Page 13 of Protecting the Newborn

Gracelyn quickly had to shove that thought aside. No way could she let that fear take over her thoughts. She needed a clear head to keep watch. Because even though Ruston and she now had backup, they weren’t out of the woods just yet.

“Red flags?” Ruston asked.

It took Gracelyn a moment to realize why he’d said that. Before Slater and the other deputies had arrived, she’d been telling him, or rather warning him, about her concerns about both Charla and Tony.

“Possible red flags,” she emphasized. “It could be nothing, but I don’t want to dismiss them and then have them turn out to be something.” She paused a moment to gather her breath. “After our covers were blown, I did some research and found out that Charla’s mother was a junkie and had a record for prostitution. When Charla was eight, her mother sold Charla’s infant half brother to what was essentially a baby broker. Her mom did it again two years later with a baby girl but was caught and arrested. That’s when Charla ended up in foster care.”

She paused again to give Ruston a moment to digest that. It definitely fell into the “possible” red flag category, since it wasn’t a strong connection to the baby farm that had come into existence some thirty years later.

“Is her mother still alive?” Ruston wanted to know.

“No. She died two years ago.”

Which would have maybe been about the time of the start of the baby farm that Ruston and she had ended up investigating. Her mother’s death could have been a trigger to start her on a very bad path.

Gracelyn went ahead and added the rest. “And, no, I don’t have any proof that Charla stayed in touch with her mother and that the woman passed along her contacts for baby brokers to Charla. Even if she had, I know that doesn’t mean Charla used those contacts to become the Green Eagle and start her own business.”

Ruston muttered an agreement. What he didn’t do was dismiss the possibility that it was exactly what’d happened. “And Tony? What do you have on him?”

“He was in serious debt. Not enough to draw the attention of Internal Affairs, but he’d gotten burned in a divorce settlement and was barely keeping his head above water. Until two and a half years ago, when his debts disappeared. The money appears to have come from an old army buddy of his who passed away, but I think the inheritance paperwork could be bogus.”

Ruston met her gaze again. “You hacked into Tony’s financials?”

Gracelyn knew she was about to admit to a crime. A crime that Ruston could use to have her arrested. But she wanted him to have the full picture here. And that picture was anything she’d learned about Tony’s funds couldn’t be used to launch an investigation.

“I didn’t personally do the hacking,” she admitted. “I don’t have that particular skill set, but I hired someone to do it. An old friend of Allie’s, Simon Milbrath, did it. I didn’t use my real name when I contacted him. I set up an identity that I used just for my contact with him, and I never met with Simon in person.”

Ruston muttered more profanity and took the turnoff to the main road. A road she knew would lead to his family’s ranch.

“Simon Milbrath,” he repeated as if committing that name to memory. “And Charla?” he pressed. “How did you find the info on her?”

“Not with any hacking,” Gracelyn said right off the bat. “I dug through her background and found old newspaper articles about her mother’s arrest. Then, using a cover that I was a reporter doing a story, I emailed the now-retired officer who arrested her mother. He was able to tell me that he had suspicions that Charla’s mom had helped some of her junkie friends sell their babies through this broker. He also recalled Charla being furious when her mom was taken away.”

“Did this retired cop have any computer expertise?” he asked after a short pause. “I’m just trying to get an idea of who could have found your location and then passed it along to Marty, who in turn gave it to me.”

Gracelyn wanted to know the same thing, but she didn’t have to consider his question for long. “I did a thorough check on the retired cop, Archie Ingram, before I ever contacted him. He’s in his late seventies, and there’s nothing in his background to indicate he’s a computer whiz or that he was dirty. Just the opposite. He had a stellar record...”

Her words trailed off when the ranch came into view. She’d been here two other times when Ruston and she had still been partners, and it’d had a picture-postcard feel to it then, with its acres of pastures and the pretty pale yellow Victorian house. In the milky moonlight, it was still pretty, but she immediately spotted sensors on the fences, and the driveway along with the front and sides of the house had perimeter lighting. She was betting the back did, too.

“Who lives here now?” she asked. As he drove, even more lights flared on, obviously triggered by motion.

“My sister Joelle and her husband, Sheriff Duncan Holder.”

She knew that Joelle was a deputy, so there’d be three cops. Maybe four if Carmen stayed. In some ways, even that didn’t feel like enough protection. In other ways, it felt like too much, since Gracelyn figured she would be plenty uncomfortable around, well, anyone. That included Ruston’s family.

“Do Joelle and the sheriff know we could be bringing danger right to their doorstep?” Gracelyn asked.

“They know. Slater would have told them.”

She saw the tall man in the front window. Saw that he was armed, too. Duncan, no doubt, and Gracelyn recalled meeting him as well on one of her trips to Saddle Ridge. He’d been a deputy then and had obviously become the sheriff after Ruston’s father had been murdered.

“A couple of months ago, there was trouble here,” Ruston went on, stopping in front of the house. “Trouble at Duncan’s and Joelle’s houses, too. After it was over, they decided to move here and beef up security. Joelle’s seven months pregnant, and they wanted to take precautions.” He turned in the seat and looked at her. “They’ll help us take precautions for Abigail, too.”

She nodded and hoped any and all precautions would be enough. “Thank you. And thank you for helping Abigail and me to get away from those gunmen.”

The corner of his mouth lifted just a little. “I suspect you could have gotten away from them yourself.” The almost smile vanished. “Now, I need to figure out if I led those men to you or if they were already lying in wait to take both of us.”

Yes, that was the million-dollar question, all right, but either way, the danger was still there. It could return. And despite what Ruston had just said, she wasn’t so sure at all that she could have gotten away by herself.

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