LULLABIES AND LIES
by
Mallory Kane

(Ultimate Agents Book 4)

February 06

Excerpt

PROLOGUE

0 hour

    Sunny Loveless laughed as Emily reached for the silver rattle.
    "Not now, sweet Emily Rose," she said. "We'll play drop the rattle when we get home. I have to pay the nice lady for the groceries."
    Emily gurgled happily.
    The grocery clerk grinned. "So you get pureed peaches tonight Emily? You are growing so much. I swear she's bigger every time I see her."
    "Six months old last week," Sunny said proudly.
    "It doesn't seem that long since you brought her home."
    Sunny smiled, remembering the day Emily became her daughter. "I know. She was so tiny. Not even a week old. My lawyer had everything arranged for the adoption by the time she was born." She looked down at her happy baby. "Isn't that right Emily? Every little thing."
    Sunny's heart took flight when Emily smiled and waved her arms. Six months ago, she'd never have believed she could love so much. Her heart felt full to bursting.
    "Here you go." The clerk handed Sunny her purchase. "I double bagged it for you. Be careful out there. That rain's really coming down."
    "I will. Thank you, Callie." Sunny rolled the grocery cart to the rear door, slung the bag over her arm and unbuckled the infant safety seat from the grocery cart. Then she fished out her car keys and looked out at the dark wet parking lot. The street lights were nothing more than pale circles through the downpour.
    "Okay Emily. Let's make a run for it." She took a good grip on the infant seat and smiled at Emily before pulling the hood up to protect her from the rain.
    Shouldering the door open, she lowered her head and hurried toward her car, pressing the remote key lock. She threw open the rear door and tossed the grocery bag inside. Then she set Emily's infant seat into the waiting car carrier and buckled the straps. Water dripped down her daughter's face. She wiped it away.
    "Oh Emily, you're soaked. We'll have to take a bath when we get home, won't we?" Sunny felt the rain intensify, driving through her cotton top and tailored slacks. She shivered. She was soaked too. "Good thing it's only a few blocks, right sweetie?"
    She straightened and took a step backward to close the car door.
    A noise, barely audible over the roar of the rain reached her ears.
    Shoes, crunching on gravel.
    She started to turn. Something came down over her head, blinding her. She screamed and pushed at it. A blow to the back of her knees knocked her to the ground. She went down hard, scraping her palms and knees on the asphalt.
    "No!" she screamed, and gulped a mouthful of wet, smelly wool. She clawed at it, kicked, tried to fight the monster attacking her.
    Something slammed into the small of her back. She lost traction. Her hands and feet scraped along the asphalt as a bony knee forced her flat.
    Rough hands jerked the blanket away and grabbed her hair.
    Sunny couldn't see for the rain, but she heard Emily cry.
    "Stop it! Help!" she cried, but the knee in her back kept her from taking a whole breath.
    Brutal hands slammed her head against the asphalt. Once. Twice. Again and again, until blinding pain immobilized her.
    Two leather-covered fingers pushed something into her mouth. It tasted like paper. Wet leather flopped emptily against her chin.
    "Chew on this, bitch." The voice had substance but no tone. It was a whispered growl.
    Her head was slammed into the pavement again, dazing her. Then silence. Rain splashed in her face.
    She heard the crunch of gravel again, and a car started and pulled away. She tried to rise but her hands and feet slipped on the wet asphalt.
    "Help!" she cried, knowing her voice was too weak for anyone to hear. With all her strength, she pushed herself up onto all fours.
    "Emily!" She crawled over to the back seat of her car. "Hey sweetie. You okay?" She pulled herself to her feet and leaned in to check on her baby.
    The infant seat was gone. Emily was gone.
     "Emily?" she called, feeling around on the seat, checking the floorboard.
    "No! Emily!" It couldn't be! She had to be here.
    Dazed and shivering, Sunny remembered her assailant's words.
    Chew on this, bitch.
    Paper. She clawed the piece of paper out of the corner of her mouth and spread it open, holding it under the car's dome light. The paper was wrinkled and wet. She wiped her eyes.
    You've messed with the wrong person this time Loveless. Tell the police anything about me and your kid will die.
     . . . your kid will die.
    Horror shattered her soul.
    "No!" It was a prank. A nightmare. She pushed wet hair out of her face.
    "Emily!" she screamed, her baby's name ripping from her throat. She threw herself out of the car and dropped to her knees on the asphalt. She was still crawling on the ground, searching, when the police got there.

