Undercover Babies Read online

  A broken window. Made a person wonder exactly what Mac did for a living that someone should break his bedroom window.

  The first thing she did in the bathroom was look at herself in the mirror. She found a twenty-something woman with extreme black hair cut painfully short. Blue eyes, full lips. Tanned skin. An abrasion on one cheek.

  The face belonged to a stranger.

  The next thing that caught her eye was the bruise on her shoulder, the bruises cascading down her left side, the needle marks on her arm, scraped knees, one of them bandaged, and, most distressing of all, the faint stretch marks on her stomach.

  No memories of any of it, but the unease she’d felt the night before, the pressing urgency of a task undone, of somewhere she needed to be, someone she needed to be with, came rushing back. She put her hand on the doorknob, ready to march right out and demand—what?

  Maybe she’d dress first…

  She found her fancy black underwear still draped over the towel bar where Mac had hung it to dry the night before. Where did she come by such exquisite lingerie?

  Mac had provided black wool-lined slacks that felt snug through the rear and a light blue sweater too tight in the chest. His ex-wife must have been a trim little woman, she thought as she pulled on socks and slipped her feet into the woman’s designer loafers, which fit a lot better than Jake’s boots had.

  The clothes were warm and more or less comfortable, boring and predictable, but good quality. Still, she entered the kitchen awkwardly, feeling insignificant in Mac’s presence, wondering if he would look at her decked out like this and think of his ex-wife.

  “Everything fit?” he asked as he buttered toast.

  “It’s all fine. Listen, I have to go.”

  His eyebrows lifted in surprise. “That’s great. Then you’ve remembered who you are and where you live?”

  “Well, no—”

  His expression reflected a disappointment almost as vast as her own. He said, “You can leave any time you want, but why not eat breakfast first?” As he said this, he handed her a plate dominated by a cheese omelet and toast.

  “I can’t eat—” she began but he cast her a stern look so she shut up and sat down at the table. Her stomach was too twisted to handle food. She began to regret drinking the coffee. Mac, not knowing this, of course, refilled her mug before sliding his own omelet onto his plate. He took the seat opposite her at the small, round table.

  “I have to go to work,” he said after taking a few hearty bites. “I’ll drop you off wherever you want—”

  “The alley,” she said, putting down her fork and dropping all pretenses of being interested in food. For something to do with her trembling hands, she picked up the mug and was grateful for its warmth.

  He repeated her destination in a wooden voice. “The alley.”

  “It’s where this all started. I have to find out what’s going on. I have to know…there’s someone I need to go to…somewhere I need to be. Time is passing. I’m wasting time…”

  Her voice trailed off as she heard her words. They sounded desperate, grasping. She’d walked down that alley with Mac the night before and there had been nothing there but a pile of empty bottles. And though the sense of urgency wouldn’t go away, how did she act on it when she had no idea who in the hell she was?

  “I think you should go to a hospital and be examined. Maybe you suffered a head injury or—”

  “Absolutely not,” she said emphatically. Her head pounded with the effort of staying focused and she rubbed her temples with one hand. “I’ll just stay here until my mind clears—”

  “You can’t stay here alone.”

  “Why not?”

  One corner of his mouth lifted in a parody of a smile. “Well, beyond the fact that I don’t know you and am not in the habit of leaving strangers alone in my house, there’s the fact that someone broke the window of the room you were sleeping in last night.”

  “I don’t understand,” she said. “Why would anyone care where I sleep?”

  “Good question. Maybe no one cares. I don’t have enough information to tell.”

  “Couldn’t the brick have been intended for you? Do you have any enemies?”

  “A few. But my enemies would aim for my head. Unless it was a cop.”

  “A cop?” As sketchy as her memory was, she knew enough to be surprised that a man who was obviously intelligent, lived in a nice apartment and dressed well had an antagonistic relationship with the police. “The cops are your enemies?”

