The crying awoke Emilia—as it always did. But it sounded as if it were coming from a great distance instead of just down the hall. Why did it seem so muffled?
She knew better than to put anything in the crib with the infant. She wouldn’t take any risk with him ever again. “Blue...” she murmured as she jerked fully awake.
Throwing back the blankets, she jumped from the bed and ran from her room, hitting her shoulder against the jamb as she exited. Pain radiated down her arm.
This was real. This wasn’t a dream like all the times before she’d heard that faint cry, when she had reached for her stomach, for her child—only to find her womb empty, her baby gone...
Except that hadn’t been a dream, either. That had been the horror she’d lived for weeks until she and her son had been rescued.
Her feet slipped on the hardwood floor as she hurried down the hall toward the bedroom on the other side of the bath. She banged into that jamb, too, while rushing into the nursery. A breeze rustled the wispy blue-and-white-striped curtains and rattled the blind pulled over the window.
The open window.
She hadn’t left that window open. She was always so careful to make sure that it was shut and locked. She wouldn’t have...
She could barely hear the crying now. It was far in the distance. “Blue...”
Was he gone, too?
Her legs trembled, nearly folding beneath her, as she walked toward the crib. Dread gripped her. She was afraid to look, afraid that it was happening all over again.
She had lost her little boy once. She couldn’t lose him again. Her hands shook and she wrapped her fingers around the top rail of the white-painted crib. And finally, she forced herself to look.
Her heart lurched, swelling with love, as it did every time she gazed upon her child. He lay on his side, his eyes closed, his little fist clenched as if he was ready to start fighting bad guys—just like his uncle.
Relief slipped from her lips in a long, shuddery breath. He was fine. Blue was fine, sleeping peacefully. There were no tears on his cheeks, which had finally begun to fill out. He looked happy and healthy.
And she’d thought she was, too, now that she had him back. But she could still hear the crying. Maybe it was coming from another house. But it hadn’t sounded that way when she’d first heard it. It had seemed to come from down the hall.
And it sounded that way again but now the direction had changed, as if it were coming from her room. She had cried herself to sleep a few nights, thinking of the mistakes she’d made, the mistakes that had nearly cost her Blue and her brother and the woman he loved and Emilia’s own life, as well.
She had almost lost everything. But thanks to her brother, Lars, and Nikki Payne and Lars’s friends, Blue was safe. Emilia was safe. She had lost nothing.
The sound of crying persisted. It sounded like Blue’s cry. But he was still asleep. She reached down for him, tempted to hold him and assure herself he was all right. As her fingers brushed across his back, he murmured and a soft sigh slipped through his rosebud-shaped lips.
He was too peaceful. Disturbing him would be selfish. She had promised herself she wouldn’t be that kind of parent, the one her father had been when he’d deserted his sick wife and kids.
No. She had to leave him alone, had to let him sleep. Most new parents would have been envious of how much her son slept. But she knew he did that because he hadn’t had anyone there for him those first few weeks of his life. He hadn’t had anyone that cared enough to come when he’d cried. And her heart broke over that, over knowing that she had already let down her son. She wouldn’t do it again.
She forced herself to step away from his crib. Along with the crying, the breeze reached her, stirring her nightgown as it did the curtains and the blind. Shivering, she lifted the blind and slid the window closed, locking it. As she did, she remembered checking that lock earlier—when she had first put Blue down in his bed. The window had definitely been closed and locked.
Who had opened it?
Lars wasn’t home. He’d moved in with Nikki nearly a week ago. Emilia had had to convince him that it was okay, that she would be fine without him.
But she wasn’t fine. She was scared. Someone must have been inside the house. Who and why?
Was someone after her baby again? She turned back toward the crib. She wanted to lift Blue from it, wanted to hold on so tightly to her little boy that no one could get him away from her—ever.
But she resisted that temptation. Instead she settled into the rocker recliner in the corner of the nursery. With that crying echoing inside her head, she wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep anyway. She would sit vigil, watching her son to protect him.
But from what? If someone had unlocked and opened the window, they would have had to be inside the room. So why hadn’t they just taken Blue if he was what they really wanted?
She was probably just being paranoid because of what had happened. The adoption lawyer who’d stolen her baby was dead. To save Nikki, Lars had been forced to kill him. Myron Webber wasn’t coming back. He wasn’t taking her baby or anyone else’s.
Maybe his was the crying she heard—as he burned in hell. Maybe he was haunting her. What he’d done to her had certainly been haunting her. Maybe that was all it was: flashbacks and nightmares from what had happened.
Because why would someone break in only to open a window? It made no sense.
It made more sense that she had left it open, that she hadn’t locked it.
But that wasn’t the case. Was it?
Had she kept everything she’d thought she was losing only to lose her mind instead?
* * *
He must have lost his damn mind. That was the only reason Dane Sutton had for deciding not to quit the Payne Protection Agency. He’d been all set on turning in his resignation to Cooper Payne, his boss and a fellow former Marine. But Cooper had persuaded him to give the job a chance.
Yet it wasn’t the job Dane didn’t like: it was everything else that encompassed the Payne Protection Agency. Family. Romance. Love.
He had vowed long ago to have nothing to do with any of those things. He’d tried family once, although it hadn’t been his choice. Abandoned as an infant by a teenage mom who left him in a school bathroom, he’d been adopted by an older couple. But like his young mother, they had also realized they weren’t really interested in being parents. So because he’d had this example, Dane had no idea what a family was actually supposed to be.
He hadn’t liked what he’d witnessed with the Paynes.