CHAPTER ONE

15 hours missing

"The case is in Nashville?" Special Agent Griffin Stone took the file from his boss and opened it.
    Nashville. Just the name of his hometown started a hollow ache in his chest. He'd never intended to go back there.
    "I'd rather not--" he started, but Mitch Decker was still talking.
    "It's a missing child, a six month old infant. The mother was assaulted and the infant grabbed about eight-thirty last night outside a grocery store near her home."
    The ache in Griff's chest intensified. "Why isn't the local agent handling it? Or CAC?"
    "The local agent is a rookie. And the Head of the Crimes Against Children Division asked specifically for you, and I agreed." Decker said quietly, his tone carrying both authority and compassion. "He knows your history with Nashville, and your experience with missing children."
    In Griff's mind, those two facts made him unsuitable for the job. "I'd have figured that after the Senator's son--" The bitterness in his voice scraped his throat.
    "That wasn't your fault."
    Not your fault. He'd known those words would come back to haunt him some day. He'd been fourteen the first time he'd heard them. He hadn't believed the FBI agent then, and he didn't believe Decker now.
    "I was too slow. Waiting for backup was a mistake."
    "Waiting for backup was your only option. The kidnappers could have still been in there."
   Self-disgust wormed its way through him. "No, it wasn't my only option. If I'd gone on in--if I'd gotten to him five minutes earlier--Senator Chapman's son would be alive."
    Decker stood and came around the desk. He placed a hand on Griff's shoulder. "You did everything right. And as always, you went far beyond the call of duty."
    Everything right. Yeah. Griff was sure that gave a lot of comfort to the Senator when he walked past his son's empty bedroom night after night.
    "Look, Griff. I wouldn't send you if I wasn't sure you can handle it."
    Decker's belief in him was the only thing that kept Griff from begging him to send someone else. He cleared his throat. "So what's the Division of Unsolved Mysteries' interest in this case?"
    "A little over a month ago, someone broke into Sunny Loveless's home, sabotaged her computer and took her case files. Since then--"
    "Case files?" Griff interrupted. Despite his aversion to anything connected with Nashville, the words piqued his interest. He looked down at a faxed copy of a newspaper article, catching Decker's nod out of the corner of his eye.
    "Ms. Loveless is a private investigator."
    "Loveless, Inc.," Griff read. "We specialize in--"
    Decker's mouth turned up in a wry smile. "Happy endings. I saw that."
    No such thing. The response sprang automatically into Griff's head, surprising him. When had he become that cynical? Cynicism implied a loss of hope. The ache in his chest intensified. Who'd have thought he had any hope left to lose?
    "Apparently her specialty is reuniting families, friends who have lost touch, that kind of thing. She's only had her license for two years."
    "Two years. Still, she could have racked up a few disgruntled customers."
    "Yeah. All the information we have on her previous cases is there. Anyhow, as I was saying," Decker crossed his arms and propped a hip on the corner of his desk. "Since the break-in, there have been several seemingly unrelated threats and incidents. There are notations about them in the file."
    "Phone calls, vague threats." Griff turned a page. "Some mild vandalism that may or may not be related." He looked up. "Sounds like whoever took her case files has been using the information in the files to harass her--or maybe to blackmail her."
    Decker nodded. "Now, her child has been kidnapped. Nashville PD is asking for the FBI's help."
     "So they believe the abduction is related to one of Ms. Loveless's cases? What about her family? The baby's father?" Griff flipped pages. "Here it is. Ms. Loveless adopted the infant at birth. Biological mother is a teenager."
