Their Baby Girl...?: The Baby Mission / Her Baby Secret

He shook his head. She dressed well, and there was a certain amount of camouflage involved, but there was no way she could hide what was going on.

Warrick stole a peppermint from her desk and began to remove the cellophane. “You know, C.J., I can’t remember what you looked like when you weren’t pregnant.”

Why was it that men felt compelled to bury affection in a sea of banter, barbs and teasing? There were times when Warrick acted just like one of her brothers.

“Very funny.” C.J. sighed, then admitted, “Neither can I.” She pushed the keyboard back on her desk. Something was clearly up. “Okay, what has you so all-fired chipper this morning?”

“Not chipper, C.J.” Under the circumstances, that was rather a disrespectful word to apply to the situation, but then, she didn’t know yet. “Just energized.”

He played out the moment, reeling C.J. in. He felt bad for her, knowing how she felt about being stuck behind a desk. But he also felt relieved. Her reflexes had to have slowed down in this condition, and he didn’t want to have to be worried about something happening to her if she tried to go about business as usual. Business was definitely not as usual.

“Remember our old friend, the Sleeping Beauty Killer?”

Recall was instant. C.J. stiffened. The Sleeping Beauty Killer was the name she had dubbed the serial killer who had killed twelve women over the space of two years. All his victims were blue-eyed blondes, all between the ages of twenty and thirty. The name had been given him not for any missives the killer had left in his wake, but for the way he had arranged all the bodies postmortem. He strangled his victims, put a costume jewelry choker on them to hide the marks on their necks and then lyrically placed them on the ground with their hands folded around a single long-stemmed, perfect red rose. The women all appeared as if they were just sleeping, waiting for their prince to come and wake them up with a kiss.

Except that no kiss could undo what he had done to them.

Ordinarily, since all the murders had taken place in the vicinity of Orange County, the FBI wouldn’t have gotten involved unless requested to do so by the local authorities. But victim number two had been found in the parking lot of the federal court building. That made it a federal case and gave the Bureau primary jurisdiction. She’d been the first to come aboard.

Capturing the Sleeping Beauty Killer had been C.J.’s own personal crusade, one that had gone unfulfilled. The killings had abruptly stopped three years ago and the trail had gone completely dry.

The drudgery of the morning with its data inputting was forgotten. C.J.’s eyes brightened as she looked up at Warrick.

“Are you sure?” She made no attempt to hide the eagerness in her voice. If the serial killer was back, that instantly increased their chances of finally getting him for all the murders. “As far as anyone knows, he’s been out of commission for three years.”

The unofficial theory was that someone had turned the tables on the Sleeping Beauty Killer and killed him. Serial killers rarely lost the blood lust, so the abrupt termination hadn’t been voluntary. C.J. had spent countless hours scouring the crime databases herself, looking for any murders that had been committed using a similar MO. But none had come to light. Eventually C.J. decided, with no small relief, that although she wasn’t the one to bring him to justice, chances were that the Sleeping Beauty Killer was answering to a higher power for his crimes.

Obviously, relief had been premature, she thought.

“Take a look at what just came in.” Separating the photograph from the rest of the folder he was carrying, Warrick tossed it on her desk.

C.J.’s stomach tightened. She found herself looking down at an angelic face that was all but devoid of makeup. The Sleeping Beauty Killer liked them fresh, untouched by anything but death.

The girl in the photograph couldn’t have been more than twenty. Her whole life ahead of her, and now it was gone. With effort C.J. pushed down the anger that rose up within her.

She took the photograph in her hands, studying it. The girl was holding a single red rose in her hands. It was too eerily similar. But there were the three years to consider.

C.J. raised her eyes to Warrick’s face. “Copycat?” Not that that was a cause for celebration. Copycat or original, the girl was still dead.

“Maybe.” But somehow Warrick doubted it. He tapped the folder. “But he got it right, down to the last detail. Including the polished pink nails.”

It was the one detail they’d withheld from the public when the story had broken. The Sleeping Beauty Killer liked to give the women he strangled a manicure, also postmortem. He used the same shade of nail polish every time, a shade too common to be useful in their search.

C.J. shivered. “Sick bastard,” she muttered under her breath. In an unguarded moment, her hand slipped down over her belly in the eternal protective movement of expectant mothers everywhere, as if trying to shield her baby from this kind of horror. It’s not the best place I’m bringing you into, baby. She let the photograph drop back on her desk. “I guess he isn’t rotting in hell the way he was supposed to be.”

Warrick tucked the photograph back into the folder. “Guess not.”

