“What was your impression of how he sounded?”
“I didn’t like the guy one bit.” Dallas would keep the part about feeling a twinge of jealousy to himself.
“Wanting the kid out of the way would give him motive,” Tommy said. “I’ll run a background check on him when I bring him in. See if there’s anything there.”
Tommy’s phone buzzed. “This is my deputy,” he said, after glancing at the screen.
Dallas motioned for them to return to Kate as his friend answered the call.
She was cradling the baby and Dallas got another glimpse of the little boy’s black curly hair—hair that looked a lot like his own—as they walked into the office. Dallas wasn’t quite ready to accept that possibility completely as he moved closer to get a better look at Jackson. There was no way that Kate’s son could be Susan’s baby.
Right?
Tommy was right. All of this would be way too much of a coincidence. The adoption agency was large and there had to be dozens of dark-haired baby boys who had been adopted around the same time. Not that logic mattered at a time like this.
Plus, Dallas hadn’t considered the fact that if Susan had had his baby, then wouldn’t she sue him for support? Or blackmail him to keep the news out of the press?
Until he could be certain, would Dallas look at every boy around Jackson’s age with the same question: Could the child be his?
Not knowing would be mental torture at its worst. Every dark-haired boy he came across would get Dallas’s mind spinning with possibilities. What-ifs. Was he getting a glimpse of the torment he’d endure for the rest of his life if he couldn’t find Susan?
Morton had confirmed there’d been a child, which didn’t necessarily mean Dallas was a father. And Morton had been able to link Susan to Safe Haven Adoption Agency. Dallas had every reason to believe that his PI would figure out the rest and Dallas would get his answers very soon. Being in limbo, not knowing, would eat what was left of his stomach lining.
Kate was watching him with a keen eye as Tommy entered the room.
“Can I go home now?” she asked, cradling Jackson tighter.
“This might sound like an odd question, but do you close and lock your doors when you leave your house?” Tommy asked.
“Yes. Of course. I’m a single woman who lives alone with a baby, and I wouldn’t dream of leaving myself vulnerable like that,” she said, and her cheeks flushed.
Embarrassment?
Dallas noted the emotion as his friend moved on. “Well, then, your place has been broken into,” Tommy said.
“What happened?” Kate’s face paled.
Dallas’s first thought was Allen. But wouldn’t he already have access to her house?
Not if she never let him inside. Maybe the date bit was a ruse to get into her home.
“The back door was ajar and the lock had been tampered with. My deputy on the scene said that nothing obvious is missing inside. All the pictures are on the walls and the place is neat.” Tommy listened and then said a few “uh-huh”s into the phone.
“Do you have a home computer?” he asked Kate.
“A laptop on my desk,” she answered.
Tommy repeated the information to his deputy and then frowned.
So, someone took her laptop?
“Are you sure it was on your desk the last time you saw it?” Tommy asked.
“Certain. Why? Is it gone?”
He nodded. “The cable is still there.”
That same look of fear and disbelief filled her blue eyes.
“Can you think of anything on your hard drive someone would want?” Tommy asked. He also asked about work files, but Dallas figured whoever broke into her house wasn’t going after those. This had to be personal, especially after the failed kidnapping attempt.
If someone was trying to scare her, then he was doing a great job of it, based on her expression.
“No. Nothing. I keep all my work stuff at the office. I vowed not to work at home ever again once I left the corporate scene. I have a manila file folder in the drawer, right-hand side, about Jackson’s adoption,” she added, holding tighter to her baby. “Is it missing?”
Once again Tommy relayed the information and then waited. “There’s nothing labeled Safe Haven or Adoption,” he said at last.
“Then that’s it,” she murmured, almost too quietly to hear.
Tommy thanked his deputy and ended the call. “How did you get connected with Safe Haven?”
“Through my lawyer. He was the one who arranged everything,” she said, and based on her expression, Dallas figured her brain was most likely clicking through possibilities.
He made a mental note that they needed to speak to her brother, and the rest of her family, as well. Dallas didn’t like to think that her family wouldn’t be 100 percent supportive of her choices, but he wasn’t stupid. He couldn’t fathom it, but if her mother was really against the adoption, then she could be trying to interfere by shaking Kate up. Maybe even hoping that she’d realize she’d made a mistake.
If that were true, then Kate’s mother hadn’t seen the woman holding Jackson.
A family intervention, albeit misguided, would be so much better than the other options Kate faced. Such as an employee’s fixation or the fact that this could’ve been a shady adoption gone bad for Safe Haven.
* * *
KATE HELD ON to Jackson as if he’d drop off a canyon wall if she let go. She’d walked away from the only life she’d ever known to have a chance at a family. Her husband, Robert Bass, had filed for divorce within weeks of learning that she had a 4 percent chance of ever getting pregnant. Four percent.
Half the reason she’d worked so hard at the start-up was so she could sell her interests when she became pregnant and be home with the baby. And then suddenly that wasn’t going to be an option, ever.
At thirty-three, she’d had everything she thought she wanted, a nice house, a Suburban and a husband. She’d believed she was on the track to happiness, and it was easy to ignore shortcomings in her marriage to Robert considering how much time she spent at the office. He worked all the time, too.
Within weeks of learning the devastating news, her entire life had turned upside down, and all she could do was kick herself for not seeing it coming earlier. All those times Robert had decided to stay late at the office even when she’d made special arrangements to leave early... And she’d been too busy to really notice how frequent his ski trips had become—ski trips she later realized hadn’t been with his best friend, but with his coworker Olivia Gail.
In fact, he’d been on the road more than he was home and Kate felt like an idiot for thinking he was working hard to secure a future for their family, too.
Whatever love had been between them had died long before she’d been willing to acknowledge it. Or had she kept herself too busy to notice? Too busy to face the reality of the loneliness that had become her life?
She’d been trapped with a husband who cared for her but didn’t love her. And the worst part was that she’d kept convincing herself that they’d be able to get back what they’d had in the early days of their relationship as soon as she had more time or had a baby. How crazy was it to think a child would somehow make things better, make them a family?
To make matters worse, Kate Williams didn’t give up. Hard work and staying the course had made her business a success. It had gotten her through a difficult childhood with a mother who was bent on controlling her. Was her