“It’s true.”
“You checked? And you didn’t tell me?”
“I thought I’d wait until you were released.”
“Consider me outta here. So my daughter really is missing?”
His lips pinched at the corners, but he nodded. “Yeah. She’s been missing for a while. The reason Settler is down here is because he thought you might have something to do with the abduction.”
She felt her gut tighten. “Swell guy. He loses track of his kid, then immediately thinks I had something to do with it? Me!” She pointed a finger at her own chest. “The woman who trusted that whoever adopted her would take care of her, keep her safe, protect her, love her? The person who hasn’t seen her in thirteen damned years?” Shannon’s voice cracked a bit. She fought back tears and cleared her throat. Right now she couldn’t afford to get too emotional. Now, more than ever, she had to be clear-headed, in control. “What about his wife?” she asked. “Where’s she in all this? The attorneys told me when I agreed to give the baby up, even though it was a private adoption, that my little girl was going to be raised by a married couple, one that really wanted children and for some reason or other couldn’t conceive.”
“The wife is dead.”
All the air in the room seemed to be sucked out by a vacuum.
“Oh.” A little of S
hannon’s rage dissipated. For the briefest of seconds she felt a pang of compassion for the single father who obviously had to deal with his own grief as well as his child’s. Who knew what he had suffered? “What happened to her?”
“The wife? Not sure. Illness of some kind, I think. She’s been gone a few years. Now it’s just Settler and the daughter.”
“Whom he lost!” Again her anger reached flash point. What kind of father loses a kid? Her baby? Rationally she knew that children could be abducted, or run away, that it was a tragedy that happened every day, but not to her daughter, not to the precious baby she’d given up against her better judgment! She’d fought the idea, but in the end she’d been persuaded that giving the baby to a loving married couple desperate for a child would be best for her daughter’s sake, for her well-being. The couple would be able to give the baby everything she wanted and needed…And it had turned out badly. Shannon’s eyes burned. She tried to get a grip on herself. “This is just so wrong,” she whispered, swallowing hard.
Refusing to wince against the pain that thrummed from her head down through her torso, she walked carefully across the small room and opened the closet door. Inside was an old yellow terry-cloth robe that one of her brothers had obviously found at the back of her closet at home. The robe had seen better days and was beyond shopworn. The cuffs were ragged and there was a coffee stain on one lapel that had never quite faded. Her blood-soaked boots had been tossed, and there weren’t any shoes, just a pair of worn, navy blue mule-type slippers.
“Perfect,” she muttered flatly. Annoyed, she slid her feet into the scuffs.
“I suppose I can’t talk you out of this.”
“Nope.”
“You seem to have forgotten that you’ve always been the baby, Shan.” Shea looked for all the world as if he was frustrated out of his mind. He scrabbled in his pocket for his pack of cigarettes before remembering where he was. He let his hand drop to his side.
“Yeah, well, let’s not think of me as the baby of the clan. Or the only sister or any of that bull. I’m a grown woman and it’s time I quit relying on the rest of you.”
“Except for me pulling strings to get you out of here.”
She had the grace to smile. “Nobody said I wouldn’t still use you whenever I could.”
His eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “So who put you in charge?”
“The son of a bitch who tried to beat the crap out of me,” she said, cinching the belt of her robe over the stupid hospital gown. She had no option but to wear it out of the place. “So do whatever it is you have to do to spring me and let’s go.”
“You want me to take you back home.”
“Eventually, but we have a stop to make first.”
“A stop?”
“You know where Travis Settler is, don’t you?”
Shea’s lips tightened. “I can’t take you to him.”
“Sure you can.”
“Shannon, I’d strongly advise against you having any contact with the man. We haven’t ruled him out as a suspect.”
“I don’t care.”