C.J.’s eyes were drawn back to the photograph. They had to catch this killer before he struck again. She tried not to think about how many other times she’d thought the same thing. “Okay, what have we got on this?”

There was that word again, Warrick thought. We. They weren’t a “we” at the moment. And they wouldn’t be until after her baby was born. She made things hard on both of them by not remembering that fact.

“Information’s just coming in, C.J.” Looking at her, he could read her mind the way only some members of her family could. They’d been partners for six years now, covered each other’s backs on the job and offered silent support outside the job’s perimeters when the situation called for it. “Hey, this isn’t a signal to leap out from behind your desk.” His green eyes swept over her considerable bulk as a hint of a smile played on his lips. “Not that leaping appears to be in your repertoire at the moment.”

“Thanks a bunch.” C.J. shifted in her seat, wishing she could get comfortable, knowing it was a futile effort. These days comfortable was only a word in the dictionary. “I wasn’t about to leap, just walk out with as much dignity as a pregnant elephant can muster.”

He’d crossed the line and hurt her feelings, Warrick realized. So he backtracked a little. “I wouldn’t say elephant.”

“Not verbally,” C.J. countered, knowing she had him and skewering him just a little. Because he owed it to her. “But I can see what you’re thinking in your eyes. I always could, you know.”

He liked being able to read her, but he didn’t like being transparent himself. “What I’m thinking is that any normal woman would have already gone on maternity leave by now.”

She’d been over this subject ad nauseum, with both Warrick and her family. Four brothers, two parents and a partner, all of whom thought they knew better than she did what was best for her.

“We both know I don’t fall into that category,” C.J. reminded him. “And we superwomen have an image to maintain.”

He grinned. It was the kind of grin that raised women’s blood pressures and lowered their resistance. At times, C.J. mused, it was hard to remember that she thought of him as another brother and was thus immune to him. He did have one hell of a smile. Lately she kept finding herself attracted to her partner at very odd moments. For some reason, Warrick had been looking sexier and sexier to her. Had to be the hormones, she decided. They were completely out of kilter. She was usually better at keeping a tight rein on her thoughts.

“Superwoman, huh?” Warrick nodded at her stomach. “I don’t exactly picture you flying around right about now.”

She eyed the folder in his hands. It was like waving a piece of ham in front of a starving dog. “Did you just come in here with this to torture me?”

Following her eyes, he tucked the folder under his arm. “No, but it was our case. I thought you’d want to be in the loop.”

Impatient, she shifted in her chair again. It creaked its protest over the change of position. C.J. frowned. “These days I feel like the whole damn loop.”

One more month, she thought, squelching a note of desperation. One more month like this and then it’d be over. One more month and she’d have this baby so she could try to get her life back on track again. It was going to be a lot better when she could finally hold her baby in her arms instead of carrying it around like a leaden weight.

She tried not to let her mind drift. There was time enough for maternal feelings after the baby arrived, healthy and strong. Until then, she was determined to keep her emotions under tight wrap.

That wasn’t going very well right now.

C.J. noted where her partner’s eyes were resting. On her abdomen. Annoyance rose up three flights.

“Don’t look at me like that. I’ve got my whole family watching my stomach as if it’s a pot about to boil, and I don’t need my partner doing the same thing.”

Warrick straightened. “The person you should have watching your stomach is—”

She shut her eyes, searching for a vein of strength. They’d been down this road before, too. Too often. “Don’t start, War. I know what you’re going to say and I don’t want to hear it.”

“Don’t want to hear what?” He meant to make his question sound innocent. It sounded heated instead. But he wasn’t exactly impartial when it came to the FBI special agent who, until seven months ago, had a prominent place in his partner’s life—a partner he was extremely fond of. If he felt anything else toward her, well, that was something that wasn’t going to be explored in the light of day. It couldn’t be. Never mind that, pregnant or not, C.J. was the hottest-looking woman he’d ever come across. “That your insignificant other should at least be around to lend you some emotional support?”

They’d already been through this, she and Warrick. Why couldn’t he get this through his thick black Irish head? “He’s not my ‘other’ anything, War.”

The hell the man wasn’t. He had no idea what the attraction had been, but it was obviously hot enough to get her in this condition. Hot enough for her to want to keep the baby instead of going another route.

Restless, Warrick got up. “I just think that after he got you pregnant—”

C.J. took instant offense. From the moment she’d first opened her eyes on the world, despite the fact that she had a warm, loving family, she’d been her own person. She resented the implication, even for a moment, that she wasn’t.