    He turned another page, and scanned the information. "Is she married? Divorced? Other children?"
     "No. Ms. Loveless has never been married. She was a foundling herself. Adopted by an older couple who have since died. I suspect that explains her happy endings business. The baby she adopted is the child of a runaway teen she located--one of her cases."
    "Which one?"
    "June of last year. Elliott."
    "Here it is, Brittany Elliott, a fifteen-year-old, ran away with her twenty-year-old boyfriend. Loveless's testimony put the boyfriend in prison." The missing child's biological father. Definitely a suspect.
    "Any contact from the kidnapper? A demand for ransom?"
    "Nothing--that we know of."
    Griff raised his eyebrows at the tone in his boss's voice.
    "The local police lieutenant isn't convinced Ms. Loveless is telling the whole truth."
    "He thinks the kidnapper has contacted her." Griff stood, preparing to leave Decker's office. "I shouldn't waste any time. I'll fly out this afternoon."
    Decker rounded his desk and sat down as Griff turned toward the door. "Griff."
    He looked back over his shoulder.
    "Good luck."
    Back at his desk, Griff pulled his laptop computer toward him and opened his personal database of missing children cases. He'd started it fifteen years ago, using a spiral notebook and a pencil. Now it was computerized in a spreadsheet.
    He filled in the fields. Name--Emily Rose Loveless. Age--six months. Date of disappearance--June 20. Location--Nashville, Tennessee. He stared at the screen for a couple of seconds, then dropped his head between his hands. He wasn't sure he could handle another missing child case.
    Ever since that day fifteen years ago, he'd aimed toward one goal--to save as many children as he could. And in all honesty, to atone. But few as his failures had been, each one had taken something from him, something the successes never quite replenished.
    Then, the death of the Senator's son had eaten away too much. No matter how many children he saved, the hole inside him never got any smaller. Lately, he felt like an empty shell.
    Just a few weeks ago, after the Senator's case, he'd talked with Decker about transferring to a specialty that was less emotionally draining, like white collar crime. With his Masters in Criminal Justice, and his eight years' experience, he could work just about any area.
    Now Decker, one of the few people in the world who knew Griff's history, was sending him back to Nashville. To his home town, where failure and guilt lurked, ready to ambush him at every familiar fork in the road.
    The imprint of Decker's hand burned his shoulder, sending a clear message. His boss was depending on him.
    Shoving aside his feelings, he booked the next flight out and started preparing himself mentally. This wasn't a personal mission, he reminded himself. It was an assignment.
    An important part of his job was to present a calm, comforting exterior to the missing child's frightened mother.
    He called the Division's computer expert.
    "Natasha, hi. Did Decker ask you to run a background check on Sunny Loveless?"
    He spelled her last name.
    "I was just about to call you." Natasha Rudolph's sultry voice was at odds with her crisp answer. He and Natasha got along well. She was another lost child. Only she was lost on the inside.
    "I'll EMail the intel to you so you'll have it on your laptop."
    "Good. Thanks. How's the house-hunting going?"
    "Not good. Everything's so small and expensive."
    He saw the icon appear that told him he had new mail. "Okay, got the EMail. Thanks, Nat. Good luck on finding that huge, cheap place."
    He hung up, then opened the file labeled LOVELESS and began to read. But he couldn't banish the question that echoed in his brain and pounded into his chest with each heartbeat.
    Why did it have to be Nashville?
* * * * *

