The Stranger's Sin

“Listen to me,” she interrupted in that same calm, authoritative voice. “You need to get your father to a hospital. I promise I’ll take good care of your son.”

Her eyes bored into his, clear and convincing. His father groaned, the sound causing pain to Chase’s own heart.

“If it’ll ease your mind, call a neighbor while you’re on your way,” she suggested. “But you need to go. Right now!”

She was right. It was vital to get a heart-attack victim to a hospital as quickly as possible. Doctors could administer drugs that broke up clots, stopping the heart attack in progress and limiting damage. Chase made a snap decision, the only one he could make.

“Okay, I’m going.” He rushed around to the driver’s side of the Jeep and got in.

His father was slumped in the seat, secured by the seat belt that Kelly had already fastened.

“Kelly’s a good woman,” his father muttered out the side of his mouth. “Toby’ll be fine.”

The fate of his father was less certain. His face was frighteningly pale. Chase turned the key in the ignition, mentally reviewing the winding route to the nearest hospital, figuring out how fast he dared drive to give doctors the best chance to save his father.

The trip passed in a blur, with Chase dividing his attention between the road and his father. It seemed an eternity before he pulled up to the emergency room.

Incredibly his father was able to walk into the hospital under his own power, with minimal help from Chase. The E.R. staff didn’t take any chances when Chase reported his father was suffering from chest pain. The nurses hustled him into a wheelchair and transported him into an examining room.

Somebody asked Chase to move his pickup from the emergency-room entrance. When he returned to the waiting room, an admissions clerk summoned him to her cubicle and instructed him to fill out paperwork.

Only then did Chase have time to phone Judy Allen, the mother of three who lived a few doors down, to ask her to check on Toby and Kelly. He got a return call an hour later, shortly after the E.R. doctor informed him they were running tests on his father.

“Kelly has everything under control. She was putting Toby to sleep when I got here, and we’re just sitting here talking,” his neighbor told him. “How’s your father?”

Chase didn’t find out the answer for another hour, a diagnosis his father was still marveling over much later as they drove home through the dark night, traveling at a much lower rate of speed.

“Heartburn,” his father repeated. “Can you believe it was only heartburn?”

“Now that I know you had chili for lunch, yes,” Chase said. “I should have asked what you’d had to eat, but the back pain threw me. That’s a warning sign.”

“In this case, it was only a sign that I’d been working in the yard,” his father groused.

“Hindsight,” Chase said, as he pulled the Jeep into the garage. “Don’t beat yourself up over it.”

The house was silent, the peace almost absolute, suggesting that no one was awake. Chase put a finger to his lips and peeked into the family room.

Kelly was asleep on the coach, one hand resting on a slightly flushed cheek, still wearing her tennis shoes. Judy was gone.

“She’s asleep,” he whispered to his father.

“This old fool needs to get some sleep, too,” his father said. “But better an old fool than a dead fool.”

His eyes moistening at the thought that his father could have met the same end as his mother, Chase impulsively embraced the other man. “Good night, Dad,” he whispered.

“Good night, son.” His father clapped him on the back, his voice as unsteady as Chase’s.

After his father went upstairs, Chase quietly approached the sofa. Kelly’s face looked even sweeter in sleep, her lashes sweeping her cheeks, her lips slightly parted as she breathed in and out softly.

He gently removed her shoes, then straightened. She stirred, rearranging herself into a more comfortable position. He held himself immobile, reluctant to make a sound that would wake her. He’d check on Toby next, but he already knew with a soul-deep certainty that the baby was fine.

The irony struck him even as he watched her sleep.

A few hours ago he didn’t trust she’d told him the truth about Mandy, but he’d trusted her with something infinitely more precious.

Toby.

His desperation to find Mandy had driven his suspicion but his gut made the decision to accept what Kelly had told him at face value.

What possible reason could she have to lie anyway?

K ELLY AWAKENED T HURSDAY morning to the sounds of a baby’s giggles, followed by a man’s deep laughter.

Unlike the previous afternoon when she’d woken up disoriented after dreaming of Mandy and the kidnapped baby, she knew instantly where she was. She’d fallen asleep on the sofa while waiting for Chase Bradford and his father to return from the hospital.

She remembered her eyelids growing heavy while she puzzled over why a woman who left behind a baby as darling as Toby would resort to kidnapping. Thinking she’d rest for just a little while, she’d closed her eyes. Now it was morning.

“Here comes the train,” she heard Chase say. “Choo choo choo choo. Open the tunnel.”

She swung her legs off the sofa and got to her bare feet. Had someone taken off her shoes? She put them on, then found a bathroom where she smoothed her hair and clothes the best she could before following the voices to the kitchen.

“Good job, buddy.” Chase sat in front of Toby’s high chair, a small bowl of oatmeal in front of him.

Toby rapped his hands on the pull-down tray, his face and bib surprisingly free of food splatter. The choo-choo had a good engineer.

“Let’s try an airplane. Scratch that. Too ordinary. How ’bout a flying saucer? Your mouth can be a black hole. Open up.” Chase made believe the spoon was flying, then started humming the theme to X-Files.

Kelly laughed aloud.

Chase swung his head around, grinning when he spotted her watching them, yesterday’s suspicion nowhere in sight. He was already dressed in his ranger’s uniform, the light-khaki color of the shirt bringing out the tan of his skin. Funny how she hadn’t noticed what a handsome man he was until this moment.

“We’ve got company, bud. Could be the government. There could be trouble if she reports a UFO sighting.” His spoon was still hovering above Toby’s mouth. “Quick. Open up. Get rid of the evidence.”

Toby might have been obeying Chase or he might have been smiling with his mouth open. Either way, Chase put the spoon in his mouth and the oatmeal—er, the UFO—disappeared.

“Way to go, Toby!” Chase raised his palm, parting his middle and ring fingers in the Vulcan salute from the old Star Trek shows. Toby clapped with glee.

“Doesn’t that mean live long and prosper?” Kelly asked.

“Not in this case,” Chase said. “In this case it means Toby just kicked some baby butt. Didn’t you, sport?”

The baby laughed louder, making it impossible not to join in. With Chase’s face creased in a smile and laugh lines showing around his eyes, he barely resembled the man who’d questioned her with such fervor the night before. Her inability to understand Mandy deepened. The woman hadn’t left only her baby, she’d left Chase.

“I hope you slept okay,” he said.

“I did,” she said, surprised it was true. Since her arrest, a good night’s sleep had been an elusive commodity. “But you should have woken me when you got back.”

“I tried,” he said, “but you couldn’t hear me over your snores.”