Bloodlines
Authors: Dinah McCall
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #United States, #Romance, #Contemporary, #Romantic Suspense, #Contemporary Fiction, #Mystery & Suspense, #Suspense
Olivia didn't see the approaching minivan until it suddenly appeared in her mirror.
She was thinking to herself that the driver was going too fast when the van accelerated and swerved almost into her lane. She had a brief glimpse of the driver's face, as well as the gun he was aiming at her, before the window glass on her side of the door exploded.
She screamedâand the sound seemed to go on forever.
Before she knew it, she was off the freeway and over the guardrail. She felt the SUV go airborne, then the impact as it hit nose down. Her body lurched against the restraining seat belt as the air bag deployed, while at the same time a terrible pain exploded in her shoulder. She thought she screamed out Trey's name, and then the car started to roll. After that, everything went black.
C
CALL
MIMOSA GROVE
THE PERFECT LIE
WHITE MOUNTAIN
STORM WARNING
THE RETURN
MIRA Books is also proud to publish
Dinah McCall under her real name
SHARON SALA
Watch for Sharon Sala's next release
THE CHOSEN
INAH
M
C
C
ALL
B
LOODLINES
For every wanted baby, there is another somewhere else who never feels the love of a mother's touch. I dedicate this story to them, and to Christina Carol, our own little baby who was born with two thumbs on one hand, and who had to learn at a very early age how to live in the world without her mother's love.
And I also dedicate this book to her mother, Diane, who was taken from us too earlyâbefore her work on earth was done.
Lake Texomaânorth of Dallas, Texas
M
arshall Baldwin was wielding the sledgehammer in his hands with as much delicacy as he moved through life, which was little to none. He had always been a take-charge kind of man, and his recent retirement had not changed that. In truth, retirement had only intensified his natural tendencies, driven as he was by fear someone might think him “too old” to cope. Now sweat poured out from beneath his John Deere gimme cap as studs and Sheetrock yielded to the hammer's blows.
From the appearance of the ancient wiring and lack of insulation in the old cottage he'd recently purchased, renovation was long overdue. Besides that, tearing something down and putting it back together in better order gave him something to do besides dwell on the fact that he'd been put out to pasture like an aging herd bull that was no longer worth its salt. Marshall didn't have a problem with hitting sixty-five, but he resented the hell out of being considered old and
was taking his frustration out on the walls he was tearing down.
In the middle of a swing, Pansy, his wife of forty-three years, came into the room, stood for a moment watching her husband's face, then sighed.
“Marshall, do you have to make so much noise?”
He paused, trying not to glare. It wasn't Pansy's fault he'd been forcibly retired.
“Yes,” he said, and swung the hammer once more.
“Maaarrrsshhaall!”
Marshall gritted his teeth as gypsum dust from the shattered Sheetrock showered down upon his hat, coating the bright green fabric in a white, powdery substance. He wished to God she would go shopping or something. How was he going to stand the last part of his life with her if she was on his case every minute?
The sledgehammer was on a downward arc again when Pansy grabbed his wrist, stopping the motion.
“Marshall! I'm trying to talk to you.”
The sledgehammer slipped out of his hand and landed with a loud thud against the floorboard. Before Marshall could voice his frustration, something shifted inside the wall and fell down between the studs, hitting the floor with a thump. He got a brief glimpse of something rectangular and brown as it disappeared from sight.
“Did you see that?” he asked.
Pansy nodded. “What do you think it was?” Then she grabbed Marshall's arm again, only this time in excitement. “Oh, Marshall, what if we've found some kind of treasure? Would we have to give it back?”
Marshall frowned as he tried to peer through the opening. “Hell, no. We bought this place, lock, stock and barrel. What's here is ours.”
“Can you see anything?” Pansy asked.
“Just a shape.”
“See if you can reach it!” Pansy cried.
He thrust his arm into the opening that he'd made and then reached down, running his fingers along the edge of the object until he felt metal against the leather.
“I think it's some kind of suitcase.”
Pansy squealed, then jumped up and down. It was a girlie thing for a woman in her sixties to pull off, but Pansy managed it just fine. In fact, her enthusiasm was contagious. Marshall grinned back at her.
“Don't get too excited,” he said. “It might be empty.”
“No way,” Pansy said. “If it was, then why would someone go to all the trouble of hiding it behind this wall?”
Marshall had to agree with her, but he kept silent as he felt for something to grab on to. A few moments later he felt what he thought might be a handle, curled his fingers around it and pulled. Resistance was minimal, but the opening in the Sheetrock wasn't large enough to accommodate the object and he was forced to let it go.
“It's too big for the hole,” he muttered.
Pansy pointed to the sledgehammer that, only moments ago, she had wanted him to put down.
“Make it bigger,” she said.
So he did.
