Blind Spot (33 page)

Claire’s heart clutched. “Oh, no…Lang…no!”

“She’s alive, as far as we know,” he said, addressing her fear correctly. “But it looks as if she’s been kidnapped from the hospital. She’s been missing for nearly an hour.”

Rita drove away from the hospital with extreme care. Extreme care.

Two reasons: one, she could not afford to be stopped, and two: she didn’t have an infant car seat. She’d had to put her baby on the floor of the backseat, and the little thing was crying over every bump.

The wig she’d chosen was a light brown color in an old-fashioned “bubble” style. It made Rita look ten years older than her real age. She’d walked down the halls in her scrubs like she owned the place, and nearly had a heart attack when Carlita suddenly appeared in the hallway with another RN named Laura, who glanced Rita’s way casually while Carlita, unaware, was going on about the new baby born to the woman from the cult.

Ocean Park Hospital did not have a wing devoted entirely to obstetrics. Expectant mothers were associated with doctors whose deliveries were at Seaside Hospital or Tillamook, one north of Deception Bay, one south, and Ocean Park’s OB-GYN, Dr. Gallippo, was mainly with Seaside General and only came to Ocean Park when specifically requested.

For these reasons—and possibly because it was just meant to be that Rita would finally have her own baby at last!—there was no real checkpoint at Ocean Park like at other hospitals, where no one could take the baby away before it was released by the doctor in charge.

Rita had simply walked the halls, looking efficient and busy, until the moment she was assured that Tasha was finally completely alone, then she stepped into her room, swept up the sleeping child, and with the Fertility Mother looking after her, had taken the baby into the first empty room she could find, ripped off her top, slipped the child into the baby sling she wore underneath, then replaced the top. She looked pregnant herself by the time she left the room, and with her heart pounding in a wild, deafening tattoo, she walked out of the hospital unbothered.

But with all her planning, she’d forgotten the car seat. She was shocked at her own failure.

Now she had to buy the protective item, and it sent shivers down her skin. If someone should notice the baby was gone—and the news broke—and they remembered a woman buying a car seat at the local drugstore, for that’s where she was headed…well, she couldn’t think that way! The goddess had watched over her to date, even if she’d had to leave the blond bitch sleeping away in her bed, untouched, and Rita saw no reason for her luck to change now.

The drugstore was the only game in town and it had been around Deception Bay for as long as Rita could remember. Rita drove around to the back, where there were no vehicles and no activity. She had no choice but to leave the infant where she was. It would only be for a few minutes and then Rita would put the car seat in place and they would be gone. Roberto might be looking for his Wrangler, but he wasn’t exactly on good terms with the police, so it could be a while before he really reported it missing.

And Cade would be Roberto’s first go-to, and with him shot and probably dead…

She purposely shoved those thoughts aside and went inside the store. Glancing around, she was glad to see she didn’t recognize the girl at the counter. Baby gear was to the back, she knew, and she walked carefully, her legs wanting to run. She grabbed up formula and a bottle and one of the two car seats they had for sale. She wanted much, much more but she couldn’t afford to draw too much attention to herself. Oh, how she’d waited for this day. But these
details.

She wondered, suddenly, the thought like a wave of cold water, if she’d made a mistake. They would find her. She should have left without taking the baby. She would be away by now and Tasha could lie all she wanted and it wouldn’t matter.

But no. The baby was
hers.

“Is that everything?” the girl at the counter asked.

“Yes.” She put the money on the counter with shaking hands.

Paolo,
she thought randomly. Paolo wouldn’t be a bad father. If she couldn’t have Rafe—or Jake at Ocean Park—maybe she could have Paolo, even though he was older?

And then she was outside, glad for the misting rain on her face. She hurried to the back of the building and the Wrangler. Quickly she opened the door. The baby was crying and Rita picked her up and cuddled her close, her gaze darting both directions. The little girl wanted to nurse, so Rita climbed in the backseat and poured the premixed formula in a bottle, holding the baby and feeding her with shaking hands.

The little girl took to the bottle well, Rita saw with satisfaction. Good. She hadn’t made a mistake.

The baby fell asleep with the nipple still in her mouth. Rita gently swaddled her back up and lay her on the seat. Then she ripped the car seat box open with her bare hands. She stared at the contraption and wanted to cry. She wasn’t good with these things. But there were instructions.

Painstakingly, she got the car seat in place, buckling it in. Then she put her treasure inside, adjusting the buckles.