  “Not all of them. In fact, I was a cop myself until a year ago. I talked to my former partner early this morning. He confirmed that tensions are high around the precinct, but he doesn’t think anyone would stoop to a sophomoric trick like tossing a brick through a window. Maybe he can help you—”

  “No police!” she said. She slammed the mug down too hard on the table. “No police!” she repeated, not sure why she felt so strongly but knowing she did.

  Did she subconsciously know she’d done something wrong, broken a law, was wanted by the authorities?

  “Okay, no police,” he said calmly, ignoring the puddle of coffee spreading across the table top.

  She nodded, swallowed and dabbed at the coffee with a paper napkin. She felt tears burning her nose. Her stomach was a tight knot. She said, “What did Sister Theresa want?”

  “She warned me that I should be careful, that you might have needs I can’t fill, that I might hurt you by trying to help you.”

  “Or that I might hurt you,” Grace whispered.

  “I’m invincible, so don’t worry about that. Listen, you can’t stay here and you won’t go to a shelter or a hospital. Where do you want to go?”

  The response came without thought. “Home,” she said softly. “I just want to go home.”

  Chapter Three

  Of course, he couldn’t take her home, because her only “home” was the Broadhurst alley. While he intended on paying the place a visit, he didn’t want Grace anywhere near it when he did.

  For one thing, he wanted to catch Jake unawares and coax him into telling his story. He wanted to know if Grace had cajoled him out of his coat or if she’d had an accomplice. He wanted to pinpoint the beginning of her amnesia without her presence serving as a distraction. Was Jake up to discerning things like that? He’d see.

  Plus, he had other errands to run that were best run alone. In the end, Mac had realized there was only one place to take Grace for a few hours. What had been difficult was getting her to agree to his plan.

  His aunt, Beatrice Dally, lived on Blade Street in three stories of stately elegance. To help look after the place, she employed two servants, the Coopers, a husband-and-wife team of the old school. The wife, Maddie, was an incurable gossip with a big heart. She cooked the meals and took care of various housecleaning chores, though a service came in twice a week to do the hard stuff.

  Maddie’s husband, a man everyone called by his last name, answered doors, drove the car and clipped the hedge once a year. He also ironed—a chore he claimed to enjoy as it gave him an opportunity to watch the afternoon soap operas without the Mrs. calling him a lazy bum. Mac thought they were both pushing seventy, which was still a good decade younger than his aunt.

  Aunt Beatrice herself was a grand-looking woman with a ramrod-straight back and the will to match. She’d always been kind to a fault, but she was no one’s fool. Married to a wealthy older man when she was all of eighteen, she’d been widowed now for fifty years.

  Beatrice Dally had never married again and had no children of her own. She said she didn’t need a child, she had Mac. Mac adored the old woman, as much for her independent will and strong convictions as for her indulgent love of him.

  Cooper opened the door on the first ring of the bell and showed Mac and Grace into the checkerboard-tiled entry. Mac was too frequent a visitor to be treated formally, though he could see Cooper trying to figure out the relationship between himself and Grace.

  “Hey, Cooper. T
ell my aunt I need to see her, will you?” Mac said.

  He got a raised pair of bushy eyebrows and a nod of a snowy white head. “Very well, sir.”

  Mac was very aware of Grace standing close beside him. He’d tucked her into one of his coats and it hung on her. Worse, though she’d started the day with a show of determination, it had all but abandoned her and now she seemed lethargic again. She wasn’t even grumbling about being “parked” in an out-of-the-way location anymore.

  “Let me take your coat,” he said, shrugging off his own and then helping her disentangle herself from the folds of wool that all but enveloped her. He draped them both over the back of a chair. It was a bit unnerving to see Grace dressed in Jessica’s old clothes, even though she carried off the casual country club look easily. Only that garish black hair sounded a false note and it dawned on him suddenly that her hair was dyed, that she was probably a blonde or maybe a light brunette by nature.

  Her nude image flashed across his mind.