A couple of minutes later he tried again, and this time, when he pulled on the object, he got it out.
“Oh, Marshall! It
is
a suitcase! I wonder what's in it. Open it quick!”
Marshall dropped to his knees as he reached for the latches, but they were stuck fast with rust.
“I can't. The latches are rusted stuck.”
“Pry it open!” Pansy said, and handed him a pry bar.
Marshall grinned. Pansy had certainly changed her tune. He took the pry bar and jammed it into the crack beside the lock, then gave it a twist. The lock snapped like a twig.
Pansy giggled. “Oooh, what if it's full of money?”
“We'll know soon enough,” he muttered, and jammed the pry bar beside the second latch. It gave way as easily as the first.
He looked up at Pansy, then winked. “Here goes nothing,” he said, and lifted the top.
There was a moment of stunned silence; then Pansy moaned, covered her face with her hands and started to cry.
Even though Marshall kept looking, he couldn't wrap his mind around what he was seeing. It was a skeletonâof a child. He wanted to believe it wasn't realâcouldn't be real. He heard the sudden and rapid thunder of his heartbeat, and wondered if he was having a heart attack there on the floor. Then a small black beetle suddenly crawled out of a tiny eye socket in the skull. Startled, he let go of the lid and rocked
back on his knees. The lid fell backward with a thump, shifting the bones of the tiny skeleton even more than they'd been before.
“Oh, sweet Jesus,” he muttered, then dragged Pansy up with him as he stood and pressed her face against his chest. For a moment, neither of them could speak. Then he made himself focus and took her by the shoulders. “Dang it, Pansy, stop crying and go get me the phone,” he said, then wiped a shaky hand across his face while Pansy made a run for her purse.
She handed it to him without speaking. Marshall took a deep breath, trying to calm his racing thoughts, but his hands were shaking as he dialed 911.
Pansy looked at the suitcase as tears ran down her cheeks.
“Dear God, Marshall, who could do such a thing?”
“I don't know, and I thank God I don't have to be the one to find out.”
Then he heard a woman's voice in his ear. It was the dispatcher.
“911. What is your emergency?”
Marshall took a deep breath. “My name is Marshall Baldwin. I just bought a property four miles west of the Fish Shack near landing number four at Lake Texoma. You need to send the police out to my house immediately.”
“And what is your emergency?”
“I just found a skeleton in a suitcase.”
There was a brief moment of silence, then the dispatcher asked, “I'm sorry, sir. Did I understand you to say a skeleton?”
“Yes.”
“In a suitcase?”
“Yes.”
“How large is the suitcase?” the dispatcher asked.
“Not very large,” Marshall muttered, then looked down at the open suitcase at his feet. “And neither is the skeleton. It's a child. The remainsâ¦they belong to a very small child.”
D
allas detective Trey Bonney strode into the precinct, nursing his second cup of coffee of the morning while trying not to think about the paperwork stacking up on his desk. He was a crackerjack detective, but when it came to filling out reports, he sucked.
“Morning, Trey.”
He nodded a hello to file clerk Lisa Morrow without meeting her gaze. To a single man who'd had his share of one-night stands, her come-hither drawl was unmistakable. Three years agoâeven two years agoâhe might have taken her up on the invitation. But no more. His transition to a true maturity with an end to one-night stands had finally arrived. It had been gradual, and he still wasn't sure when it had happened, but it was a lot lonelier than he had expected. Even so, Lisa's presence and beckoning voice were nothing more than a small obstacle course on his way to his desk. But when another female called his name, he recognized the voice and looked up.
“Hey, Trey!”
Trey set his coffee cup on his desk as he gave Detective Chia Rodriguez his full attention. If she
stretched, she measured an inch over five feet tall, but her size was deceiving. She was bulldog tough and constantly pissed due to the fact that the detectives in the precinct had a habit of referring to her as the office “Chia Pet.” Her short, unruly curls did nothing to deflect the image. Still, he liked her attitude and, on occasion, fished with her husband, Pete Rodriguez, who owned and operated his own landscape business.
“Yeah, what's up?” he asked.
“Lieutenant Warren said for you to come see him as soon as you came in.”
Trey eyed the backlog of paperwork and grimaced. “Probably going to chain me to the desk until I finish these files.”
Chia grinned and pointed toward their superior's office.
“Yeah, yeah, I'm going,” Trey said, then took one more sip of coffee and put down the cup, bracing himself for what he figured would be, at the least, a dressing-down.
He lifted his chin, yanked nervously at the tail of his sports coat, then moved toward the office. He knocked once, then opened the door and leaned inside.
“You wanted to see me, Lieutenant?”
Harold Warren looked up from the paperwork on his desk and waved Trey inside.