She was a good mother, she thought with pride. A good, good mother.

But when she edged toward the highway, intending to drive south toward Tillamook, a sheriff’s deputy whizzed by in the direction of the hospital, lights flashing.

They
knew
!

She couldn’t be on the highway. Couldn’t afford to be in view.

Because she could think of nothing else, she drove back toward the Foothillers’ community. A familiar place to hide while she planned her next move.

It was a melee at Ocean Park Hospital when Lang and Claire arrived together. Someone had stolen the baby from its bed inside Tasha’s room while Tasha slept. Someone brazen enough, or just crazy enough, to believe they could get away with it.

And they had.

Claire knew it was Rita. Lang knew it was Rita. Hospital personnel wanted to believe it was some kind of strange mistake.

Lang marshaled Clausen for the job of finding the kidnapper and left a younger woman deputy named Dunbar at the hospital. He phoned Warren Burghsmith, still on duty at Rita’s mother’s house, warning him of the new development. Then he pulled Claire aside and said, “She’s obsessed. She took that baby out of here under everyone’s nose. Where would she go? What’s she thinking?”

“She wants the baby above all else.” Claire could hardly think, she was so worried. “But she left Tasha alone. That’s good. That’s good.”

“Where the hell is she?” He was talking rhetorically, frustrated, his eyes flashing with anger. “Where
the hell is she
?”

“You’ve got an Amber Alert going,” Claire reminded him, more for something to say than any real reason that it needed to be stated. “Someone will find her.”

“We don’t know what vehicle she’s in. Maybe she thumbed a ride. Maybe she stole a car. Jesus.”

His cell phone rang. It was Deputy Burghsmith. “Tell me you have something,” Lang answered.

“A Jeep Wrangler just drove by the Feather house really slowly with a woman at the wheel. Maybe a gawker. Couldn’t see in the backseat.”

“Wrangler,” Lang snapped out. “There was a Wrangler parked in front of Cade’s, but it wasn’t there when I went inside last night…. Damn!”

“Want me to go after it?”

“I’ll get someone there. I’ll come myself!” he decided. He was off the phone and striding toward the door.

“Wait!” Claire called.

“I gotta go. I think we’ve got her.”

“I’ll come with you.”

“No.” He put his hands on her shoulders and stopped her as she was about to charge out the hospital doors. “Let me do my job. Stay with Tasha.”

Without another word he strode out through the door and Claire gazed after him in frustration. She headed back to Tasha’s room. Maybe it was a blessing that Tasha hadn’t woken up again. She was bound to be exhausted, and if Catherine was right, and why wouldn’t she be, this was a facet of Tasha’s overall health, whether it was good or not.

While Claire waited for news, the Channel Seven team pulled up outside the hospital and Pauline Kirby began serving up special reports. When the Amber Alert went out, they’d gotten themselves a story.

Several hours later Claire, who refused to go outside and let the newspeople pounce on her, pushed aside a plate from the cafeteria with the remains of a barely nibbled hamburger and remembered her own plan to call Human Resources and find out about Rita’s employment. She dialed from her cell and was put on hold for long moments before finally getting through. The head of the department, Dale Werkken, answered her queries carefully. “You know, Dr. Norris, that I’m not allowed to give out personal information about an employee.”

“Yeah, well, this employee could be the kidnapper of a baby from Ocean Park Hospital. Have you seen the news at all? Do you know about the Amber Alert?”

“That doesn’t mean I should tell you. There is a protocol.”

“Come on, Dale. She had to have been recommended by someone or the decision would have taken a lot longer. Who recommended her?”

“She came in and applied by herself…”

“And?” Claire questioned, hearing the hesitation. “Who recommended her?” she practically yelled at him.

“Paolo Avanti,” he said quickly, as if that would somehow vindicate him from telling.

Claire pulled the phone from her ear and stared at it in surprise. Avanti?

What did that mean?

Checking her list of stored numbers, she put a call through to Avanti’s cell. It was two thirty. He was probably in his office or patrolling Side A, maybe checking in with his favorite patient, Heyward Marsdon III.

He didn’t answer and she was about to hang up, when his supercilious voice suddenly came on the line. “Hello?”

“Paolo, this is Claire.”

“Claire! Are you still at Ocean Park?” He sounded extremely tense.

