don’t doubt that he’d try. But all it would take is one picture of me. Or for someone out in that crowd to recognize my face. That might even include the police. The world is watching, Nadine, and I can’t risk being seen.” And Mattie knew for certain that she couldn’t trust her point of contact, a federal marshal, in the Witness Protection Program.
Not after what had happened.
Mattie swallowed hard. “Will you protect my baby?”
Nadine closed her eyes and nodded. Mattie heard the racing footsteps in the corridor. There were frantic shouts. One of them came from a man calling out for Nadine. Bo, no doubt.
Mattie’s time was up.
She took one last look at her baby and leaned down and kissed her warm, rosy cheek. And with her heart in shreds, she did the only thing she could do to make sure her child would survive.
Mattie turned and left.
Chapter One
Thirteen Months Later
Lieutenant Bo Duggan didn’t like what he saw in the rearview mirror of his SUV. A black van had been several vehicles behind him since he pulled out of the parking lot of San Antonio Police headquarters ten minutes earlier. The van was still there.
Maybe it was a coincidence.
Maybe not.
Bo didn’t slow down or speed up. He simply continued his fifty-five-mile-per-hour pace on the drive home. Except he wouldn’t go home just yet. Not with the possibility of that van on his tail.
As a veteran SAPD cop and head of the Special Victims Unit, it was always a possibility that someone was dissatisfied with the outcome of a case and wanted to bring that personal grudge to Bo’s doorstep. But he wouldn’t let it get that far. He already had enough to manage with the other crazy things happening in his life.
What the hell was going on anyway?
The day before, he’d learned someone was running a cyber-investigation on him. A deep one. From an unsecured computer at a coffeehouse, no less. He was still trying to get a list of possible suspects from the partial fingerprints taken from that keyboard. Then someone had tried to break into his SUV while it was in the parking lot at police headquarters.
Now this.
Slipping his phone from his pocket, Bo called one of his sergeants to inform him of the situation and to give him the van’s license plate number to run through the database. Bo’s second call was to his house, and as he expected, the nanny, Rosalie, answered.
“Rosalie, I don’t want to scare you, but are all the doors and windows locked, and is the security system turned on?” Bo asked.
“Yes.” But he could tell from her hesitation that she was already alarmed. Probably because he hadn’t been able to keep the concern out of his voice. Still, better to be safe than sorry. “Why?”
“Just a precaution.” He checked to make sure the black van was still there. It was. “Keep everything locked up tight, and don’t let anyone in unless you hear differently from me.”
There was more hesitation. “I’m sorry, but someone’s already here.”
His stomach knotted, and he pushed his foot to the accelerator. “Who?”
“Madeline Cooper, the woman who’s interested in buying the house across the street. Remember, she called yesterday to make an appointment with you so she could ask some questions about the neighborhood? I let her in about five minutes ago.”
Bo didn’t relax. He was expecting Ms. Cooper, just not this soon. And not with that van following him.
“Tell our visitor I’ll get there as soon as I can,” Bo explained to Rosalie. “And if anyone else calls or comes by, get in touch with me immediately.”
“You’re scaring me, Bo. What’s going on?”
“I’ll explain it all when I get there. Right now, I just want to take a few precautions and make sure you and the kids are safe.”
He clicked End Call and was about to call for backup before he stopped the van and confronted whomever was inside, but he realized that wouldn’t be necessary. The van made a right turn, off the main highway, and disappeared down a side street.
Bo blew out a long breath and wanted to dismiss the incident as mild paranoia on his part, but something in his gut told him he had reason for concern. After twelve years of being a cop, the one thing he’d learned was to trust his gut.
He pressed a little harder on the accelerator while he kept watch around him, to make sure that van didn’t resurface. It didn’t. Bo made the turn into his neighborhood without any sign of it or any other suspicious vehicle. However, in front of his ranch-style house there was an unfamiliar two-door blue Ford.
Ms. Cooper’s probably.
He would quickly answer his prospective neighbor’s questions and send her on her way.
Rosalie met him at the door that led from the garage and into the laundry room. Oh, yes. She was concerned. Normally, Rosalie was cool and calm under pressure. But Bo saw the stress, and the tenseness only accented the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes.
“Everything okay?” Rosalie asked.
“Yeah. How are the kids?”
“Fine. They’re playing in the nursery.” She glanced down at the monitor she held in her hand. She carried it with her whenever she wasn’t with the twins so she would be able to hear them no matter where she was in the house. “So, why did I have to make sure the doors and windows were locked?”
“I thought this black van was following me. I was wrong.” Bo kept it at that, but Rosalie’s raised eyebrows let him know that she would want to discuss this further. “Where’s our guest?”
“Living room.”
Bo headed in that direction, and he kept his jacket on so that it would shield his shoulder holster and gun. Best not to alarm Ms. Cooper in case she was squeamish about such things.
He found her just where Rosalie said she would be. Not seated, but standing by the limestone fireplace, where she was looking at a framed photo. He’d forgotten the photo was there, but then he rarely went into this room. Heck, for that matter, he rarely had guests. Between fatherhood and his job, there wasn’t much time for anything else.
Madeline Cooper turned. Their eyes met, and Bo made a split-second cop’s assessment of her. Tall, about five-nine. Average build. Shoulder-length, straight brown hair. Green eyes. A full mouth. Very little makeup, just a touch of pink color on her lips. She wore matching olive-green pants and a sweater. The outfit was nondescript. Definitely not flashy.
She was not a woman who wanted to draw attention to herself.
But something about her caught Bo’s attention.
“Do I know you?” he immediately asked.
“No.” Her answer was immediate, as well. Maybe too immediate.
“You look …” Bo didn’t know where to go with that. Several things came to mind, including, much to his surprise, that she looked damn attractive. But what also came to mind was that she was “… familiar.”
“Oh.” It was her only response.
Bo was ready to launch into more questions, but his phone rang. He pulled it from his jacket pocket and looked at the screen. It was Sergeant Garrett O’Malley from headquarters.
“Please excuse me a second. I need to take this call. Duggan,” he answered after his guest nodded.
“I ran the license plate on that black van you thought might be following you,” O’Malley informed him. “It must be fake. No record of it.”
Hell.