nstead of going home, Rip had the cabdriver take him to the hospital. He used his parking card to gain entrance to the physician’s parking lot, and he told the driver to wait. As he got out of the cab, he checked the vehicles in the lot, and wasn’t surprised to see that his own car wasn’t there. He was disappointed, but not surprised. Still, he clipped on his identity badge and went inside to the emergency department.

“Has Felicia D’Angelo checked in?” he asked the admissions clerk, who checked the computer.

“No, sir, we have a Ramon D’Angelo, but not a Felicia.”

Just to be certain, Rip had the driver take him to the other hospital where he and Susanna had privileges, and he went through the same routine. His car wasn’t in the parking lot, and Felicia D’Angelo hadn’t been admitted to the hospital.

He hoped like hell Susanna would be at home when he got there, that the false page and her story had just been part of her misguided effort to throw Milla and Gallagher together. Despite everything, he still hoped.

But when he got home, the windows were dark. He paid the cabdriver the rather hefty fee, then trudged up the sidewalk and unlocked the front door. He automatically turned off the alarm and flipped on the light switch.

He wondered what tale Susanna would have when she got home. He wondered where she was. And he wondered what in hell he was going to do.

True might not have gotten into his truck yet; he might hear her scream. The thought burned through her mind as Milla tried to force air past her constricted throat, but it was like in a nightmare, when you try and try to scream but can’t. All she could manage was a strangled sound that was cut off when a hard hand clamped over her mouth and a steel-muscled body pushed her against the wall, holding her there.

“Hush,” said that low voice. “Don’t scream. It’s just me.”

Just him? Even knowing it was Diaz didn’t lessen her panic a lot. Her heart was slamming against her breastbone so hard she felt ill from the force of it. She was almost grateful he was holding her against the wall, because otherwise she didn’t think her knees would have supported her.

She felt him lean to the side, heard the click as he switched on the lamp and mellow light flooded the foyer. From outside came the sound of an engine starting, then the whine of tires on pavement as True drove off.

Diaz took his hand away. His face was expressionless, his eyes cold. “You got something going on with Gallagher?”

She hit him. She slapped his arm and his shoulder; then she took her purse and swatted him on the side of the head. “Damn it, you scared the life out of me!” she shrieked, and tears of fright and relief trickled down her cheeks. Trembling, she sank down in the chair beside the lamp table while she fumbled in her purse for a tissue.

Diaz was no longer expressionless; he looked absolutely floored that she had hit him—and, probably, that he had let her. She couldn’t believe it herself, not only that she had so lost control, but that he’d just stood there instead of breaking her arm or at least tossing her to the floor. She opened her mouth to apologize, and instead found herself swatting him on the knee. “Damn it,” she said weakly, as more tears trickled down. She scrubbed at them with a tissue. Her makeup was probably a mess, and that made her want to swat him again.

He crouched in front of her, his eyes almost level with hers. “I didn’t mean to—I’m sorry.” Cautiously he reached out and took her hand, as if making such contact wasn’t something he normally did and he wasn’t quite sure how to go about it. His fingers were hard and hot, his palm was callused; he cradled her hand in his and stroked his thumb over her knuckles. “Are you okay?”

“You mean if my heart ever starts beating normally again?” she snapped, then abruptly found herself laughing. She was so weak from adrenaline overload that she couldn’t stand up, so she just leaned her head back against the wall and chuckled while she wiped her face with her free hand.

An incredible thing happened. The corners of his mouth moved upward.

She was so astonished at the sight of Diaz smiling that she stopped laughing and stared at him. Her heart had begun to settle down, but now it started thumping wildly again, and this time it wasn’t because of fear. Her entire body flushed with heat and she began trembling again. Diaz holding her hand, smiling—now was when she should scream, because she was in far greater danger than she’d been a moment ago.

“What?” he asked, bewildered by the way she was staring at him.

“You’re smiling.” It was as if he had dropped part of his mask and was letting her see past the blankness he usually presented to the world. Astonishment, bewilderment, concern, amusement had all been visible in his expression during the past minute. The one thing she was most terrified she would see was desire, so she pulled her hand from his and began making the feminine motions of neatening herself: pushing her hair out of her face, straightening her skirt, blotting under her eyes to remove any melted mascara.

“I smile,” he said, as if he couldn’t understand why such a small thing would startle her.

“When?”

“Hell, I don’t keep a log. I laugh, too.”

“This year?”

He started to say something, then reconsidered and shrugged. “Maybe not.” Amusement began curling the corners of his mouth again. “You hit me with your purse.”

“I’m sorry,” she apologized. “I was so scared, I lost it. Did I hurt you?”

“You’re joking.”

“Not really. I mean, I hit you in the head.”

“Those were girl slaps.”

They had been. She felt a twinge of despair. She trained and trained and trained, trying to get herself in a sort of warrior state of mind so she could handle situations exactly like that, and instead of doing anything effective, she had automatically fallen back into a purely feminine response. If this happened with, say, Pavón, then she was a dead woman.