  “Why are you staring at me?” she asked, her voice little more than a whisper.

  He thought of the other hair on her lithe body, all of it light-colored. “I don’t think you were born with black hair,” he said.

  She touched her jagged locks.

  His aunt came down the stairs with a vigor that defied her years. She was almost as tall as Mac, with steel-gray hair waved away from an aristocratic face. Mac introduced his aunt to Grace, who produced a wan smile.

  Aunt Beatrice took one look at Grace and turned to Cooper. “Tell Maddie to come here. No, tell her to make tea first and then come here.” She dismissed Cooper with an imperative wave of her hand and took Grace’s arm.

  “Come with me, child,” she said, leading Grace into the living room. Grace went willingly, sinking into the huge white chair his aunt offered.

  “Maddie will bring you tea. Eventually, anyway. She doesn’t move as fast as she used to. Then again, who does around here? Would you like to close your eyes for a few minutes?”

  Grace blinked, then nodded as she apparently deciphered his aunt’s rapid-fire comments and got to the one that suggested what it was so obvious she wanted, needed, to do: sleep. Mac slipped a sofa cushion behind her head as Grace murmured her thanks and leaned back.

  “Leave her be,” Aunt Beatrice commanded and Mac, caught staring at Grace’s exquisite profile, felt his cheeks grow warm, just the way they had when his aunt caught him doing something slightly illicit when he was a teenager.

  Like coveting something he wasn’t supposed to want, let alone have.

  Aunt Beatrice herded Mac into the connecting den, where he took a seat in his favorite chair and she faced him from across her antique desk. Through the door, he could see Grace’s recumbent form.

  His aunt cleared her throat.

  Tearing his gaze away from Grace, he said, “It’s a long story.”

  “And no doubt an interesting one.”

  He filled her in on the highlights, how he’d met Grace, how she was dressed, her fear of the doctor, her lethargy, but his aunt stopped him when he got to the part about Grace’s fancy undergarments.

  “And how did it come about that you saw that girl’s underwear?” Aunt Beatrice demanded.

  “Someone had to help her get out of those horrible clothes,” he said, hoping he didn’t look as embarrassed as he suddenly felt.

  His aunt, looking scandalized, said, “And you couldn’t find a willing female friend to come help?”

  “Trust me, Aunt Beatrice, Grace didn’t mind. There was nothing…titillating…about it.”

  His remark was greeted with arched eyebrows.

  “Anyway, like I was saying, her things are obviously quite pricey. There’s a little sea horse with what I swear is a diamond eye sewn right onto the—”

  Here he paused, not only because his aunt appeared to be close to swooning, but also because he was at a loss for words to describe that area of a bra that occupies the space between a woman’s breasts. He finally tapped his own chest in the appropriate spot and continued. “Right here.”

  “L’Hippocampe,” his aunt said with an impeccable French accent. “That’s the brand. It’s French for sea horse.”

  “I looked, there was no label.”

  “Of course not. It’s very exclusive. No labels, not ever. How odd that a girl like that would be wearing such things.”

  “What I need from you, Aunt Beatrice, is a baby-sitter. I can’t leave Grace alone and I don’t know where else to take her.”

  “She seems drugged to me. Are you sure she didn’t have something stashed away in a pocket that she might have taken when you weren’t looking?”

  “Positive.”

  “How could you be positive?”

  “I checked her pockets,” he said, hoping his aunt would let the matter drop and he wouldn’t be forced to explain the intimacy of seeing Grace nude. “Maybe some substance from the night before is still in her bloodstream,” he added. “She’s got needle marks on her arm, bruises up and down her body. Don’t leave her alone with your liquor cabinet or your good silver.”

  “I’ll have Maddie keep an eye on her.”

  “Maddie will talk her head off.”

  “Tsk. Anyway, even if she does ramble on a bit, perhaps it will be good for the girl. Where are you headed?”