“If it's about the files⦔
“Don't second-guess,” Warren muttered. “It'll get you in trouble every time. Come in and shut the door.”
“Yes, sir,” Trey said.
“Sit,” Warren said, pointing to a chair.
Again Trey obeyed, wishing he'd brought the rest of his coffee with him.
“How old are you?” Warren asked.
“I'll be thirty in September,” Trey said.
“Too young to remember,” Warren muttered, more to himself than to Trey.
“Remember what?” Trey asked.
“The Sealy kidnapping.”
Trey flinched. Warren saw it.
“What?”
“Actually, I do know something about it,” he said.
“How so?” Warren asked.
“I, uhâ¦know Olivia Sealy.”
Harold arched an eyebrow. “I wasn't aware that you ran in such exclusive circles.”
“I don't,” Trey snapped. “We went to the same public high school. Even then she was sort of famous, you know. Parents murderedâraised by a rich-as-sin grandfather who showed up for school plays in a limousine.”
“She went to public school?”
Trey shrugged. “Marcus Sealy didn't believe in separation of the classes. He wanted her to grow up as normally as possible.”
He just didn't want her anywhere near me.
“You seem to know a lot about her. Is there anything else you'd like to tell me before I continue?”
He thought about the fight they'd had when she came to break it off with himâremembering the shame in her eyes when she'd told him they couldn't see each other anymore and they both knew it was be
cause his father was a drunk and his mother waited tables for a living.
“No.”
“Is there anything between you two that could be construed as a conflict of interest?”
Now Trey was getting curious. “I haven't seen her in years,” he muttered. “What's up?”
“Two days ago, while renovating a lake cabin up at Texoma, a man found a suitcase in a wall. They found the skeletal remains of a toddler inside.”
“Good God,” Trey muttered, then frowned. “But what does this have to do with the Sealy family?”
“Maybe nothing, but I want you to go see the Grayson County sheriff. His name is Blue Jenner. He's a friend of mine, and he's the one who caught the coincidence.”
“Yeah, sure, Lieutenant, but what coincidence? What does a baby's skeleton have to do with Olivia Sealy's kidnapping? They found her, remember?”
“Maybeâ¦maybe not,” Warren said. “The Sealy kidnapping was the department's case. I was a rookie when it happened. Hadn't been on the force more than three months when she was snatched. Half the force was on that case. I was there when one of the kidnappers, Foster Lawrence, took the ransom money. We followed him, hoping to get to the kid, only we lost him. By the time we found him again, the money was missing and the kid was nowhere to be found. We were all down and out, certain that we'd blown any chance of getting that kid back alive, when she up and appears wandering around a shopping center in a pair
of pajamas and dragging her blanket behind her. Talk about a high!”
Trey couldn't quit thinking of the Olivia he'd known. As a teenager, she'd been so pretty and self-assured. Even though they'd all known her history, it had never occurred to him to think of her as a toddler, lost and frightened and wondering what had happened to her world. Had she seen her parents murdered? Did she remember any of that now?
“So what does that skeleton up at Texoma have to do with Olivia Sealy?” Trey asked.
“One of the defining factors in identifying the kidnapped baby was the fact that she'd had two thumbs on her left handâ¦a trait that all the Sealy family supposedly share.”
Trey shook his head. “But Olivia didn't haveâ”
“I understand that they all have the extra digit removed once it's obvious which one is dominant. Even the old man, Marcus Sealy, has a small scar to prove it.”
“Soâ¦?”
“So after the Grayson county coroner finished his autopsy on the remains and Blue Jenner saw it, he gave me a call.”
“Why?”
“The coroner's best estimate is that the remains found at the cabin are of a female about two years old. They're still running tests to determine when they think the baby was murdered, but he's guessing it was twenty to twenty-five years ago.”
Trey frowned. “I still don't see what that has to do withâ”
“It was twenty-five years ago this year that the Sealy kidnapping occurred, andâ¦it seems that the baby in the suitcase also had two left thumbs.”
Trey leaned forward. “Are you saying that Olivia Sealy isn't reallyâ”
“I'm not saying anything,” Warren said. “Just go talk to Blue Jenner, question the coroner, check out the cabin, and do what you do best, which is nose around. Find out what you can about the previous owners.”
“Yeah, all right,” Trey said as he stood. He reached for the doorknob, then stopped and turned around.
“What?” Lieutenant Warren asked.
“The Sealysâ¦do they know about this?” Trey asked.
“If they don't, they will soon enough,” Warren said.
“How so?” Trey asked.
Warren unfolded the newspaper and pointed to the headline: Sealy Connection To Skeletal Remains?
“We don't know squat and they still print it. How do they get away with that?” Trey muttered.
Warren pointed to the question mark in the headline.
“It's all in the punctuation, but maybe after you talk to Jenner we'll have answers for everyone.”