River couldn’t imagine spending every summer under his parents’ roof again. It wasn’t like he spent every evening partying with prostitutes or something, but he chafed under the supervision. If he wanted to leave dishes in the sink, or heaven forbid on the coffee table, it was okay. “Do you hate being home that much that you’d rather stay there than commit to some real estate? You wouldn’t have to buy. There are short-term rentals you could get. A beach house, even.”
“I know. My father insists I stay there with them. For practical reasons, of course.”
“Of course,” River agreed.
“But you’re right,” she sighed. “I should find another option.”
River lifted his glass and flashed his most charming smile. “Lucky you, I just so happen to know of a couple of amazing properties available in town.”
* * *
When Jade got home from her shift at the pharmacy, she found her fiancé, Harley, in his mother’s formal dining room. She had never returned to her rental bungalow after the break-in. Harley had all her things packed up and they’d taken up temporary residence at his mother’s mansion until he was done working the case for St. Francis Hospital.
In the meantime, he had taken over the space as his pseudo-command center for his investigation into her thirty-year-old baby-swapping case. He had boxes of files, his laptop and anything else he could get his hands on sprawled across the large oak table. He was sitting at the head of the table, frowning at his computer screen like an unhappy king at a feast.
“What’s wrong?” Jade asked. She put her purse down in one of the dozen ornate wood-and-velvet chairs and circled behind Harley to rub his shoulders. He had always taken this case seriously, but after the break-in at her house and her kidnapping, it had become personal for him. Almost all-consuming. Some nights she had to drag him to bed.
“I can’t find the file I’m looking for. I’ve searched everywhere. It has all the information about the hospital staff that I reviewed with the former CEO.”
Jade pressed her fingers into his tense muscles, eliciting a low groan from him. She glanced over his chair to the table and the boxes set out across it. Harley might be an investigator, but he was first and foremost a man. They couldn’t find anything, usually because it required moving something else and it wasn’t in plain sight.
“When did you see it last?”
“The day I went to his house. It has the personnel files and photos of all the nurses and physicians working when you were born. I’ve been looking for it since your family went out on the yacht with the Steeles a few weeks ago. I need to find that nurse’s information.”
With a sigh, Jade walked over to the boxes. It had been a while since her families had had their first get-together. It had gone well enough, but with everything going on, she’d forgotten about Patricia and Carolyn’s discussion of the day the girls were born. Thankfully, Harley hadn’t. She glanced in a few boxes, flipping through some things before moving to the next one.
“It’s not there. I checked twenty times.”
Then Jade picked up one of the boxes, revealing the manila folder that had been beneath it. It was marked with a red confidential personnel stamp from the hospital. She didn’t say a word. That would just irritate him. She simply picked it up and laid it across the keyboard of his laptop.
“Are you serious? Where was it?”
“Doesn’t matter. What matters is you have it now. What are you looking for?”
“The nurse Patricia and Carolyn were talking about on the boat. Her name was Nancy Crowley. When I spoke to the former hospital CEO, he mentioned how she’d committed suicide at the hospital less than a week after Hurricane Hugo and the switch.”
Harley flipped through the file and pulled out a photograph that he handed over to Jade. She took it from him, studying the picture of the woman with the bright red curls and round face. She looked like she would have the cheery, chatty disposition that the mothers had mentioned from their time in the hospital. It was hard to believe that a week later, this woman would be dead.
“She jumped from the roof. My gut feeling is that it isn’t a coincidence. I think the CEO said something about her having a drinking problem that may have driven the suicide, but I’m going to do some digging. It sounds more like the action of someone with a guilty conscience to me.”
Harley’s words triggered a memory in Jade’s mind, but she couldn’t put her finger on it immediately. “What did you say?”
“It just seems like the actions of a guilty conscience.”
We’ve sat on our hands for three decades because of her stupid conscience...
“Wait.” Jade put her hands up to silence Harley. “That’s it. That’s what they said in the van.”
“Who?”
“My kidnappers. One of them was complaining about the other guy’s sister having an attack of conscience that ruined their plans. Do you think that’s what they meant?”
“It could be. Do you remember anything else?”
Jade stared at the photo and tried to remember the argument she’d listened to as she banged around in the back of her abductor’s van. “I think one of them said she was dead, but she hadn’t told them what they needed to know.”
“Like which baby was which?”