  “I’ve got an appointment with Bill Confit. I’ve finished my report and I’m anxious to hand it to him and get out of this committee. Then I thought I’d stop by and see my old partner on the force. After that I’ll figure out what to do about Grace. I’ll be back by evening.”

  “Travis, if the child doesn’t remember who she is, how do you know her name is Grace?”

  “I don’t,” he said as he stood. “I gave her that name last night.”

  “And you’re sure she’s for real?”

  That comment stopped him. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, dear boy, that you have half of this city’s finest upset with you because of your association with the mayor’s rival. The other half thinks you’re a traitor because of that mess last year.”

  “I know,” Mac said.

  “What I’m saying is that you have your fair share of powerful enemies. A win for your friend Confit will mean disaster for not only the current mayor, but for Chief Barry, as well. Everyone knows you’ve taken to bringing that old drunk a sandwich every night. Isn’t it odd that your Grace should show up right there at that alley, wearing your bum’s clothes? Maybe she’s just waiting to get you into a compromising situation that would discredit you and, ultimately, Bill Confit.”

  “Aunt Beatrice,” he said, putting an arm around her slender shoulders, “I think you’ve been watching way too much television.”

  “I beg your pardon,” she replied haughtily. “I do not watch television.”

  “Then reading too many mystery books.”

  A moment of silence was followed by a soft chuckle. “That’s a possibility.”

  They both regarded the snoozing figure in the white chair and Mac said, “She doesn’t look much like a spy, does she?”

  “No, she doesn’t. She’s very young. And very attractive.” This last comment was accompanied by a lift of her eyebrows and sounded more like a question than an observation.

  He shrugged as though he hadn’t noticed.

  “And you can’t keep your eyes off her.”

  “That’s nuts,” he grumbled.

  “It’s true.”

  He shrugged again. He knew from long experience there was no lying to his aunt. He added, “Well, there’s something about her, that’s all.”

  More arched eyebrows and a smug tilt of her head let him know she thought she knew exactly what he was getting at. He wondered if she’d care to explain it to him, because he wasn’t sure what was fueling this obsession of his.

  Aunt Beatrice, however, didn’t say another word, so Mac tiptoed around Grace. For a moment, he paused and stared at her, at the pretty set of her mouth, the sweep of la
shes against her lightly tanned cheeks, her spiky black hair.

  Was there a husband nearby praying for her return? A child crying himself to sleep at night, aching for Mommy?

  Or had she burned her bridges, left no one behind to care, no one to love her or worry about her, to help her find her identity and reclaim her life?

  Or…did she really want to reclaim her life? Had she put herself into the homeless scenario before she lost her memory? If and when her memory came back, would she find herself still lost and disconnected?

  Looking at her, it was difficult to believe that could be the case, but beauty is no protection against illness, no protection against self-destruction or heartlessness.

  He moved away from her chair before she opened her eyes, knowing if she pinned him with her blue gaze it would be harder than ever to keep thinking of her as a problem to be resolved and forgotten and not as…Grace.

  THIS TIME WHEN Grace woke up, she felt clearheaded. True, she still didn’t know who she was, but just the fact that recent events weren’t lost in a hazy mire was a huge relief.

  She got to her feet and stretched. Just like that, as though she’d pulled a cord in her body when she raised her arms above her head, that inner swell of anxiety returned.

  Pressing her fingers against her forehead, she searched her mind.

  Who needed her? She was letting someone down and the thought that it might be a child—her child—well, the very idea made her heart hurt.

  Or a husband.

  She looked at her left hand and tried to envision a diamond, a gold band…anything.

  Oh, where was Mac? Why had he brought her to his aunt’s house and then abandoned her?

  Restless past enduring, she searched the bookcase, looking for a title that might divert her attention from things she couldn’t control. Aunt Beatrice’s tastes seemed to revolve around books printed before the turn of the century, however. A deck of cards sitting atop a beautifully inlaid cribbage board caught her attention, and she slipped them out of the pack.