18 hours missing

BABY POWDER and the sour smell of spit-up milk. Ugh. Janie Gross nearly gagged as she lit a cigarette and took a deep puff. Her brand new Lexus stunk of baby. She'd have to get it detailed to get rid of the disgusting stench.
    At least Bess hadn't balked at keeping the kid. Her old nanny had not been happy about Janie showing up with another kid, over three years after they'd agreed to quit the adoption business.
    Bess was such a sucker for a baby. The brat would have the best of care. And after fifteen years of Bess keeping kids while Janie made arrangements for their adoption, Janie knew for a fact that she could trust the old woman.
    She grinned at her own brilliance. Handing over the first kid she'd ever snatched to Bess to rear as her own was the best investment Janie had ever made.
    Lucky for Janie, Bess's own little boy hadn't been dead six months when Janie had shown up at her door that long ago day with a screaming toddler in tow.
    She shuddered. Thank goodness Bess loved kids, because Janie hated them. Maybe they should have gone into dog-snatching, she thought with a smile as she merged on to the New Jersey Turnpike and headed back toward New York. Dogs were a lot quieter, and a whole lot less trouble.
    But nothing she'd ever done in her life gave her the rush she got from snatching a kid from under its mother's nose. And she was good at it. Her nondescript features and colorless appearance made her nearly invisible. She'd never even come close to being caught.
    Her cell phone rang. She glanced at the ID, sighed, and pressed the speaker phone. "Hi Eddie."
   "Janie, where are you? I thought you'd be back by now." Eddie's voice was tight and high with tension.
    "I'm on the road. I'll be home in a couple of hours."
    "How was your mom?"
    Janie almost laughed. Like she'd ever visit that bitch. Eddie was so gullible. He knew how much she hated the woman who had given birth to her but never wanted her, and still he bought her lies about visiting the old hag.
    "She's fine. Said to say hi." No way was she telling her husband where she'd really been, or what she'd done. He'd panic again, and screw things up even worse than he already had.
    He'd just wanted to help, he'd said. Janie took a long drag and let smoke drift out through her nostrils. Eddie's help was what had set all this in motion in the first place. If he helped any more, they'd be in jail.
    He needed to focus on getting elected. Which reminded her--she glanced at the time. "Shouldn't you be filming those new campaign ads?"
    "We're on a break. I'm sick of saying 'I'm Edward A. Gross, and I approved this message'."
    "Well, you just keep saying it, and come November you can say 'I'm Congressman Edward A. Gross, from the great state of New York.'"
    "Janie? I can't stop thinking about that private investigator and the client she was representing. Maybe we should meet with the girl. Admit she's our biological child. Maybe it could be a positive thing--you know, reaching out to our long-lost daughter--"
    "No!" Janie angrily whipped the Lexus into the next lane, and a car swerved, its horn blaring.
    Why couldn't Eddie just stick to what he was good at--glad-handing and pandering--and leave the thinking to her?
    She lowered the window a crack and tossed out the cigarette butt, then lit up another one and took a deep drag while Eddie named all the politicians who had gone on to success after admitting an early indiscretion.
    "But Janie, if she is one of our babies--"
    "Eddie, shut up! You never know who's listening. We don't have any kids. Never change the story, remember?" She'd drummed the phrase into his head for fifteen long years, ever since the day she'd snatched the first kid.
    They'd fled Nashville that night, leaving everything behind, including their own two babies they'd sold at birth to eager childless couples. It had always been laughably easy to find people willing to pay for a kid.
    "But Janie," his voice lowered to a coarse whisper. "The Loveless woman showed me a picture. The girl is eighteen. That's how old our daughter would be. She looks like you."
    Janie's ears burned with rage and a dull, throbbing ache started in her temple. "We don't have any children, remember? The story?"
    She consciously relaxed her face and throat. She had to calm down. If Eddie thought she was angry at him, he'd fall apart.
    "Go look nice for the cameras, Mr. Future U.S. Congressman. Concentrate on that bright future. I'll take care of the past." She flipped off the phone, pounded her palm against the steering wheel, and cursed loudly.
    Damn that Loveless woman. This was all her fault.
    A month ago, when Eddie had told her about the private investigator who'd shown up at his office looking for her young client's biological mother, Janie had nearly passed out from shock. Until that moment she'd never spared a thought for the two babies she'd birthed and sold while Eddie was in law school in Nashville.
    She'd never wanted kids. They were a commodity, nothing more. The idea that those kids were now teenagers, nearly adults, had never crossed Janie's mind.
    If the truth about illegally selling their own kids came out, Eddie's future would be down the toilet. They might even go to jail.
    Eddie had a real chance to win that House seat. It was what he'd always wanted and whatever Eddie wanted, Janie made happen. She'd worked hard to get them where they were today. Nobody was going to spoil her plans.
    The Loveless woman had shown up at the worst possible time.
    To give him credit, Eddie had handled her pretty well--for him. He'd lied, told her they didn't have any kids.
    But Janie knew how bad a liar he was. Then he'd gone and called that dork buddy of his from law school, Hiram Cogburn.
    Spooked that Loveless had found them so easily, and worried about that fool Hiram's bumbling attempts to throw suspicion elsewhere, Janie had headed for Nashville to assess and contain the damage Hiram had already done.
    She'd had no clue what she was going to do about Sunny Loveless, until she'd seen her--with her six-month-old infant.
    Even now, the thrill of that moment sent an addictive rush of adrenaline surging through her.
    Sunny Loveless had a baby. And babies were Janie's specialty.

