn’t want to have.
Logan turned and looked out the back window. “The police are still searching for one investor,” Logan continued. “A man named Donnie Bishop. Unfortunately, Bishop has eluded them by staying at his residence in Mexico. There isn’t enough evidence to extradite him, so the cops are just waiting for him to make a return visit to the States.”
With every new bit of information that Mia learned, she became sorrier and sorrier that she’d ever stepped foot in Brighton. She wished she’d gone anywhere but there for the insemination.
“Donnie Bishop,” she repeated.
But the man’s name rang no bells. It was the first she’d heard of him and she hoped it would be the last. She didn’t want anyone associated with Brighton involved in what was going on with her now. Of course, the alternative wasn’t much easier to accept.
Because the alternative included a criminal, George Devereux, and his unstable stalker daughter, Genevieve.
Logan pointed to the sleek hunter green car that cruised into the parking lot and stopped next to them. “That’s our clean vehicle.”
Mia considered the risks of doing such a transfer, but if Logan was right, if there was indeed a tracking device on her car, then the transfer needed to happen immediately before something else could go wrong. She didn’t want another encounter with that slow-moving gray car that’d been in the parking lot of the pediatric clinic. She didn’t want anyone else to find out where she lived.
A man with long dark hair stepped out from the other vehicle. Logan reached over and unlocked Mia’s door. Unfortunately, his arm brushed against her right breast. Mia reacted. She sucked in her breath.
“Sorry,” he mumbled. “Did I hurt you?”
“No.” Her reaction definitely hadn’t been from pain. Odd that even though she was a nursing mother, her breasts were apparently still capable of reacting in a pleasurable way to a man’s touch.
Mia pushed that realization aside.
The other man worked fast. He opened Mia’s door and Logan got out, then walked to her side of the car. She noticed the limp then. It was slight. But it was also an indication that he might not be a hundred percent healed as she’d originally thought.
The man with the long hair made the same smooth transfer with Tanner still in his carrier seat. In less than a minute Logan was behind the wheel and they were back on the road.
“That was one of your employees?” she asked.
He nodded.
She considered asking more about his job but decided it was a subject best left undiscussed. Besides, she didn’t intend for Logan to be in her life for long, so there was no need for her to learn anything else about him.
“So, what do we do next?” she asked.
“We go to your house. We get Tanner inside. And we’ll wait for Collena. She was going to make some calls. By the time she arrives, she might already have answers.”
Well, that would help to speed things along. “Is it possible that your ex-girlfriend was also an investor at the Brighton Center?”
“It’s possible. Collena has someone pouring through all the surveillance tapes that were confiscated from the center. We’re talking months and months of tapes.”
That was not what she wanted to hear. “So much for speeding things along,” Mia mumbled.
He glanced at her. “You know you’re not going to just get rid of me, right?”
She didn’t want to hear that, either. “I know no such thing.”
“I’m not going to leave my son—”
“He’s not your son,” she snapped.
Logan made a hmmmp sound. “Well, I might have started off as the sperm donor, but we’re past that now.”
No. They weren’t. “I don’t want or need a man in my life. That includes you.”
“Then think of it this way. I won’t be the man in your life, Mia. I’ll be the man in Tanner’s life.” He paused, waiting for an objection. “You’re aware that you could be in danger.”
A burst of air left her mouth. Almost a laugh. But she was definitely not happy. “I’m aware of it. I’m also aware that I wouldn’t be in danger if it weren’t for you and your ex.”
He looked as if she’d slapped him.
Mia felt as if she had, too. “Sorry. You didn’t deserve that last part. I mean, we haven’t even connected your ex to this.”
Silence.
The moment crawled by.
Before he finally spoke. “I have a theory.”
That chilled her to the bone. “What?”
More silence. “Last year, when Genevieve and I were still together, I found out that she’d been taking fertility drugs. She also tampered with my condoms.”
Mia was starting to put together a mental image of this woman, and there was little about that image that she liked. “She wanted a baby.”
He nodded. “It was an obsession with her. She believed a baby would bring us closer together. She wanted marriage.”
“You didn’t want those things.” It wasn’t exactly a question.
“Not with her. Genevieve knew that right from the start.”
Mia believed him. Despite what he did for a living, he didn’t seem the sort of man who’d have to lie to get a woman into bed. “Did she get pregnant?”
“I don’t think so. After I found the fertility drugs, we argued and she stormed out. A few days later, I got an e-mail from her saying that she would always love me but that she needed time apart so she could think. That was a little less than eleven months ago.”
Around the time Mia had undergone the insemination.
“Maybe Genevieve did get pregnant,” Mia concluded. “Maybe that’s her connection to Brighton. She could have had your baby there.”
Logan immediately shook his head. “If she’d found some