“Yes, I’m not sure I’ll be back this afternoon. I’m waiting with Tasha, our Jane Doe, who’s been unconscious since the birth.”

“We’ve been watching the news,” he said. “Any word on the kidnapper?”

“No. What you haven’t heard yet, but it’s bound to get out soon, is that we think the kidnapper is a nurse named Rita Feather Hawkings.”

He couldn’t disguise his gasp.
“Who?”

“The recent hire at Halo Valley that you recommended for the job.”

“There must be some mistake!” he sputtered. “I know of Rita, yes. We’re acquaintances. And I did think she’d be good for the job, but she isn’t capable, she wouldn’t—”

“The sheriff’s department is looking for her. I’m assuming she’s not at the hospital today?”

“Um…no…I don’t know.” Panic ran beneath his tone.

“You’d better call and tell them what you know about her before something worse happens to that baby.” When there was no response, she said, “Avanti? Paolo?” But he was gone.

She next put in a call to Lang but it went straight to voice mail. She was debating on whether to call the sheriff’s department directly or find Deputy Savannah Dunbar, who was still at the hospital taking reports, when her phone rang in her hand.

It was James Freeson.

“This is Claire,” she answered.

“What did you say to Avanti?” he demanded. “I heard him talking on the cell phone to you and then he stormed out of here.”

“He knows the woman we think kidnapped Tasha’s baby. Rita Feather Hawkings. I told him to contact the sheriff’s department.”

“Rita stole the baby?” he repeated sharply.

“You know her, too?”

“I know that she really
knows
Avanti well,” he said in his smug way.

“Like that?” Claire said, slightly surprised.

“Claire, we need you back at the hospital. Avanti’s God knows where, and I’m going straight to Radke and bringing him up to date on all this.”

“I need to tell the sheriff’s department about Avanti’s friendship with Rita.”

“Do that. And give them my number, because I’ve got a few things to say as well…”

Lang screeched to a halt in front of the Hawkings house. Burghsmith, late thirties, tall and lean, met him on the porch. “Drove by that way,” he pointed toward the north. “Turned east.”

“Thanks.”

He jumped back in his truck. She could be long gone. It might not even be Rita. He could be chasing ghosts. But he followed Burghsmith’s directions and found himself winding back and forth through the Foothillers’ community, passing by the café-cum-grocery store-cum-tavern. No Wrangler.

He drove up to Cade’s house, thinking it was where the Wrangler had been parked before. Pulling into the driveway to turn around, he thought about the night before and felt a deep sadness for screwed-up Cade, who’d been undone just hearing about Rafe’s injuries and then was killed himself.

Turning back into the street, he glanced toward the Blackburns’. Rita had been parked in front of their house. Quickly he reversed direction and drove to the end of the block, the nose of his truck at the end of the road, pointed across the Scotch broom–covered field where he’d chased Cade.

There was no Jeep Wrangler anywhere.

He shook his head. Rita Hawkings wasn’t here. She hadn’t come back to the community because it would be the first place anyone would look for her.

Throwing the truck in reverse, he put an arm around the back of the seat and started to turn his head when a light caught the corner of his eye. A light from the house across the field, turned on against the uncertain daylight of this dark day.

Angela Feather’s house. Rita’s aunt.

Who lived there now?

He drove out of the Foothillers’ community, back onto Highway 101, and then to the side road that led to the house across the field. He pulled up to the drive and looked down the lane toward a carport.

A black Jeep Wrangler was tucked inside.

A zing ran up Lang’s nerves. The muscles at the back of his neck tightened. He drove past the driveway and pulled to the side of the road, then called the sheriff’s department and asked for O’Halloran. He was told the sheriff was busy and he nearly bit the administrator’s head off telling her it was Langdon Stone and it was an emergency.

O’Halloran came on the phone. “Detective?” he asked, slightly miffed.

Tersely, Lang explained the situation, finishing with, “I need the name of the current homeowner, if they live there themselves, or if it’s a rental.”

“I’m sending backup.”

Lang got out of his truck and, in a crouch, walked back to the edge of the drive. He was pretty sure striding right up to the door and saying he was with the sheriff’s department wasn’t going to work if Rita was inside.

As if divining his thoughts, a dark-haired woman stuck her head out of the door and looked around. Lang shrank into the tall weeds and behind a skinny pine tree, his heart beating hard and fast. He’d bet his last dollar that was Rita Feather Hawkings. He couldn’t see her in this position and risked lifting his head, but she’d gone back inside.