He was still crouched in front of her, so close she could feel his body heat against her legs. His short black hair was spiked and untidy, as if he’d run his fingers through his hair while it was wet. For the first time since she’d met him he was clean-shaven, though he was dressed in his usual uniform of T-shirt and jeans, with black boots. The lamplight emphasized the stark bone structure of his severe face, made his dark eyes seem more deep-set, and his usually grim mouth was softer, fuller.

Desperately she hid her inner quiver. She had held out hope that her physical response to him was mostly in her imagination, fueled by his deadly aura. Women daydreamed about dangerous men, when in reality a nice, normal guy was far preferable. But this was no daydream, and she had to clench her hands to keep from reaching out and stroking that mouth. Diaz wasn’t a bad boy, he was a bad man, and she would do well to remember the difference. He didn’t walk on the side of the angels.

But they were alone in her house, isolated in this small pool of light, and she knew that all she had to do was part her knees and he would be between them. He hadn’t made a pass or even indicated he was thinking about it, but she knew he wouldn’t turn her down. He would oblige her, and then he would disappear again, the encounter having meant no more to him than a drink of water when he was thirsty.

So she remained in the chair, and kept her legs together. She refused to be nothing more than convenient sex for anyone, even herself.

“Gallagher kissed you,” he said, letting her know that he’d watched them from a window, since her door was solid. Even as she watched, his face was changing, losing its brief animation and settling back into the familiar stone mask.

“I didn’t want him to.” For some reason, she felt as if she owed Diaz an explanation. “He keeps asking me out, and I keep refusing.”

“Why were you with him tonight?”

“I had dinner with some friends and True stopped by our table. My friends are both doctors, and one of them was called to the hospital on an emergency. She took their car, so True drove me home while Rip took a cab home.”

He was silent as he considered that, then shook his head. “I won’t help you unless you stay away from him.”

She didn’t bridle at the ultimatum, because it jibed with her own feelings. “All right.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that. You know him, don’t you?”

“We’ve met.”

And yet True, when she’d asked him about Diaz, hadn’t said anything of the sort. Instead he’d pretended to be looking for information. It was possible he thought she would be safer if she never crossed paths with Diaz, and if so then he was right, but she made her own decisions and took her own chances. By trying to keep her from Diaz, he’d been blocking her from information she desperately needed.

“Did you find Pavón?”

“Working on it. Got a lead. He may stay out of sight for a month or so, though, since he got word I was looking for him.”

Any sane person would stay out of sight longer than that, like for a lifetime. “Then why are you here, if you don’t have any new information?”

“To tell you I did run across something that might interest you. One of my informants knew something about a baby-smuggling ring going on about ten years ago.”

She stiffened, chills running up and down her spine and over her scalp. She felt as if her lungs suddenly constricted, preventing her from breathing. “What did he say?” she asked, her voice stifled.

“It was a fairly high-class operation, as these things go. The kids were flown across the border in a small private plane, rather than stuffed in car trunks and driven across.”

She still couldn’t quite catch her breath; all she could do was gasp. A plane! She’d had nightmares, thinking of Justin dying of heatstroke in some car trunk and being tossed aside like so much garbage.

“This doesn’t mean it was the same ring that kidnapped your baby,” he warned. “But the time is about right, and they operated in southern Chihuahua and Coahuila. They had a contact here in Texas who arranged for birth certificates for the kids, so they could be legally adopted.”

“Birth certificates.” Then it had to be someone who worked in a county courthouse, or a hospital. Since Justin had been born in Mexico and all the paperwork had been done there, she wasn’t sure exactly how birth certificates were issued, and she had never thought to check.

“Things wouldn’t work the same way now,” he said, reading her mind. “Everything is on computer. And the birth certificates could have come from any state.”

“I know.” Adoption records were also private, unless otherwise directed by the birth parent. That was a huge obstacle. Nor could she look for a noticeable spike in a certain county’s birth rate, because the number of extra certificates would far more likely be a few hundred for one year, rather than thousands. In a county that contained a large city, with a transient population, those extra birth certificates wouldn’t even be noticed. But the larger cities would also have been more likely to be computerized ten years ago, she thought. A small rural county, with limited funds that didn’t cover full computerized record-keeping, would be a better bet. She said as much to Diaz, who nodded.

“What would you look for?”

“Birth certificates issued in clumps. How many babies would be born in a small county on the same day, or the same week? Even the same month? If the total in some months was noticeably higher than in other months, I’d concentrate there.”

He was silent, and she waited while he processed whatever he was thinking. Finally he glanced up at her. “Supposedly, the smuggling ring stopped operating when the private plane crashed.”

Her lips went numb as the feverish hope in her turned into yet another nightmare. “When?”

“Roughly ten years ago. Everyone on board died, including the six babies.”

She sat staring at her hands long after he’d gone. Life couldn’t be so cruel, God couldn’t be so cruel, to let her go for so long and get this far, then snatch everything away from her. She knew Justin wasn’t necessarily on that plane, that a different smuggling ring might have taken him. But this was another nightmare possibility that she had to deal with, another horrible ending to innocent little lives.

She might never find her baby, though she’d never stop looking. But she would find the people behind this—no, not “people,” monsters—and she’d bring them down if it was the last thing she ever did. Something in her was changing, and she was no longer willing to overlook anything in exchange for information on her lost baby, on any lost baby. She wanted justice, and she wanted vengeance.