* * * * *

 34 hours missing

Sunny Loveless paced the length of the interrogation room at the East Nashville Patrol Sector headquarters, her limbs twitching from tension, her head pounding, her empty stomach cramping from the reek of stale cigarette smoke and old coffee. Nausea burned her throat. Momentarily dizzy, she grabbed the back of a chair and closed her eyes until the wave of sickness passed. It was exhaustion--she knew that. Combined with fear and grief and a terrible, suffocating guilt.
    She shouldn't be here, waiting to talk to the FBI agent that Lieutenant Carver had called in.
    She should be at the operations center the police had set up, reviewing the tips and photos that had come in since the AMBER alert was posted. Or at home, helping Lil recreate the stolen case files that the police had dismissed until two days ago.
    She glanced at her watch. They were late.
    Not that she was looking forward to going through the events of Tuesday night again, this time for the FBI. Having to remember everything she'd told the police--and everything she hadn't.
    She gripped the chair more tightly and shuddered. Not even the FBI could help her. Not with this.
    The note that had been stuffed into her mouth by those wet, gloved fingers now rested like a lead weight in the pocket of her slacks. She hadn't let it out of her possession for an instant. It was her only link with her baby. Her baby.
    All the horror overwhelmed her again--the attack, the realization that Emily was gone, the sickening sound of that whisper echoing over and over in her ears.
    Chew on this, bitch.
    The wooden door creaked open, startling her out of her thoughts.
    Lieutenant Harry Carver stepped in. "Thanks for coming down here again, Ms. Loveless."
    He moved further into the room and Sunny spotted a taller man behind him.
    The FBI agent. Sunny gave him a quick once-over. He was a shade under six feet tall, lean and athletic, with dark hair and eyes.
    He carried himself with a loose-limbed grace that wasn't hidden by the crisp shirt and summer-weight jacket he wore, although his face and the set of his mouth told her he was anything but loose.
    His jaw was strong and square. His features were even, but a little too prominent to be considered handsome. And those eyes were as piercing as an eagle's.
    She felt an odd mixture of wariness and reassurance. She was going to have to watch her step around him.
    "This is Special Agent Griffin Stone. He's with the Division of Unsolved Mysteries."
    "Unsolved mysteries?" Fear congealed into a cold knot in her belly. "Is my daughter's abduction connected with an unsolved case?"
    "Nothing like that, Ms. Loveless," Agent Stone stepped forward.
    Sunny noticed his slight accent. He'd grown up in the south.
    "I'm here because I've worked a number of missing child cases."
    A shadow crossed his face as he spoke. Her investigator's instinct kicked in. He didn't want to be here. Why?
    "I see." She held out her hand. "I'm Sunny Loveless. But then you know that, don't you, Agent Stone?"
    Griff lowered his gaze to Sunny Loveless's outstretched hand, and accepted her intense scrutiny. Families of abducted children were initially wary of law enforcement, especially if they'd received a warning from the kidnappers.
    For some reason, he was reluctant to touch her. Just seeing her straight slender silhouette, haloed by the faint light from the dingy window, had been enough to slam him in his solar plexus.
    It was always difficult to meet the family of a missing child for the first time. This time, maybe because he was back in Nashville, the intensity of his reaction surprised him.
    But he didn't want to be rude so he took her hand. Her trembling fingers telegraphed how hard she was working to stay in control.
    After a brief but surprisingly strong grasp, she withdrew. His hand tingled, as if she'd left a part of herself on him.
    He knew she'd taken something of him with her. But then each family he worked with took something from him, and gave him something back.