Carefully, tramping through tall, wet field grass, he skirted the drive and came up on the north side of the house.

His Glock was tucked back in its spot at his waistband. He sure as hell hoped he didn’t have to depend on it. There was a baby inside that house, and as if calling for help herself, the little girl’s cries could be heard from where he was standing.

In a moment of pure reaction, he ran lightly across the driveway, tucked around the Wrangler, and let himself in through a back door that, though locked, gave when he pushed hard against it, breaking loose under pressure.

And there she was. Standing directly in front of him as he looked down the galley kitchen toward a back den. Attempting to give the crying infant a bottle. Staring at him.

Her eyes widened.

“Don’t move, Rita,” he ordered in a cold voice that brooked no argument. “Don’t you damn well move.”

“This is my baby,” she said, after the longest moment of Lang’s life.

“Police are on their way. Put the baby down and your hands up.” He eased forward, his own hands in front of him, trying to keep her from panicking.

“You don’t understand! This is
my
baby!”

“Just put her down.”

“She’s hungry.” Rita’s attention wavered and she looked down at the infant, who was trying to eat, but Rita wasn’t holding the bottle correctly.

In that brief moment, he sprang forward and grabbed her upper arms. She automatically let go of the infant but Lang’s body was there, keeping the baby between them. He pushed Rita to the wall and pulled the baby away. He hardly knew what he was going to do until he did it. When he stepped back, he reached around for his gun at the same moment she jumped forward, claws out, but he yelled, “
Back off. Get back.
I have a gun, and so help me, I’ll shoot you if you don’t
back off
!”

His fierceness had its effect. She hesitated, looked around wildly, eyes rolling. She started screaming in frustration. “You can’t take my baby! You can’t take my baby!”

Lang held the child in one arm, the Glock in his other hand. He kept it steady on her. She was wild with fury. Torn between attacking him and ripping at her own hair. “She killed him!” she screamed. “She killed Rafe! And Cade! And she took my baby. Mine and Rafe’s and she
doesn’t care.
She’s evil. She stabbed Rafe to death! And she wants everyone to think it’s my fault but it’s not! She cut herself.” Rita made a motion across her own abdomen. “I didn’t do that. She wants you to think I did, but I
didn’t.
I had a knife but so did she. I went after her. I wanted my baby, but she turned on me with her knife. I stabbed her up here!” She pounded her upper chest and shoulder area. “I just wanted the baby. Yes, yes, I meant to take it. But I
didn’t.
Don’t you understand? I didn’t. Because she came after me. She’s a witch! A witch face! And Rafe was there, trying to stop her. But she kept hacking at me. Hack, hack, hack!” She stabbed at the air with a clenched fist. “But I got away. I cried all the way home because she took my baby. Mine and Rafe’s. And then
she killed him
! She stabbed him to death for saving me!” Rita was crying, gulping and crying. “Don’t you see? Don’t you see?” She fell against the wall for support, sliding down. “I had to kill her. For Rafe. And I had to get my baby back. Don’t you see?
Don’t you see?
”

Before Lang could say anything, do anything more, Clausen and Burghsmith surged through the front and back doors at the same time. They stopped short upon seeing the crumpled woman crying on the floor and Lang, holding both a Glock and a crying infant, standing over her.

Lang called Claire as he drove away from the scene of Rita’s capture and Claire listened to his recounting of the events in a kind of horrified disbelief. She was halfway to Halo Valley, and Lang’s terse recap of what had transpired brought instant relief and a whole lot of questions.

“Thank God the baby’s safe,” she expelled. Then, humbly, “Thank you for saving her.”

“Rita wasn’t going to hurt the child, but she’s definitely deluded. A candidate for the Dr. Norris treatment of care for the seriously psychotic.”

“She’s lying about Tasha,” Claire said. Then she quickly related what had transpired in her conversation with Avanti and how she’d given the information to Sheriff O’Halloran, who was going to talk to Freeson as no one had heard from Avanti himself. “I’m on my way to Halo Valley.”

“Clausen and Burghsmith have probably already talked to O’Halloran. They’re on their way to the jail with Rita.”

“Good. I’m glad she’s caught.”

“Yeah.”

“You don’t believe anything she said about Tasha, do you?” Claire asked anxiously. “She’s obsessed. Can’t take the responsibility. Wants to believe the baby’s hers, and has a whole delusion about it.”